Syria is a dream.

My perception of Syria is so fragmented, akin to the way the country itself is after a decade of war. 10 years seems like an important milestone to remind people of. But what is there for me to say? The facts? There are 387,000 dead, 6.7 million displaced. This is such an astronomical number of casualties, something that I cannot wrap my head around.

There is the Syria of the news: a war-torn nation with widespread destruction and home to millions of displaced refugees. There is the Syria of those who have lived there: a reminder of a home and place of belonging. Then, there is the Syria of my summer childhood memories.

That is the most mysterious Syria of them all, one that I cannot come to terms with and that always lingers hauntingly at the back of my mind. The world does not know this Syria. It lives only within me.

I read a Gazelle article from a few years ago that echoes my feelings, how “My Syria” lives through fading memories, which are detached from how the world views the country. I feel a bit melancholic when I think about my memories. I question how genuine they are as they mirror the limited attention span of a child, presenting only the selective and skewed moments we hold on to.

I think about broasted — a type of fried chicken — with extra garlic paste waiting for me in my Tete’s house after arriving from the airport. I think of the cheaply made toy fishing pole I got from a restaurant play area in Bloudan. The metallic horse emitting the notes of Für Elise in a mall in Kafar Souseh. Sour lemon and salt that a cousin dared me to drink at my Jiddo and Nana’s house.

But as time goes on, remembering starts to feel like a chore in itself. The war has been going on for half of my life. I start to forget and feel the need to hold on tighter to what I remember. Every few months, I find myself unable to sleep. I feel restless. I make myself recollect every little detail of the childhood I spent in Syria.

I walk through every corner of the family members’ houses. I walk through the malls and through the restaurants. I walk through places like I am transporting through time, because every corner takes me to a different memory from my childhood. It is overwhelming. It is exhausting. It leaves me with a heavy heart, because I can’t simply go to Syria to replicate or replace these memories with new ones. Despite my best efforts to recollect everything, each time, some memories start to feel more hazy.

But I need to do it. The erasure of my memories makes me feel like the normalcy I experienced in and associated with Syria is being destroyed.

I easily feel like an imposter for being in a position of privilege when Syria is linked to pain for so many worldwide. I have not stayed there for more than a couple months at a time, nor have I been there in years. Keeping a deathly grip on my memories is my way of remembering that I do belong to it, too.

Forgetting is also accepting a world that is tired of Syria. The sensationalism of the conflict and ensuing refugee crisis peaked in the middle of the previous decade, before global interest in it declined. It may still be featured on the news, but conflict and destruction is normalized. Syria is treated as a pest, a place that no one wants to deal with.

With 10 years of conflict, a whole generation has grown up with this war as something that always was there. But Syrian residents, refugees, migrants and their children still exist — and so do their memories of a time before the war. Maybe this is another reason why I hold on so tightly to my memories: I want people to ask about them and see a different Syria — a Syria full of people — even if I caution about the danger of solely seeing it through the rose-colored lens of a child.

I know it is not sustainable to hold on to a set of memories that are bound to be tainted. With time, I hope to find a way to come to terms with the Syria that I knew and the Syria that others have experienced in the past and present. Doing so will allow me to better express the humanity of the country beyond statistics.

One day, I will be able to come to terms with the normalcy of fading memories and my yearning for an inaccessible place.

Until then, for me, Syria lives on as a dream.