Thus I reluctantly started my journey as a reader, but there was no other choice. Watching TV was annoying too, since we only had two channels, Egypt 1 and Egypt 2, which were full of boring Egyptian TV series. Except a series called ‘Al-Aayyam’ (‘The Days’), telling the story of Taha Hussein, which captured my attention in that period. I didn’t miss a single episode of this one. Just like my auntie Jazia who used to cry while watching it and say, “you poor Taha” till towards the last episodes when he started questioning religion and the Azhar, she sighed, “ohh ... my God, how would it be if you were not blind!” And she stopped watching the series after that.

My curfew memories are glued and bound to this series. The darkness and Melancholy that accompanied Taha Hussein in his life was somehow a parallel to mine in terms of the shape of the house and the colour of its walls. The light of our oil candles, and the different objects I used to see in the same degree of shadow and light at all times made me think, what would it feel like to be blind, and to be born to see... The third channel we had was the Arabic speaking Israeli Channel, where we used to see the news at exactly 7:30 in the evening to learn about the harvest of that day from martyrs and to hear if there was any change with regards to the seemingly endless curfew.

This furthest corner of the house which was full of my father’s books and magazines was my last resort. I entered this beautiful world that started recompensing me, somehow, for the smile of my neighbour’s daughter and the sunlight and life outside the walls of our house. I started reading novels and short stories that were available, especially the works by Najib Mahfouz, Taha Hussein and other Arab writers. I was lucky too to find translations of works by Jean-Paul Sartre, Shakespeare,... Reading was not only about understanding and absorbing everything in the piece I had in hand, it was more about enjoying my escape between the lines of the books. The books I had there were mostly by Egyptian publishers, containting small drawings related to the story. At the time, I was overwhelmed by the drawings, especially those by Jamal Qutob and Jamal Kamel portraying characters of Mahfouz novels. They were all beautiful and prompted me to copy the drawings using transparent paper... After some time I got better and better and started adding my personal touch to the copies. That was how I discovered the painter in me, and it became my first game to make me less sad about the curfew.

I spent many hours of my life lying down on my stomach using my pencil and paper as means of travel to the worlds of those writers. I used to fall asleep and wake up at dawn time to find myself on the ground, hearing a mixture of sounds coming from different places around me, like the morning prayers from the Egyptian half of Rafah, which is isolated from our Rafah by a wire fence border, and the voice of the Egyptian singer Fayza Ahmad, who was the beloved voice of my elder brother Nihro, and the voices of Farid Al-Atrash and Mohammad Abudulwahab, who did not leave the speakers of my fathers radio. Whenever a song finished I used to hear my father’s voice from the other room cursing this life with a phrase that summarises the whole situation we were living... then he turns the radio tuner searching for another song... Another dimmed sound of romantic songs is coming from my sister’s room next to me, and the harsh voice of a faceless soldier driving his military truck, shouting and repeating, “the curfew continues and is still valid till otherwise announced, and everyone who leaves their house will expose themselves to danger and will be subject to punishment, go to sleep.”

I still hear these voices while I am writing these words, far away from my studio in Paris, the voices that will keep pumping in my soul the love of life and continuous resistance, till otherwise announced.

Paris, November 2007