What it’s like to grow up without a hometown

I first came across the poem “Diaspora Blues” by Ijeoma Umebinyuo last year, while I was working in Karachi, Pakistan and taking a semester-long leave of absence from NYU.  However, the few lines that struck me the hardest, have come up again in my mind time and time again since then:

“So, here you are
too foreign for home
too foreign for here.
Never enough for both.”

Until very recently, I struggled to articulate the reasons why I consider Karachi my home. Objectively speaking, having grown up and been educated in Washington, DC, by definition it should go without saying that DC is my home. But I’ve never entirely felt that way.

I grew up hearing stories of flame trees, wind chimes, the smell of fresh flowers from the garden -stories of my mother playing in the park across the street from her home and carefree independence that no longer exists. I didn’t grow up in the same Karachi, but I see the reflection of it in my mother’s words and my grandmother’s memory. Perhaps this idea of a place is what makes it home to me, or maybe just the idea that so much love can still exist in one place, even after everything material that was loved is gone.

DC is pints of Ben and Jerry’s in the kitchen lit by the light from the refrigerator, sushi often twice a day, and the best cuddles with my English Bulldog. It’s old friends and old haunts and a weekend escape from college. Its memories of all-nighters studying, early mornings with blurry vision, stuck in traffic, long lists of errands, and torrential downpours.

For me, Karachi is my family home, my mother’s happiness, the joy of espresso in my father’s study and brunch in front of the TV on Sunday mornings. It’s constant socializing equally matched with days spent doing absolutely nothing, and seemingly-mandatory afternoon naps, even on workdays. It’s staying up all night with no purpose, and eating twice as many meals as one would anywhere else.

Even then, even with such vivid images of home, with two feet – each deeply rooted simultaneously on separate continents – to me, my hometown is not a place. I can’t say what is quintessential of my hometown, what landmarks hold significance to everyone from a given place. I can’t settle in one place, because my heart will always be stuck in another.

What that means though, is I’m fortunate enough to never have to choose. Being at home in Karachi will never undermine the experience of being home in Washington, and vice versa. Even the best of friends in Karachi will never take away from friendships in Washington, and the joy of having both my parents in the same place at the same time, even after 17 years of divorce, doesn’t take away from the empowering freedom of life in Washington.

Home for me, will never be any four walls, a singular place, or specific people. Home will always be the feeling and the memories  of each fragment of happiness from my childhood to date, that I hold so very close to my heart.