I have seen so many places and traveled far, spending nights in unfamiliar hotels, airports, and making friends with people of different-colored skins. After weeks of winding roads, I return home with wrinkled suitcases, and reach for a door knob that to this day, makes my heart beat a little faster.
Is that you?!, she calls. I hope I can hear her call as long as I’m alive.
Home is that little corner of the world, a familiar place where the pillows and blankets smell like us. There is a picture of mine from when I was seven and then, twenty seven; and no place else have I seen those photos.
The pen that wrote this, rests to one side of a mug on my desk. Oh, and there is one old chair that has graciously changed her shape to embrace my bones. Delight means dropping my bags and surrendering to its cushions.
Home is the only place where I can do nothing while it is bitter cold and snowing outside. The one who knows me better than myself, makes me chicken soup that fogs my glasses; the music plays, the candles melt, as snow falls into the night.
I know this world is moving fast, but I pray that this home will be my last, for it calls me back, time and again, to my mate, my pen, to my old chair, to the smell of books, pillows, and disheveled blankets.
One day, you might visit my home, but you might not feel what I feel here.
God Bless your Home and Family…
~ Kambiz Naficy
