by Daniya Osamah
I feel my memories slipping. They shouldn’t slip away, not like this. Not when it was the house I grew up in, not when it was my home for twelve years. Not when someone says ‘home’ and it’s the place that comes to mind. Not when I’m so desperate to keep them intact.
The architecture is blurry, I don’t remember the paths, I forget the rooms, I forget the stairs. I have trouble remembering the kitchen. One cannot claim that this house was home and forget the details of everything, can they? What I do remember comes from fond re-tellings, “remember when you fell down the stairs?” And for a fleeting second, I remember the stairs, and I laugh at the memory, at the collective sadness that seems to always lie within these conversations. The mere mention of ‘Yaad hai? (remember when?)’ brings a smile to my face, because I know I remember what happened. I might not remember the place, but I do remember what happened.
The liminality of these memories frustrates me, they should come when they are called upon, I should remember what the drawings under the paint looked like, I shouldn’t concede to others’ re-tellings of my experiences. But I do.
Hiareth, longing for the feeling of home, is yearning for that naivety, that innocence that consumed every waking moment in that house. I meet those cousins now, we discuss that magical time, again reaching into that liminality, relying on it to provide us with those memories, we know they may not be accurate, we know the path to dada abbu’s room differs in all our minds, we reach anyway. Everything seemed so big, I know looking back the living room definitely didn’t have the capacity to accommodate my entire extended family, the iftaris on the floor can attest to that, I wonder how small we were to fit so comfortably on that mat.
Perhaps the door still contains traces of my cousin’s blood from when she ran into it during a game of tag. Maybe the walls still contain my untidy A B Cs drawn in crayon. I hope the plant that fell during that one bicycle ride has forgiven me. Reader, do you think the house remembers the souls that made it a home? It scares me how willingly I would trade everything I am and own for a blurry memory of home, what I would give to reside in that palace of memories forevermore. They are of course, unreachable, one should move on, one should make more memories, home is where the heart is’, but during the recounting of such tales, I see the longing in the eyes of everyone I love, the need to be home, no matter where it’s situated. It’s unspeakable and yet such yearning pulls me in, summarizing in a simple childish need, I want to go home’.