This picture is for my friend Leyla.
don't you forget me.
I have missed you a lot.
Nusaybin|Mardin
1991

Baba.
The refugee camp.
Sweden

Baba - 1986, 26 years old.
Qamişlo - Rojava, Northern Syria

His books, pictures, cassettes and speakers.
the Kurdish books were hidden somewhere else. Before he left, he buried the Kurdish books he could not give away under the earth in the garden.

When I asked him how he learnt to read and write in Kurdish, he simply replied that sometimes they would secretly travel for hours to a village where there was a Kurdish book that they could borrow. He is a Kurdish writer and poet.

Baba.
"I was maybe 16 or 17, we developed these pictures ourselves with equipment my brother got from Russia. I coloured some of them in by hand, but I just made the colours up"

Damascus. Before 2011.

Kalo Mûrad and Pîrê Kejê.

إِنَّا لِلَّٰهِ وَإِنَّا إِلَيْهِ رَاجِعُونَ‎,

Three generations.
Kalo Keleş is in the centre.

Qamişlo - 1997
Mîtra and Hûda

Grandma Şerîfa, great grandma Ayşo
Uncle Sîrac, the brother who stayed.

Qamişlo - A life before mine.

I remember the stairs and I remember the window that mama and xaltîkê Firyal are stood in front of. I remember the room behind the window. I remember the hallway outside the room. I remember the entrance to the house. I remember the toilet on the left. I remember the kitchen, I remember the bathroom it leads to. I remember the courtyard the hallway leads to, thats where the stairs are. The stairs lead to the rooftop, the rooftop was for sleeping. Jafer broke his teeth on the stairs once. I remember the three rooms, three rooms turned into two. I remember the street outside and the beige dust. I remember the smell of basil . I remember the smell of the unripe, green orange I picked. I tried to make everyone smell it but the only person who I remember smelling it was my great grandma. She is not in this picture.

I've played where my grandma was sat, even though I never really met her. She died when I was six months old and my mum was 25. This picture is a ghost.

The bookcase

Baba, on the right.
With family and friends, now exiled.
I don't know about the man looking into the camera.

When I was little, I thought I was the only artist in my family.

"My mum is one of twelve" used to be a fun fact until I realised there was no contraception.

I don't know who this man is, like other pictures I have found in my family albums which I have no information about, I joined dots and made up stories in my mind.

It was hot and I remember the napping area for the children, there were long pillows.