Shirin

Since I was a child, back when I did not even know the meaning of the word salvation, I knew this: when I draw, I feel something that nothing else can give me. I would forget time. Whatever was happening around me would fade away, and sometimes I would not even hear the sounds around me. I would sink into a world that was my own. A world whose rules I set myself, a world where no one had the power to hurt me.

I was not a social child. Drawing was my way of communicating with others, and sometimes a way of escaping from them. Through my drawings I said the things I could not say out loud: the screams I never had the strength to release, the “I love you”s that were hard for me to say, the tears that sometimes dried before they could fall, the friends I did not have, and the dreams that felt far away.

Later, when I immigrated, drawing became my home. Whenever I missed home, I would draw it. Then I would sit in a corner of my drawings, and it felt as if I were home, despite all the oceans that had come between us.

I endured the worst days of my life with drawing. I endured the loss of my loved ones with drawing. In a dark and endless whirlpool I struggled, and I drew a green sprout. I drowned in my tears, and I drew a smile.

Drawing was never a hobby for me. It was life, the air without which breathing was impossible. In my drawings I search for a way to give shape to a feeling that has no shape. I want that when someone looks at them, something awakens somewhere in their heart. I want that when someone looks at them, even for a moment, they feel safe and loved. That they feel someone or something beyond that picture is telling them ,that they are not alone.