Entrance to my home in Cairo
“We’ve had to learn how to lose
From everything we’ve been through
Places change and fade away, but one thing that stays true
Home is me and you”
What is home? Where does it reside—within walls and streets, or in fleeting moments of belonging? The song is hushed, almost hesitant, yet deeply anchored in longing. When the voice repeats “home is wherever you are” and, more tenderly, “home is me and you,” it circles around the fragile comfort of being held, of finding in one another—or in a place—a reassurance that the world might still offer shelter. This is not the triumphant anthem of return, nor the romanticized vision of roots reclaimed. Instead, it captures home as something precarious, improvised, and deeply personal.
Cairo, the city I left behind, no longer claims me in the way it once did. Yet fragments remain, resurfacing in sounds, scents, or the shadow of a building. Even remembering passing next to a random vendor selling bananas and oranges.They echo the refrain of the song—especially that intimate line, “home is me and you”— reminding me that while home now resides elsewhere, my former home is never entirely lost. It lingers, even in absence, even in exile.