Childhood memories of three Egyptian grandmas
Sandy · Egypt
Read
Faulkner’s “Barn Burning” stayed with Sandy: told from its character’s childhood, it suggested a memory he could never forget.
Discuss
Sandy read “Barn Burning” in Arabic in order to discuss it in English, and found the course gave room to change one’s mind without changing who one is.
Sit with it
Sandy wondered whether childhood memories stay with us into old age, and noticed that, as in “Barn Burning,” parents are the most significant figures in any childhood.
Act
Sandy interviewed three older women, raised in Upper Egypt, on the coast and through the 1973 war, about their childhoods, and edited it into a video with songs they loved. One viewer said her late grandmother would have loved it.
I realized to forgive the adults before blaming them, because they were children once.