I Wish I Could Send You This Glass of Water

“I Wish I Could Send You This Glass of Water” is an ongoing, collaborative drawing series between American artist Heather Layton and three Palestinian sisters— Remas (15), Enas (13), and Retal (11)—who are trying to survive genocide in Gaza. Despite the constant threat of airstrikes, quadcopter attacks, displacements, lack of emergency medical care, frigid and extreme heat temperatures, mental trauma, absence of education, contaminated water, and famine, Layton, the girls, and their father have been able to exchange letters and drawings daily through social media messaging. Here are some of the girls’ drawings, as photographed by their father, who has been a friend of Layton’s since 2015:

“Starving people rush to get flour. A quadcopter shoots them from the air.”

“A mother is cooking. Her daughter tries to warn her that a missile is coming.”

“It is too late. They die. There is blood everywhere.”

“Families line up to get bread.”

“A missile hits them. There are body parts in the air.”

“We just want to be free.”

One sister imagines that one day she will have a bedroom that is also an art gallery.

People do not have any food.

Birds are chirping on tree branches.

A decorated donut.

“The price of food is astronomical. We can not afford to buy it.”

Layton says that, throughout these past two years, she has found herself in a constant state of wishing that she could do more. “I wish that I could send them food. I wish that I could send them blankets I wish I could send them antibiotics.” This is how the drawing series I Wish I Could Send You This Glass of Water started, not as an art project for public view, but as a personal expression of love and a promise that they are not forgotten; that their lives are valuable, and that they are seen.

The series starts with Layton pouring a glass of water in her kitchen in Rochester, New York. The water then travels into a pipe that goes below the floorboards, out the window, down the street, through a grocery store, across every geographical region on earth, and under the border wall that separates Israel from Gaza. In its original form, the pipe traveled through catastrophic scenes (illustrations of stories told by the girls and their parents) until it finally reached the family, living in a tent in one of the many encampments.

The narrative took a significant turn when Layton asked the girls to join her in the drawings. In it’s revised form, as drawn by the girls, they run and get a plumber as soon as they hear that a water pipe has popped up. The plumber branches the pipe into three so that it can get to more people in Gaza. Their first pipe goes makes it to an encampment and the second to a school-turned-shelter. The third goes to a water tanker, at which time the girls hand the drawing baton back to Heather, who continues to create drawings based upon their stories. In this new version, though, horrors and dreams are interwoven.

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This project is ongoing; it will continue until the girls, their parents, and their two younger siblings—Kenan (5) and Rose (3)—are safe.

Layton sees this project as both a love letter and a historic document. The drawings put the stories of this family on record. They cannot be dismissed as “AI generated” as they are physical objects that exist in the real world with a trail of hundreds of archived messages placing them in context. They are an act of resistance and a promise that, regardless of what happens, this family will never be forgotten.

For questions about the project, contact Layton at thisglassofcleanwater@gmail.com.