Other Words for Home

by Jasmine Warga

You should care about our country, too, he says. I do, I say, but what I mean is that I care about my brother and my baba and my mama and I just want to live in a country where we can all have dinner again without shouting about our president or rebels and revolution.

Life is not good for everyone. You only think it is good because that is what you have been told. You need to open your eyes,

We live in a town where most people do not speak ill of our president. But my brother does. So do his friends who attend the local university. They have ideas about how the world should be. Issa says he wants to live in a country where anyone can be anyone they want to be.

Our president’s family grew up in the mountains to the north of us, and if you listen carefully you can hear the whispers rolling down the mountains, telling us to stay quiet and be grateful. The president’s ancestors are powerful spirits.

Our town used to be a place for people to laugh and enjoy all the things that unite them like family and sunshine and the sea and good food. Not the things that divide them like opinions and political loyalties.

When you walk around town, you had better show deference to our president— to his large picture that is in almost every shop, and the armed guards that are now on every corner. If you don’t, you will be asked if you would rather live in one of those other towns, towns that are no longer under our president’s control. Towns where families huddle together in rubble, and there is no running water and electricity, but a whole lot of blood.

Nunu, she confirms. I slide out of my chair and snuggle up to her belly, pressing my ear against the soft fabric of her dress, and I swear I hear a heartbeat. I am learning how to be sad and happy at the same time.

I like comedies where people laugh and then laugh some more. No one ever tells people in comedies to grow up.

Fatima walks over to my bed and sticks her head in one of the boxes that I haven’t sorted yet. She picks up two scarves, one for each fist, and waves them like she is at the finish line of a race. Are you going to bring these? What she wants to ask is, Are you going to wear these in America? Are you going to grow up without me?

I AM: CRYING

When I say good-bye to Baba, he hugs me tight, his arms saying everything that his lips don’t. His tight embrace tells me to be good and listen to Mama. His tight embrace tells me that he is going to miss us a lot.

And that’s when I realize I don’t have a choice. I’m going to have to learn how to be brave. We’re all going to have to learn.

I know he wants me to be impressed, and I am, but I try to hide it. Showing him I’m impressed feels somehow like a betrayal of Baba, a betrayal of home. VIII.

America, like every other place in the world, is a place where some people sleep and some people other people dream.

Mama asks him about the store and he says everything is good but his smile fades. Until now, I never knew you could see fear through a computer screen.

Americans love labels. They help them know what to expect. Sometimes, though, I think labels stop them from thinking.

Mama wraps her arms around me, pulling me close to her, and she smells like she always has, agarwood oil and rosewater. It is the smell of home, of love, of safety. It is a smell that makes me feel like it is okay for me to say anything.

I wonder if it is exhausting to be a tree. To lose something, year after year, only to trust that it will someday grow back.

Bad news doesn’t happen in real life the way that it does in movies.

Lucky. I am learning how to say it over and over again in English. I am learning how it tastes— sweet with promise and bitter with responsibility.

I’m starting to think, might be the bravest thing a person can do.

I’ve decided it is very American to have the audacity to claim that three things add up to everything.

I have learned Americans love to say you know and then stop talking. They force you to fill in the hard parts, the things they are not brave enough to say.

I left home, I flew across an ocean. My brother is missing, in the middle of a war zone. What is there left to be afraid of?

The words are a wish, a prayer.

I am going to give her, give everyone, a reason to know how to say my name, my full name. I open my mouth and start to sing.

That I cover my head not because I am ashamed forced or hiding. But because I am proud and want to seen as I am.

There is an Arabic proverb that says: She makes you feel like a loaf of freshly baked bread. It is said about the nicest kindest people. The type of people who help you rise.

Americans think it’s normal for there to be violence in places where people like me are from, where people like me and people who look like me live. That they all see people like me and think violence sadness war.

When I was younger and I used to get upset, Issa would say to me: Too much sunshine makes a desert. I wonder, though, if it is possible for there to be too much rain. I am starting to feel like I am drowning, like I don’t know how much longer I can stay afloat.

I have learned that sometimes the simplest things are the hardest things to say. That sometimes there is no word for what you feel, no word in any language.

I also hope that by introducing you to Jude, a magnanimous girl with a big heart and even bigger dreams, I will show that you don’t need to be afraid of these children who are fleeing from a war zone. That they want the same things all of us do—love, understanding, safety, a chance at happiness.

We’re in a period of human history where empathy is needed more than ever.