MAPPING HOME

I have never stayed in one place for more than nine months. One hundred and sixty-six visa stamps between Lebanon and the UAE. That is eighty three trips in total turning into an average of a three months stay at one place before leaving. Looking at a map I was not able to pinpoint home as a location, instead my meaning, as well as most kids who grew up between multiple locations, of home transcends location and turns into an experience of home rather than a tangible structure or place. Mapping Home is my experience of finding home by weaving the tangible with the intangible using everyday objects like maps, threads, needles, and tokens collected throughout my life. In this piece, as I repeated the motion of stitching threads through a map, the locations themselves faltered into voids giving the threads a predominant location of a map that wasn’t accustomed for them. As the holes thickened and there was not enough space to weave through the two countries, the previous threads, my previous journeys, gave support to the threads to come as I started weaving through the line of wool itself and not the map. All the while the back end of the map was left to organically weave itself through and through creating a secondary mapping, a map that more accurately describes the terms of what a home means to me; tangled lines, relations, some taut, some loose yet all contained in one space, in the thread of wool, in my experience of living.

FIRST TRAVEL BETWEEN ABU DHABI AND BEIRUT IN 1995

TRAVELS BETWEEN 1994 (YEAR I WAS BORN) AND 1997

TRAVELS UNTIL 2005

TRAVELS UNTIL 2016

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ART:
NADIM CHOUFI
LEBANON

POSTCARD #8

in

Sobh bekheir,

I just woke up, thought I’d write you a couple lines. How are you feeling today? What are you doing all day? 

In all my dreams, I run back to you, we meet again in our arms, we meet again at the sea, we meet again in the sky.

Delam barat tang shodeh, I miss your perfume, the taste of your lips, the softness of your fingers caressing each square of my body, my skin shivering,

I need you like I need air. 

As soon as I am back, I’ll ask you something very important…

PS: I forgot to tell you, I found a beautiful green djellaba at the souk, I bought it for you. I know green is your favourite colour.

Asheghetam,
Bedrood.

A GHOST, A FRIEND

in ,
 

Up on the hillside
I’ve found a place to hide
Far from the people
And the city lights

Then came a friendly ghost
Who sang me lullabies
I didn’t speak her language
So I thanked her with my eyes

She said ooh
I said I know

She held me by the finger
As ghostly as can be
I felt the warmth within her
Transfer into me

I said ooh
She said I know

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MUSIC: MAHMOOD AL ZADJALI
ART: HAYAT

 

PRAYING FOR SURVIVAL

in

You must survive.
Attempting to kiss your memory goodbye hurts every ounce of my being,
it exhausts every cell within me, it cripples my heart and burns my throat,
You must survive,
And the destiny that awaits me is lost In a motherland that’s left behind
forever,
my free floating spirit is left there In its trauma,
left to cage it's ache, left to battle
against its tyrant, left to fight a bit more and to love a bit more.
You must survive,
For here I am, yet again, overwhelmed with the inability to overcome the
sorrow of longing for a place that is more of a divine state that pulls me
into contentment,
more of a call to prayer that breathes new life into my ancient soul,
more of the sound of my beloved’s laughter,
more of the smell of a rain-covered street I found refuge In,
More of warmth, more of bliss,
more of ease and reminisce.
You must survive,
You will survive,
Oh dear, please do survive.

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TEXT: RAWAN RAKAN