During the summer of 2009, I had been reading quite a bit about happiness. What kept recurring was that the 'pursuit' of happiness is what keeps people from attaining it. We're meant to accept what is beyond our control and surrender to the universe. We're meant to live in the 'now' and not perpetually in pursuit.
This notion targeted a place of placeless-ness within me. My personal pursuit of belonging and that cozy comfortable feeling that people feel when they're in a familiar place called home.
I've never been to my home... Safad.
Safad is in the Northern part of Palestine (occupied since 1948) and the highest city in Galilee. It is a place that is considered one of the most mystical and beautiful in Palestine...It's old city is so beautiful that people have painted the doors blue because it reminds them of heaven. It's winding stairways have no systematic order but serve to both connect everything but also get you lost in its web. It is a city of layers.. layers of history that are left as traces through its architectural diversity. Layers of stone built homes that are leveled like showpieces at a 900m elevation.
It's a place that I have wondered and fantasized about many times. I have yearned to wake up there and smell its morning smell; yearned to get lost amidst the old city's alleyways; yearned to know that I could hop over to my neighbours and find my grandmother 'Im Zafer' there.. hop over to her neighbour and find my aunts, uncles and cousins all in homes forming a radius around my own.
I can write about my fantasies forever... but this led me to the decision that my first collection had to be about Safad and my fantasies within it. I had to make an experience or something out of it that I could touch. It's my fantasy, my home, my pursuit of the unattainable and what I think has alot to do with my happiness.
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