Where is Home?

by: Evan Sahraeian

        Finding a home has always been extremely difficult, somewhere where you spend most of your time, where you should feel safe and loved amongst your family. It takes us a lifetime to learn that a home is not about the walls or how big how expensive it is, it is about the feeling you have when you take your first step inside, at that second you can tell if you have the life you wanted, but if you tell yourself ��no again, oh my God.��  and all that you can think of is when will you be outside of the house again, this is not a home that is a prison, as for myself I have lived in both of situations, here I will write about tow more houses that I have lived in my childhood, one of them we stayed for two nights the other one more than 3 months.

After leaving the house of scorpions, as you know we could carry everything we owned, so started walking toward the city, on the dirt road we saw many things like a falling bridge, many more abandoned and imploded homes, right on the road there was even unexploded missile, for some unknown reason this one decided not take any innocent lives, it just laying there to show that it is not like the other missiles but it didn�t receive anything except hatred, for it looked just like all the other killer ones. Reaching the city with the hope to find a house, we were recommended by someone, that there was a house belongs to a middle-aged woman who lives alone, she was willing to rent us one room of her house, having hope that you are going somewhere, that you have a destination your steps becomes faster no matter how hungry or tired you are. Reaching our  new ��home�� brought joy, and fear at the same time, we sat down to eat something and rest for a while, the woman came in to ��welcome us�� she saw our situation but all she saw was free food, it looked like she hasn�t eaten for weeks, and my mother who will never say no for sharing she served her tea and food, next morning we see that one of our blankets is gone when you know next night you don�t have enough blankets for everyone to sleep with you know exactly how many blankets you own, believe me, my mother asked the landlord she calmly said she hasnt seen it, we started looking around everywhere there was no sign of it, and the only person that can come inside is that woman, the blanket will not grow legs and go by itself, so my mother waited until the owner left the house, then the search and rescue operation for lost blanket started, we searched every corner at that house, the poor blanket was no were to be found, at last, my mother found it folded stashed behind one of the water barrels on the roof, without saying a word about it, with sparkles of victory in our eyes we brought back our blanket,  that night we slept with one eye open to guard our precious belongings, like we had lots to lose, next morning we count our loses, some tea cups this time, but at last we didnt care much for the tea cups, we gathered everything with the first sun light we started moving out of the house, this time with no destination. 

Walking for hours we finally found two rooms for rent with a good family the land was shaped like an L shaped the owners family were on one side facing a small garden and our family on the other side also facing the garden I remember how happy I was this looked like a real home so beautiful the garden was great, the family had children to play with, it couldn�t get better than that, the woman was so kind, we lived there for about three months I was excited because the house was close to school, in few months I would be able to start my first year, I don�t understand why us humans don�t remember the good times as we do the bad ones, because I don�t remember much about this, all I know everything was going fine until one day when it started to rain, the owners house the part where they lived the roof fell, we had to leave so they can live in our part.  Again put everything on our back and start looking in the neighborhood maybe someone might have a room to rent, the good part has people there liked us, my mother was a respected woman because she wasn�t talking to people and at that time that how a widow should be, not talking to people not have guests, so finding a house was not a big problem.

Those four walls around you that make you think it is protecting you, what you can do to make it a home is important,  for us, the children as long as we were with my mother that place was always home to us, she was the strong protector she was not afraid of anything, she was killing scorpions, she was finding blanket, she was kicking out the ghosts and at the end telling us about the fairytales that always had strong men and women who fought back, that few minutes before bedtime when we all gathered around a lantern and our shared blanket were the moments that gave me faith and strength that there is always hope in the future we just have to be patient.