No matter how hard she tried to appropriate a space in a country which was not hers, she couldn’t feel it “hers”. No matter how hard she let herself think that in a short period that space would be hers, she couldn’t believe it. She couldn’t believe that the task was really hard. It was, indeed. To live in a place you have never been to before or never thought to setlle in before is a hard thing. She tried not to make it as hard for herself as it was, after all it was a matter of time.
The more one spends time in a space which has no strings attached to, the more one starts to feel “home” … or almost “home”. Could it be true? Was this possible after a long period of time? Could she finally feel herself home as for now her only home was her mother country she had left six weeks ago. She felt nostalgic from time to time. She didn’t forget how miserable she was in her home country after all the things she had been through, she had never forgotten about it and would never forget about it.
Tunisia. My dear Tunisia.
I miss you so fucking much, but I am sorry to have left you. But, wait ! Should I even feel sorry to have left the place where I grew up and became a young and an accomplished woman.
There is no reason to feel sorry, you will always be my deary country, but I had to leave and go somewhere else.
It is thought that after one leaves one’s country, one would feel free. This thought is true.
She wasn’t free in her country…not totally free and now that she flew to the land of liberty, she had felt herself free as never before.
Free like the wind. She could finally open up her wings and fly high into the sky. She wanted to see that ray of hope. She needed it so much and back there, at her homeland, her ray of hope vanished.
Her fellows lost hope and were thriving to find out their own. Most of them couldn’t and didn’t find it … a minority, on the other hand, succeeded to find it.
Still there was no taste of freedom. She has always felt blocked; she has always searched for a way out, but didn’t find any … Until one day, everything changed.
Every time she went outside and started wandering through the streets, she kept asking herself about the importance of the places she went to, about how to feel wanderlust and how to enjoy the experience of “starting” a new process, that of appropriating a space. Her space.
Everyone needs to feel belonging to a specific space. A chosen space. Everyone needs to map a territory, even a small territory, as his or her own in order to feel belonging to place called “home”.
How much time would it take to reach that stage ? How much time would it take to feel comfortable in a country that is not yours? How much time would it take to be in a space that you would call “mine”? How hard was it ? How hard was it to go through this process of appropriation ?
We live in a world where the body needs a space to exist without that space, one cannot construct one’s identity.
Space is all about belonging to a culture, a community, a language and a country. Space is within us. Space is within her. Space is a battle and for her to appropriate her space, all she has to do is to fight. Fight until one day, she succeeds in appropriating her “space”.
Neyra Behi
A Foreigner's Journal 