When I Was 9

When I was nine years old, I vividly remember looking at my great grandmother, 85, lying in this home, and thinking to myself, “this is the last time I’m going to see her.” I don’t know why I thought this at the age of nine, but I did.

Written the day I took these photos:

When I was nine years old, I vividly remember looking at my great grandmother, 85, lying in this home, and thinking to myself, “this is the last time I’m going to see her.” I don’t know why I thought this at the age of nine, but I did.

Today, exactly ten years later, I walked into the room I last saw her. I felt nine years old again. My heart, filled with so much love. My face, covered in tears. My hands, brushing atop her dusty Qurans. I felt nine years old again.

My great grandmother’s home has been mostly left the same as it was. Rarely has the door to the home been opened since after she passed.

The emotions I felt walking into a home I remember so vividly after ten years is a feeling I am still trying to figure out how to explain. Reassuring, perhaps, is the right word. Reassuring.

I took these photos as a symbol of returning to roots that left me when I was so young, and that I left long before I was even born.