Between Ghar and Bayt

between ghar and bayt

ghar or bayt
ta‘aam or khaana
india or saudi arabia when someone asks me where home is

gets stuck somewhere between breath and voice,
because i have learned to belong in two directions at once.

i grew up under a sun that spoke in arabic,
streets humming with words i answered to,
while my name carried the weight of another place -
india,
soft on my mother’s tongue,
alive in stories i didn’t fully live.

home was never one map.
it was sand and monsoon,
dates and chai,
a childhood split between what i saw
and what i was told was mine.

in saudi, i learned how to stay,
how to fit my voice into borrowed sounds,
how to call a place home
even when it called me something else.

in india, i arrive like a memory -
familiar, but slightly out of place,
like i should know the rhythm
but missed a few steps along the way.

so when they ask me where i’m from,
i build my answer carefully -
not a country,
not a single word -

just a quiet truth:
i am made of both,
and still becoming either