Abdulrahman Alkhamees wants to tell your story

Abdulrahman Alkhamees’ love of the Pacific Northwest was sparked while watching a documentary on the eruption of Mount St. Helens when he was just 10 years old. Living in his birthplace of Kuwait at the time, Alkhamees and his father would watch documentaries every Friday morning.

When he awoke to St. Helens on the screen, Alkhamees (who goes by “Abe”) recalled, “You mean to tell me there’s a place with volcanoes, rivers, deserts, and trees as old as time? I was blown away. To me, the Pacific Northwest was as close as you can get to a mystical world with this amazing terrain, and I was really enamored by it.”

I invited Alkhamees into the BikePortland Shed on Tuesday to learn more about his latest creative project, a magazine called The Paperclip.

Alkhamees held onto that love and curiosity of the Pacific Northwest and decided to attend Portland State University. And like many people who move here, the gravity of cycling soon began to pull on him. He bought a bike the first week he moved here and now he’s carved a niche as a photographer of his rides and the stories of people he pedals with.

Four years ago he wanted to combine his love of cycling with his love of his home and create a magazine about cycling in the Middle East. That remains a dream, but this past summer he decided to pivot and put together a collection of stories about cycling submitted from riders from all over the globe. The Paperclip is a square-bound publication that looks and feels more like a small coffee table book than a typical magazine. It’s beautifully laid-out and has a nice balance of text and imagery. 

The stories in The Paperclip range from a window into the Gaza Sunbirds (a paracycling team that escaped the war and competes in cycling events worldwide) and a first-person account from a guy who trained hard all summer only to be passed on a climb by someone in their 70s — to a story from a woman who shares how riding gravel roads helped her overcome the passing of her parents. While cycling runs through each one, it’s not always the main character. “Cycling is the glue,” he explained. “It’s not necessarily the main story.”

And while Alkhamees personally loves long rides into the “mystical terrain” of our region, he seeks stories that center riders’ lives over extreme physical accomplishments.

“Some of these some of these stories don’t really get a lot of light because they’re not epic,” Alkhamees explained. “I didn’t include any stories about somebody riding a thousand miles in 48 hours or whatever. That has its place, but for me I wanted the stories to be human-forward. I wanted the humanity, the failures, the struggles, the fun parts — all the other stuff that kind of fall in between the cracks — to show up.”

For this first issue, all contributors agreed to donate their work. Alkhamees’ plan is to donate half the proceeds from sales to the Gaza Sunbirds and the other half will pay authors and photographers who make it into the next issue. 

Asked what he hopes people take away from the magazine, Alkhamees said, “Connectivity. That everybody has a shared struggle in some sense. But also, that struggle is what makes us, us.”

— Watch a short video of Alkhamees below. Issue one of The Paperclip is available now as a $25 pre-order at ThePaperclip.cc. The order window is open until November 14th. Wholesale pricing is also available for bike shops and other businesses. Follow The Paperclip on Instagram.