Family

 

I spent the afternoon at a friend's house. She and her girlfriend made me lunch, a huge affair of rice and potatoes and chicken and pasta and laban and salad and enough such and sundries as to render the table useless for eating, it was so laden with food. My friend is looking listless and sad these days, and I'm worried for her. Leaving for the summer is hard -- will my friends still love me when I come back, or will they have found some other, more constant companion to hold their hand?

It is so hard to live away from the safety net of family, childhood friends, the community in which you grew up. My friends and I constantly talk about our mothers, cousins, uncles, best friends 'back home'. So many of the women I know in the UAE can't go home. Think Palestine. Think Iran. Think Iraq. Think Somalia, think the Sudan. Interspersed with the contentment of day to day life with a nice home, a healthy child, a loving spouse, is the constant tug and ache of those we left behind.

These women I am getting to know miss their family. I miss my family. I hope, when I return from my international tour, that I can be family to these women whom I hold so dear.

And I hope they will become my family, my home away from home.