Reem to Dalia:
I knew your name and your number,
Your face and your frames,
Long before I really knew you.
Then one day, under the sun, beneath the shade of a tree,
You spoke to me of your woes and sorrows.
You became the subject and I the camera,
My irises capturing every frame with clarity,
For the first time seeing the woman, not the photographer.
Dalia to Reem:
Dalia Khamissy, April 2020
My mother has Alzheimer’s.
She spends her time sitting on the couch in the living room watching series on TV, listening to music (a TV channel broadcasting old music), playing cards or knitting, something she’s become obsessed with. She lost her ability to do almost everything else and is basically very dependent now. The smallest change can disturb her thoughts and well-being.
A couple of years ago she used to knit long rectangles, then suddenly she started making big triangles then smaller ones and lately she’s been knitting every piece of yarn, whatever size she finds, into different forms and sizes.
For the past few weeks, the government of Lebanon has imposed a curfew on Sundays, the day I usually spend with her, so Mondays have become our Sundays. Today I came to visit, I helped her undo the big pieces she had already knitted long ago to roll them into balls of yarn so she can knit them again. Since I found the small blue ones last time I started collecting the small pieces and putting them in a separate box. Today I found other small pieces of different colours, mostly red ones, in different shades. Here are pieces.
The secrets of the human brain.
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Creative Conversations: An Introduction
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