Home

Home is where I can be myself,

where I don’t need to pretend in order to please.

Home is the job I can’t wait to wake up to go to,

Special Assistant to the Director of the ABP.

Home is the friend I feel inner peace around.

Home is wherever I can make a difference.

Home is where my daughter is healthy and happy,

where she played with rabbits by the Euphrates

instead of breathing smoke in Baghdad

Home is a warm slice of my mom’s cake with a glass of cold milk.

She experimented with the recipe over the years

in an attempt to make it healthy, yet addictive;

a recipe I still fail to bake the way she does.

Home is the smell of the cloud that rises

from my dad’s Cohiba cigar,

and Erinmore Flake tobacco

when he smokes his pipe.

Home is in his eyes,

in his voice, in his presence.

Home is bigger than a building,

A country, a continent

Home is the world.