The Sun’s Hidden Faces

The best thing about Istanbul is seeing the same sun I knew growing up in Syria. It makes me feel less like a stranger and more open to life.

Some time ago, I realized that my “age” in Istanbul is ten.

I live accordingly: learning its language, moving with its rhythm.

But last year, when I returned to Syria, I experienced a quiet shock. I suddenly felt my real age. I told this to a childhood friend I met by chance in my old neighborhood.

He laughed and asked, “What if it were Berlin?”

I replied, “Then I would photograph the clouds I once counted as stars before sleep. Maybe the feeling of being a stranger would fade. Maybe I would learn how to sleep again.”

Yes, I learned early on that joy softens the feeling of exile.

Since that day, I’ve started to notice… This is not merely a matter of happiness.

I understand that my smiles are, in fact, a polite way of asking serious questions. I can’t say exactly when it began, but this is how I am.

I returned to Istanbul. I watched the sun climb the façades of buildings. In today’s frames, the city’s temporary surfaces look like mirrors that reshape the light, much like cities reshape us. On the walls, there is a warmth that resembles a fire without flames.

I try not to smile so that the questions don’t suddenly collapse onto me, so that my thoughts between light and shadow remain undisturbed. I stay with the same light that raised me there; now that light is here beside me as well.

I wonder what would have happened if I hadn’t gone to Syria last year.

Maybe my age in Istanbul would have been twenty, without ever realizing my real age. That thought made me laugh.
Then I decided: this photo series is my way of counting my years not by the calendars of cities, but by the light of the sun.
The sun stands as one; we are endlessly reshaped by what surrounds us.

When questions pile up, I laugh. When I find the courage to listen to them, I take photographs.”