a love letter from home
I got home two days ago from my two week summer in Istanbul. I had dreaded the prospect of returning, of relenting the liberties that are afforded by being away from home. My flight ticket, booked months in advance, brought to mind not the weightlessness from soaring thousands of feet above ground, but the fright of becoming tethered for the month starting my arrival. I definitely wasn’t a death row inmate working through my last meal, but I sure did savor the said flight and its little pleasures. I spent my time reading a curious novel by a Czech author, watching a lovely coming of age movie, and napping on the entire row that I had claimed for myself. Then, I cleared the arrival check, and spoke very little on the drive home until I got home a little after midnight.
The most dominant feeling was that I was tall. I towered over the new dining table, the sink, the wardrobe. My body felt too big for the home that raised me for 20 years before I moved out. Even my pet bird, peering at me through groggy doe eyes, seemed to have shrunk a little from the size I saw her first at the pet store. I could smell the tiled floor (I can no longer smell it after two days) anew. Then I felt hot. I had just come from a desert of a country that subsisted on powerful air conditioning, but my flat in a country in the tropical zone felt hotter and heavier than I was accustomed to. The welcome was sentimental, as expected, but did not overshadow the mix of feelings that bore into me as I settled in. The water pressure in the bathroom was a little lower, the lights more fluorescent than needed, and bedsheets that failed Western aesthetics. The emotions felt uncomfortable to bear because of the guilt that lurked within: I had cozied into the motions of a different life at the expense of forgetting what the life I lived for so many years had looked like, the life my family was still living.
Now, don’t get me wrong. I wasn’t so spoiled that a temporary split from the luxuries paid for by the Emirati money could bring me down to be so despondent. I have been feeling a lot of things that accumulated to the feeling of restlessness, because it was a lot to sort through mentally, and I knew I needed to write. I had to compartmentalize the deluge of feelings bubbling noiselessly within me. But to write down what I did not understand meant that I had to invent something. Not fabricate, but give meaning to the thoughts that I am now transcribing. I wasn’t sitting and thinking about words like guilt, split, or different. These words come to me as I write, and I keep them because to me they sound like the most appropriate translations of my emotions. A writer’s writing is, and has always been, up for debate on the grounds of the sincerity of his reflections. But the critique is external: for now the only bridge that exists between my feelings and comprehension is my translation.
At night after everyone has gone to sleep, I open my bedroom window and smoke. I have to hide my cigarettes, and I keep my lighters out of sight. Back in my dorm, I had stashes of Bic lighters of all colors in corners. Rainbows on standby. But here it's different, hiding the contraband like I have to hide a part of myself to go along with the rest of my family, and I’m not just talking about my piercing, although I have by now mastered taking my nose ring out and putting it back in, a routine I follow every time I leave and return to my bedroom. Since my sleep cycle has gone completely off the tracks, I don’t have trouble keeping up with my nicotine cravings. I wake up sometime in the late afternoon, so I am naturally not sleepy throughout the night. During these quiet hours, I let my subdued self swim out to the surface. It reigns until it's light out again, when my sisters start to get ready for school.
I don’t do anything particularly spectacular in these hours. I have just finished watching a whole season of a TV series. I go through my phone occasionally. I also read a little today. It is true I miss the freedom I enjoy during the semester, but it really hasn’t been taking much away from the calm of the slow paced life at home. There is really no daily agenda to pursue, and my days are as unstructured as they come. I imagine this will be relaxing for some time before I eventually get bored. I have already considered going back to campus as soon as I’m allowed to check in, having already emailed the residential department enquiring about the dates and all. By the time we are allowed to return, I’m sure I will have exhausted the pleasures of a sedentary lifestyle. I say sedentary, but more than that what I think will eventually get to me is its solitary quality. I miss my friends, and the ordinary days I spent with them are the firewood for my nostalgia these days. I’m a little nervous about my housing situation next semester though, since my rooming assignment unfortunately puts me in lower proximity to my friends than I would prefer. I just got an email today about the possibility of reassignment, and I am dearly hoping for the best.
Of all the feelings I’ve talked about, I think I miss Saruul the most. I miss the comfort, the joy, and excitement of sharing the same space as her. I’d wake up every morning and she would not fail to remind me how she had woken up hours earlier, and then we’d embrace. Waking up next to her every morning was the most electrifying prospect: a whole new day to experience alongside the bestie. She’s so funny, I love the way she makes me laugh, so much so that I even love the person I am when I am around her. Even though I had always hated having my picture taken, I let her do it without ever so much as any unease. Her presence heralds safety and an absence of judgment in which I can be a better person for myself and for her. I am so besotted with her charm, the kindness that she imparts not just for me but for everyone around her. Being separated from her feels comparable if not worse than an impeding paywall on an academic website. I used to postpone responding to texts for as long as possible, even if I wasn’t particularly occupied. Text conversations just felt like an obstruction to my day. But Saruul’s texts feel like birthday presents: I open and respond to them as soon as I see them. She’s just so cool (this is where my literary abilities fail me in the face of love), and more than anything I cannot wait to be reunited with her.