Building homes
This piece was originally written in 2020, for the yearbook in the village where I grew up. It’s about moving home, and building new ones.
How many ways can you build a home? In my case, four, at present. There is my calm, mid-century second-floor flat in Beirut, Lebanon, which I share with my dear friend Leila and our dogs Freddie and Bunduq (‘hazelnut’ in Arabic). That home was badly damaged in the enormous chemical explosion that ripped through the Lebanese capital last summer. The blast tore out the elegant old window frames, and left the brown wooden door in large splinters. But, unlike many others, we were lucky. We had enough of our home left to be able to rebuild it, rather than abandon it entirely. Leila has bought a bougainvillea for the small porch area and a lime tree that stands in a big black pot.
I have two more homes in Iraq, both of them new last year. As so many people were losing their jobs during the pandemic, I was lucky enough to be hired as senior correspondent for Iraq Oil Report, a well-reputed news outlet on energy, politics and security. I had been reporting freelance in Iraq on-and-off since soon after leaving the UK over four years ago. The chance to take up a more permanent position in Iraq, while keeping a pied-à-terre in Beirut, has been an immense and wonderful new challenge. So I now also have a relatively luxurious apartment in Erbil, capital of the…