It is in producing the disappeared as an excess object in absentia, as here rather than elsewhere, that awaiters step out from the margins and begin the labour of conversing with the disappeared, a conversation which charges absence with uncanniness.… In collecting the uncanny, the labour of the missing attempts to locate a presence rather than await a ghostly visit. And it is by interring absence that a presence is relocated and a conversation with the disappeared can begin. The labour of missing lies therefore in structuring and maintaining a conversation with an absence made uncannily present when tangibly unavailable. — Walid Sadek, “Collecting the Uncanny and the Labour of the Missing,” in Archives, Museums and Collecting Practices in the Modern Arab World, eds. Sonja Mejcher-Atassi and John Pedro Schwartz (Surrey, England: Ashgate Publishing Limited, 2012), 218.