Exile in the Shape of a Woman

Yemenat

Adnan Al-Dosari | Iraqi Writer and Novelist

I did not know, when I fell in love with her, that some women do not enter the heart as a love story. They enter it the way a homeland enters the memory of an exile. Once they do, it becomes hard to let them go, even after they have left.

There was something about her that reminded me of my homeland in a way that made me uneasy. Not in her features or her accent, but in the feeling that quietly came over me whenever I was near her: a kind of comfort mixed with fear, a sense of belonging that was always threatened by loss. It was as if every time I sought shelter in her, I was reminded that the things we love most are often the things that can hurt us the most.

Whenever I sat beside her, an entire city would come alive inside me: the door of our old house, the smell of bread in the morning, the tree in our courtyard, the voices of our neighbours, and the laughter of friends scattered by exile.

I would look at her and wonder:

How can one woman bring all of this back to me?

Only later did I understand that a homeland is not simply a piece of land where we are born. It is the place where we do not have to explain our sorrow.

And she understood my sorrow before I ever spoke.

One evening, she asked me:

“If you had to choose between me and your homeland, who would you choose?”

I smiled and said:

“That’s not a fair question.”

“Why?”

I looked at her for a long moment before saying:

“Because you have come to resemble it. I worry about you as I