Coming Home After Spring

by Maheen Ahmed (Pakistan)

I didn't expect to find Qatar

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This is after I left Italy. Seven days after spending spring driving, riding and sleeping my way through through a land both familiar and foreign. It was also seven days after I waved a shy good bye to my father at the airport in Lahore, trying to look like I was in some new mature phase. He wasn't moved in the early hour, before sunrise. I however had completely fooled myself, I needed some faith in myself to be traveling on my own for the first time. Of course now I wasn't in Lahore, far away from the narrow streets and fading gardens of the walled city. I also wasn't in Italy anymore. I wasn't looking out at the still and chill night from the window. I wasn't trying to not get lost in the crowds that invaded all the historical monuments. This wasn't the mouth of the volcano, and took a rock from. I wasn't gliding my findings through the destroyed walls of Pompeii anymore. Not going to see all of Rome in day, maybe three days. I was rushed through Florence and stuffed my face with olive oil bathed food before slowly letting it out. I thought that this trip that I fought for at seventeen would help me grow. That it would remove the shell, and harden these soft, anxious and wanting hands. Where am I now? I'm looking outside the hotel room in Qatar. The sun and light heat feels like home, and all that I have for this land is a few hours. I decided to stay at the hotel and pack for going back to Pakistan. It's a full circle moment, because in the room around sunset I have been able to neatly pack my luggage. It sounds silly and ordinary, but it feels special. When I was packing my bags in my room, it was a mess and looked like an demented animal had secured the bags. I could've asked for help, but I didn't want my innocence to be visible. I begged for this trip, despite being young and naive and I wasn't going to let any mess I made become a reason to not let me go. This was going to be a journey. And then there I was without any stress, fear and shame, unafraid of what I my father say. Unbothered yet engrossed in my new surroundings, consuming all the spring and summer images. I placed every painting, sock, gift, spare shoe, museum ticket, coin, torn scarf, bar of chocolate and carnival mask tightly and securely and stood up. This would be the last time I would look outside a hotel window and down onto the streets. At least until the next guilt trip. The sun had a few hours still it would fall behind the tall buildings of the desert and I had a few hours before I would be home and in my own room. And it was packing the remains of my journey, that I found something that I didn't expect to find. In leaving my home, walking through a foreign land and now waiting in an ancient land , I found the end result to having trusted myself. I found closure...despite the failure and shame. I found the image of beauty. I realized that spring was over and I was in blossom.