Zoe Eva

Zoe-Eva is my niece. I was very homesick for my family and country when I lived in Syria. My mother sent me an adorable photo of Zoe and I drew her in ink. We ate, slept and I even drew whilst sitting on the floor. Most(all) of my Syrian drawings where done whilst sitting on the floor and nursing my three month old baby, Lougene. I remember my eight year old son, Azzam, falling out of his first wooden bed each night and landing on the floor, because he had never slept in a bed before. We had always slept on mattresses on the floor. I used to try to carry my huge round aluminium tray full of food on my head but I wasn't very good at balancing it like the Syrian women. They used to carry large gas bottles that were full, on their heads for great distances. I called the women of Skelbieh, true earth mothers. They would toil in the fields during the day and work in their homes at night. My mother-in-law used to take my cotton nappies off the clothes line because she was embarressed that they were not white enough. She would boil them, scrub them and then hang them out again. We had to think about what the neighbours would say. I didn't worry, but then I have always been a bit of a gypsy. I come from the Hungarian Korchma clan (probably a few gypsies way back in my ancestry).