WEBVTT
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This is where I source all my found objects,
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my dried plants, my miniature furniture,
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Christmas ornaments, shells, paints, snails, stones.
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This knob here is a radio switch.
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But what I see in it is an exploded engine.
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This is my stash of miniature toys.
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Sometimes the furniture I find is already broken
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and the shop owner says,
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"Well, I can't sell you that it's broken.
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What are you gonna do with it?" [laughs]
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This is from my previous marriage wedding cake.
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That's what's left of the marriage.
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Before the Syrian war,
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my art was very therapeutic, was very cathartic.
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[solemn music]
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I was just making, making, making.
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I wanted to build the Damascus of my memories.
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[solemn music]
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A lot of generations came here.
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A lot of paint happened on these walls.
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[solemn music]
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So it's exactly what I'm gonna do.
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Paint, scrape, paint, scrape.
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[solemn music]
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Before you know it,
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the architecture was telling the story of the human
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that lived within.
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[solemn music]
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And that would bring me home.
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[solemn music]
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[Mohamad speaking foreign language]
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[Mom foreign language]
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[Mohamad speaking foreign language]
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[Father foreign language]
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[Mama speaking foreign language]
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[Father speaking foreign language]
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[Mama speaking foreign language]
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[Father speaking foreign language]
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[Mama speaking foreign language]
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[Father and Mohamad speaking foreign language]
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[Mama and Mohamad speaking foreign language]
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Bye, take care.
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I always wanted to come to the United States
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to study architecture here.
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After 9/11 happened, there was a travel ban in place.
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Now it wasn't called the travel ban.
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My visa was stamped as single entry only.
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And I realized that I was stuck here
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and I was extremely homesick.
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I was giving up being with my parents,
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being with my older brother, my sisters.
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I missed my sister's wedding and the birth of her children.
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I was very close to my grandmother
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and I couldn't go to her funeral.
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It felt horrible.
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I would say to my parents, "Okay,
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this is, that I'm coming home."
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They'd say "No, don't do this.
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Don't jeopardize your career."
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[solemn music]
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It was one of those nights.
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It might've been Thanksgiving break.
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Nothing's open. Where is everybody?
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They're at home.
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Mm.
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They're with their families.
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And I was in this open architecture studio space and I was
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the only person in there.
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I remember I was so frustrated and I had a photograph
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of an old [speaking foreign language]
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facade that was on a candy wrapper.
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And I think a little bulb turned on in my head
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and it told me, "Well, stop whining.
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If you can't get home, why don't you make home?"
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[solemn music]
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And I would collect all the wood scraps
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that my peers would throw in the floor,
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the plastics, the styrene.
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[solemn music]
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That's when really kind of clicked like, okay, this is me.
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This is where I'm from.
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[explosion echoes]
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[people screaming]
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[objects clatter]
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It's hard to pin down when exactly the war started.
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My parents hesitated to leave home.
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It's not until the clashes broke off a hundred meters away
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and shook our whole house.
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They realize, okay,
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the conflict is now on our doorstep and we need to leave.
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They came and lived in my small apartment.
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I was a very young designer pitching 200, 300,
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$400 million buildings.
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I had to keep a straight face at work and still perform.
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But I was very troubled.
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Extremely troubled.
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[solemn music]
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I had a monitor literally on news channels 10 hours a day.
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I'm working and I'm seeing the Arab world blow up.
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[explosion crashes]
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I lost my appetite.
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I didn't do any art for maybe two years straight.
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And I've internalized it, internalized it.
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[Mohamad speaking foreign language]
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I took to my models like an explosion.
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[solemn music]
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If something did not look right
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I took a hammer to it and I broke it.
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And I snapped it, I would throw ash on it and burn it.
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[explosions crash]
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People were so sick of seeing blood and bodies
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as a way to build empathy.
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And I get that. I was sick too.
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How many dead bodies can be seen?
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You just go like, oh my gosh,
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not another Syrian came washing off the shores.
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Swipe away to the next story.
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[solemn music]
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There was this fire inside me to start humanizing refugees
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and to tell their stories.
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[solemn music]
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[Man speaking foreign language]
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[Mohamad speaking foreign language]
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[Man speaking foreign language]
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[Mohamad speaking foreign language]
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[Man speaking foreign language]
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[Mohamad speaking foreign language]
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[Man speaking foreign language]
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[Mohamad speaking foreign language]
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[Man speaking foreign language]
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[clothes flapping]
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I was interviewing a refugee
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one time and the man started crying and he said,
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"I'm very grateful for their help.
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But the night we arrived here,
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the lady welcoming us was teaching me
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how to turn a light switched on.
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Could you please translate to her that I had a very
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beautiful house in Syria with a lot of appliances
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and a lot of things in it.
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And I really know how to switch a light on."
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We come from established lives.
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We had a life.
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You can't explain millions people
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with one stab refugee foster.
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[solemn music]
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Marathi is a Welsh word
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without a direct translation into English.
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It describes a state of extreme homesickness to a homeland
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that is no longer existed or has never, ever existed.
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I have certainly fallen in love with the idea
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of Damascus in Syria.
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I only had a moment there.
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When I opened my eyes, I was swept away.
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[speaking foreign language]
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The Syrian war resulted in a lot of marriages failing.
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My mom moved back to Damascus
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because she became extremely homesick.
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She was saying in Arabic [speaking foreign language]
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whatever happens to everybody will happen to me as well.
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I can't go to Syria because I will get drafted
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to the military.
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Going and seeing my mom in Lebanon is the closest
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I can be to home.
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My nice [speaking foreign language].
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I love my lemon.
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The news was not showing what we are losing culturally.
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Undoubtedly, the most expensive price being paid
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in conflicts is the human life.
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No question.
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But also there's something to weep over
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when you see a thousand year old Minaret be bombed
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out of existence.
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[solemn music]
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You wipe a nation's history, you wipe their architecture.
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Two generations later it's as though they've never existed.
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[solemn music]
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What does a civilization leave behind
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when they lived there for thousands of years?
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How many layers do they leave of paint and stories?
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[solemn music]
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I was painting a picture so that people can fully understand
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the magnitude of destruction.
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[solemn music]
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For a split second,
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you are transported to a different place.
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[solemn music]
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[Mohamad speaks in foreign language]
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Mm.
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[Mohamad speaks in foreign language]
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[Mama speaks in foreign language]
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[Mama and Mohamad speaking in foreign language]
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[Mama speaking in foreign language]
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[Mohamad speaking in foreign language]
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Okay.
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[Mohamad speaking in foreign language]
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[Mama speaking in foreign language]
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[Mohamad speaking in foreign language]
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[Mama speaking in foreign language]
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[Mohamad speaking in foreign language]
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[Mama speaking in foreign language]
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[Mohamad speaking in foreign language]
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[Mama speaking in foreign language]
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[Mohamad speaking in foreign language]
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[Mama speaking in foreign language]
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[Mohamad speaking in foreign language]
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[Mama speaking in foreign language]
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[solemn piano music]
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Wars tend to change people.
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They change some of us.
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The memories that I have could very well not exist today.
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[solemn piano music]
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The grace and warmth
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could very well have vanished.
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[solemn piano music]
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We don't have a full family portrait
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that is newer than 1999.
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[solemn piano music]
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The four siblings of us and the two bairns have not been
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under a single roof in 14, 15 years.
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I stopped counting.
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And I miss it. I miss home.
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[solemn piano music]
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I miss home.
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[solemn piano music]
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[solemn music]