The Day We Never Had

There are goodbyes we remember for the rest of our lives, and there are goodbyes we never got to have.

When my family left Iran for Canada, I left behind more than a country. I left behind my best friend, and an entire world of ordinary moments we had taken for granted. What I remember most isn’t the departure itself, but the time we never spent together before it.

The Day We Never Had is an imagined final day between two friends. They wander through the city, buy energy drinks, listen to records, laugh at terrible karaoke, and share a late-night meal. Nothing extraordinary happens. That is precisely the point.

These photographs are not documentary records. They are memories of something that never existed, created through the language of black-and-white film, heavy grain, and fleeting moments of tenderness.

The series ends with an empty park bench and a crushed can on the pavement. The city remains, indifferent to their absence.

Perhaps the cruelest part of leaving isn’t saying goodbye. It’s realising, years later, how many ordinary days you would give anything to have back.