Memories

""“She wants a nice little packet of memories she can serialize for her readers. Even better would be memories tied up with those observations she’s so fond of. “"p19
""“I don't know how to explain to her that Iam cornered by memories, caged in by recollections. I feel persecuted by the things I remember and by what my mind chooses to hide from me.”p19

""“The human need for stories is itself an obstacle to memory. Like our dreams, we are not content with images or scenes or fragments of sensory stimuli… We try to construct narratives…. We try to place these elements within a structure that makes sense, wading back through fragments, trying to stitch it all together into a coherent pattern—a beginning, a middle, and an end. Something to cleave to, something to reassure us that everything is okay in that head of ours and that the monsters and ghouls and jinn that visit us in the night ARE NOT REAL.”p19

""“There is a kind of deceit to memories, where youre never entirely sure something happened the way you remember. I read a book on forgetting, and it said most people can trace their first memory to the third or fourth year of their lives (Dostoevsky thinks you can remember things from when your'e two), but I don’t see how it’s possible. I mean, you can say you remember something from then, but can you be absolutely sure it’s your memory and not one youve claimed from stories you heard? »p20

"“That's my first true memory, I think, though even that is not a true first, but an amalgamation of memories, the way I have a hard time believing Noah’s flood happened as told, that the story isn’t simply a compounding of countless, smaller floods that coalesced into an all-consuming myth designed to teach us something about hubris and submission.”p21

""“How much have I forgotten simply because it happened so often?.. If bombs go off each day, youre not going to remember each one and who it killed.”p21

“It seems to me that complicit in the very idea of memory is the act of forgetting.”p21

“I can’t see the cooking, but I can smell it and saliva pools heavy in my cheeks. My whole family smells it, and we move like a pack of wolves scenting blood:” (memory triggered by olfactory stimulation in the park<smelling kebab<)"p23

"There is an obsession here with memory, its preservation and dissemination and accuracy. The obsession is typified in the language itself. Memory, recollection, recall, retention, remembrance, reminiscence, impression—who needs that many words for one concept? It’s as though more and more synonyms were thought up in reaction to the porous quality of memories, their ability to morph and be stained and leave you and haunt you, as though if we had more words for them, they would be more inclined towards permanency or, at the very least, clarity."p74

"In my language, we have one word for it( the word “memory”), and we make do, and memories are painful things we have no inclination to solidify."p75

“Let it go, Dr Thompson had said, which I took to mean “forget.” It’s the only way forward now. »" p75

« Are memories ever true in their entirety? Josie asks me for them, but I feel like I’m lying if I say something happened fully in this one way. How much can I trust my mind with my own story?”p75

“Why dont you give us some of your memories instead? She asks it so easily, as though it were as simple as No-Lights-Man pulling his box out from under the bed, as though it were not in fact a matter of pulling corpses from the ground, their foetid breath washing over you as they speak of all the things they've seen. She wants me to flay myself, to dig deep, to mine all that I have swallowed. Perhaps even drag Little Ahmed up, muddy water dripping from pale brow... No. »

". Much of it is gone from my waking mind, held only in my nervous system—the beating of my heart, numbness in my extremities, feelings of impending doom." p75

""“Memories, or fevered imaginings. They sear me, bright white and hot.” p87

"“Khalid’s face is there, suspended above the cravat, then it’s Poe with a sullen look under a white helmet, then Khalid again. They flicker back and forth like a light switch, toying with me, tearing at the fabric of my mind… Khalid/Poe laughs. A loud, barking cackle. Falling back against the wall, sliding to the floor, he grips his belly and laughs and laughs and laughs. He laughs until tears glisten around his eyes and his mouth screws up like he’s in pain. The jarring sound pierces my brain. I clap flat palms over my ears and turn away onto my side. »p120

“She still asks for memories… She wants stories about home, about family, about the journey and the camps. The whys and hows of it all. And yet, here I am, swallowing the personal in favor of the political. Again. Why? Is it easier? Safer? After all, if no one knows your personal story, they can’t use it against you. »p154

“Josie wants memories, so I’ll give her memories. I will give her all of them, whether they are completely chronologically factual or — not… I'll write about Queiq in that spring when Mama gave up on life and Baba finally resigned himself to the fact that we couldn't stay there,.. I’ll write about the cousins and aunts and uncles and brothers and neighbors and best friends who were tortured or killed or scattered to the wind like doves that would never again find a place to nest… Pll tell her about the crossing of Europe and how I walked a continent. About the weighted-down raft and the people who drowned ° and the bigger boat and all the camps where people immediately tried to impose some order and structure on their lives..(page 165) I’ll write about being locked in freezing lorries and being chased and shot at and beaten by border guards and smugglers who fleece you and use you because they know your only other option is death.I write two, three, four articles that I fire off throughout the day and night and another day until she has a fucking timeline of how I got here.”p164

“First Josie wanted memories. All the memories, for weeks it’s all she asked about, but now she says they are too much to be believed, and I wonder if she’s playing with me. She’s read the other pieces I sent, where I talked about the hot and overcrowded bus through Turkey and the camps in Greece and the little toe that became so infected I thought it would fall off like a rotten piece of fruit. I wrote about guns to my head in front of the open backs of freezing trucks and that afternoon when we swallowed tear gas and dodged rubber bullets on the Macedonian border. I still have not, cannot, will not, tell her about Syria. The bombs pulverized our home and that door has caved in, perhaps forever. »p191

“My memories have fractured, and I don’t entirely trust the pieces. Words and numbers don’t mean much. Pictures, even less. What do I do with the things I’ve seen—the arguments, the blood, the bodies, the special kind of silence that follows when loved ones leave? How much of it is mine? How much is theirs? »p192

. There is a theory, Freudian perhaps, of compartmentalization. It says that memories can be hidden in different parts of the mind, where the waking consciousness cant reach them. It is a way of containing contradictory components of the mind, a way to avoid cognitive dissonance, if you will. I imagine it as a kind of grand estate, and the flats all have people in them, and the ones in flat A are unaware of whats happening in flat B**.(page 236)** Of course, there are obvious issues with that analogy. You know how its wrong to go snooping in other peoples rooms? Thats kind of how my memories feel. It’s how I feel about my past. Ive already brought more of it out than I thought I would. If I give more, if I use my name and all of my story... who knows what all that rooting around will dig up? »p236