There was not time for imagination

Mahmoud Mileji (Youth Male)

We usually do not have time for imagination. We are sentenced to live a life where we do not have time to accept reality. Frankly speaking, refugee residents spend their time between working, going to university… They try to finish as many things as they can, wishing for the day to end. They can barely catch their breath.

When COVID19 started, we looked at our homes or the places we live in, since I’m not sure if we can call them houses or a community. We built a relationship with the community, and we realized new things that we have not seen in it before. Maybe the void in quarantine did not exist before, or we did not anticipate its existence. People who are living in tiny houses inhabited by 6 or 7 persons are not used to gathering at home except at lunch. But suddenly they had to stay and gather with each other at home all day long. It seemed strange.

For me, I felt that imagination was waiting for me at that time since I did not have any work to do. So this room became a flexible space. A space I should create and build its walls as I wish. Sometimes I imagined it as a castle... or realistically speaking, I imagined it as a typical house. Sometimes, I accepted the room as it is and imagined the community surrounding it. I imagined a society that has its means of subsistence which we are deprived of. Sometimes, I imagined different times and places. What is interesting about imagination is that it has no end. I was not confined by anything. This is why the room was not confined by certain times, places or pictures. Sometimes, I feel that walls are not just stones. I believe that walls have witnessed hard times and things unseen by other walls. Actually, our walls are also oppressed. They have seen things that no one has seen before.

I feel that during the quarantine, imagination was the only refuge. We were not accepting our reality because it’s not providing us with the minimum living standards, not to say prosperity or comfort. So we tried our best to deal with imagination and overcome a hard period. A hard period that is preceded and followed by hard times. The difficulty of this period made us imagine reality much more difficult than what it actually is.