the gallery wall
"A little to the right, Clair... that's too much, a bit to the left now...hmmm"
"This is the biggest frame and if you haven't noticed already it's very heavy!"
"No I think it's perfect, I'll mark it with the pencil now"
To some it might seem that a gallery wall is a piece of cake; a DIY project that just needs a few frames with pictures, a hammer and some nails (and maybe a few inspirations from pinterest). But to me creating a gallery wall was a mammoth undertaking that involved digging into virtually lost photos and albums, stored away in five different countries around the world. I had always wanted to create a gallery wall in my house, but with my dad working for the United Nations, the implementation of that idea seemed like a far-fetched dream. By the time I would get my energies ready for the aforementioned task, my dad would announce that we were moving to someplace new. In my seventeen year existence, I have visited twenty-seven countries, I have lived in four, and never stayed in the same place for more than three years (even within my own country).
Memories are powerful, and pictures are tangible memories that tie us to people, places, and emotions. During the winter of 2014, I was visiting Pakistan. While at my family's house in Islamabad, I had to search the attic for my mom's tea set (apparently we needed it for some tea party) when I found some old picture of me and my siblings. I spent hours looking for more pictures and found my parents wedding albums, my baby album, and pictures of my grandparents and other relatives. I organized the pictures systematically anddecided to create a gallery wall in our house in New York. It took me more than a long time, just to get the pictures together, and even longer to select the perfect one. Now when I look at the gallery wall, not only can I remember the places I've been to but also I will never forget the place that I come from.
I have travelled around the globe and experienced many cultures, and while people find it interesting when I tell them about how I missed my bus and had gotten lost on my way from Geneva to the Divonne-les-Bains, how people love to eat Mansaf in Jordan, and how I almost fell off the Tok-Tok in Thailand. People almost never ask me about the unpacking and packing that I have to do, the agony of losing my dear friends, the countless hours that I have spent on the airports and even more hours on congested airplanes. They almost never ask me about how I adjust to different cultures and societies
How do I stay true to my culture and identity? The Pashtuns are a people who live in northwest of Pakistan and southeast of Afghanistan. Pashtuns have a dynamic character with a great zeal for music, dance, poetry, and art but in contrast to this poetic nature, the Pashtuns are warriors as well. Although the origin of the Pashtuns is obscure, Pashtuns are majorly known as the people, who follow the Pashtunwali and who speak Pashto. At the present time Pashtuns are the most unfortunate people because they live in a society, which is marred by terrorist groups and fanatics. But those are not the people that define Pashtun; rather people irrepressible and heroic like Malala Yousafzai are the true depiction of the Pashtuns.The gallery wall always reminds me that I am a Pashtun girl, through and through, who started off from the secluded town of Mansehra (from where you can clearly see the Karakoram mountain range, including K2, the second largest peak in the world), in the Pashtun province of Pakistan, to a girl who lives in New York.
This is why the Gallery wall is important to me.
"Okay the final one is hung, come look at it!"
"It's perfect"