I was born estranged, then I returned only to become estranged, and returned and became estranged anew. Until this very moment, I have not known a single moment of belonging in my life. No person, no place, no land that I can call a homeland. My memories are scattered, years accumulated in disparate places, placing me as a witness to a false belonging. I search for a root that does not settle, for a land that cannot bear my weight, for features that crumble whenever I approach them. Everything I tried to attach myself to became a reflective mirror, showing me my void instead of my image. Belonging was a shadow game, passing by my side without touching me. I make my homelands from memory shards, from transient abodes, from unknown faces, then I leave them as dreams are left upon morning. I experience belonging like someone placing a hand on a cold wall: a moment of contact, then recoil. So, do I belong to my pain? To my journeys? Or do I belong to non-belonging itself? My destiny was to only be a witness, not a resident.

Exile was not a choice, but a state I was born with, like a birthmark I cannot shed. Even before I understood the meaning of the word "homeland," I felt that I was not from here. The first place, the one supposed to be a warm nest, was like a glass cage from which I saw the world without touching it. I tried to blend in, to touch the earth with my toes like other children, but I always felt I was treading on an unstable surface. The faces around me seemed to speak a language I did not understand, even if they uttered my words.

I used to watch children playing, building their memories on a land they knew, while I felt like a foreign body, my roots suspended in air. I tried to cling to the details of the place: a tree in the garden, a shop on the corner, the smell of baking filling the alleys. But whenever I thought I had become part of the scene, a strange look, or an unfamiliar word, would come to remind me that I am not from here.

The first fracture came when I realized that no land embraced me, that the roots I search for are merely illusions planted by others. The first mask fell, and I began to see the world with foreign eyes. I wondered: if I am not from here, then where am I from? And if I have no place, then why do I exist? Childhood questions, but they carried within their simplicity a wound that never healed.

Over time, I saw many people learn to create small homelands from nothing. Stable ground was no longer the measure, but rather the transient moments that give a feeling of warmth, as if telling them: "You exist."

Cafés were the refuge. Places sometimes noisy, sometimes quiet, but they leave an impression resembling a temporary home. One sits in a dim corner, watches those entering and leaving, contemplates the faces turning into passing scenes. Some of these faces repeat every day, becoming part of the décor of the temporary homeland: the waiter who knows the order without asking, the table that remains empty as if watching you, even the smell of coffee lingering in the air.

In those simple moments, one can feel a strange belonging: not to the land, nor to the city, but to a small detail that suddenly becomes a shelter. An open notebook, a book in your hands, a window overlooking a quiet street... they all turn into invisible walls surrounding you.

But these homelands are fragile, like thin glass that shatters at the slightest touch. Sometimes the café closes its doors suddenly, or the features of the place I'm accustomed to change. The small homeland collapses as if it never was, just as a dream disappears upon waking.

And the journey of search begins anew: for another corner, another table, a new face that grants you a moment of warmth.

But the question remains: is belonging merely a transient feeling, passing like the wind then leaving?

Or do we invent these moments, plant them deliberately in our lives, just to deceive ourselves that we are not alone?

I tried to make love my final homeland. A homeland whose borders are not drawn on earth, but on two bodies drawing close, on two eyes searching for a mirror to see themselves in.

But, what homeland can be built on a feeling we don't even know what it is?

Love is not a ready definition, but an open question. We approach it only to discover that we do not possess it, but that it possesses us. We seek safety in it only to collide with ourselves, we search for the Other in it only to find the reflection of our estrangement.

Did I ever love a person, or did I love the idea that someone might accept me despite my fragility?

And did the Other love you, or did they love the image you crafted for them so they wouldn't see you naked of belonging?

Love is a dual test: a test of the self as it faces another self, and a test of truth as it is revealed behind the masks. Closeness is a space where fear meets desire, need meets anxiety, hope meets loss.

And perhaps that's why it collapses quickly. Because love is not a promise of eternity, but a rare moment where we discover that we were trying to escape from ourselves through another person.

So is love belonging or estrangement?

Is it a meeting with the Other or a confrontation with a mirror we refuse to look into?

Or is it just a new way to feel that we are strangers, even in the arms of those we love?

After all attempts, nothing remains in the end but confronting the self.

The solitude we long fled from turns into a mirror, and the mirror does not flatter.

Many think that inside exists a pure, constant "I," an unchanging essence.

But the truth is, the inside is not an essence, but a stage.

A stage upon which multiple roles are performed: the obedient son, the loyal friend, the dreaming lover, the contemplative stranger.

At first, this multiplicity seems like deception. As if you wear masks to hide your truth.

But with time, you discover that the masks are not a cover, they are you:

There is no "I" behind the mask, rather the masks are the face itself.

Belonging to the self does not mean searching for a pure image to hide behind, but rather the ability to embrace this multiplicity, to accept the chaos instead of denying it.
To realize that you are not one, but many. Not whole, but fragmented.

Strength is not in uncovering "who you are," but in enduring all that you are.
True belonging is not stability, but comfort with instability.

In the end, perhaps true belonging is the war itself, not the peace.

It is not a matter of acceptance or surrender, but a daily battle between my desire to belong and my insistence on freedom. Every day I wake up carrying this contradiction: I yearn to have a place I call homeland, and at the same moment I fear this homeland becoming a cage.

Belonging is not a land, nor a face, nor an idea, but rather a battlefield between what I want and what I fear, between my need to belong and my fear of it. Sometimes I think I have accepted my estrangement, other times I find myself searching for anything to cling to.

Homeland is not a map drawn on paper, but a wound that does not heal in the soul. A wound that makes me wonder: Am I free because I do not belong, or am I just fleeing from belonging? Is my estrangement strength or weakness? Choice or fate?

Those who cling to belonging may be prisoners, but those who reject it may be fugitives. And I am between the two: I fight the desire to belong and I fight the fear of it. I want to belong but I fear losing myself. I want to be free but I fear loneliness.

Estrangement is no longer an enemy nor an ally, but has become a battlefield. A battle between a part of me that wants to build homelands from air, and another part that wants to destroy everything I build. Between a child searching for an embrace, and a man who refuses any embrace.

True belonging is not acceptance of nothingness, but rejection of both existence and nothingness. It is to stand on the edge, neither here nor there. To feel that you are part of everything and connected to nothing. To love people but maintain a distance. To live in places but not possess them.

Perhaps this is not freedom, but another kind of slavery. Slavery to the internal struggle, to the endless war. So who wins in the end: he who accepts his belonging, or he who accepts his estrangement? Or he who remains fighting between the two?

The end is not certainty but a question suspended in the air:
Can you be free while belonging? And can you belong while free?

Perhaps the answer is not in belonging or freedom, but in the ability to carry the contradiction.

To carry your estrangement and your belonging at the same time.
To be here and there.


To be yourself and another in one.

This is neither freedom nor slavery, but life as it is: beautiful chaos, that does not accept classification.

In a moment of my usual curiosity, I asked my friends the question that has haunted me for years:

"How does it feel to belong to a place or to a person, from your point of view."

I did not expect the answers to be a mirror reflecting my fractures even more clearly. Because I know my mind works in a mysterious way, but it always searches for answers in the minds of others.

The answers were as follows:

My first friend said:
"Regarding place - even though I've lived in the same house all my life, I can call other places home. I feel I belong to them because of how I feel in them. Like a friend's lip [likely typo, perhaps 'place' or 'house' intended], a beautiful garden, a theater, and sometimes cafés and bars, even museums. I feel I belong to these places because I feel welcomed in them, free to be myself and relax. The places I belong to are usually filled with my loved ones who make me feel at home."

"As for belonging to a person - first, I need to be aligned with them on core values and a certain worldview... I like to have shared interests, but it's also wonderful to learn new things from each other. Finally, I feel I belong to a person when I trust them, when I know they will love me in my good and bad moments. This trust usually comes with time."

The second friend:
"Place... I don't know if it's necessarily a specific place, it's more of a feeling. You know you're fine, that the surroundings suit you, that you don't need anything else. You just feel you're in your place, where you should be. And maybe it's not the place that's important, but just leaving the place that makes you suffocate ["أمريكا" likely typo for "تخنقك" (suffocate you)] to breathe somewhere else."

"Belonging to a person... I never thought about this question. For me it's a choice without being a choice: it falls upon you suddenly, you don't choose to feel it but you can decide whether you will accept what it represents. You can't be more vulnerable than in this state. It's to give a part of yourself that you hide or even don't always understand, and know that there is someone who will understand it. But yes, there's nothing more dangerous, but at the same time if it's respected, you finally feel understood, as if your entire being is understood."

The third friend said frankly:
"I no longer believe in the terms 'belonging to a person or a person belonging to me'. But when I did believe in it, I thought about giving them blind trust and half your heart, but in return you get half their heart too. Looking at the person is like looking at yourself in the mirror. And the lasting internal feeling that there is someone who depends on you, and that you would rather die than disappoint them. The feeling of placing your soul in someone's hands with your last breath, and in fact even your breaths belong either to this person or to no one, not even to yourself".


The fourth friend wrote:

"It makes you feel that you have a purpose, a reason to keep trying, that you matter, that you count, that there is someone you can positively influence and vice versa. But the fear of negative influence is also present. They can make you feel on top of the world, and other times make you feel at the bottom. You have the responsibility to take care of yourself and them. In the long run, you are no longer alone, no longer one person, now you are two. Every step, every decision, every thought - you think of them before yourself. You no longer think only of yourself. And in most cases, your partner is the same way. But sometimes you love someone who isn't like that, and that pain is hurtful in a way that you give them your mind and heart without getting the same level in return. One way or another, it's acceptance, difficult, good but painful, and sometimes you wonder if it's worth all this. But it depends on the other person and what they offer in return. It's a game of luck"

All these answers made me realize that belonging is not a single state, but rather a multi-faceted entity. Each of us has our own definition, and our internal map of what it means to belong.

But I still see belonging as an internal freedom. A war between:

The desire to be part of something bigger and the fear of losing yourself in that thing

Between:

The need for a warm embrace and the desire for free space

Between:

The child who searches for a hand to hold and the man who refuses any hand extended to him

I still see belonging as a battlefield, but now I see that this battle is not weakness, but strength. Because it means you are still trying, still searching, still alive.

The end is not surrender nor victory, but the acceptance that the war continues. And true strength is in the ability to live with this war without letting it destroy you.

Perhaps true belonging is belonging to uncertainty itself. To accept that you may never find an answer, and to keep questioning nonetheless.


Thus I end, as I began: with the most painful and beautiful questions. Because the question itself is the homeland, and the search itself is belonging.

As for me...
I am still that child searching for an embrace,
The man who fears any embrace,
And the stranger who makes his homelands from unanswered questions.

And this might be the most beautiful form of belonging,
Or the harshest form of estrangement.
Or both at once.

Belonging is not for me, nor will it ever be.

This is not a statement of surrender, but a declaration of liberation from an illusion I have chased all my life. For how can you belong to something when you know it does not belong to you? How can you search for roots in soil that is nothing but shifting sand?

Perhaps belonging is a grand illusion, a myth humans invented to reassure themselves of their existence. We create homelands just as we create grand narratives for the same reason: because we fear the void, we fear being mere coincidences in a universe that is indifferent to us. But what if non-belonging is the only truth? What if we are all strangers in this world, but only a few of us have the courage to admit it?

I see people around me clinging to their identities like someone clutching at a straw in a raging sea: I am Egyptian, Syrian, Saudi, American... They raise their flags, sing their anthems, and protect their borders as if they were absolute truths. But I ask: Are these identities not merely stories we tell ourselves? Are borders not just lines drawn on paper, not on land?

I tried once to belong to an idea, a principle, a cause. I thought intellectual belonging could be a refuge from the alienation of place. But I discovered that ideas also make cages. I saw how belief turns into dogma, how belonging transforms into an ideology that kills the different Other. Is belonging to an idea just replacing a spatial cage with an intellectual one?

Even language, which I thought was my last refuge, betrayed me. I discovered I do not belong to any one language. I write in Arabic, dream in English, and speak a third language with my self. In each language, I become a different person, as if I am acting a role in a never-ending play. Language is not an identity; it is just another mask we wear to hide our fundamental estrangement.

I have met many people who claim belonging. They recite their family histories, take pride in their roots, speak of the "land of their ancestors" as if they were the ones who planted its trees. Sometimes I envy their certainty, but deep down I doubt their sincerity. I wonder: Do they truly belong, or are they just good actors in the play of identity?

Philosophy told me: "You are a being-in-the-world" (Heidegger). But it did not tell me how to be in the world without belonging to it. The existentialists spoke of alienation, but presented it as a problem to be solved. I, however, see alienation not as a problem, but as the original state. We are not alienated because we have lost belonging; we are alienated because belonging itself is an illusion.

In modern physics, they say particles do not have a definite location until you observe them. I feel like these particles: I have no fixed identity until someone looks at me. Then I return to a state of ambiguous positioning. My belonging is conditional on the gaze of the Other, and it is a fragile and transient belonging.

Even art did not offer me refuge. I tried to belong to a painting, a piece of music, a novel. But I discovered that art does not provide homelands; it provides mirrors. Every work of art reflects a part of my estrangement and reminds me that aesthetic belonging is also temporary and fleeting.

Time itself has become strange to me. My memory is not a continuous sequence, but fragments of disconnected moments. I belong to no past, no present, no future. I live in a "now" that disintegrates the moment I try to grasp it. How do you belong to a time when you know every moment dies as soon as it is born?

Human relationships also did not provide the answer. Every person I met was an isolated island, and I was merely a passing visitor. I tried to build bridges, but discovered that bridges do not connect two shores; they remain suspended midway. Love, friendship, kinship—all are desperate attempts to create belonging from nothing.

Perhaps the problem is not the absence of belonging, but the desire for it. Why do we insist on belonging? Why don't we accept ourselves as we are: transient beings with no roots, no homelands, no fixed identities? Why do we fear the freedom that non-belonging grants us?

Belonging is not for me, because it simply is not for anyone. We all live in the illusion of belonging because it gives us a false sense of security. But the truth is we never belonged, and we never will. We are strangers from birth, and we will remain strangers until death.

So, I do not reject belonging because it is not for me, but because it is not real. Homelands are illusions, identities are roles, relationships are mirrors. Nothing grants true belonging except accepting the truth that we do not belong to anything.

In the end, perhaps "belonging to non-belonging" is the last illusion I must relinquish. I do not even belong to non-belonging. I simply exist, with no need to belong to my existence.

This is not a tragedy; it is an absolute freedom: the freedom to be nothing and to belong to nothing. The freedom to be a stranger in a world that does not care for you, and to keep smiling nonetheless.

Belonging is not for me, nor will it ever be. And finally, this very thought has become my only homeland.

The tapestry of human connection is woven from the earliest threads of childhood. For most, it becomes the very embodiment of identity—a seemingly pre-written script of family, culture, and shared history (with the occasional, beautiful mutation, of course).

But belonging… belonging is a truly immense word.

From another perspective, or as an example, one must ask: Can I belong to a person?

This is a question of significant weight, for it is directly and irrevocably tied to that most potent of human experiences: Love. Or, as I have come to name it: my curse.

To belong to a person suggests a final surrender of that existential homelessness. It promises a portable homeland, crafted not from maps or flags, but from the geography of another soul. It is the dream of finding a shelter that moves with you, whose walls are built on whispered secrets and whose foundation is a mutual, unspoken understanding. In the eyes of the beloved, one hopes to finally see a reflection that feels like home—not a distorted echo or a cold, vacant stare.

But herein lies the exquisite trap, the core of the curse.

For if my own identity is a performance, a collection of masks with no solid actor beneath, then what do I offer in this exchange? Do I offer the beloved a character I have crafted specifically for them? A role designed to be lovable, to be worthy of belonging? And in turn, do I not fall in love with the version of myself that I see reflected in their eyes? It becomes a perilous dance of mutual fabrication. We love not the other, but the feeling of being less alien when we are with them. We belong not to them, but to the temporary respite they provide from the deafening silence of our own solitude.

Love, then, becomes the ultimate test of the philosophy of non-belonging. It is the siren's call that threatens to shipwreck you on the shores of an illusion you thought you had transcended. You feel the ancient, primal pull to merge, to dissolve into another, to let their identity become your anchor. You whisper to yourself, "Perhaps here. In this person. I will finally be found."

But the curse is the inevitable awakening. The moment you realize that the beloved is also a universe entire, separate and ultimately unknowable. Their "homeland" is not yours to inhabit; you are, at best, a cherished guest. Your solitude is not annihilated; it is merely shared for a time. The fear returns: if I truly belong to this person, what becomes of my hard-won freedom? Does this belonging require the annihilation of my Self, however fragmented that Self may be?

And so, the question tortures: Is love the highest form of belonging, or is it the most sophisticated form of escape? Is it the final answer to alienation, or merely its most poignant and painful expression?

We try to build a country for two. We draft a constitution with our promises and draw borders with our embraces. But the state we found is fragile, built on the ever-shifting sands of emotion, perception, and time. It can be overthrown by a single glance, a misunderstood silence, a change in the wind.

Perhaps to love, for someone like me, is to belong to the question itself. It is to embrace the curse not as a damnation, but as a fate. It is to understand that the yearning will never be fully quenched, the homelessness never fully cured. The beloved becomes not a destination, but a fellow traveler who makes the journey of ambiguity more beautiful, more bearable.

They do not end your exile. They simply make it feel less lonely. And in the end, that may be the only form of belonging this world allows: not a possession, but a shared sigh in the dark. A recognition that we are all cursed with the need for a home, and blessed with the inability to ever truly find one—except, perhaps, in the fleeting, sacred space between two strangers who have agreed to pretend, for a little while, that they are not.

And so, after all this dissection of the self and existence, after this entire journey through homelands of illusion and homelands of air, I find myself back at the starting point. At the original wound. All roads lead to the same truth I spent my whole life fleeing from.

How am I to know? For in the end, I could not have become anything else. I was born estranged, then I returned only to become estranged, and returned and became estranged anew. This was not a fate I chose, but the fundamental truth of my existence, the only note my being knows how to play. Every attempt to belong was merely a temporary return to a foolish illusion, where I thought I could change the original melody of my music.

For acceptance is not a victory, and refusal is not a defeat. It is the surrender to the only truth I trust: that I am not from here. And perhaps "here" itself is nothing but an idea.

My only homeland is this very estrangement. It is my cradle and my shroud. It is the question and the answer. How am I to know? Because every step confirmed it. Because every return proved that departure is my permanent state.

I was born estranged, then I returned only to become estranged, and returned and became estranged anew.
This is not my story; it is my anatomy. It is the only thing I know to be true.