The Blockade: Please don't send me back home

I am writing this as I prepare to leave Qatar heading to grad school in the U.S. With many people asking me what do I plan to do after that (Are you going back to Egypt? Will you come back to work in Qatar? Or oh, you are probably staying back in the U.S to get a green card!) I simply answer that I don't know yet, I barely have a plan for the next couple of years of my life, and will figure things out along the way (if I stay alive).

Leaving the place where I lived in for the past 12 years of my life turned out harder, and more emotionally draining than I thought. Qatar is where I went to school, made friends, got my first job, and recently started attending weddings. It is where my base is. I always called it second home, but leaving made me rethink that. Is not it my only home? Or is it even home at all?

The last time I have been to Egypt was more than a year and a half ago, and on that last trip I decided that I don't want to ever go back (unless my passport needs renewal). I felt a void, that I don't belong to Egypt anymore. Those people around me in the street are different from me, they think differently, I can't relate to them. Simply, I felt I don't belong there anymore. I called Egypt home almost my entire life, until my grandfather passed away. I realised that to me he was home and not Egypt as a whole, and when he was gone I didn't see a reason to go back.

About two years ago I was in university, noticed some of the VIPs from our uni marching behind me going to the conference room. I thought it is a random meeting, and I then I was told it is an emergency meeting where they come up with a list of names of students that might be affected given the new political situation, and to prepare a plan on what to do to help them. What? What political situation? Five minutes later everyone was talking about the blockade. I freaked out, and the first thing that I though of was 'Please, please, don't send me back home'.

Since the blockade happened and I am confused. I become more aware of the division in me every time I am abroad and someone asks me 'So where are you from?' Can I be from two places at the same time? Can I claim that my heart belongs to a country which I don't hold its passport? If I say that I love Qatar, that doesn't mean I am not loyal to my country (I still cheer for Egypt in football matches!).

The sad part that at times in Qatar I feel inferior. I am a resident, not a citizen. I get pointed at as 'اجنبية :a foreigner'. I don't wear an Abaya (nor a hijab). I am easily identified as 'مصرية: Egyptian' which sometimes equate to 'enemy'.

At the end, Qatar is the country that provided me with education (and paid for it), who sponsored me to go to places like Silicon Valley. Without the chances that I got while living here, I wouldn't have been the same person that I am today (and the thought of how my life would have been if my family hadn't left Egypt scares me).