For twelve years, Syrian national Khaled Abdel Halim kept a collection of archaeological artifacts safe from loss before deciding to return them to the Raqqa Museum on October 15 this year. What he did was more than simply hand over old objects to the relevant authorities. Symbolically, it seemed to be an attempt to salvage part of the history of a city exhausted by years of war. He had preserved the artifacts since 2014, carefully wrapping them, convinced that their rightful place was not in his possession, but in the collective memory to which they belonged.
