Najma

8. The Courtyard

Some days, I draw because I have to. Because there's a deadline, a critique coming, an idea that needs form before it evaporates. And some days, like today, I draw because I don't know how else to think.

The studio emptied out a while ago, but I stayed. The sunlight has turned gold, stretching long and soft across the concrete floor. My sketchbook lies open in front of me, the paper half is filled with an idea that surprised me not because I didn't want to draw it, but because I didn't know I remembered it this clearly.

It started with a wall. Then an arch. Then a bench tucked under the shade of climbing bougainvillea. I blinked, and there it was a courtyard I hadn't seen in years but still knew by heart.

My grandfather's house.

I used to spend entire dry seasons there. My cousins and I would run barefoot across its dusty tiles, chasing each other through the orange haze of dusk. There were chickens. A gate that creaked exactly three times before closing. My grandmother's prayers echoing from a shaded corner. It wasn't grand, but it held everything.

I remember the smell of wood smoke, and how the afternoon heat made the air shimmer. There was a tin kettle always resting over a charcoal stove, and someone, my aunt maybe would whistle while stirring zobo in a rusted pot. Once, Baba let me carry the water jug on my head. I dropped it, of course, and water spilled everywhere. I was mortified. But he only laughed and said, "Good architects start with balance"

I think my father loved it more than any place in the world. I remember the way his eyes softened when we drove through the village gate, the way he'd touch the mud walls like they were old friends. He never called it architecture. Just "home"

Now I'm trying to reimagine it not as it was, but as it might be. A public space, a memory turned outward. My professor's words ring in my ears: "Design is an act of remembering. What memory does your space hold?"

I keep thinking about that. About how certain places become memory before we even realize it. This courtyard I haven't been back in years, and still, it lives inside me like it never left. That feeling of warmth, of space to breathe. That slow, unhurried rhythm that only exists in places where the walls aren't in a rush

I want to bring that rhythm into the present. I sketch in silence, letting the lines shape themselves. The curved wall that shields you from the road. A fig tree. A narrow water channel tracing the outer edge. I pause to add a tree I don't think was actually there a pomegranate, blooming red

I smile at that. I've always loved pomegranates. Even now, I'll pick one out at the market just to hold it for a while before I eat it. The weight of it. The mystery of what it hides inside. That slight resistance when you break it open, the sudden burst of red. There's something beautiful about how it makes you work for sweetness

Baba used to buy them for me when he travelled. From Iran once, Turkey another time. Always wrapped gently in a scarf, handed to me like a secret. "I saw these and thought of you" he'd say

He still does things like that. Quiet gestures. The kind that settle in your memory and bloom years later

Sometimes I think about how little he says, and how much he gives away anyway. The way he looks at old buildings like they're speaking to him

I think I inherited that from him

And I wonder if, one day, he'll look at something I've designed and feel the same pause. The same quiet recognition. I hope so. I hope my work can hold the silence he taught me to honour

I don't finish the drawing. Not yet. It feels like something I need to come back to slowly, with care

I close the sketchbook and rest my hand on it. The studio light has softened, the world outside leaning into evening. I gather my things, sling my bag over my shoulder, and pause at the window before heading out.