To return to a place that no longer exists 

Photo Taken By: Omar Abozeid

I feel like growing up abroad, I have lost many things that I’ve only realized now.

I don’t remember going to Teta’s house after school and sitting at the table with my cousins, fighting over the last piece of Kahk. 

I don’t know my family members much, nor are they keen to know me well. I don’t blame them; I’ve always been the visiting cousin, the distant niece, the family member no one could distinguish from her sister. 

It’s an odd feeling when you realize maybe you were born at the wrong time. Living somewhere where your tongue sounded forked and your looks stood out. Growing up, I was always the ‘other,’ the sore thumb that stuck out.

I thought that as I grew older, this feeling of otherness would leave me, but I was wrong; it permeated my being. I didn’t know that this single unidentifiable feeling would sink its claws so deep within me. 

I guess I always wonder who I would’ve been if I’d lived here longer; my personality, my fears, and the things I love are utterly tied to my experience as a foreigner.

How sad is it to feel like a foreigner in your land?

I think the realization or acceptance only came recently because I am often asked if I prefer it here or ‘there.’ I’ve only begun recently to accept that I might always feel that way.

There seems to be an unnamable period of time where if you didn’t live somewhere, you’d never belong; things that come naturally to you, as an Egyptian, are hard for me—trying to find the missing piece of the puzzle that will make me feel like I finally fit in.

It never occurred to me that all the moving around, from city to city, country to country, would imprint such a mark on me. Always being the one leaving, the new girl at school, and never someone who has always been there. 

Do the places I’ve stayed fleeting at remember me as much as I remember them—do they know that they make up a child’s fragmented home? 

Now, it feels like I left a home for another home.

I might one day return to where I lived as a child, but in the footsteps of a young girl, I will return to an unrecognizable woman who has been weathered by life. 

And some places will never hear my laughter again.

Until now, I have to remind myself that I am back in my home country, where my ancestors have treaded, and I am as part of this land as the rocks are…I am home…I am home…I am home. 

Maybe if I repeat it enough times, I will believe it.