No face no name no number…

Maybe you have heard of this song before. Maybe not. Anyway, please take a moment to listen to this song now. I promise this is a fun song. I first overheard the song when I was sixteen.

I did not speak English back then so all that I could hear was “No face, no name, no number, la, la, la, la, la”. Of course I did not understand what the lyrics were about (even until now I still haven’t really checked that). The funny thing is that from time to time I have an earworm called “No face no name no number”. When it happens I recall the reason why I made a connection from myself to such a random song.

There are a couple of questions that I always get confused about when someone asks me: Where are you from? What is your birthday? How did you look when you were a kid?

The first two questions are the questions with multiple answers, and there are several correct ones for each (yeah it sounds weird I know). However, for the last question I cannot tell. There is not a single picture of me until when I was around sixteen or seventeen.

I remember that when I was little we took pictures of the family every year for new year occasions. So technically there must be some pictures of me somewhere.

One day when I was nine, my mother and I were living at my grandmother’s house. I accidentally caught my mother dipping a photo into water and then scratching it with a key. That was my favourite picture of me with my mama. In the picture she was carrying me on one hand and I, as a baby, was standing on her other hand. I must not be more than three.

When I saw that, I came closer to my mother and asked what she was doing and why she was doing so. Without being interrupted, my mother said slowly: “The picture is not nice, not necessary to keep it”. When I looked at the picture, I realised that the baby me was scratched away. I was sad for a moment but quickly I no longer paid much attention to that.

I grew up to become a teenager. I did not like taking pictures of myself. I never asked for pictures of me during vacations or any special occasion. Sometimes in the final school year we took some pictures of the whole class. I didn't even ask for one copy of it.

Our family was moving quite a lot and I must say we were not a rich family. Pictures were treated as memories. We kept it in our heart. It means carrying things like that was not our priorities when we were moving house. Those were not “essential”.

One day when I was laying down on my mother’s lap, I asked her about the picture I saw her destroyed the other day. I asked her why she did that, and why I did not have any pictures when I was a kid.

She did not answer me right away. In a moment of silence it seems she was trying to remember the reason. Then with the familial low voice, she said slowly: “People said that if we kept your images in pictures, your disease would not be gone”. She was trying to remember who told her so. I understood my mother was a superstitious woman. She would try many things she can as long as she believes that would help. “But does it work mama?” “No it didn’t work but other pictures were also ruined because of humidity. What a pity”.

I know my mother, she trusts people easily. She has always shared her thoughts with me since I was a child. I appreciate the fact that my mother never talked to me using the way people usually talk with a kid. She knew I understood.

We were making fun of the fact that I have no childhood photo and that would make me a perfect spy. I was never mad at my mother about that because my pictures are never something “essential” to me. Like an old-fashioned style of doing things, I keep memories rather than taking pictures.

Now, I hope you like the song I have mentioned at the beginning. ;)