The car nobody drives

In a family in Zagazig, there is an old car parked under a cover in the building's garage. It belonged to the father, who died some years ago. It has not moved since.

Every so often, the family talks about restoring it. New engine parts, new seats, fresh paint. It would cost a great deal, and the money is real money: a daughter is about to start university, a son wants to marry next year.

The argument for restoring it is that the car is him. He drove the children to school in it, took the whole family to the coast in it every summer, washed it every Friday morning. Letting it rust feels like letting him go.

But the car stopped being only a car a long time ago. It became a story. The summer the tyre burst on the desert road. The way he refused to let anyone else drive. The cassette that was stuck in the player for a decade. Those stories are told at every family dinner, and none of them live in the garage.

This happens to anything that comes to mean something. The original sign over a shop, the first bottle a brand ever made, the house a family grew up in. At some point the meaning separates from the object and starts to live in the people who carry it. It travels further without the object, because it can go wherever they go.

Which makes the real question harder and simpler at once. What would make the story stronger? Polished paint on a car nobody drives, or his granddaughter walking into her first lecture?

Sometimes keeping the object is right. But it is worth knowing that the symbol does not need it. Letting the thing go can be the way the meaning grows.