What memory keeps
I know I cannot keep everything.
A childhood becomes too large. Too many rooms. Too many voices. Too many mornings that looked exactly the same until one day they were gone.
So I do not try to save everything at once.
I hold on to small things.
The things that would mean nothing to someone else, but would bring an entire house back to me.
The door
The Green Double Door
I can still see the double green door of the Grand Salon.
I can also see the older entrance door of the house. Wood covered with recycled metal from old cans. A lock. A padlock.
Nothing elegant. Nothing made to impress.
But I would recognise those doors immediately.
A door can become part of a family without anyone noticing. You pass through it thousands of times. Then one day you realise you remember the door almost as clearly as the people.
The sounds
A Silence Full of Noise
Meski was quiet. But it was never silent.
In the morning, the rooster.
Farther away, the soft diesel engines in the valley. Sometimes one. Sometimes several. The sound travelling and returning with the echo.
Donkeys. Birds.
At night, crickets. Sometimes dogs.
I did not listen carefully then. I had grown up inside those sounds.
That is the strange thing about memory. What is ordinary while you are living it can become precious after it disappears.
The house itself
Earth, Straw
and Uneven Floors
The walls had their own smell.
Earth. Palm wood. Something I still know when I smell it, even if I cannot explain it properly.
The walls were hard under the hand, with bits of straw caught inside them.
The floor was not perfectly level.
The cushions could be hard.
Today we spend a lot of time making everything smooth, straight and comfortable.
That house had none of that perfection.
I would still give a lot to sit there again.
The lamp
The Light Moved
When We Walked
I remember the oil lamp.
The light was weak. Dark around the edges. It moved when we walked.
As a child, that could be a little frightening.
It was also beautiful.
The shadows were never still. The house changed shape around the flame.
Today I can switch on a light and see every corner. It is better. Of course it is.
But I still remember the charm of not seeing everything.
The mill
The Stone Sound
If I had to save one object, I think about the wheat mill.
Two stones. A simple movement. Grain becoming flour.
I associate that sound with my grandmother.
Stone against stone. Slow. Repeated.
I watched.
At the time it was just another object in the house.
Today I understand that the sound of a mill can carry a person inside it.
The tea
Ten Minutes
That Should Not Be Rushed
Tea was never just hot water and leaves.
You waited. You watched.
The mint. The pouring. The tea returned to the pot. The tasting. The adjustment.
Ten minutes could pass before the tea was right.
Nobody needed a timer.
It was habit. Experience. Repetition.
It was an art because nobody called it art. It was simply how tea was made.
The words that stayed
Some Sentences Refuse to Leave
There are phrases I can still hear.
“Sirou jibou rkem.”
My grandmother. A few words, and suddenly I can hear her again.
“Galssou ya lwlad, khaliou lbnent y chatho.”
Men at weddings. A sentence that stayed in my head long after the moment itself disappeared.
“Ben lihoudi lhakhour.”
Another family phrase. The kind of expression that makes sense first through the voice that says it.
I do not need every sentence to become literature.
I want some of them to remain exactly what they were. Family sounds.
My grandmother
The Thing I Fear
Forgetting Most
I can talk about doors. Mills. Lamps. Tea. Walls.
But there is one answer underneath all of them.
My grandmother.
I remember her coffee in the morning. The smell of spices. Her carpets. The habits she repeated every day.
And I remember her key, hidden inside her clothes.
That detail still makes me smile.
Maybe that is why I hold on to the objects and sounds so tightly.
They are not only things. They are ways of reaching people who are no longer in the room.
What I would keep
If I Could Save Only a Few Things
I would keep the way we lived together.
The sharing.
The meals.
The tea.
The well.
And the oasis around it, with its oued, its sounds, its small movements, and all the things I once thought would always be there.
I know I cannot keep the past.
I can at least refuse to let every trace of it disappear.