What does it mean to leave one’s home?

The word leave suggests a degree of choice, even if it does not entirely imply it. And when no choice is involved, the word itself feels too weak to capture the magnitude of the event.

After every evacuation warning issued to the villages, we do not leave our homes; we abandon them. And in that abandonment lies a relinquishment not only of the house itself, but of all the small habits we built within it and around it.

Abandoning one’s home does not necessarily lead to homelessness, nor to living in a tent or a shelter. Even when it means moving to a second home, it is no less than a shedding of oneself. Abandonment is merely the beginning of that process.

I did not feel this sense of abandonment the moment I left home. I felt it when I found myself standing, lost, in the middle of the apartment, not knowing what I was looking for. Then I realized I was searching for the light that guided me and set the rhythm of my day; for the wall I turned my face toward when taking a nap on my couch; for the silence that became deafening just after the noon call to prayer; for the darkness that slowly settled into my eyes as daylight faded; for my belongings, which I could find with my eyes closed; and for my mood itself.

Then I found myself hurrying out of the apartment in search of a familiar detail I could not find there.

In Beirut, that familiar detail is the café. I escape to it so that the searching can stop.

When I left home, I left behind the couch with which I had reached an understanding, along with the other couches in the house, the windows, the doors, the tiles, the walls, the photographs, the paintings hanging upon them, and the bed sheets. Together, we had agreed that this was my place, the one that suited me best, the one I preferred at that particular hour of the day and in that particular darkness.

To replace it with another in a different home, I would have to weave anew everything I had woven with the objects of my house. But this time, it could not happen organically, as it had with the things in my own home. Time had been a partner in all that was woven there, and what was created within it cannot simply be replicated elsewhere.

In the new place, a different accumulation will take shape, tied to a different rhythm of time, a different light, and a different window. Comparison cannot be part of the equation, because it serves neither the new place nor my ability to adapt to it.

Building a new accumulation of experiences, one that belongs to this new place, requires an understanding of the time I will spend there. And if the duration of my stay remains uncertain because the entire situation is uncertain, then my standing in the middle of the apartment will last longer, not only in search of what I once knew, but of what I want to become familiar.

When we leave our homes, we do not leave a place behind alone. We leave behind the rhythm of our nervous and emotional systems, and the entire fabric of our being and temperament that we have woven over time.

Home is our space-time.

At home, and throughout the years we spend in it, a relationship slowly forms with things and corners, with the cracks in the wall, and with the ants we follow to discover which crevice they emerged from. Through boredom, exhaustion, celebrations, and ordinary days, we weave stories that shape and anchor our connection to the house, even when that relationship is not always easy or pleasant.

With time, or when circumstances arise that may be no less profound than a forced departure, we come to realize that we were not merely staying in the house. We dwelt in it, and it dwelt within us. We lived in it, and it lived in us.

Because the word stay also feels too weak to describe our relationship with home.

We do not love our homes all the time, at least not throughout all the years we live in them. We often resent them, perhaps because we grow tired of the burden of owning them, of the attachment and obligations that come with preserving them. Or perhaps because of the repairs and alterations that accumulate and remain undone. Or because our homes do not resemble the homes we once dreamed of, and seem unlikely ever to become them.

But at other times, we do not love our homes because they are beautiful. Rather, they become beautiful because they are ours. And because they are ours, we love them. And because we love them, we diminish when we are far from them.

And then, we disappear.

I did not leave, abandon, or relinquish anything. I was torn away from my place and from the place that my home had granted me after I had proven myself worthy of it.

I am a queen in my home.

Outside it, I stand lost, searching for myself and for my temperament.