Malak Shahine hugs a friend, delighted by the bright orange and yellow stripes now running from one end to the other in their neighborhood park in Hartford.
The two young girls are walking across art that is part of a new permanent exhibit titled “No Guns, All Play,” to draw attention to gun violence in the Park Street area where George Day Park is located.
The installation – commissioned by Real Art Ways, a nearby nonprofit – comes as the U.S. surgeon general recently declared gun violence a public health crisis driven by the high number of shootings across America. Neighborhood children are invited to help create this art exhibit, writing the names of people they know who have been affected by gun violence.
Malak, 9, picked up a flat brush and wrote a remembrance on the artwork.
“BJ we love you,” she wrote.
Her neighbor BJ, she said, was shot and injured in the hallway of their apartment.
Malak’s mother, Joumana Shahine, was also at the park and was appreciative of the addition.
“If you have that beauty in the area, it's gonna change your mood and mind and thinking,” she said.
Shahine and her husband immigrated from Egypt for a better life in America — but she said her husband left her and she raised their three children by herself.
Shahine believes the decision to move to the U.S. paid off though – her eldest daughter is studying pre-med in UConn, and her teenage son aspires to study computer science.
Still, raising her children in this neighborhood has not been easy.
Her car was shot three times, she said, pointing to patched holes right below the window. “I stuck it with some stuff,” she said.
Getting to her car early in the morning to go to work is a daily risk.
“I have to look around to see if somebody is coming,” she said. “And I have to run from my house to the car. I don't feel safe, but I'm the only one who’ll take care of my kids, so I have to do it.”
Steed Taylor from New York City designed and created the vibrant curves from one end of the park to the other.
“It’s that thing of childhood. You want to have your children to have fun things to play, things to do,” Taylor said. “You just can't do that if there’s that type of thing over the head.”
Steed is referring to the fear of guns that parents and children live with in this neighborhood.
In Southwest Hartford, where Park Street is located, the number of shooting victims with nonfatal injuries was eight as of early August. Last year, the neighborhood saw 18 non-fatal shootings, according to the Hartford Police Department.
With gun violence declining in her neighborhood, Malak is out again at the children's park. Last year, she said, so many people were shot that she stayed in her room crying, refusing to come out.
Connecticut Public's Jim Haddadin contributed to this report.
