It was seven in the morning, in the cruelest heat of August. There was no electricity, so we had slept on the rooftops, beneath an open sky.

Everything was still. I was deep in sleep, somewhere untouched by the morning, where nothing was urgent, where nothing was ending.

In my dream, the world was quiet. There was no running. No voices. Nothing to leave behind.

Usually, it was my mother who pulled me gently from sleep— because I was late, because she needed something from the market, because mornings had ordinary reasons.

But that morning, another voice reached me before my mother’s.

“Get up.”

A pause.

“We have to leave the house.”

Leave? Why would anyone
have to leave their home?

I lifted my head.

The dream disappeared.

Around me, people were waking from their places, one by one, slowly, uncertainly—as if everyone had opened their eyes to the same words I had just heard.

I looked at the faces around me.

No one spoke.

Fear had arrived before understanding.

Everyone seemed to be waiting for someone to explain what was happening.

But no one did.

And among those faces, I saw Dalou.

For the last time.

I never said goodbye.

How could I? I did not know that someone could disappear between one morning and the next. I did not know that a face you saw in the morning could become a face you would spend years trying to find again.

We climbed down from the rooftop. We began getting ready to leave the house. And I think, somewhere inside all of us, we wanted to stop time.

To pause that morning.

To remain there just a little longer.

To sit beneath that same sky, inside that same home, and pretend that nothing was asking us to leave.

But we had to go.

Not because we wanted to.

Not because we had somewhere else to go.

But because, that morning, staying was no longer a choice.

We left the house that had given us a life. The walls that had watched us grow. The rooms that knew our voices. The corners that had witnessed ordinary day we never thought we would miss.

We had never called anywhere else home.

We took almost nothing with us. Perhaps there was no time. Perhaps we thought we would be back before long.

Or perhaps we wanted our things to remain where they belonged. Inside the house. Because at least they knew their destination. They knew where they were.

We did not.

We were going somewhere we had never chosen, toward a place we did not know.

Before I got into the car, I turned around. I looked at my home. I tried to hold it with my eyes—every wall, every corner, every familiar piece of it.

I wanted to remember it exactly as it was.

I don't remember closing the door.

I don't remember checking whether it was locked.

I only remember that we left, for the first time, I was leaving my house because I had to.

For the first time, the house was empty. For the first time, I did not look back to make sure the door was closed. Because we had never imagined that leaving home could mean leaving it behind.

We drove away.

And through the car window, I watched my village.

For the first time, I saw it empty.

Not quiet.

Not asleep.

Empty.

The streets that had once carried voices held nothing. The houses stood beneath the morning sun,
silent and open, as if they, too, were waiting for someone to come back.

I kept looking.

I wanted to find someone.

Anyone.

A familiar face.

A child.

A neighbour.

Someone standing at a doorway. Someone waving. Someone who could make me believe this was still the village I knew.

But there was almost no one.

Only one family behind us. They had no car. They were running. I could see them through the window — their bodies moving as fast as they could, their faces carrying a fear that needed no explanation.

I watched them.

I kept watching until the distance swallowed them. And the car kept moving.

That was the last picture my village gave me: an empty road, and a family running along it, trying to reach a safety that was already moving away.

I did not know where they would go. I did not know what would happen to them. I only knew that I was watching them from behind a window, and that I could not stop.

Inside the car, no one spoke.

We sat close together, but silence had filled every space between us.

No one asked where we were going.

No one asked when we would return.

Maybe because there was no answer.

Or maybe because everyone already had an answer they were afraid to say.

Perhaps we were all still waiting to wake up.

Waiting for someone to tell us this was temporary. Waiting for the road to turn us around. Waiting for home to still be there when we come back.

But the car kept moving.

And perhaps the last words anyone heard before everything changed were the same words that woke me that morning: We have to leave the house.

And we did.

We left.

And the years passed.

Twelve years later. I almost arrive, but I never do. It is the same city, unchanged, untouched. The streets still whisper the names I once knew, but one thing is different — silence.

Never before has it been this quiet. What has become of it?

On my way, I wait for someone to greet me. Will my mother come? Will the children run to me? Will someone call my name from a doorway? Who will come?

I walk for hours.

No one arrives.

This is the longest journey of my life.

The city is the same. I recognize it. But it does not recognize me.

I call out— it does not hear.

I cry— it does not answer.

I look for the voices I remember, but the streets give me nothing back.

For the first time, I am a guest where I once belonged. Or perhaps only a passerby.

Everything stops as I walk through the streets.

The houses remain.

The roads remain.

The walls remain.

And yet, something is missing that I cannot name.

I wonder— where will the wheels rest? Where do you stop when the place you once called home
no longer knows how to receive you?

But the wheels do not stop.

I pass through without resting.

For the first time, my city is not a destination. It is only a crossing. And as I leave, I see sorrow in its eyes, as if the city itself is whispering, “I have no choice.”

And I want to answer— “But you know me. You have always known me.”

I want to tell it that I did not choose to become a stranger. That I did not choose to leave. That there was a morning when we were told to leave the house, and we did not know we were carrying our last pieces of home with us.

I leave my heart behind, just as I did before. Only this time, I know exactly what I am leaving.

And perhaps that is the cruelest part—
the first time, I left without knowing what I was losing.

The second time, I return knowing exactly what is gone.

I almost arrive.

But I never do.

Because somewhere between the home I remember and the home I return to, there is a distance that twelve years could never cross.