To: yellows, ugly tiles and inherited textiles

I am writing this in order to finally create the spaces for farewells to homes that I left without being aware I was leaving them for good. This late attempt is going to be unexpectedly short and direct. I am going to say goodbye to yellows, ugly bathroom tiles and carpets. So, this is about these three elements of homes which I actually am seeking and keeping in my current life. It seems significant to mention that it took me 3 years to start writing.

Yellows have been both an interior and exterior issue. The majestic tree of mimosa would be blossoming yellow around this time of year, or a little bit earlier. This would be the prime time of yellow and diluted greens. Rooms would be filled with the possible and potential warmth of these few weeks throughout the year. A slightly more consistent presence of yellows was seen in the paint of interior façades. I thought that I didn’t like it very much for years until the day I rented a flat just because I was caught by the yellow stripes on the walls. I realized that yellow was the first one to empty in my watercolor sets, and that I have been painting sunset colors everyday. Eventually when I think of home, I imagine myself in a warm yellow room. Now, I have a big yellow suitcase, providing some room for my personal belongings.

Passing through a heavy yellow painted door, I would find myself taken to the wet spaces. The ugly tiles would be dominating my imagination and feelings towards small bathrooms. The uglier and messier they would be, the more they would allow me to contemplate over the simplest questions in the most complicated ways possible. The problem with the coffee latte colored-tiles was that the walls were covered with square ones while the floor with rectangular ones. And the patterns were differing too; dots for the squares and lines for the rectangles. I could not forget the white ugly flowers on black tiles, yet somehow they became abstracted in my mind in time. Perhaps, this is how I wouldn’t see the ugliness of the patterns but only their primary lines and shapes, which became more interesting to my eye and also to my imagination.

Finally there are the characteristic textiles which were not my personal choices nor preferences. They found their way to me by themselves, until finally I couldn’t imagine making a home without their smooth and wrinkly effects. The main one was the transportation of creamy tulle curtains from one home to another. The width of the main façade was exactly the same as the balcony wall of the other, yet the ceiling heights differed significantly. Nevertheless, I enjoyed them carrying the wind in the room through their exaggerated movements. More interestingly, I realized that the traditional carpets I inherited from the family, which once looked boring and outdated, became an indispensable part of my inner world. Now, I miss them dearly. I miss them and can’t replace them.

Thank you for being in my imagination and in my notebooks. Thanks to you it becomes easier to say goodbye to homes. Thanks to you, it becomes possible to imagine new ones.

Sincerely,
hilal.