AARON HUGHES
Tea Installation at 2191 Days and Counting Exhibition, Brooklyn, NY
TEA
noun
a hot drink made by infusing the dried, crushed leaves of the tea plant in boiling water.
TEA
243 Detainees left in Guantanamo
243 Styrofoam flowers
STYROFOAM FLOWERS
My friend Chris Arendt was a guard at Guantanamo. At mealtime the detainees were issued small Styrofoam cups and, though it was illegal, they would scratch flowers and beautiful designs into the sides of the cups with their fingernails. The inmates were yelled at for making the flowers, yet they kept creating them and part of Chris's job was to the deliver entire trash bags full of the tiny cups to military intelligence officers, who would (he assumed) analyze the flowers to see if they contained secret maps or plans.
I know Chris liked working night shifts, because whenever the detainees were awake he wanted to apologize to them When they were sleeping, he didn't have to worry about it. He could just walk up and down the blocks all night long.
The Detainees were only allowed to have Styrofoam cups and they would write and draw all over them. Chris was not familiar with Muslim culture... none of us were... are... but he learned they don't draw the human form, maybe not any creatures, but they draw a lot of flowers. They would cover the cups with flowers. Then he would have to take them. It was a ridiculous process. It was as if they were writing some kind of secret message that they were somehow going to throw into the ocean, that would get back to somebody. He would send them to our military intelligence and they would just look at these things and then throw them away.
Chris loved those little cups...
I asked Chris what he would draw on the cups if he were going to serve Arabic tea in them... He said, "I'd draw flowers for sure, Islamic designs ... it's tough to say."
I know I would like to have Arabic tea in one of those cups along the river whether it is the north branch of the Chicago or the Euphrates, where I dreamed of how connected it all is: the Euphrates to the gulf to the ocean to the lakes to home. Tea is an ongoing dialogue that traverses a variety of landscapes. From the tea sipped at this installation, to a quaint coffee shop in the lower eastside, to a cage in Guantanamo Bay, to a motor poor in Iraq; tea is not only a favored drink but a shared moment that transcends cultural divides and systems of oppression. That is not meant as a clichéd utopian statement, but as a reminder of a shared humanity that is so often overlooked.
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