RAMALLAH, West Bank — Every workday morning for 71 years, 88-year-old Hani Rihani has headed for work at the Aslan Tile Factory in downtown Nablus.
The factory is one of the last bastions for the tradition of Shami tiles, which were brought into the Levant by French colonialism. In 1913, founder Hamdi Jamal Aslan built a workshop in the city of Acre and opened branches in the cities of Haifa, Jaffa and Nablus the same year. All were closed shortly after the 1948 war save the Nablus workshop.