I went to our family home in Maadi the other day to see the tenants. As I waited in the hallway for Jane, I looked carefully around the house. We lived there for about 8 years. I did some very significant renovations in the house before our tenants moved in, but the sense of the house that attracted us many years ago still live in the house. Our tenants are a lovely Scots family with three children who have been with us for some years now. This is right, as it is a children's home. The house itself feels friendly to kids.
As I stood in the hallway looking into my study, the living rooms, the dining room and the kitchen I had the most extraordinary sensation. I felt as though all my skin, inside and out, had been scraped raw. I wondered if I would want to live back here in "civilisation", if I might want to be more in the center of things. But I realised that even standing in the hallway, I was being dragged back into my former life. I was looking at the front door wondering when my late husband would be walking through apologising for being rather late. I believe that it took a relocation to let me realise the importance of a new beginning of sorts. I know that even now, if I were to be living in our old home, I would stop moving forward and simply go back to waiting the arrival of the lost.
copyright 2009 Maryanne Stroud Gabbani
