A Wayfarer’s Reflection

Every now and then, one of my children asks a surprisingly difficult question.

“Mama, where is home?”

I never know how to answer in a single sentence. Is it Indonesia, where I grew up and where so many of my childhood memories still live? Is it Riyadh, where most of my children were born and where weekends often meant gathering with friends at the istiraha? Or is it Sharjah, where we are slowly building a community that once existed only in my du’ā’?

The older I become, the less I think home is simply a place. Perhaps it is something much deeper.

A Heart Scattered Across Maps

If you were to unfold the map of my memory, it would not look like a straight road or a single, uninterrupted journey. It would look more like a patchwork.

The smell of rain on Indonesian streets. Driving along the edge of Riyadh just before Maghrib, when the whole desert seemed to glow gold beneath the setting sun. The sea breeze at Al Heerah Beach after a morning Qur’an class. Coffee shared with sisters from countries I had never imagined visiting. Children laughing in languages that have become woven into the fabric of our family.

My memories refuse to stay in one country for long. For years, I thought that meant something was missing.

When your heart is scattered across several places, “home” becomes a complicated word. You begin to feel like a perpetual guest—always grateful, always adapting, always carrying pieces of one place into another.

Time Doesn’t Wait for Us

As I reflected on Surah Al-‘Asr recently, another thought quietly settled into my heart.

“Indeed, mankind is in loss.”
(Surah Al-‘Asr 103:2)

Time never pauses while we find our bearings. It doesn’t wait for us to unpack the last moving box, finally learn the local dialect, or stop missing the people we left behind.

The children continue growing. School years quietly pass. Parents grow older. Friends move away. The places we once knew change without asking our permission.

Sometimes I think the hardest part of living across countries isn’t leaving. It’s realizing that every place continues moving while you’re somewhere else.

Every visit home reminds me that home has quietly changed too. The streets are familiar. I am the one who has changed.

Looking for Something That Doesn’t Move

For a long time, I think I was searching for a place that would finally make me feel settled. A country. A city. A house. Somewhere that would quiet the feeling of always being between worlds.

But Allah, in His mercy, was teaching me something I hadn’t expected.

The believer’s anchor was never meant to be a postcode.

No matter how many times my address changes…

No matter how many passports are stamped…

No matter how many homes we pack into moving boxes…

The direction of my prayer remains the same.

The Qiblah has never moved.

The Allah who heard my whispered du’ā’ during lonely afternoons in Riyadh is the same Allah who heard my childhood prayers in Indonesia. The same Allah who hears me today in Sharjah.

Perhaps that is the only constant I have ever truly needed.

Our spiritual orientation does not require a permanent address.

Home That Travels

Looking back now, I realize Allah quietly gave me pieces of home everywhere He sent us. He gave me roots in Indonesia. He gave me years of raising young children beneath Riyadh’s endless sky. He gave me sisters who became family in Sharjah.

Every Friday potluck. Every cup of Saudi coffee shared after Islamic class. Every conversation that lingered long after the children had finished swimming. Every neighbour who arrived carrying food from a kitchen thousands of miles away. Every child who wandered into another mother’s lap without anyone thinking twice.

The Ummah has a beautiful way of travelling with us.

Perhaps that is one of Allah’s greatest gifts. When one home is left behind, He quietly begins building another.

What I Hope My Children Inherit

Sometimes I look around our dinner table and realize my children are growing up with a different map from the one I inherited.

They know Indonesian lullabies. They speak Arabic more naturally than I ever will. They are growing up beside the sea in Sharjah instead of the streets where I played as a little girl. Their childhood will not look like mine.

At first, that made me sad. Now I wonder if perhaps Allah was never asking me to pass down a place. Perhaps He was asking me to pass down a direction—a heart that turns to Him, love for the Qur’an, love for His Messenger ﷺ, and a home where Allah is remembered.

Countries change. Cities change. Families scatter. Children grow up. Time never stops.

But the One we worship has never changed.

Home

I am slowly learning to stop mourning the fact that my life does not fit neatly into one country.

Perhaps this world was never meant to feel permanent.

We are all travellers—packing and unpacking, leaving and arriving, collecting little signs of Allah’s mercy wherever He writes our story.

Perhaps home is not where every memory was made. Perhaps it is where our hearts remain anchored while everything else changes. And perhaps the truest home was never waiting at the end of an airplane journey.

It has always been waiting at the end of the journey back to Allah.

As the Prophet ﷺ said:

“Be in this world as though you were a stranger or a wayfarer.”
(Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī)

Perhaps that is the answer I have been searching for all along.

A Du’ā’

O Allah, anchor our hearts to You when the world shifts beneath our feet. Make every place You decree for us a place of peace and barakah. Let every journey draw us nearer to You until You gather us in the everlasting home You have prepared for the believers. Āmīn.