Anonymous Homecoming: A Journey Home to Myself: An Excerpt

Homecoming: A Journey Home to Myself: An Excerpt

Anonymous

Content Warning: Emotional Abuse

FINLAND 2012

Over the summer before 8th grade, we moved from our shoebox of an apartment into a decently sized three-bedroom apartment in Haukilahti, a well-situated neighbourhood mainly populated by elderly Finnish people. When we moved, the yelling subsided and was replaced by a deafening silence. You might think that silence is better than yelling, but I was surprised to find out that was not the case. Yelling meant that something was worth arguing over—that someone was worth engaging with. But now, Hooyo and Aabo had graduated from simply disliking each other into full-blown indifference.

They eventually stopped talking altogether. When Hooyo was in the living room, Aabo would go into the kitchen. When Hooyo was in the kitchen, Aabo would go into his room. Years of frustration, disappointment, and resentment surrounded them like a forcefield keeping them at a 5m distance from each other at all times. The air in our last apartment was always crackling with electricity so that if you breathed too hard you might spark a flame. The air in this apartment was heavy, dimming my senses and lulling me into a never-ending numbness. Nothing other than silence felt appropriate. We were all dragged into grieving the collapse of their twenty year long marriage.

Being in a constant state of indifference must have been exhausting, so every once in a while, Hooyo and Aabo would drag themselves out of mourning and insert themselves into my life.

“Waryaa! Get up! Do you know what time it is?” Aabo would come barging into my room on a Saturday morning. “Don’t you have homework to do? You need to do better than last year; you can’t just stay at that level.” He would tut as he left my room with the door open, something I couldn’t stand.

Other times, I would get called out for the state of my room. My sisters slept in a bunk bed pushed up against the right-side wall of the room and my bed was on the opposite end. A narrow portion of the window overlooking our balcony and the road in front of our apartment separated our spaces and we shared the cupboards.

“Furqan, what is this on the floor?” Aabo would ask me in the mornings pointing at Zuleika’s socks lying on the floor of my bedroom.

“Aabo, it’s not mine,” I would whine back.

“It doesn’t matter Furqan. You are the older sister; you have to be responsible and take care of this room.” Some variation or another of this sentence has been the soundtrack to my life since the second Zamzam was born. At the ripe age of five, my childhood ended, and I earned the cursed title of “older sister.”

Zamzam and Zuleika have never been beaten. They get away with everything. They can scream and shout and throw tantrums and no one will blink an eye. They’ll throw their clothes all around the house, not wipe the toothpaste off of the sink when they’re done brushing their teeth, talk back, and ignore orders and nothing happens.

If I tried to scold them, all they had to do is cry and Aabo would tell me, “Furqan, you are older than them. Please act like an older sister.”

Hooyo would say, “If you yell at my children again, I’ll kick you out of this house.”

FINLAND 2015

I came home from school one unsuspecting Wednesday afternoon to find my mom sitting on the sofa. Something was off. I don’t know if it was the way she was sitting, with her legs curled under her in the middle of our L-shaped sofa, or her dazed eyes staring at nothing in particular. She looked bewildered, something in between grief and awe.

Standing in the hallway, I asked “Hooyo what’s wrong?” I didn’t want to go any closer. I must have thought keeping a physical distance would protect me from what she would say next.

“Your father is moving out today.” My stomach dropped and my lungs suddenly failed me. I needed to sit down so I put my bag down and sat on the edge of the sofa. “I called your uncle, and the divorce is final so he’s leaving today.” She turned her blank eyes to me, and I could see she had been crying.

“Ok,” I sighed, finally letting out the breath that had stopped in my chest earlier. “Ok. It’s going to be ok. This is what we wanted right? This is good,” I tried to convince myself. We had been talking about divorce for the past three years, I had known this day was on the horizon and yet, I was stunned.

I got up and walked to my room, probably sporting the same bewildered expression as Hooyo. Lying on my bed and staring at the ceiling, I was reminded of the past three years in this house with Aabo. I couldn’t understand why I was crying when I had been encouraging Hooyo to

pursue a divorce all this time. I clearly remember the day I told her, “Hooyo why don’t you just get a divorce? It would make all of our lives better.” After everything, how dare I lie here crying? I thought. My stomach was twisting and turning. I was disgusted with myself.

I lay there, heart racing, mind blank, tears streaming down the side of my face until Aabo came home. In my memory, it was dark outside, but my sisters weren’t home. Neither was Bilal.

I came out of my room to find Aabo packing up his books from the bookshelf in the living room. I didn’t know what to do with myself. Going back to my room and letting him pack alone felt unbelievably cruel. Asking if he was okay felt wholly inappropriate. Crying would be shameless of me, so I bit the inside of my cheek and said, “Aabo, do you need help?”

“No, Aabo macaan. It’s okay,” he said without looking up from what he was doing.

“Okay.” I didn’t have it in me to insist but I also knew I wouldn’t be able to sit there and keep Aabo company without bursting into tears. I didn’t want him to be alone, but I also didn’t want to burden him with my tears, so I got up and went into the bathroom next to the living room. In there, I could cry as much as I wanted but he would know I was close by. That I was witnessing him, acknowledging his presence in this house.

I had been in the bathroom for so long that when I came out, Aabo had finished packing. My Aabo didn’t own a lot of things. Some might use the fancy label of minimalist to describe his lifestyle, but he was simply a frugal man with a childhood history of poverty. I had never been separated from my Aabo before; in the midst of my ever-changing life,

he had always remained a constant. I don’t remember if I saw him out or if I hugged him goodbye, but I like to believe that I did. When Aabo left, something in my spirit left with him.

The empty bookshelf in the living room haunted me but not for long. After Aabo moved out, we took weekly trips to IKEA. Every empty space that he left behind was filled and every trace of him, his personality, his energy, was erased and replaced with something red; Hooyo’s favourite colour. We changed everything in our apartment from the carpet, to the curtains, to the organisation of the furniture. We bought new plates, placemats, and utensils to match our new car and new life.

Some part of this was very exciting to me. Given my Aabo’s frugal nature, we never bought anything unnecessary or uselessly expensive but Hooyo’s relationship to money was inherently different. Hooyo’s entire character was built around keeping up appearances. Her pride and dignity would never allow her to prioritise financial stability over looking impeccably wealthy. As a sixteen-year-old, this new luxurious life made me feel special and valuable. I was one of the first scholarship students accepted to enter the International School of Helsinki, the only private school in the greater Helsinki area. Hooyo’s bougie spending habits satiated the financial inferiority I had been feeling since returning to Finland and threatened to overwhelm me at my new school.

None of this was for free. Aabo’s absence wasn’t only physical. As far back as I can remember, he was in charge of cooking, cleaning, and helping my sisters with their homework. My Hooyo had no experience being more than a provider and so this transition was far less graceful

than going to IKEA and upgrading our house. Bilal was out of the question. As the oldest and the only son, no one had ever expected more from him than for him to exist and he delivered exactly that. Zamzam and Zuleika were both too young and would always be too young to have responsibilities so naturally, only I was left. I cooked, cleaned, did the laundry, kept the grocery list, helped my sisters with their homework. I was also something of a full-time assistant for Hooyo. I helped edit her work reports; I listened to her workplace drama; I followed her to my sisters’ parent-teacher conferences, and I gave advice as to what our next steps as a family should be.

After school, we would often meet up at a cafe and she would update me on whatever exciting new drama there was going on in her office. I felt like she and I were friends, and I was immensely proud of my relationship with her. Hooyo was special. This was an indisputable fact. I often thought to myself that if she was God’s gift to her Hooyo, being related to her was God’s gift to me. I idolised her and simply by being in her presence, I could feel my value increase.

The high of our new life was short-lived for me. Around a month and a half after Aabo moved out, things started to change. Hooyo didn’t like it when I didn’t come home before 6pm so she told me that if I was ever late again, she would throw my clothes from the balcony and I could sleep outside. Hooyo hated that I spent so much time texting my friends from home so she would cut the Wi-Fi at 7pm. In fact, she hated my friends, period.

When a friend who had moved away came to visit Finland and I asked if I could meet her, Hooyo yelled at me exasperated.

“What do you need from these friends? All the time: can I see my friends, Iris this, Kat that. What the hell are you doing that you want to always be with them?”

I didn’t know what to say to that. Wasn’t it normal for a teenager to want to hang out with her friends? Especially when all of my friends were girls, didn’t drink or do drugs, and were also highly performing at school. I couldn’t understand why she didn’t like them.

She kept going, “Do you not care about this family? Do you hate to be home so much that every day you must be out there with those white girls?”

“No, it’s not that Hooyo! I—”

“Shut up! You’ve always loved those disgusting whites since you were a child. If you love them so much why don’t you go live with them? I know that’s what you really want.”

I had started crying, but my tears only fuelled the fire. “What the hell are you crying about? Is it that heart-breaking to not see your little friends?” Hooyo hated crying. When I would get in trouble as a child and she would hit me, crying only prolonged the beating.

Wiping my eyes with my head held low I asked, “Why don’t you trust me? I’m not out there doing drugs or anything. We literally spend time inside, eat, and talk. That’s all!”

My throat was tightening again, and I practically whispered the rest, “I work hard at school, I help around the house. My grades are good. You know me Hooyo, I promise I’m not doing anything bad. You didn’t raise me like that.”

I never knew what to expect next with Hooyo. Sometimes she was sympathetic to my feelings and opinions and other times she was determined to assert herself as the ultimate authority. On this day, she was somewhere in-between.

After a few beats of heavy silence, she responded, “I didn’t have any friends. I didn’t need them. I spent all of my time with my Hooyo and that made me happy. I can’t understand why you would need anyone else.” But I’m not you, I thought to myself. My friends were the only reason I was able to survive three years of hell at home. Even though I never talked with them about what was happening, spending time with them laughing about whatever young teens find entertaining made me feel normal. But I could understand where Hooyo was coming from. The concept of friendship was completely outside of her range of comprehension; she had never had one.

“I promise I’m not doing anything bad. I wish you would trust me a bit more.” I pleaded, my voice coming out muffled and small.

I wasn’t able to convince her.

I didn’t know it then, but I had been mistaken that our relationship was a friendship. How could it be when Hooyo didn’t believe in friendship? The harmony of our relationship was dependent on my subservience to Hooyo; she created me, so she owned me. I was to be an extension of her and every time I behaved inappropriately, I was to be corrected and set on the right path.