let’s go home
What a peculiar expression.
How many movies, how many books have ended with the classic go-to phrase that implies that all will be well and all is right in the world and from now on, everything will be okay? How many times have stories ended with the same clichéd and overused expression that implies the obtaining of a “happily ever after”? We are so accustomed to it now that whenever we hear it, we feel a nostalgic sense of familiarity, a longing for simpler times when such endings would solve all of our problems and better things would come, and a hope that they could solve them still, and that better things would come still. It’s a powerful phrase. Unique in its universality. There isn’t a phrase out there quite like it, that could inspire the same sense of family and the something-missing in everyone’s souls. Everyone, no matter who they are or where they’re from or where they are now, has a home. Everyone has a place that they think of when times get hard, a place where they wish they could be when everything is too much and they need to go somewhere that surrounds them with the feeling of safety and belonging.
Well, almost everyone.
My name is Yasmine Atallah. My parents are originally Lebanese, but they fled Lebanon at a young age when the war broke out. They went to Canada with their families, and they now hold that citizenship, as do I, and as do my siblings. My father’s brothers stayed there to raise their kids and build lives for themselves. My father’s work brought him and his family to Dubai, where my siblings and I grew up. We visit our family every summer in Canada, and every other Christmas. I wasn’t born and raised there, but I love the city of Montreal. Its charm is hard to resist and I have failed greatly at that task. I also love Dubai, for the impressive things it has accomplished in a relatively short amount of time and for how it exudes an aura of endless possibility, of progress and opportunity and innovation. Lebanon, on the other hand, is in a category of its own. Its entire people seems like one big family. I have memories of dishes and occasions and traditions that I could never forget, and that creates an almost instant, sometimes unspoken bond between me and other Lebanese kids like me because we share very similar experiences. I have family there who always bring me a unique sense of joy when I visit them, because there really is nothing quite like going back and living all these experiences that were a huge part of your childhood and upbringing, despite the country’s questionable state.
All that is good and well, but the real question here is, which one of those three is my home?
The expected answer would be Dubai, of course. The place where I was born and raised, where I grew up and where I did the most growing up. The second guess would be Lebanon, because it’s my country of origin; I practice most of its traditions, I’ve been raised into its culture and, even without the passport, I consider myself to be Lebanese. However, if you know me, if you know that I visit Canada more often than I visit Lebanon, if you know that most of my closer relatives live in Canada and that that’s where I pursued my university-level education, your guess would probably be Canada. It’s a logical answer, of course. I know the streets relatively well, I have favorite restaurants and favorite bars and favorite areas and favorite activities there.
However, that has yet to answer the question, which one is my home?
The honest answer is, none of them. An even more honest answer is, all of them. But that doesn’t make sense, does it? Having more than one home defies its very definition, refuting the uniqueness of the place of safety and comfort and belonging. How is it possible to have more than one place that makes you feel this way? In truth, it’s absurdly amazing and truly a blessing on one hand. On the other hand, it’s also challenging, because no matter where you are, there is always another place that your heart longs for, another bed, another room, another kitchen, another noisy neighbor or familiar street light that makes you feel everything this home does, but in its own unique way. After coming to such a realization, the most honest answer here would be that these places, they’re not home, because my true home is in people. My grandmother, who passed away, was as solid a home as solid homes could get. My cousins are all my brothers and sisters, and they inspire the same sibling-love that my siblings do. My father spreads an aura of calmness and stability and wisdom that, no matter how calm or stable or wise you are, you will never be able to match. The truest home I have, however, is my mother. The love and strength a mother gives can never be imitated or replaced. The assuredness and certainty that they inspire in you - the sense that they are there, always, every time, no matter what - are so powerful that, specifically for people who have more than one home, they are the perfect human representation of one.
This must sound like a rather corny, romanticized conclusion to the analysis of what a true home is, but it’s a groundbreaking revelation when you connect the dots in your own life, instead of just in theory. The real weight of the phrase “my mother is my home” is only felt when you are in your home when your mother is far away, and suddenly your home doesn’t feel quite the same. You could never understand it, could never put your finger on it, but in those times, something would be missing. You’d realize that something wasn’t right, but you’d simply ignore it. And with your mother’s eventual return, the feeling would be gone as quickly as it came. Lamartine said something that explains this quite well: “Un seul être vous manque, et tout est dépeuplé”. The literal translation is, when you’re missing one person, everything is depopulated. In other words, when one person is missing from your life, everything else feels empty, no matter how many other people are around.
Once we’ve made such a discovery, it’s hard to ignore, and even harder to forget. That’s why, in the face of the loss of such a thing, we often crumble, because the glue that built and held us was no more. However, there is nothing we could go through from which we come out stronger than this. This loss helps us realize that, first of all, having more than one home is very much possible. Second, having people as your home is a truly satisfying feeling. And finally, we learn that your truest home (we clearly have many, at this point) is actually in yourself. Only you can allow yourself to be, to grow, to learn, to think, to live. You have the most power over yourself, which means you also have the biggest responsibility. What it also means is that only you can give yourself the realest, truest and most incontestable feeling of home.
I hope, as our world grows and shrinks at the same time, that more people can think of more than one place or one person as home. It’s a particularly glorious feeling.
In the words of Maya Angelou, who says it far more elegantly than I ever could: “I long, as does every human being, to be at home wherever I find myself”.
At last, after such a wondrous revelation, there is but one more thing I wish to tell you.
Let’s go home.
Yours truly,
A human chasing a feeling