Introspection
Dear Senior Year
I love the life Harvard has given me, not because it’s been perfect, but because it hasn’t been. Freshman year exhilarated me, sophomore year disarmed me, junior year repaired me, and you, senior year, have made me proud.
A Pale Shade of Green
I often feel as if I’m lost in a garden of blossoms, surrounded by bright stories of success and high standards. I am a barren branch reaching out in a field of fully bloomed magnolias.
Replacing: Self
Apple’s Migration Assistant, in all its sterile productivity, offered two options: transfer everything, or choose what matters. Though I wanted to bring it all with me, my storage had been 95% full for months, and it showed. Soon enough, I found myself sorting through the digital debris of a former life.
In Pursuit of Knowledge
I have found my place at Harvard by leaving it, using Harvard resources to open my eyes to the broader world.
In Pursuit of Knowledge - Villa I Tatti
The author at Harvard’s Villa I Tatti in Italy.
In Pursuit of Knowledge - Granada
The author (left) on a research trip to Granada, Spain.
To a Syria Far Out of Reach
This year marks 28 years since my father last walked the shores of the Mediterranean in his home city, Jableh. It is a country that returns to me in flashes of memory, but does not anticipate my return.
Nowhere Else (but Detroit)
A Harvard student and a fantasy footballer board a bus to downtown Detroit.
As If Your Tears Do Anything
I want to write something — not to arrive at clarity, but to practice reaching for it. To trace the distance between where I am and where I think I could be. To say: I don’t know what I’m meant to do, but I want it to matter.
An Inhabitable Archive
What stays behind isn’t paint or plaster; it’s the way we’ve marked each other when the walls themselves were the only witnesses.
Traveling Through
A small part of my mind traces back to the moments I spent sitting in the big hospital chair, able to reflect without worrying about the speed of life around me. Time I thought I had lost.