Borrowing a Family Album

“I was four or five years old when I woke up one morning, and my sister, Eman, wasn’t there. Not only did her toys, bed, and clothes disappear, but her name also vanished along with our family photo albums. Later, I was not sure anymore if I had ever had a sister at all or if I had made up all the memories that kept haunting me after I saw that girl once in an old movie. To bring my doubts to an end, I chose to believe my sister was the fearless girl who saved her father in Kamal El Sheikh’s classic film, Life or Death. I was relieved and enjoyed inventing new memories with her. We visited new places with my family, played together by the sea, and roamed the city on fantastic adventures.
I was 14 when a relative accidentally mentioned my sister’s death in front of me for the first time since she had disappeared. That day, I finally became certain of her existence, but I’ve never been able to tell which of my memories with her were true and which were fictional.
In 2022, I saw amateur film footage from the Rigopolous Family collection. It was shot mainly by Georgios Rigopoulos in Athens and the Cyclades Islands in Greece between 1966 and 1968. Could images of places I never saw as a child help me to retrieve a disoriented memory? Could we explore stories about ourselves in memories belonging to people we never met?” Tamer El Said