If I Could Pack Home

So, let me tell you if I can pack up home in a bag I would take my dad’s keys because they always indicate his presence, my mom’s glasses and perfume, and my blue fuzzy blanket.

If I could pack up home, I would take the smell of the street leading to the sea in Alexandria, and I would take my grandma’s magazine collection.

I would take those blue cheap shoes that I wore when I was a baby, yet my grandma kept them hung on her bedroom’s wall and treated them like the most precious antique she owns. I would take my grandpa’s portrait and his old worn-out pipe, I would put it next to my dad’s "ايش فهمك انت" after a tedious discussion over something trivial.

I would take all those pieces of white paint that fell of my bedroom’s walls and piece them together in my new room to give it a little taste of home as if introducing those walls to each other, as if they could befriend each other. As if those pieces will tell my current bedroom’s walls my stories from back home, and they would forgive me for all the nights I cried out of home sickness and made them feel insufficient.

I would pack up the sound of silence not the one of emptiness, no, that silence I heard back at home after my relative’s children evacuate my living room and the awkward one after my oldest cousin cracked a dirty joke. I would pack my mom’s “why are you up?” when I sneak out of my room to watch the sunrise while they are all sound asleep.

I would take Friday’s late night’s outings and أذاعة القرءان الكريم من القاهرة on early Friday mornings and the 90’s music that my dad played during lunch.

I would take all those resturants I belated giving a try.

I would take all those crowded streets I avoided crossing for years and I would hang them in that new house’s corridors.

Lastly, I will unpack the bag and place everything right where it is meant to be, including me.