One of the things that struck me while reading Reading Lolita in Tehran is the idea of home. No matter how crazy her country was becoming, no matter how good life in America was being to her, Nafisi still desired to go home.
The idea of ‘home’ is a powerful one. When life’s journeys take one out of the country of one’s birth, ‘home’ becomes tied to the idea of ‘country’, and inevitably, ‘nation’.
What really intrigued me, though, is how anybody can muster up so much feeling for their country? When I read about the revolutions in the Middle East, or listen to the students’ lyrics in Les Miserables[1], a shiver runs up my spine for the sheer recklessness of their loyalty to their nation and beliefs; the faith that they are worth laying down their lives for. Enough to die for their country, and for the trajectory they believe their country should take? What is it about these ideals that make people so convinced about them, and how does anybody feel so strongly about their ideals for their country that they are quite literally willing to die for them, even as they acknowledge that their death may ultimately be ineffectual? What is it about the notion of home and country that inspires people to create these ideals in the first place?
Singapore is home, but I don’t quite know why. It’s not just because my family and most of my friends are here, which is the fickle reason we learn in primary school. After spending three months overseas, there was a familiarity in coming back to Singapore. My first night back felt very much like a slow sinking, or an easing into a bath tub; comfortable, but with the uncomfortable feeling that you might drown in it. But it felt good, being able to walk around and know exactly where you were going, being able to mentally map out the roads sprawling out from where I live with absolute certainty about where they would end up for the next few kilometres or so.
Yet the ability to navigate a place speaks more about how long you’ve stayed there and how many times you’ve walked its roads than your feelings about them. Navigation is a mechanical thing. Home is an emotional thing. Maybe that’s the answer, then; maybe ‘home’ is an impossibly inexplicable as ‘love’ is – because for all that we try to talk about it, love is really just a feeling you get, unknowable unless you’ve experienced it yourself.
And maybe it’s the same thing about ‘home’ and ‘love’ that inspires people toward sacrifice.
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[1] Selected lyrics sung by the revolutionary students in Les Miserables:
But now there is a higher call.
Who cares about your lonely soul?
We strive toward a larger goal
Our little lives don’t count at all!
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Let us die facing our foes
Make them bleed while we can
Make them pay through the nose
Make them pay for every man
Let others rise to take our place
Until the earth is free!
home is where the heartlands are 