“It has been some time now, since I think the year 2000, that the idea came to me about this tree called Haraz…it’s a huge tree with a very, very soft pulp – and there is a legend around it. They say that Haraz tree fought against the rain. Because during the rainy season and the flooding of the Nile, it is completely dry, with dry leaves, nothing at all…then during the drought it comes out with blooms and with fruit and everything. This is the definitive statement. Like saying, ‘I am me! I am an individual! I do not follow what everyone is doing!...When everyone is going to be green let them be green, I am not.”
Ibrahim El-Salahi, A Visionary Modernist, Edited by Salah M. Hassan, Museum of African Art, 2012
