Growing up, I formulated different definitions of home.
I used to paint a country according to my mood and whims, what I like and what I hate. A country that looks a lot like me. It matches my details.
I like the terrain and geography of many parts of the earth, so I collect them and put them in the form of the imagined homeland.
I imagine buildings and sidewalks, cafes and nightclubs, universities and libraries, I imagine human societies that think like me. You rejoice like me, get angry when I get angry, and share my desires. I put them all in the mold.
As a child they gave him the experience of choosing his parents.
“And if you do not find yourself in your original land, then the entire land is your homeland.” This is a phrase that I formulated in my adolescence and adopted as a constitution.
Wherever I find my dreams, I find my homeland.
When I was growing up, opportunity came to me, opportunities. As a father, unique and rare in his dealings as an oriental with his daughter, granted me absolute freedom with which I would be the first and only responsible for all my actions.
Then she stood hesitant. Because freedom is not what some understand, chaos is far from freedom, and because I became free and responsible, I reconsidered my fantasies.
I hesitated. So how do I choose alienation? How does one choose his alienation of his own free will?
I am not an Arab citizen whose land was stolen from her, so she was forced to roam the earth in search of an alternative homeland.
I am not lost without roots.
And suppose I find the imaginary exile.
Is it enough for you to have an isolated island that has no one but you, to design it, put your laws in it, and practice whatever actions you want in it?
For any cause I will fight and fight there. How do I live strange? I can't stand being weird.
In those years when extremism prevailed, I wanted a land to walk on freely.
But will your dreams have meaning when they come true far from your land?
Does beauty have meaning when it comes incomplete?
And in foreign countries. Who will I dance with for the joy of my freedom? Alienation will be the greatest limitation on freedom.
As for what happened, it is exactly the opposite.
Before I fell in love with this profession, I chose writing and media for a clear purpose. My goal was the issues of Saudi women.
I chose a field attached to my homeland, and I chose a media job in which I tell about the beauty of my homeland and the concerns of my homeland.
It is true that I hate groupthink and adore individualism and independence. But I also adore my society with all its praises, good deeds, ugliness, and flaws.
Where can I find a replacement for it? Or an alternative to this land.. I want a matching formula.
I passed dozens of beautiful places and countless areas of picturesque nature, but none of them rose to the rank of home.
With time and years, I have not been able to separate from my land. With every article and every TV episode. Which country do I travel to. Any conference and any angle I stand at, I talk about my country, any meetings in which I am a party, I direct them to focus in the end on my country.
Until the day came, in which many wishes came true.
What I feel now I describe to my daughter: The happiest days are when you live in the glory of your homeland and you have freedom. Grow here and enjoy the elements of the renaissance and participate in it as well.
What is home:
Is it the place that accommodates your aspirations and dreams? And he understands your difference and uniqueness?
Or is it the land that brings you together with its people in different mosques and ties?
Is it the land of your ancestors? Some require a link to language, sect or creed. But the homeland for me is a spiritual connection that transcends sect and language, transcends all the conditions that philosophers and political scientists draw in your relationship with your country.
So why do its cities inhabit me?
The spectrum of its map mixes with any idea that flashes in my head, any new country, any road I take for the first time. It mixes with my retina, so I can't see any image or idea except through the spectrum.
I always imagine my country has two eyes.
From its sands, oil and seas, two wide Bedouin springs are formed, extending across the surface of the earth's crust. Their inner corner starts from the middle of the desert and expands to cover the rest of the spaces, and the tip of each eyelash ends at the water, with the end of the political and geographical borders of Saudi Arabia.
Those eyes.. watch me wherever I go. Their charred blackness moves left and right according to my position on the ground.
This, in short, is the code of the relationship with my homeland. Two eyes. I derive from them strength, existence, pride and elevation.
Once they wrote about me (the iron woman in Saudi Arabia), would I have been described as that strong if I did not belong to this place? And what other land can give me that power?
happy National Day.
Peace for this land on its national day. It has become history within a group of patriotic celebrations and endless projects. And Jabbar's work is in full swing for the competition of civilization.
The National Day passes and peace agreements rain down on the Gulf of Arab Peace.
Peace be upon you, my country. Oh my pride.
Nadine Albdear @nadinealbdear