I was particularly drawn to his work called “Hiraeth” - the Welsh word for a homesickness for a home to which you cannot return, a home which maybe never was; the nostalgia, the yearning, the grief for the lost places of your past (Hafez, 2016). In Hireath we can see the scene of a street with a door that is perhaps leading to a coffee shop. Perhaps it's dawn and the door hasn't opened yet, the shutters are not fully up but they're also not all the way down. There is a peaceful nature which is oozing from his choice in colours; it gives a sense of early morning quiet. You can almost hear the morning Azan - call to prayer - coming from the structures of the city towering above this serene street.

His architectural background has gifted him with an extensive knowledge of the structural elements that compose a building. In the bottom of the model it is a much grittier scene with exposed pipes and dark basement like spaces. In the Apollo 40 Under 40 Podcast Hafez said he wanted to express the turmoil and agony he was experiencing inside him, so he felt that his pieces need to jet out of the wall as if they were creatively yelling out (Schwarz and Hafez, 2020).  His work is very emotional; he calls it "creative weeping"(Schwarz and Hafez, 2020). He creates monuments of his ideal damascus while also exposing the structures as if someone has torn off the rest of the city. It's the way he's tried to cling and capture his loss that I relate to when thinking about the buildings from my childhood. He has created something that can take him back; that is, perhaps, more accurate then real Damascus.