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Every other Wednesday, on a leafy cul-de-sac in Arlington, Virginia, students trickle in and out of the home studio of Mohamed Zakariya, who teaches Islamic calligraphy. Reporter Bruce Wallace went to a recent lesson at Zakariya’s home to see and hear the master at work. (Photo courtesy of the artist)

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MARCO WERMAN: Every other Wednesday, on a leafy cul-de-sac in Arlington, Virginia, students trickle in and out of the home studio of Mohamed Zakariya. Zakariya teaches Islamic calligraphy. Reporter Bruce Wallace went to a recent lesson at Zakariya’s home to see and hear the master at work.

BRUCE WALLACE:  Mohamed Zakariya has been writing out this lesson for, let me see, about 29 minutes. While he’s writing, he’s pointing things out to the students leaning over him at his drafting table. About spacing…

MOHAMED ZAKARIYA:  Try and make a dot like this.

WALLACE: …or how to hold the reed pen…

ZAKARIYA: Now you notice your pen is very vertical, when you want actually it to be going like this.

WALLACE: Zakariya has been doing calligraphy for over 50 years, and teaching it for over 20. He still makes mistakes though.

ZAKARIYA: Nah, that’s not good.

WALLACE: Classes go like this. Zakariya traces out a lesson, a verse from the Koran or an exercise showing how different letters connect. The student takes the lesson home and tries to copy it. The next time they meet, Zakariya marks in red where the student’s lines should have been wider, shorter, taller, at a different angle.

ZAKARIYA: They get their first lesson, there’s red all over the page. It’s a mess. At that point I would say 75% of them quit.

WALLACE: The students who stick with it take anywhere from a few weeks to a few years to finish that first lesson. The roots of this way of teaching go back about 1,000 years. It was formalized in the 1400s in the Ottoman Empire. In the 1980s, Zakariya went to Istanbul to study Islamic calligraphic scripts with two of the last living heirs to the Ottoman tradit – oh wait, he’s finally finished with that lesson.

ZAKARIYA:  Okay.

FEMALE SPEAKER: Thank you.

ZAKARIYA: Now I’m going to take a few minutes and have a cup of tea. Anybody…

WALLACE: Anyway, 1980s, Zakariya studies with two masters in Istanbul, then completes the lessons by mail. Once you do that, you agree to take on students free of charge and pass on what you’ve learned. He’s been doing that since the late 1980s. His relationship with Islamic calligraphy began in 1961. He was a 19-year-old machinist working for an aerospace company in his native Southern California, and he took a trip to Morocco. Being there opened his eyes to a different world, he says. He converted to Islam and began immersing himself in the language and culture. He admits his first attempts at calligraphy were very bad. He stuck with it, though, and soon was making a living doing calligraphy commercially. Newspaper ads, company logos, things like that. More recently he’s gotten an agent and entered the fine-art world. His work is shown all over the US and the Middle East, and is in museum collections from DC to Singapore. The commission that probably got Zakariya the most visibility started secretively.

ZAKARIYA: I got a telephone call, kind of like a Mafiosi sort of call, that says, “Mmm. We’re the Postal Department and we would be interested in talking to you about something.” And I said “Yeah, okay, what about?” And he said “Well we can’t talk about that. You have to sign a non-disclosure agreement before we can even tell you what it was.” And I said “Well why don’t you come out and talk,” so they came out. I signed the agreement, because I figured – I like the post office, the post office is cool.”

WALLACE: The post office asked him to design a stamp with the Arabic phrase Eid Mubarak, or “blessed festival” on it. Leaked news about stamps can cause a frenzy among collectors, hence the secrecy. Last year the government tapped him again, this time to turn out a piece for President Obama to give to the King of Saudi Arabia. Along the way, Zakariya has also become a scholar of the art, publishing articles and translations and books. Sheila Blair is a professor of Islamic art, and she wrote the book on Islamic calligraphy. Literally. It’s called Islamic Calligraphy. She says Zakariya’s scholarship fits neatly with his artistry.

SHEILA BLAIR: Muslim calligraphers traditionally are supposed to be in a pure state of mind when they do calligraphy and they’re supposed to reflect upon past masters, and I think his knowledge of Arabic imbues his writing with a sense of reverence for the past and a sense of value in traditional styles.

WALLACE: Back at the class, Zakariya and three of his students have settled down around the tea. This, of course, also in keeping with Ottoman and Islamic traditions. They get to talking about hadiths, sayings of the prophet Muhammad.

ZAKARIYA:  You see there’s another hadith, there’s another hadith, where God says, through Muhammad he says, “I am as my servant thinks of me.” And the idea of that is that if you think the creator is a oppressive, punishing, wrathful being, then he’s going to be like that for you. But if you think of him as a forgiving, and kind, and creative being, then he will be like that for you.

WALLACE: Zakariya is himself a pretty forgiving guy, even if sometimes there’s a lot of red ink. For The World, I’m Bruce Wallace, Arlington, Virginia.

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