I grew up in the desert of Egypt’s west sahara. It is a unique experience growing up in an Oasis. Oases defy nature, they defy all the odds of existence. One would think such defiance comes with great force and protest, but in fact my oasis was just calm. Nothing really happened in El-Dakhla of Egypt. People were peaceful and quiet, the weather was stable and predictable. We had no tornadoes, no hurricanes, no volcanic eruptions, no flash flood, just nothing. I grew up in isolation and my family visits to the capital, Cairo, always made me feel there is something bigger, something more dynamic, something more living. Defying all the odds of growing up in a middle class family that lives 8000 km away from the capital, I joined the elitist university of that capital. My diaspora began.
Unlike El-dakhla, Cairo was not peaceful at all. People are rude and the pace of life is just too fast to have any peace of mind. The sound of car sirens fills the polluted air with unbearable sense of pressure. I hated Cairo.
2 million years ago early humans are believed to have started the first true migration events. There were no pressuring forces behind the migration of homo erectus from Africa. Africa had everything in abundance: rivers, game, and an extremely stable nature. The migration of humans never stopped ever since. The Human diaspora began.
Maybe humans are nomads by nature. Maybe humans always want to explore beyond their oasis and in this exploration a yearning is born. A yearning that is never fulfilled.
On the Search for Home 