Scenes from Little Amal’s visit to Green-Wood Cemetery

By Brian Braiker

It was a gorgeous, if windy, day Friday when Little Amal arrived at Green-Wood Cemetery. The afternoon sun was slung low on the third full day of fall as she slowly lumbered up the hill from Fifth Avenue and through the ornate 1876 brownstone Fort Hamilton gate that welcomes visitors at 25th Street.

And there were a lot of visitors to welcome. Hundreds, if not a thousand, people waited to greet Amal as she paid her respects to the historic cemetery’s permanent residents. Amal is 10 years old and 12 feet tall. And unless you haven’t looked at Instagram for the past 10 days, you may have missed the fact that “Little” Amal is in fact a giant puppet. A Syrian refugee who arrived in New York on September 14, she has been making the rounds through four of the five boroughs, spending the past five days in Brooklyn specifically. This past week, she has made stops at Brooklyn Bridge Park (which she will visit three times during her trip), Coney Island, The Brooklyn Children’s Museum, Bed-Stuy, BAM, Bay Ridge (where she danced the dabke) and St. Ann’s Warehouse, which organized her trip through the borough.

The purpose of her journey is to raise awareness of displaced people — the story is that she is a Syrian refugee who spent 2021 walking across Europe in search of her mother — but in practice it is so much more.

“With every single one of Amal’s engagements in New York and in Brooklyn, it’s really about reflecting the values of the community and telling the stories that matter in this moment,” says Yazmany Arboleda, New York City’s “People’s Artist” and creative producer of Little Amal Walks NYC.

“To me she is intersectional,” he says, “Little Amal doesn’t discriminate. When I think about who she represents, she represented all refugees and immigrants, specifically children who are displaced by war violence, climate change. But when I think about the world she is engaging with in New York, it’s the stories of all of our people.”

There is perhaps an initial inclination among some cynical New Yorkers (ourselves included) to dismiss Amal as gimmicky showmanship. What does the unasked-for appearance of a giant bamboo muppet solve? But there is an undeniable warmth to her spectacle. Amal is operated by four puppeteers as she walks, blinks, nods, dances and accepts flowers along her travels. She ventured from Turkey to Britain last year “in search” of her mother. She comforted Ukrainian refugee children in Poland, met some misguided religiously-rooted resistance in Greece, encountered the spirit of her mother in England. She is our global inner child, writ large and somewhat inscrutable.

(Alex Kent)

“The work for me is very personal. I was displaced by violence myself. My father was assassinated in Columbia when I was 11 years old; two of my uncles were tortured to death. My mom had to figure out how to leave the country to save me and my sisters and give us a future,” says Arbodela. “This is happening all over the world. How do we take care of each other in this moment? And how do we recalibrate our resources to reflect that care? … Everywhere we’re going there’s conversions that parents are having with their childcare, that people are having with each other about what it means to welcome.”

Amal is Arabic for “hope.” And Little Amal’s walk through Europe last year followed a path not unlike the one her fellow hopeful Syrians had taken to flee war. Her route through Green-Wood Cemetery on Friday included stops where she paused to take in performances by the Bangladesh Institute for Performing Arts and Academia de Mariachi Nuevo Amanecer.

(Alex Kent)

“It makes me think of kids in Ukraine,” said Jack, a 10-year-old third grader at P.S. 130, who says he raised $100 in support of Ukrainian refugee children. “I kinda expected her to be bigger,” he added. “I did not expect this many people.” (There were a lot of people.)

For her part, Jack’s friend Zelda, also 10, was excited to witness a piece of history.

“We talked about it in class and my teacher was like, ‘Go! It’ll be cool,’” she said. “For the rest of my life I can say saw the giant puppet that traveled the world. It’s one of the things we’re talking a lot about in school.”

Amal will continue her tour through Brooklyn with a walk on the Brooklyn Bridge on Saturday and visits to St. Ann’s Warehouse Saturday and Sunday, when the Brooklyn Youth Chorus will sing her home.

Here are a few more photos from Green-Wood Cemetery Friday, shot by photographer Alex Kent.

(Alex Kent)

(Alex Kent)

(Alex Kent)

(Alex Kent)

(Alex Kent)

(Alex Kent)

(Alex Kent)