Qamar 717 (717 Moons ago) by Reem Salloum 2025

Qamar 717 is a deeply moving work that inspired by the childhood paper “chatterbox” game once shared between the artist and her grandmother, this piece transforms nostalgia into testimony. At its heart is a 1967 letter her grandmother wrote, pleading for the release of her imprisoned husband. Only the draft survives, crossed-out lines, urgent revisions, unanswered questions.

Handmade Unryu paper, embroidered with Palestinian tatreez (“Moon of Bethlehem” motif), carries her grandmother’s handwritten words, carefully traced into its folds.

“717 Moons” marks the lunar months between that letter and her grandmother’s passing in 2024. A paper game becomes an archive. Memory becomes form. 

More about the work 

Qamar 717 centers on a letter that the artist’s tata (grandmother) wrote in January 1967 to the Jordanian authorities, appealing for the release of the artist’s sedo (grandfather), who had been arrested in the West Bank due to his role as a political figure working toward Palestinian liberation. The artist’s grandmother had traveled to Jordan to see him in prison but was denied visitation and feared for his life. While waiting, she wrote a letter in the hope that it would reach the person in charge. Her handwritten words—poignant and unyielding—reveal both urgency and resolve. The crossed-out lines and revised thoughts offer a rare glimpse into a critical moment otherwise unrecorded in family memory.

The final version of the letter was most likely given to someone at the prison. Only this draft remains, discovered after the grandmother’s death by the artist’s mother and aunt while they were sorting through her belongings. None of the siblings have memories of what happened afterward, leaving the family with unanswered questions.

This work adopts the form of a Chatterbox/Fortune Teller, a childhood game once shared between the artist and her grandmother. When her grandmother visited, the artist would excitedly set up a “shop” and sell her drawings and artworks—the chatterbox being one of them. Her grandmother always bought everything, and with the coins she gave her, they would walk to the corner store where the artist would spend it all on candy. Reanimating that memory, the artist folds this structure once again, but this time as a vessel for the unknowable.

The artist embroidered the outer corners of the paper with tatreez, the Palestinian cross-stitch tradition, using the “Moon of Bethlehem” motif. This serves as a homage to the landscape that shaped her grandmother and to the garments and textiles that surrounded her, which remain etched in the artist’s memory. Her grandmother was always wearing bright, colorful tops adorned with tatreez.

Inside, the artist hand-traced passages from her grandmother’s letter using carbon paper to transfer them onto the paper, following the forms of her Arabic handwriting so that her voice is, in a way, inscribed within the folds. On the innermost flaps are the unanswerable questions the artist wishes she could have asked her grandmother.

The book is available for viewing by request at AKDC/DDC, MIT Libraries: 1578194678