Home
"Two languages, two lands, perhaps two souls. Am I a man or two strange halves of one?" Joseph Tusiani
I was recently flipping through the pages of an old notebook of mine and stumbled upon a reflection from my early days as an immigrant to America. The reflection went, "I miss my country. I miss my people. They're part of me, I'm part of them. We're sculped by the same hands, from the same clay. We breathed our land's air, thrived on bounties offered by its generous soil, drank from its fountains of youth, dreamt under its starry skies. "Is it still home for you," someone asked? I answered, "It is, but I am lucky to have two homes."
But can we really have two homes... I left my heart in a faraway place. No, that's not true. It simply refused to leave."
As I read these words a quarter of a century later, I started to reflect on my life in America. I have lived here longer than I ever lived in Lebanon, longer than I probably ever will. It took a while for my heart to follow, but it has since happily come along. We two often go back-mentally and physically, to our beloved motherland. We connect, reminesce, lament, and rejoice. But... we are finally at peace.
