We Leave Them, Yet They Never Leave Us, Aurhoress - Reema Hamza (Syria)

We Leave Them, Yet They Never Leave Us
Reema Hamza (Syria)

Is it because their architecture was raised not upon stone, but upon the secret foundations of the heart?

Each house leans upon the weary shoulder of another, as though solitude were an unforgivable sin; each balcony stretches out its hand to its opposite, refusing the tyranny of distance, defying separation with the silent dignity of old companions.

Or is it because they do not erase the names of those who dwelt within them, as inns do, indifferent to memory and loyal only to passing footsteps? Instead, they are inhabited by permanence itself—a presence as sacred and invisible as the divine light resting upon the face of an innocent child.

How impossible it is to uproot them from the sinews of one's heart. They, who once gathered the wandering winds by their forgotten names, have never surrendered a single bead from the rosary of remembrance clasped within their eternal hands.

One may mount the carpet of the wind, pursue the horizons of the unknown, sheathe his wings like a solitary swallow adrift beneath the turquoise vault of heaven, and dare to gaze into the blazing face of suns beyond counting. Yet these houses will never release the siege laid upon the frozen citadel of the soul—not until every certainty is shattered, every fragment scattered, every dream dissolved into air. Even then, they possess the strange and terrible power to awaken what one believed forever reduced to ashes.

Between departure and return, another kingdom rises.

A tumultuous orchestra of olive trees, mighty oaks, wild thyme, basil, roses, and lilacs ascends from the earth like an anthem no exile can silence. The lilac combs its violet hair beneath the breeze and smiles with the melancholy tenderness reserved only for those who have stayed away too long.

Then the demon of longing whispers.

At once, the scenes collapse before your eyes like autumn forests surrendering one tree after another beneath an invisible storm.

How shall you gather together the shattered glass of the heart?

As you comb through forgotten evenings, laughter now fallen silent, conversations broken into scattered phrases, your childhood passes between the pauses—your paper boats drifting upon vanished streams; the vine that once stole into the embrace of your window; the weathered gate whose hinges still remember your touch.

The faces of those you loved rise before you.

Your mother.

The high priest of tenderness, who transformed affection into a sacred liturgy.

Their voices still wander through the festival of life; their anxious eyes remain fixed upon the mystery of departure, as though every farewell were the first rehearsal for eternity.

You are still planted there like the steadfast stake of a desert tent, though every road insists you have long since departed.

Your tears find themselves imprisoned within an impossible dilemma. You cast aside the little toy with which you once murdered time—the very time that a single treacherous tear has now transformed into an endless lifetime.

How exquisitely cruel memory is!

How masterfully it seasons the soul with salt and fire.

How effortlessly it kindles the dry timber of the mind in one sudden blaze.

And how does the past discover the window of your new pillow, entering without permission, enthroning itself where sleep once believed itself secure?

What flight is this?

No—you never truly escaped.

For your home has always dwelt within you.

It never left.

It was you who carried it into exile.