This weekend between morning walks and early dinners, I talked to him about home. He told me that he was able to adapt anywhere and everywhere but that he longed to return to the one and only home, to where his mother lives, to where his ancestors came from, to the land, to the Watan. And his words reminded me of my father because this is what he has always taught us. To long for and belong to the land.

I struggle heavily with the notion of home. And I shall not pretend otherwise. There are times when I feel like a flower in a garden, only I am bending in the other direction. A friend of mine studying psychology once told me that we are forever stuck in our childhoods. I don't know who said it or if it applies to everybody but sometimes it does to me. I sometimes think I am still that little girl in the Watan I once knew in my childhood - it is now but a memory. My father used to always say that the Watan for him was this triad of the land, the wife, and the family.

I am all by myself aimlessly wandering around this large mall and I look around me and observe the Britons and foreigners that surround me, and I wonder if they, like my father, know very well the word Watan...