Letter from Lebanon: Finding the ‘Home’ in Homesickness
I swore that I would never fall victim to homesickness. “Trust me, I will not miss Cairo, with it’s busy streets and loud sounds,” I attempted to convince myself as I prepared to leave to Lebanon.
But just over a month after that futile self-promise, I realized that being homesick means so much more than simply missing your hometown. At first you conclude that ‘home’ is just a fictional space, and that what is home is who you find at ‘home’.
It became clear after the first few weeks away from home that I did not need my own bed but that I simply needed my family. If I could bring them along it would complete my entire experience of a semester abroad.
Or so I thought.
These few weeks I was sure that the midnight mother-daughter hugs, and super early auntie-nephew kisses were all that was lacking. Beirut was perfect, my dorm was great, and all I needed was to somehow insert my family into the picture.
I wanted to write an article then and clarify that ‘homesickness’ just refers to the people you leave behind and not your physical house. I was convinced that the term was misleading, as it expected me to miss my home, my house, couch, and bed.
Just recently however, the term and its denotation made sense. Gradually I did begin to miss my physical home. The carpets on my bedroom floor, the bookcase that decorates the study room, the purple covers that tucked me in at night. Home is definitely a combination of the people inside the walls and the furniture that encompass the building.
It’s that you’re so used to the way your couch once embraced you and how your bare feet memorized every bump on your wooden floor. Or how your dining room table was your go-to place for breakfast, lunch and dinner, where you could enjoy your food and watch your television shows.
It’s more or less how your body was so used to where everything was, that you found home in every household utensil. Your fingers moved effortlessly to work the microwave and had every corner of the fridge memorized.
More than furniture, it’s the way you could walk from your bed to the kitchen, with your eyes half closed, knowing you’ll end up where you want to be.
New home, bed and kitchen means eyes wide open.
Relocating to a new home, far away from your original one is truly something I took for granted. With close friends having moved away for university before I did, I never considered the feelings that came along with their experience of being a stranger in a strange land.
It was silly of me to disregard that leaving the same house I’ve lived in for so many years would be easy. Being uprooted from what you know best to something you don’t know at all is definitely a challenge that should get easier with time.
What I now call home back in Cairo was not my home for the first eight years of my life and yet it gradually became my safe spot.
Small relief; I am sure that with time I will no longer need fully functioning eyes at 7am to make breakfast or make my way down the hall.
Malak Sekaly
Caravan Columnist
