What The Expat Story Means to Me

I've been an expat for almost two decades now. And since I'm forty-two, that's almost half my life that I've lived outside Pakistan. And I have to tell you, I never had the 'ambition' of leaving Pakistan, as some do. Better pastures and all that. Never had that. Never wanted to leave the comfort of my most favorite city in the world, Karachi, which I didn't realize was my favorite until I actually left it. For good.

Every time I return to Karachi, every time I breathe the coastal air, I feel I'm home. But I keep missing things. My bed. My things. My family. I recall everything that I miss in Dubai. Karachi feels like home, but Dubai has its own place in my heart now, since I've been there for almost 10 years of my expat life.

Perhaps this is one of the biggest dilemmas we immigrants and expats face. We keep dividing our hearts and our minds between cities, homes, countries, people, food choices, and even holidays. How does one decide what is more 'home' than the other?

The truth is, you can't. You can't possibly decide that one place is more home than the other. While I experience permanence in Dubai (and yes it is possible to be living long-term in the Middle East, yawn + eyeroll), I experience nostalgia and roots in Karachi. I'm sure everyone experiences that. There is a heartbreaking homesickness no matter where you go. Too foreign for home, too alien for where you are -- the perpetual immigrant/expat struggle.

I guess that's why I thought a platform like this would be key for so many voices that experience this, and for so many experiences that aren't exactly home but aren't exactly foreign either.

Home can be a complicated feeling when you've spent a long time away from what your childhood haunt was. You never really let go of it. For example, every time I go by Burns Road in Karachi or Urdu Bazaar, strong but distant memories start hitting me. This was where Dad and I once stood, trying to purchase my course books. I remember the longing gaze with which I looked at those pretty diaries that had flowers, and sometimes pretty pens were sold with them. Do kids write diaries nowadays? Or is everything on Instagram?

When I go to Tariq Road, I remember how I had shopped for my wedding, Rickshaw hopping, or how Gulf Shopping Mall had a variety of artificial and real jewelry shops that I had also scoured through. Whether it was my wedding or whether I was trying to design my own clothes (pret wasn't that easy back in the early 2000s, nor as common or affordable), I would rely on Gulf or Ashiaana to buy fabric, run after darzis, and decide between laces for my dupatta. Now, when I visit these places, they seem the same but different. It seems like while I recognize them, they don't recognize me. Perhaps it's because back when I regularly visited Ashiaana or Gulf, I almost had the shopkeepers and the shops memorized. Now, in my once-a-month or six-month trip back home, I struggle to remember where I have to go. Life is a strange thing when you've grown up and are an expat: familiarity becomes a complex, telling thing that those living at home take for granted.

Life threw me another curveball as I navigated two special needs sons. Autism takes a lot away from you. It often shoves you in a corner. So a homebody like me clings to the familiar, loves it like a child loves their comfort blanket. So whenever I visit Pakistan or meet an old friend or stumble upon something that reminds me of a time when life wasn't so challenging, I cling to it like a lifeline. It reminds me that there was a time when I wasn't worried about therapy or my child swallowing a nail. Others may have their own reasons for clinging to the familiar. This is mine.

Being away from home takes courage. It takes discipline. I have no qualms in saying this, but choosing the familiar over the alien is easy. I know, I've chosen it. Life just didn't let me get away with my choice and pushed me in a direction that I am in now. So I'm not judging anyone who stays home. In fact, I might be kinda jealous. But do know that your life is definitely easier because of how close you are to your roots.

And roots matter.

When your kids get sick, you have a support system. When there's a pandemic, you are still around loved ones. You know the streets, the system, the failures, the potential. For everyone who leaves home to build a life abroad, they have to relearn, unlearn, and learn everything. It takes guts, sacrifice, and pain.

You may see a lot of the gloss, and I won't say that the gloss doesn't exist. There's a lot of good, too. The amount of safety I feel in the UAE, I don't think any country in the world offers that. Systems are stronger, roads are clean and the air is breathable. No one's denying any of the benefits we reap when we live in countries that offer us more possibilities. Isn't that why we continue living here, there, everywhere?

But it all comes with a cost of leaving home, leaving loved ones. Gratitude will always be foremost in my list of emotions when I count the experiences but I will always miss home. A complicated relationship status now.