It’s Homemade

An eye roll was my usual response growing up to the frequently repeated saying, “home is where the heart is,” as we moved from one country to the next. The saying never sat well with me and felt too broad; my heart is scattered amongst many places and people. With every country we moved from, every bedroom I emptied, every person I left behind, and every routine I broke, a piece of my heart remained.

In the winter evenings during university, my friends and I would sit outside our campus building, drink tea, tell stories, and laugh as much as we could before the midnight curfew forced us into our dorms. One particular evening, a few strangers joined us. An Algerian fellow, AZ (a pseudonym), took a seat beside me. I recognized him as the student who walks the halls with way too much hair gel. He struck up a conversation and asked about my upbringing, which he discovered was spent across seven countries. “So… where is home for you?” he asked.

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This was a question I was only asked comically, and it was not one I consciously contemplated. Lost for words, I resorted to my habitual response to such prompts: a laugh and a shrug. That may have been the end of the conversation for him but, seven years later, this conversation still hasn’t found its end with me.

Over the years, I stumbled upon many possible answers. Each one came quickly and left just as fast, and, often, I found myself without any at all. It was earlier this year, and only after a series of profound events, that I began to consciously reflect on my answer to AZ’s question. Analyzing past patterns, I found that I felt most at home when I was around specific people. I figured that might just be my answer: “People”.

A month after the U.S. and Iran War began, my family and I found ourselves in Malaysia, with the possibility of it being another permanent move. In one of our very first taxi rides, the song “Castle on the Hill” by Ed Sheeran began. A couple of lines from that song have been replaying in my head over the past month:

“One friend left to sell clothes, one works down by the coast
One had two kids but lives alone, one’s brother overdosed
One’s already on his second wife, one’s just barely gettin’ by
But these people raised me and I can’t wait to go home”

These lyrics made me reflect on the decade I spent in the UAE. Lasting peace was difficult to find while living there; still, I cannot deny its importance to me. It is where I was shaped up to be who I am today. Where I was both my absolute worst and best self. Where I failed miserably and achieved things I never knew I could. Where I rebelled, where I eventually grew into an adult and where my familial bonds strengthened. Where I graduated both high school and university, and where I began my career as a freelancer. Where I was broken and where I found faith. Where I learnt how to drive with a Pakistani instructor, and watched my friends get married in hotels across the country. It’s where I finally formed a peculiar sense of identity I am proud of. Where I made some of the greatest friends, with whom I’d grab several cups of karak in the depths of the night. This country is where I visited my first grave and where I saw women my own age grow life inside their bodies. And, it is the only country my little sister knows. As I write this, tears fall. I never considered the UAE my home, but as I grieve this potential loss, I withdraw my former conclusion to the question of home—“people” is an incomplete answer.

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Walking down these lively and unfamiliar streets, amongst people I do not look like, with smells I never smelt, and sounds I never heard, questions of home have been cacophonously playing about in my mind. It feels like a squash game, but with 50 balls in my head … and I am not sure who’s going to win. Is my fluctuating definition of “home” a universal experience, or is it reserved exclusively for third-culture kids or people with mixed identities? What does home look like for other women? How does home play a role in who they are? How is the notion of home honoured by those who have a solid outline of where or what their home is? Is it really home for them, or simply all they know? Is home a choice or is it given?

In the grand scheme of things, I believe with certainty that our ultimate home rests with our Creator. Nothing in this life is lasting, complete or enduring enough to hold that place. My curiosity stems from whether a partial sense of home can still exist in this life, what it looks like, and how shifting realities mould its shape.

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The first thought that sprouted was that being born and raised in the country that flows through your veins makes the quest of finding “home” on this floating ball relatively easy. I talked to Roudhah al-Mazrouei, an Emirati artist, currently based in Abu Dhabi. Roudhah was born and raised in al-Ain, though her family is from Siji, a village within the Hajar mountains, near Fujairah, in the Northern Emirates.

When coming across Roudhah’s work, one quickly notices that her pieces repeatedly honour her roots, be it through the landscapes she portrays or the materials she uses: “rocks gathered from mountainous terrains, sikham charcoal derived from native trees, and snaah, a saffron and mahlep mixture historically used as perfume.” They offer an intimate insight into her origins and the culture that shapes her, but not from the angle one would expect when thinking of the UAE. “My father has an agricultural engineering background, which meant that land was never abstract to us. It was something you understood practically, something you worked with and listened to. Growing up with that relationship to the land, and with family roots in Siji, shaped in me an understanding of the UAE not as a skyline or a flag but as terrain, as soil, as weather, as living things.” This upbringing gave her “a way of looking that moves slowly” as she “was not raised with urgency about newness. There was value placed on knowing a place well, on returning to it, on understanding it across seasons and years.” Her constant return to painting landscapes, which she considers as “love letters”, is attributed to this practice of knowing the lands throughout all its phases.

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This strong connection to her roots did not come easy in spite of being born and bred in the very country that runs through her blood. Much of the definition of “home” was already molded then passed down to her through generations. “There are parts of my feeling of home that came to me already formed, through family, through place, through a language of land I did not choose.” The easiest option could have been to just accept the mound of clay the way it was given to her, but, for Roudhah, it was important to go through the process of remolding it and “do the work of making those inherited things consciously” hers. A big part of that journey transpired when she left the UAE for London, to study at the Royal College of Art.

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Often a period of loss and grief is necessary to grasp the value of what was once in our possession. Before heading to London, home for the artist “was assumed and unexamined”, but when she arrived in this new, big, bustling city, it became a conscious contemplation. “Living in London clarified that I am fundamentally oriented toward the Gulf. The light is different there, the scale of the sky is different. I understood that the landscape I belong to is this one.” But to my sweet surprise, this clarification did not stem from a feeling of loss. Rather, it was like, “suddenly being able to see the outline of something that had always been too close to see clearly. When you are inside a place it surrounds you completely and you stop noticing it. Distance gave (her) the ability to feel its specific shape, its parti-cular qualities, what it gives (her) that nowhere else does.” Roudhah’s connection to what was passed down deepened, not through grief, but through newfound attention to the place she grew to understand will not always be there. The work she produced in London was the result of this longing; she was “compensating for absence through making”, and her craft became her way of staying connected to the place she was no longer physically in. That period of being away pushed her towards painting the landscapes of her ancestors, which she continues to do, even now, as she finds herself back in the UAE.

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The journey of Roudhah owning her definition of home was familiar. I embarked on a similar journey towards owning my definition of faith. Being born into a particular faith, and in Roudhah’s case, a heritage, does not mean it will fit into the shape of one’s heart the way it was molded and passed down. That mound of clay needs to be remolded into a shape that fits the possessor of the heart, then set gently into the fragile vessel. Such work belongs to the self alone.

After years of remolding and reshaping her sculpture of home, Roudhah thinks not of a building or an address, but of something both physical and intangible: “… a sensation, something in the body before it reaches the mind. It is the smell of the earth in Siji after rain. It is the particular quality of light in the late afternoon over a flat, open landscape. It is the sound of my father’s voice.”

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Roudhah found a home within the country she was born and raised after a process of active sculpting. On the other hand, H (a pseudonym), was raised away from the country of her ancestors. At the age of one, H moved from Syria to Abu Dhabi, she therefore considers herself born and bred in this capital city. H comes from the Alawite community, an ethnoreligious minority concentrated in the small port cities of Latakia and Tartous on Syria’s Mediterranean coast.

Growing up, H lived a deeply family-centric life, and considered her family of four her home, particularly her mother. “Growing up, I was so attached. I was so dependent on my mother. I was never without my mother.” Every summer, H and her family would leave the heat of Abu Dhabi, as most residents do, and spend those 3 months in Latakia, at her grandparents’ house. The attachment she felt for her mother was extended to her grandmother; she feels their souls are connected and they would sleep next to one another during those months. Their days would be spent at the beach and Fridays would be spent in nature at neighbouring villages, visiting extended family. In the evenings, their grandparents’ dinner table would be filled with neighbours, cousins and friends gathering over home cooked food. The balcony would overflow with people, so they’d sprawl onto the floor. The door was always open, welcoming anyone and everyone into their home. There was constant motion, people coming, people going; “you’re never alone, but you wouldn’t mind it.” It was “such a different way of living. Simple people, doing simple things. And for (her) it was everything.” Those three months, out of the twelve, were the ones she would live for, and the times she cherishes most from her childhood.

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In 2018, her immediate family was split apart, and she lived at her friend’s house for a while, before eventually living alone. Over time, the summer ritual also began to fade as family members, cousins and friends emigrated. H still continued to visit her grandmother, but changes in the town forced her to realize that Latakia felt like home, and those summers were so special, only for the presence of family and community. The last time H visited Syria was in 2023.

“Circumstances changed in Syria, and there were a lot of problems last year. There was a genocide. A full-on genocide happening. So we got the idea out of our head. I don’t think of going at all. It was happening in our town and the outskirts as well. The entire community was affected. It wasn’t stable and people were living in fear.”

H’s reasons for not returning to Syria were beyond just the departure of her friends and family, but also because of the persecution her community faced for their differing religious beliefs. Seeing the events unfold in her town while being outside of the country was a struggle for H. She barely ate or slept, and experienced physical pain.

“Why doesn’t anyone care? These are my people. I don’t think of myself as a patriotic person, but at the time I was like, no, this is my community. These are my people, they’re hurting, they’re being killed. It was so hard. You get this sense of belonging. I want to scream. I want to fight for them.”

The feeling of belonging was not associated with Syria, but with her community. There’s a complexity in this relationship: the blood of a country runs through her veins, yet that country does not embrace her as such.

“When I see people who are patriotic and support their countries, whether they’re right or wrong, I’m like, it just happened that you were born with this nationality. You could have been born anywhere else. You need to use your brain and have your own values, your own ideologies. Why would you connect yourself to something that you know is wrong? I’ve gotten to a place in my life now where I avoid Syrians. There’s this huge disconnect, people pointing fingers, and no one trying to understand the other. I have no connection to the country, no connection to its people. If I go there now, it would be for one reason: to visit my mother and grandmother. But if you take my family from there and put them somewhere else, I wouldn’t go to Syria. So, you find yourself asking: what am I? Am I a citizen of
the world?”

The components that once shaped her home growing up crumbled, and forced H into a process of remolding. H “had to switch” and “build up this whole other personality, this whole other way of thinking.” She became unrecognizable. A part of her considered that perhaps the UAE is home. Friends of over 20 years lived in the city and whenever she’s away, she feels a longing for return. However, two factors complicate this. Firstly, her family is spread across the globe: her father with her in the UAE, her mother in one country, her brother in another and, her partner elsewhere too. Secondly, as with any country that is not one’s own, one’s stay is dependent on your employment status and visa, prompting her to question if home can be found somewhere without a true security of permanence.

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With time and experience, H has come to realize two things: one, “home is not about the place. It’s about who you’re sharing your life with,” and, more importantly, two, “as humans, we need to come to terms with the fact that you have to make your own home.”

“It all comes from within. You never know where you’ll end up. Life throws all sorts of things at you. If you attach yourself to anything external, you will never feel at peace—not to objects or materials, nor to places or people. Faith, spirituality, connection with the world, with nature, with God, with whatever you want to call it. Something within you, you take it with you wherever you go. You’re not attached to anything, you’re within you, you hold everything you need. So you would not need anything external. And it’s not easy. It’s really not.”

While H’s ideal version of home is one where her family lives together by the beach, she believes that detachment is necessary for peace especially in a world of ever-changing circumstances, and so one must build a home from within. Detachment from the external is an Islamic teaching known as zuhd (asceticism). It is a conscious, heart-based liberation from the dunya (the worldly life) and its items, to pursue the afterlife and closeness to Allah. Its purpose is to allow the believer to navigate life’s troughs without being consumed by feelings of distress or grief.

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Listening to H’s story deepened my curiosity about what home looks like for those who live(d) within the turmoil itself. Dalal Hamdan was born in Karaoun, a small village in the West Bekaa Valley of Lebanon, during the civil war and, later, she lived through the Israeli occupation. Alongside the fear and anxiety, she lived a simple and deeply connected life, where everyone knew one another, and traditions were cherished and preserved.

“I remember the richness of nature: my father harvesting figs, grapes, and fresh produce from our land; the springtime honey harvest; the olive season in autumn and making our own olive oil. I remember Eid visits, the constant exchange between families and neighbours, and my mother preparing lunches and dinners that brought everyone together. I remember waking up to the sound of Fairuz on the radio.”

When Dalal got married, she moved to Brazil where her husband was born to Lebanese parents. “At the time, I didn’t fully grasp what it meant to leave. I was young, filled with excitement at the idea of building a new life. It was only later that the weight of it truly settled. Even as I was happy creating a new home, there was a quiet grief that lived alongside it. A longing for everything I once knew. I left behind family, friends, and the familiarity of places that shaped me. I would find myself overwhelmed with nostalgia, moved to tears by Fairuz’s songs, or by looking through old photographs. I missed my family and friends deeply. At that time, without the internet, communication was limited. I would wait anxiously for letters, especially from my mother. She would write them over weeks, filling them with news, warmth, and the recipes I loved. Each letter felt like a small piece of home reaching me from afar. Starting over in a new country demanded strength and independence. Building connections wasn’t easy. I missed the simplicity of sharing a conversation with a friend, of feeling heard and understood. I had to learn a new language, not just to communicate, but to find my voice again in an unfamiliar place.”

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As a young adult, Dalal considered Lebanon to be home. But with the move, she suddenly had to redefine what home meant and, at first, there was a clear divide between Lebanon and Brazil. With time, she began to feel that she doesn’t belong in a single place. She no longer felt entirely Lebanese, nor was she perceived as such. And in Brazil, she was considered “the immigrant”. That turning point is when she began to mold her own version of home: a blend of both countries. Dalal preserved the Lebanese traditions that were passed down to her, while creating new ones. She taught her children their languages which, “became a way of preserving a connection, to our family, our culture, our faith, and our identity.” These efforts were in the pursuit of creating a home where they would feel a sense of belonging, and perhaps shape their own identities in which they could find a home.

After leaving Brazil, Dalal settled in the UAE, where she has lived for the past 20 years. To build a home through these three life-changing moves, “family was always (her) anchor. Preserving traditions, language, food, music, dance and staying connected to loved ones was essential.” Dalal also joined various women’s communities where she formed meaningful bonds. These relationships “grew into regular gatherings and shared moments, giving (her) a deeper sense of belonging beyond the home itself. Friends became (their) chosen family. Gatherings around the table, Lebanese mezze, Brazilian churrasco, celebrations and simple dinners became (their) way of recrea-ting belonging wherever (they) were.”

Dalal’s relationship with Lebanon changed over time, and she does not feel it can be a home again “because of the lack of stability and opportunity” as a consequence of the “ongoing challenges, economic instability, insecurity and war.” The little bit of home that was left in Lebanon was tied to her mother’s presence there, but since her mother moved, “that emotional anchor is no longer there, and with it, the feeling of home has shifted.”

Having lived abroad for nearly three decades and as she experienced living in peaceful environments, Dalal’s definition of home changed. She now values stability, security and peace as essential elements of a home; however, she does not believe that home is only defined by physical conditions.

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“It is, above all, an internal feeling, something that can be created and carried within, regardless of circumstances. I have felt a true sense of home in Lebanon despite the war and instability, and in Brazil despite certain security concerns. At the same time, having lived in the UAE and experienced a high level of peace and stability, l’ve come to deeply value that sense of security. So while it is not essential for creating the feeling of home, when given the choice, I would naturally gravitate toward a place that offers both emotional belonging and physical safety.” Her love and patriotism for her country are still intact. This is merely a choice that she would make if given the opportunity to offer her family a life without the trauma of war. The crucial point is, if the opportunity did not exist, as it does not for so many, a feeling of home can still be built within the space where there is fear or upheaval.

These environmental transformations, along with the relocations, led to a constant reshaping of Dalal’s home. It was a process she described as difficult and required adjustment, growth and, at times, sacrifice, but it ultimately allowed her to mold a home on her own terms. Now, she describes home as “… a layered experience that shifts with time, context, and emotion. At times, it is something tangible: a house, a garden, a table, familiar objects. At other times, it becomes intangible, a feeling, a quiet sense of comfort. At its core, home is also a practice. It is something we continuously create and recreate through the way we cook, host, gather, arrange our spaces, and carry our traditions.”

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The experience of having an upbringing deeply rooted in one’s blood country and forming a strong identity around it, then leaving it behind, is one I cannot relate to, but I imagine it is a very difficult process. However, uprooting yourself several times and moving across the world is an experience I can relate to, and so can Najl.

Najl Arif was born in France and raised in Jeddah, in a Pakistani-French household. She went to university in Abu Dhabi for three years, returned to Saudi briefly after graduating, then headed to Paris. After three years in Paris, Najl returned to Saudi, and is now based in Riyadh.

Growing up, she was heavily immersed in both her Pakistani and French culture. Najl attributes her quietness as a kid to the perplexity surrounding her divided sense of identity; she didn’t know where she belonged, so she stayed silent. This identity crisis did not just cause inner disturbance, but she was made victim to school bullying. “I always felt out of place. I was the only person who was French Pakistani. They made me feel like I stank, because there’s a stigma about Pakistani people smelling bad. I just didn’t like the fact that I was different. I didn’t like the fact that I couldn’t connect with people.” The bullying led her to some intense “cultural cringe” and she found it difficult to connect to her Pakistani origins; “I hated wearing traditional clothes. I thought it looked weird on me. I thought I looked ‘pendu’. ‘Pendu’ is a term that is translated as villager, but with time, it became a word to describe something outdated. It’s kind of an insult if you say it to someone.”

This tension with her identity, both internal and external, made it hard for her to recognize and define a home for herself growing up. “When I was a kid, since I did not like myself, I never felt at home with myself. It’s a harsh thing to say but, I did hate myself. That played a big part in me not feeling a sense of home.”

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Najl only began to grow into herself and her identity when she took physical distance from the place in which she faced many difficulties. After fighting tooth and nail for an opportunity to go to university away from Jeddah, Najl found herself at Sorbonne University in Abu Dhabi. “Everything was new, I didn’t have my parents over my head. I was trying to cut the umbilical cord I had linked to them.” Those next few years were metamorphic as Najl embarked on a journey to find out who she is, how she thinks, what her identity is, and where in the world she fits, on her own terms. At around 20 years of age, “something clicked” and she warmly embraced the Pakistani side she was made to be ashamed of: “I feel like it brings richness into my background.” Her journey towards defining a home did not stop at reconciling with her origins, that was just a starting point.

In 2021, Najl moved to The City Of Love, Paris, which she described as a “really eye-opening experience”. Being educated through the French system, Najl relates to, and values, a lot of French liberalism. Therefore, growing up, she connected more to her French origins and was closer to her family in France. Despite this, she found it difficult to connect with the local Parisians. “They had one way of thinking. Whereas for me, since I grew up in different cultures, I’m very open to different ways of thinking, different opinions. I love sitting down with someone who thinks, or perceives things, differently than the crowd.” Her decision to move back to Saudi was largely driven by the consequential isolation and the shortfall of Islamic presence in the city.

Given Najl’s history in Saudi, her move back may seem counterintuitive. However, carrying the weight of your past, and not healing your relationship with it, is possibly more detrimental. Since her return, Najl sees the country in a new light and has found a fresh way to connect with it. Reflecting on how all the different cultural and environmental influences sit within her, she finds that they “all feel intertwined”. Her inability to untangle them from one another was once a problem but, over time, Najl has grown to love the jungle vines that dwell within her.

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This melting pot of experience and influence has allowed her to mold her own sculpture of home. But this sculpture is not fired in a kiln and made solid since she believes that home is “ever-changing and intertwined with a lot of factors in (her) life: languages, moments, phases.” Leaving the sculpture malleable allows her to reshape it when she needs. However, clay has an array of colors and mineral compositions to choose from. Najl’s chosen components are self-acceptance, comfort and harbour.

“Once I accepted myself and accepted being my own first home, I started accepting all the changes around me. Life is really about how comfortable you are with yourself. If you’re not comfortable with yourself, things become really hard; you try to escape your thoughts, you become turbulent in being with yourself, and your thoughts becomes heavy. Being comfortable with yourself is the first way to feel at home. It becomes easier to find home in any phase of your life if you feel at home in your own body, in your own thoughts, in your own mind. I feel at home with myself, which is why I am able to find home in the external factors as well; people, languages, environment or culture. I feel rooted in, and connected to, myself, which is why I’m able to find a home easily.

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Home is a feeling. The feeling of comfort, the feeling of being low energy. Nowadays, I often link my home to where my parents are. Whenever I am with them, I feel cocooned, I am in my comfort place. I think the most important thing for me, wher-ever I go, is a place where I can disconnect; I don’t have to think a certain way, talk a certain way, or I don’t have to speak. I’m just in my bubble, with my thoughts. When I’m surrounded by warmth, when I step into my room, or sit with my parents, I’m disconnected. Another way I would disconnect is by reading, or by watching a show. The disconnecting part makes me feel at home; a place where I can just rest and reset.”

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I will admit that, when I first began this quest, I feared more balls were going to be added to the squash game. It seemed that each of these wonderful women had deeply personal and rather different ideas as to what home is, but that assumption was premature and surface level. Over the three weeks of piecing this together and allowing the conversations to settle, the squash game had wound down. I noticed a deep red thread that weaved through each woman, bringing them together in the most beautiful, yet subtlest of ways.

Building a home was a journey for each of them, regardless of very similar or vastly different roots and upbringings. It is likely a journey for the majority of people. We attach oursel-ves to family, friends, careers, identities, cultures, objects, whole countries, languages, traditions, rituals etc. and they become our “homes”. Though each of these women attributed home to different anchors, the red thread that brought them together was that these belongings are not home in and of itself, rather they are manifestations of certain feelings which create home.

Home is, first and foremost, a feeling. What those feelings are differ for every individual. They are dependent on a variety of historical, circumstantial and personal differences, as well as many subtleties in between. Those feelings are then materialized into beings, physical objects, or abstract concepts and, for each person, the manifestations differ. Home is a feeling, but when and where that feeling manifests changes through time and space. It will rarely look the same and its intensity, or even presence, will fluctuate, if we rely on its materialization through anything of this world. Acceptance of that fact is necessary for lasting peace but, more importantly, it seems crucial to build a home internally and to consider these external manifestations simply as decorative pieces for your space.

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How your internal home looks like, and where you draw the material to build it, is also a very personal journey. Building a home out of anything from this life could be foolish, as everything in this life has an end. It is like the timeless story of the three little pigs, one of whom built their home out of straw and the other out of sticks; both of which were blown down by the big bad wolf. The last pig built his home out of bricks, and the big bad wolf failed to bring it down. What you build your home from must be sourced from something strong and reliable, something eternal. And, for me, I am reminded that there is truly only one source from which I can build my home from.