Zena's post triggered my own nostalgia, She was talking about her 7th grade old Scrap Book...

I have a 7th grade old drawer, 2 actually...
Drawers of everything... small details most ppl wouldn't even notice... but to a sicko like me, they capture a moment, they capture a feeling... I have a gift of recalling feelings, vividly... that's why I hold on to every little thing that can help me, a bus ticket, a chocolate from a friend... or an old paper with a French homework scrambled on it...

I still have my cousin's piano recital brochure, I have a plane ticket Latakia-Cairo-Latakia dated June 28th 2002...

I have the pen I did my prove [9th grade] exams with... I still have my bakaloria pen...

I have the only copy of a Magazine we edited as a school homework in 10th grade, I still laugh hysterically when I read it...

I have 3 papers of the only attempt I had to write a journal, 3 days... everytime I read them I wish I had a journal... bas I know I couldn't write one, it'd be too freaking painful.

Italian Corner, l'Express bills... Laundry bills...

Placebo gig ticket, loads of phone cards and little stuff from Egypt.

All the scraps and drafts, chaotic, idiotic but youthful and full of life, papers, projects, drafts for change... projects to make syria [what we thought] a better place... written with hundreds of names I can't remember half of em nowو throughout hundreds of nights of vodka and dreaming.
A scrap from Al-Thawra newspaper calling for the supervisors of al-Mahaba festival to boycott Lebanese artists...

My Grades Sheets [jala2aty] since first class, since kindergarten...

A bag, with all the clothes price tags I could get...

My Tishreen Basketball club card...

Up on the attic, I have all my paintings in Beirut, the place where I used to paint... I still find it weird that I never really painted unless I was in Beirut, at my dad's. Lots of papers with a sun, river and mountains... Israeli airplanes and Syrian air force bombing them. God with a satanic look, Family, Friends, people I don't know. Meaningless lines of a 4 years old kid.

Each one of these things is someway or another a part of me, they're all in core miniatures of me, my life…


This is what I do, when it gets hard "to be a human", this is what I do... for when it feels lonely and fucked up, I can open my drawer and look at a postcard that reads...

حبيبنا يزن
ونحن نرحل من خيبة إلى خيبة
هل تسمح لنا أن نقاسمك هذا النجاح؟
فرحنا
وكأن الناجح نحن

I opened this drawer today, to put a small Egypt flag, a small red booklet from Cairo Airport Duty Free, and an "Astra Travel" airplane ticket case... another set of feelings... another part of me.