Goodbyes and Uncertain Reunions: Goodbyes and Uncertain Reunions: What My Syrianness Has Given Me

I remember the exact layout of the room: my grandparents in one corner, my cousins, my aunts and uncles, and a person I had been around my whole life, but never knew how we were related. The room was dimly lit with candles and LED lights. I remember the three lemon trees, the myrtle in the front yard, the olive groves behind the house, the grapevines that covered the wide pathway to the front deck, and my grandmother’s roses. Everything was silent, completely without a sound. I saw the tears on my grandmother’s cheeks as I passed each person, one by one giving them warm hugs and kisses. I did not cry at that moment, nor did I fully understand my grandmother’s sadness. I hugged her tightly, even though she had always been rather tough on the outside. I kissed her cheek before we left, and walked outside of that door for one last time. The same door that I had walked through thousands of times, during all the summers and holidays that had passed. My childhood is attached to its memory, to the memory of the screen door that slammed loudly every time we left it open, only for the wind to close it.

I don’t remember how we left. How do people leave? Did the family stand behind the car to see us off? Did we look back? I did not comprehend this goodbye. I thought that a reunion was certain, that I would be back to the same old life that existed within the borders of that land, that nothing would change. I was naive enough to believe that I could leave without closure. Now I know that I was exiled, uprooted, and planted somewhere beautiful, but foreign. I realized that reunions were uncertain, that I was not free, that I could never be free as long as I existed on the face of this earth. This is what my Syrianness has given me.