In a matter of weeks, I’ll be leaving home for college.
This thought is quite intimidating for an 18-year old who’ll spend the next four years of her life living 20-plus hours away from her home across the Atlantic. Indeed, everyone has their own reasons for leaving home. Some people leave home for jobs, some leave home to escape an unsuccessful marriage or a depressing childhood. Some leave for the sake of exploring themselves through solitude, and some wish to escape from reality to a place that seldom exists. After the recent ISIS bombings in Bangladesh, a father confessed that his 19-year old son had left home long ago when, one day, he did not return from school. That boy joined a terrorist group and was killed by the Bangladesh police in an encounter.
Apparently, some people even leave home to become terrorists.
When I was in class five, a terrible incident happened in my city, the first of it’s kind witnessed by a 10-year old. A group of local terrorists had planted bombs in several places across our state. One of those blasts took place at a location just 10 minutes away from my home. On October 28, 2009, I saw my friends being picked up from school at noon when our school actually got over at 1:30 p.m. Soon, I was walking with my dad across a back lane where he had parked his car. It was only after we reached his office that he told me what the situation was. We couldn’t head back home because the area where the blast took place was on our way. So we decided to stay in the office as long as we felt safe. That day, for the first time, I had the greatest desire to go home. We were safe in my dad’s office but that safety didn’t feel safe enough.
Seven years have passed and the fear of that day has almost faded. Today, I hear about the blasts at Istanbul Airport, in Paris, in a cafe in Bangladesh and even at a sacred prayer ground during Eid. All of them remind me of the day when home was all I wanted. Recently, I watched a Ted Talk by a 2005 London bombing survivor who was just a few meters away from the 19 year old suicide bomber. She lost her legs in the blast, and only her spirit to go home and unite with her family kept her alive for the one hour that she lay holding herself up, forcing herself to keep her eyes open until a rescuer finally found her.
It is indeed very difficult to imagine ourselves in situations where returning home becomes questionable. But, there’s always uncertainty like there is probability. Often, we do not consider things until and unless they happen to us. We try to adapt to a state of denial, that convinces us about the unlikeliness of an unpleasant event. Surprisingly, this is what keeps us moving. One of my cousins visited Paris just a month after the terror attacks. Paris was not completely out of terror, yet. Many, including myself would have questioned going there in the first place. My cousin had no choice but to simply accept a state of denial.
With so much more than terrorist activities happening around the world, staying away from home brings too many emotions I cannot delineate. There is sexual abuse, alcohol addiction, negative peer pressure, drug smuggling, rape, abduction—problems that are way more miserable than homesickness. “Do not trust everyone” is my mom’s advice. But, I want something more than trust to depend on. I want freedom from fear, harmony against hatred, safety rather than uncertainty and a feel of home even while walking down a dark street at 1 a.m. wearing my favorite shorts and not worrying about being raped. If you can give me a place like that I’ll call it home—the safest place of all.
