I will never get my Barbie dolls back.
When I first opened my eyes to the world in Aleppo, Syria, I was met with a comionate dad, a loving and intellectual mom, and a bossy older sister. My life was ordinary—running around our second-floor apartment, playing dress-up with my Barbie dolls—until the day terrorists appeared just around the corner of our home.
It was 2012. My brother had just been born, and the opposition had planted themselves across from our apartment building like a storm waiting to break. I didn’t understand the danger, the weight of what was coming—because I didn’t have to. The warmth of my dad’s embrace, the steadiness of my mom’s voice, and the quiet strength of my sister built a shield around me.
From that day on, we never slept in peace. Every hour, every minute was filled with the sounds of explosions and bullets soaring through the air. I’m sure even the birds had to find shelter. We often went months without electricity or heating, burning papers, books, and whatever else my parents could find to keep us warm.
I vaguely recall my mom, sister, and grandma waiting in line for a piece of bread, knowing there was a chance they would come home empty-handed. But still, they braved the cold and stood strong.
After countless back-and-forths and threats from terrorists, my parents made the heartbreaking decision to leave the home they’d built. I wish we had known when leaving it would be the last time we would ever see my childhood home. I wish it had come with a warning. I wish I had known how much grief I would carry for what was taken from my family. But there was no warning—only the leaving.
Our home had been stitched together with my parents’ love, their unwavering resilience, and the quiet weight of their sacrifices. It was filled with the warmth of my mom’s home-cooked meals, the laughter of her students, and the towering presence of my dad’s library—shelves upon shelves of stories that shaped me.
Then there was my room—our room—where my sister, Lousin, and I whispered into the night, where I clung to her hand when I was afraid, where we played with our dolls and got ready for school together. A room that I now barely , and the thought of not ing what we shared makes my stomach turn. Lousin, I’m sorry that was taken from us.
To my mom and dad—I’m sorry for the books you had to leave behind, for the pages you had to burn just to keep their two daughters and newborn son warm when there was no electricity. Just to make us believe, if only for a moment, that everything was okay. I promise, we believed you.
But despite leaving behind my room with my sister, the bookshelf that had been my playground, and the life we built amid the echoes of explosions—even after my dad and grandfather were kidnapped—I never lost hope.
I always knew I’d find my way back home, convinced life couldn’t be so cruel. But oh, how naïve I was.
In a strange and unfamiliar house, which we moved to for safety, my dad received a phone call. Our family home had been destroyed to the point where it was unlivable.
I can’t the date or the time of that call, but I do the suffocating weight of hopelessness pressing down on me, the world slipping through my fingers. I watched my parents see their life’s work crumble. For the first time, I saw my dad cry.
In that instant, the hope I had clung to so desperately vanished like smoke.
In that moment, the truth hit me like a cold wind: I would never know the feeling of being home again.
I was wrong—not about the pain of losing my home, but in believing I would never find a home. The more I grow, the more I realize that while I’ll forever hold that devastating grief of losing our apartment, I now understand what made it so special.
It was my dad, my mom, my sister, and my younger brother. They were my home. I shouldn’t have been so worried about finding one—I had already been carrying it with me all along.
That truth was reaffirmed in many ways when my family immigrated to Canada in 2019.
I’ve come to realize home isn’t a place, a building, or the walls that contain us. It isn’t the furniture we arrange or the childhood toys we leave behind. It’s far less tangible—it’s the moments that make me feel safe. It’s the nights when my partner stays up with me, our conversations stretching until dawn. It’s the books I read, the same ones my dad casually mentions in a conversation. It’s the quiet afternoons spent with my mom and my sister, where words aren’t needed. It’s seeing my little brother grow and shape his personality.
Home is the people around me—the ones who inspire me, who remind me of who I am and who I want to become.
Even though the war scattered my family across different countries, we found our way back to each other, after almost 13 years apart, in the Netherlands this past Christmas—a true Christmas miracle, after once believing we wouldn’t make it out of Aleppo alive.
The moment we stepped off the plane in Amsterdam, I was welcomed with the warm embrace of my grandparents, uncles, and aunts who were waiting for me at the airport—embraces I had missed so dearly.
I was home.
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