Cardboard Wings: Finding Belonging in an Imagination Room

In Muna's Imagination Room

We landed in Amman in August, two grown-ups and a few suitcases between us. The apartment we were given was large, bright, and echoingly bare. From the marble floors to the blank white walls to the high ceilings—pure page. Blank. Untouched. Every sound we made bounced back at us as if asking: Are you sure you want to say that out loud? The echo itself became a teacher. A subtle invitation to choose our words with care.

For months, that echo was our companion. There were no paintings, no photos to anchor us to a past, no woven rugs to soften our steps. No chairs to collapse into. No music to meet us in the mornings. In our minds, we imagined. We designed. But mostly, we waited.

Just days before Christmas, our sea shipment from Canada finally arrived. For weeks, we unpacked one box at a time, slowly turning the blank white cube into a warm, textured home in the Levant. We had no idea we’d soon be locked inside it for months, our lives paused by a global pandemic. Yours, too.

When the last box was emptied and flattened, we were left with a mountain of cardboard—too much to throw away, too full of potential to ignore. Before heading out on a weekend road trip to scout the hot springs and spas near the Dead Sea, we posted an open invitation on social media: Boxes, up for grabs.

When we returned, refreshed and sun-kissed, my inbox was overflowing. I answered every message. Muna’s was first.

Her husband, Saeed, came by the next evening. Soft-spoken, gracious. He told us the boxes would become something else entirely—not trash, not even canvasses, but materials for transformation. Muna, he explained, was an artist who painted on cardboard—an alchemist of sorts, turning refuse into radiance. I was struck. What a beautiful metaphor for a life of purpose, I thought. When he left, we asked him to keep us in the loop. If Muna ever held a vernissage, we wanted to be there.

Weeks passed. I forgot about the boxes.

Then Muna called—not with an exhibition invite, but something even better. A play. This time, she wouldn’t be painting, but directing. The boxes had sparked an idea not for art on walls, but a world to be lived in. She had transformed her living room into an Imagination Room, a kind of cardboard sanctum where her children and their friends could act, create, and be.

When we arrived for the first rehearsal, we stepped into a scene pulsing with joy. A dozen children laughed, danced, and buzzed about in their hand-crafted wings—butterflies and ladybugs in blues, reds, yellows, and browns. In the center of it all stood a cardboard tree, branches outstretched, leaves rustling with imagination. Ruhiya took her place with the other parents, watching. I, on the other hand, walked straight to the tree, kneeled down, grabbed a pair of wings and a mask, and joined the flutter. Buzzed. Danced. Played the maracas.

In that moment, I remembered Jake.

Back in America, we have an adoptive family, and among them is Jake—a Navajo medicine man, Purple Heart Vietnam veteran, and beloved elder in his Pennsylvania community. Before we left for the Middle East, we sat with Jake in a sweat lodge to receive his blessing. Gazing into the fire, he told me that in Jordan, I would find my footing. That my peculiar rhythms would resonate with the land. At the time, I didn’t know what he meant. But standing under a cardboard tree with a swarm of children, wings on my back, laughing until my stomach hurt—I felt it.

Sometimes prophecy arrives in giggles.

Before that first rehearsal, the mothers had already moved into action. Macadi, a composer and singer, wrote lyrics for a song. Samah, a dabke dancer, taught the kids the steps of the traditional dance. Rania, a purpose-driven entrepreneur, offered to host the play’s premiere at her bookstore on Rainbow Street in the spring.

But the spring never came. Not that kind of spring. Instead of a premiere, there was a pandemic. The Imagination Room was dismantled. The cardboard tree came down to make space for desks and screens.

Afterward, Muna sent photos from that day—moments full of sparkle and motion, of cardboard wings in mid-flight. She also sent a note: the kids had given me two nicknames—“The Man Who Speaks English” and “The Funny Uncle.” In the years that followed, Muna and Saeed became good friends. Rays-of-sunshine friends. Root-system friends.

And in our living room today, years later, there is a piece of Muna’s art: a luminous, well-framed slice of painted cardboard. A gift. A reminder.

Life, out of the box.

The boxes we pack and ship across oceans

often carry more than belongings—

they carry longings.

What we flatten and discard

may yet rise again

as wings,

as trees,

as stages for joy.

We think we are settling in,

but sometimes we are being unwrapped.

Undone by laughter.

Reassembled by play.

And sometimes,

a box is not a box.

It is a threshold.

A temple.

A chance to become someone

a little lighter,

a little brighter,

a little more true.

So if you find yourself surrounded by cardboard—

literal or otherwise—

pause before you toss it out.

There might be

a tree inside.

There might be

a child.

There might be

you,

waiting to grow wings.

Next: Sunbirds, Screens, and the Whisper Beneath the Roar

© 2025 Dominique Bel. Cardboard Wings: A Constellation of Becoming. All rights reserved.