I Miss Home

I haven’t been home since January 2023. About a year and a half now. What is really difficult about that last time I was in Egypt, is that I came to a realization that Egypt no longer feels like home.

I don’t know if it ever felt like home no more than the walls of a prison cell might deceive prisoners with their familiar look. Is home only a notion of familiarity?

I was just outside my house smoking a cigarette. I know cigarettes might kill me but they also spark creativity. Something about the rusty taste of burning chemicals. It takes me back to a place, a memory, a time way back when I was a teenager. I picked up smoking as a habit to rebell. I was mad I was angry I felt I needed to destroy. I was helpless and I could only destroy myself. So I started with that. Long nights outside in the streets of Cairo with my college friends. Smoking and sometimes drinking. No pleasure in doing any of that, just a revolution, an expression of self-outside the taboo. A fuck you to society like we used to claim.

These days also marked the birth of the writer in me. I have been reading since I was 7. My brain was ripe with words. And they would just pour out of me. I wrote about myself and my beliefs. I wrote about my friends. Everyone I ever wrote about holds the piece I wrote about them with greatest regard. I wanted to become a writer. I found a home in writing. I promised myself I would do that once I am out. Once I am far enough, I will start writing and I will make a living out of writing.

Did writing feel like a home?

I moved to America and here my friends didn’t know a word of Arabic. I bought books, I bought as many books as I can afford, I spent time reading and reading and reading. I knew if I read enough, one day, the words will pour out of me again and they did. Around the beginning of my third year in America, I wrote my first piece on boycotting social media before dopamine fasting was trendy and cool. I published it on LinkedIn and got 23 likes on it and a comment from my friend Dara.

Dara spent a lot of time listening to me. When we first met, right when I moved to Austin, she seemed to be in awe of me. She is a writer too. We wrote a lot and we always wanted to share writing with each other. One summer night we were sitting at her doorstep at her apartment on south Lamar. I asked her “Dara, where do you get your confidence from? Don’t you doubt that you might be wasting your time writing and building and trying so hard? What if you arent event that good?” She smiled and said “I can see the future and I know it is good. I know my north star so well and I just follow it. You too should find it. When you do, things will feel more aligned, and your self-doubt will ease up”

Can home be what we find in real friendships?

It took me a while to accept my fate of living in America. This airconditioned nightmare. Robots everywhere. Soul-less humans. passive aggression. I spent the 29th year of my life seeking refuge somewhere else. I travelled a lot in Europe and spent too much time in Egypt trying to make it work somewhere else. But I was too tired to start over. I was too exhausted to learn a new language to study a new culture. I wanted to grow up and not around. I looked back and saw the big economic opportunity that Austin is. I came back and bought a house.

I was scared to death buying this house. I made up a fight with the realtor the day before we close on it just to deter the possibility of buying it. I had good reasons to be scared. Taking up that much debt is scary. Signing up for the economic cycles of house prices in America is scary. Deepening roots is scary. For someone who floated around the planet for years and took pride in being detached and ready to go, buying a house is scary.

Did I never have a home? Or was I always so scared of homes?

Alas, I called my sister and she said “don’t worry, you will love it. And worst case you can just sell. You are entering your thirties. This is going to be a good change for you. And you have wanted it for so long”

Nowhere else on this world did I ever feel at home as much as in the company of my younger siblings. We grew up in a disastrous house. Parents and older siblings all too crazy to be able to enjoy life. We made different choices, we entertained ourselves and never stopped to do so. We spent a lot of time goofing around and picking up arts. Once it was acting and film making. Another it was Hussam learning Oud and playing for us in the living room. Another was the three of us playing video games all night long and ordering pizza before dawn.

As much as I knew I needed to leave Egypt to take care of myself, I knew I was leaving a hole in my heart that would never be filled by taking distance from the two of them. We stayed connected over video calls for so long. We tried our best to stay best buddies and keep the feeling of home alive for each other. Home can be a voice note from one of them. Could be a new inside joke that we can’t stop repeating over and over. The laughter gets louder and more hysterical. The jokes get better when you are home.

Alas, culture and distance get in the way. My younger siblings lost touch with me. One lives in France and the other lives in Italy. try diaspora once and you will get to see your loved ones become new people. And you are rolling a dice on whether the new people will get you as much as the old ones once did.

Mehra was right, buying the house was the right decision. I walked in and my eyes immediately started tearing up. I love this home. It is elegant. The hardwood flooring is charged up with good energy. The skylights bring heaven into it. The fireplace projects warmth on the Persian carpet that occupies the living room. The plants reflect my green thumb and make the space feel lived in. My bedroom remains minimalist and Zen. The bathroom feels like a whole suite. Exactly how I envisioned my house should be while travelling Europe when I decided to settle in America forever. I have grown so much into myself since the day I moved in. Every time I leave, I come back craving this space, craving the peace and madness I have cultivated in it.

Home can be found in art. Home can be found in a friend. Home can be found in a joke. Home can be found in a house.