27/01/2025
SO WHERE IS HOME
As a child who found fascination in reading pieces way older than her, I once read a poem that spoke of homes and how a shelter doesn't equal to one. I got engrossed and tried to find different versions of definitions of these words from dictionaries.
When my thoughts started becoming more like mine and life started going full-fledged at me,the question came up again: where is home? I asked myself this question for years until the answers began to show up.
Home is not the address you jot down on forms in the bank or the house you return to each night after an exhausting day, but the place that stills your heart,the space where the restless ache quiets, and for once, you feel complete. But is such a place even real? Isn’t life itself a movement, an endless drift from one phase to another? I remember seeing an infographic likening life to a train ride ,and it fitted well. Aren’t we all just nomads, wandering through fragments of experiences, carrying pieces of our past selves while trying to create something that feels like home?
For me, home has always been complicated, elusive, even contradictory. As a child, I didn’t think of home as a sanctuary. Instead, I saw it as something I needed to escape and something I never wanted to leave as well. My childhood wasn’t always the kind you’d read about in fairytales or reminisce about with a fond smile. It was loud at times, too quiet at others, beautiful on some days,gloomy on others, and often weighed down by an unspoken heaviness I couldn’t name. And still can't name.
I remember lying on my bed, looking so ‘minuscle’ ,staring at the ceiling that seemed as if it were reaching the skies, it’s asbestos line resembling the fractures in my little world. I would trace them with my eyes, imagining they led somewhere far away,anywhere but here. Outside, the world felt impossibly big, breathing with places I hadn’t seen, faces I hadn’t met, and possibilities I hadn’t yet dreamed of. Inside, home felt too small even in it’s enormousness , too stifling, too certain. I could predict the next minute based on my own actions.
When I left for the first time, I thought freedom would feel like taking a deep breath after holding it for too long. But the air outside wasn’t what I imagined. It was sharp and cold, and for the first time, I realized I had traded one uncertainty for another. The thrill of leaving was quickly replaced by the quiet, unsettling realization that I had no idea where I was going or what I was looking for.
The search for home became a journey that wasn’t just physical but emotional and existential. My young mind became a mess. I wandered through the corridors of my life, looking for pieces of myself in places I’d never been. At first, I thought I’d find it in certain moments—the warmth of a new friendship, the euphoria of small victories, the escape offered by books and stories,late night gists at the boarding house, muraja'ah sessions in the midnight. And for a while, those moments worked. They were enough. But they never lasted.
One day, I told myself that home, at least for me, wasn’t a single place or moment. It was transient, fluid, always shifting,as if it wanted me to never rest of find peace. I told myself it was the feeling of belonging I found in laughter that lasted too briefly. It was the safety I felt in rare moments of stillness, like my grandmother’s arms or the soft hum of a fan in the dead of night. It was the thrill of running barefoot across the front of my hostel as a fresher while it rained,my heart pounding as though it could outrun everything I didn’t understand. That time, I didn't have to tell myself, I knew it because it felt profound.
But those fragments were never permanent. One day, the places and people I thought I belonged to started to feel foreign. The laughter quieted. The walls that once felt protective now seemed like barriers. I could no longer run across the front of my hostel on rainy nights because the halogen lights were replaced and new restaurants now stood there. The child who dreamed of escape had grown, her world now tangled in the weight of responsibilities, expectations, and questions with no easy answers. Or no answers at all.
There were days I thought I’d found home in external things- success, recognition, the approval of others and even my professional calling. But those, too, turned out to be temporary shelters. Like sand slipping through my fingers, they left me chasing something I couldn’t hold onto. You'd ask me,what if the ‘professional calling’? That also became something I was uncertain of on some days, something I wanted to run away from.
Life, I’ve learned, is a labyrinth. It is cunning. It twists and turns, doubling back on itself, leading you to dead ends just when you think you’ve found your way. It’s not a straight path from Point A to Point B but a series of detours, missteps, and unexpected discoveries.
And in that maze, I’ve been forced to confront myself lots of times-my fears, my doubts, my desires. I’ve stared into mirrors, trying to find the girl I once was. But she’s gone, replaced by someone shaped by time, by loss, by the unrelenting process of becoming.
So, where is home?
Is it in the people who love us, the ones who hold us through our storms? Is it in the temporary moments of joy that light up our darkest days? Or is it in the quiet solitude, where we confront the truths we spend so much time running from?
For years, I searched for a home that didn’t exist, a place outside myself where I could finally feel whole. But the more I searched, the more I it hit me that home isn’t something you find—it’s something you create. It’s the pieces of your story you carry with you, the moments you stitch together into a patchwork of belonging.
Home is in the mental replays of laughter you hear even after the moment has passed. It’s in the willfulness you discover in yourself when the world feels too heavy. It’s in the way you let yourself grieve, heal, and grow.
I’ve stopped searching for the kind of home that stays still, the kind that doesn’t change. Instead, I’ve found it in the movement itself—in the way life changes, and surprises you when you least expect it. I’ve found it in the transitions, in the becoming, in the messy, imperfect beauty of it all.
We are nomads. We pitch our tents in moments that feel like home, knowing they’re temporary, knowing we’ll have to move again. But that’s the nature of existence. And that could be the point. Home isn’t a destination. It’s the journey, the movement, the choice to keep going even when the path is unclear. Home could be a swirl of emotions that you going through in life. It could be anything else within you.
And so, I carry my home within me—in the When my thoughts started becoming more like mine and life started full-fledged on me,the question came up: where is home? I asked myself this question for years until the answers began to show up.
MUSHINAH MUHIBI
HUSNAH COMPENDIUM
