That's me.
My brother's filming me me on his camera
and I'm filming the road ahead.
This is us on one of our holidays to Syria.
Do you wanna get out for a minute, five minutes?
Get some fresh air, come on.
Wow, it's amazing here.
Have you seen it, mum?
Can I go down there?
Our dad wanted us to have a relationship with our family there
and it was important to him that we grew up knowing them.
But this was our last trip.
Can I have a shot of filming this place?
Go with Adam.
No, I want to hold –
I want to film, please.
Please let me film.
Please, I'm desperate.
I want to get it, I want to be a photographer.
This is Syria.
I remember getting there and getting off the plane
and being hit with this smell.
It was a warm homely smell and it was the scent of jasmine.
There was jasmine all over Syria, I remember that.
Don't film people in their faces, Laura.
Film around.
I filmed everything,
because I wanted to show my friends what Syria was like when I got home.
Oh look, there's our shadows.
Hi.
I hate shadows.
Hello, Lujain!
Hello, Laura.
This is my cousin.
I'm her cousin.
OK, but I'm going to film ...
our journey.
Look at the sun.
Blue skies! This is unbelievable.
You don't have blue skies?
No.
It was snowing last week!
Welcome to Syria, Laura's friends.
She lives in Canada now
and the rest of my family are scattered all over the world
and I don't really know her any more.
Hello!
This is so funny!
I know, right?
Like, it's been ages!
When was the last time we saw each other?
The last time we saw each other
was when I was in Syria in 2010.
I know!
Ten years.
Ten years?
Yeah.
Oh wow.
I'm gonna miss you.
I'm gonna miss you too!
No, do you have to go?
How will I say, 'I will miss you?'
Ana mushtaq lik.
Ana Rahh ...
Ishta'a ...
Ilkon.
Ana Rahh ishta'a ilkon.
Ana ...
What did she say?
A funny thing, let me tell you something funny,
I don't remember anything I've done in Syria.
I don't have any memories.
It's like my brain ...
doesn't want to remember anything from there, you know?
I'm reading our old Facebook conversations.
Does she remember talking to me?
When we moved from Syria ...
So I left with Baba first
and I couldn't take anything with me,
like, I just took one suitcase and that was it because, you know?
And then when mama came,
we thought that she's gonna bring all of our memories with her,
like, our photo albums, our like, DVDs.
Nothing, she brought nothing and they've been in Syria ever since.
Would you want to see old videos?
Yeah!
I don't have anything –
Or would it make you like –
I want to send you it all, but I'm like would it make you sad or?
It would make me sad, but I would be happy to see them.
I miss the places,
but none of my friends are in Syria now.
And pretty much we don't have family over there,
all of our family, like, moved out so ...
I just miss the places and that's it.
Ah Syria.
You start from zero,
like you don't know, you don't have memories where you are.
You feel like you don't belong, you don't know the culture you're in and ...
and people don't know how to approach you.
I want her to remember these times,
but, I don't know.
So I'll send you this link on here.
Yalla, one, two, three.
This is the first time,
this is me and my family coming to Syria for the first time,
meeting Taiteh.
Laura.
That's your granny, that's your other granny!
I remember you back then.
Do you?
Wait, is this our house?
I don't know whose house this is or anything.
Yes, this is our house, this is our old house.
Is it?
Yeah.
There's your mum.
That's Mum!
Oh my God, I look like her.
Is that me?
Oh.
Lujain?
Yes, Uncle?
How are you?
Now I remember this day!
Is this weird?
Mm-hm.
Let me know if it's too weird.
Looking back at us, back then like ...
I actually, I never thought about these days before.
I still don't remember that day, but I know that it was –
it happened.
It's proof.
But I don't remember anything out of it, like nothing else, like this is –
so what I saw right now is OK, now it makes sense.
These trips to Syria were really important to me.
They were significant times in my life
and I remember them in so much detail,
but I have no reason to forget them.
Oh, you wrote something here!
Yes, I remember when you wrote it.
Oh my God.
To Lujain, your cousin Laura was in your room
on the 15th of April 2010.
I will miss you a lot, I hope you stay happy and well.
Follow your dreams and your heart no matter what happens.
Remember the good times, Laura.
Oh.
Whenever the war started happening,
I stopped dreaming, I stopped thinking about the future,
because you're kind of, like, you were in the unknown.
So you don't know where you're going to be next,
like am I gonna live for another year?
Like, basically back then when I was like 16, 17,
my best friends and I, we were planning on going
on a trip to Australia and like, travelling the world together,
because we never thought that the war was going to happen.
Things would have been different,
like if we all lived in the same country, I think.
Definitely, well, I think so.
It's the distance, makes it worse.
Distance is hard.
We miss our memories,
but the way they are now,
everything has changed.
Hassan understands like how everything was before
and he helps a lot.
We try to take a lot of pictures, just documenting everything.
Yalla, Mira, Mira, Mira!
I'm never gonna understand what they've been through
and all of us might never be in the same room again.
But I'm so glad we have these pictures and videos
and we can remember Syria this way.