Homecoming - العودة للوطن by Muhammad Abdulaziz

Public Story

Homecoming - العودة للوطن

Copyright Muhammad Abdulaziz 2024

Updated Mar 2021

Topics Fine Art, Spotlight

Homecoming - العودة للوطن

A strong yellow-ray of light overexposes the side of the frame where she’s sitting on the frame. On the opposite hand, my mom’s presence is marked by her blue hair rollers, looking off camera. It’s been only three years since I was born. In the middle, Suhair sits with a white piece of cloth on her lap; her hands are gently complemented by the touch of her friend Amira. while Khadija sits silently on the ground in her short-sleeved white dress. It is the only photograph I have of my grandmother and her two daughters, my mother and Auntie Suhir, together.

I was sleeping one morning in 2013. It was the second day of Eid. My mother knocked loudly on my door, screaming that our house was on the brink of collapse. I woke up in shock and ran outside to saw neighbours whose homes had already been destroyed. They stood on the fence of our plot, which was on higher ground, but the water was relentless and eventually reached the borders of our home. My mother, sister, auntie, and I left at the very last minute. Our house was destroyed, and ever since I have felt the void. Home—once a fixed space in time—has now become a deep sense of longing and search for fulfillment.
That cataclysmic event propelled my search for safety and belonging, but with time, the question became: when was I ever really home? All of us come and go, with no destination but a dream of an entrenched sense of self. The hunt for an anchored identity in a world that remains in a constant state of flux.

"Homecoming" is my therapy, my refuge. a safe space for me to explore "home" as a philosophical, spiritual, emotional, and physical construct. To find meaning beyond the linear and the formulaic, and delve into the beyond.

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Muhammad Abdulaziz

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/ˈsɪnθɪsɪs/ - إختلاق

Traveling, I just wanna be your friend