Where is home?
The other day, I was discussing with my husband, what he thought was the true definition of ‘home?’ Or where he felt most at home. Especially since his parents have moved from his birth home to a different city. I was curious to which place he would give this label. His reply was that for him, home is where memories were created. The place he was born and bred.
And although, this seems like a straightforward and simple answer, which most people will agree on too, I was still unsure. After getting married, the word ‘home’, is one that I find hard to define. When I visit my parents in Bradford, I tell people I’m going home, yet when I come back to Nottingham, I tell them, I’m going home! So where is home?
Is home, at my parents, the place I was born and bred, the first place my sight fell upon, the city in which I was educated, both spiritually and academically, the place I took my first steps, made my first friends and felt a sense of belonging?
Or is home, in my current city, the one I moved to after tying the knot, the house I am the head of, the home I have been assigned to make, to nurture, to take care of, so it can be a place of serenity for myself and my family?
Sometimes, I question, is home where the heart is? In the city of Rasulullah (salallahu alayhi wasallam), a place when one enters, feels a sense of belonging, feels at home, at ease, not like a foreigner but part and parcel of the community? A place, which ones heart craves and years to visit and whose heart breaks when they leave the Masjid gates?
Finally, after giving it so much thought, I realised, that in this world, we will never truly have one home. Rather, home can be in more than one place.
Even those who don’t flee the nest for studies or work or marriage, will still feel a sense of detachment, a sense of emptiness from time to time, and their hearts may crave another place or feeling of belonging.
Because this world was created this way. It makes us feel a sense of incompleteness and strangeness. The nature of the dunya is one that is temporary and constantly changing and when one thinks of home, it is a place of dwelling that is constant and calm.
And that’s when I remember the ayah:
“Say: shall I give you glad tidings of things far better than those? For the righteous are Gardens in nearness to their Lord with rivers flowing beneath; Therein is their eternal home; with spouses purified and the good pleasure of Allah, for in Allah’s sight are (all) His servants.” (Ale-Imran; Ayah 15)
The real home, the eternal home, the constant home, the place our hearts will feel a complete sense of belonging, calmness and completeness, is not in this world. It is the one home that will not change with time nor will cause us to feel detached and distant or crave another place. It is Jannah. And perhaps that’s why we are made to ask this question, because the answer lies within the ayahs of Allah. Where is home? Home in this dunya can be more than one place, but the real home is in the hereafter; it is Jannah.
May Allah make us the inhabitants of Jannah, ameen ❤
