DescriptionThis is a beaded necklace made by an imprisoned Palestinian in Ansar Prison in southern Lebanon. After the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon, the occupation forces built a prison camp outside Ansar (Arabic: أنصار; also spelled Insar), where imprisoned people lived in small tents surrounded by four-meter-high barbed-wire fences. Ansar was known for its extremely poor conditions and its abusive treatment that included torture, rape, and starvation. Twelve thousand detainees passed through its gates; the youngest was twelve, the oldest was eighty-five, and nearly ninety percent were civilians. Despite these circumstances, certain small items circulated within the camp—beads, cord, ink pens, and improvised tools—accessed only sporadically through guards, visitors, humanitarian workers, or shared prisoner supplies. The necklace was made by a former detainee who later worked as a nurse in the small healthcare unit in Ain al-Hilweh Camp. According to donor Marcia Stone, the beads used in this necklace were distributed by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) as part of supplies intended to occupy detainees’ time and provide small, manageable materials for craftwork. Using these limited materials, the maker created a densely beaded pendant composed of white, green, red, and black beads—the colors associated with the Palestinian flag—arranged in a diamond-shaped central motif with patterned straps and a fringe of beaded tassels. After the maker’s release from Ansar, the necklace—along with a small stone carving (2024.10.14c)—was kept by his daughter in a box of cherished family belongings in Ain al-Hilweh Camp. When Stone visited their home, the daughter showed her the family treasures, and upon seeing Stone’s admiration, offered the necklace to her. In Palestinian culture, it is believed that if someone admires something in your possession it attracts the evil eye, which is bad luck. Giving the object to the person protects one from the evil eye. Stone initially refused, saying she could not accept such personal treasures, but the former prisoner insisted: the sculpture belonged to his daughter, and if she wished to give it, Stone could not refuse. Stone later described this moment as one of the many lessons she learned in the camp—about generosity, loss, and the intimate forms of exchange that persist within displaced communities. The maker is believed to have died after leaving Lebanon with his family, and Stone has no means of locating his surviving relatives. For this reason, his name is withheld here out of respect for the family’s privacy and in recognition of the ethical complexity surrounding attribution when consent is impossible to secure.