Feels Like Home

By: Yelena Agadzhanova

My older sister recently returned home from a trip to our native country, Armenia. As she unpacked her suitcase overflowing with gifts, my family progressively grew confused, wondering how she made it through the airport, as well as sentimental. My mother, for instance, couldn’t get over the smell of aromatic Armenian herbs and the taste of freshly baked lavash, an Armenian flatbread. Meanwhile, my older brother stuffed his face with apricots picked from the tree near our childhood home while admiring a set of wood carving knives my sister bought for him, knowing that it was his favorite hobby as a kid. Amidst all the excitement, I felt something I had never felt before. 

There is a frequent trend of my siblings reminiscing upon their eventful childhood at the dinner table. These conversations never fail to make my eyes widen and, oftentimes, want to spit out my food. A prime example of this would be when my brother brought up the fact that he had wiped his butt with a leaf before. Another would be when my sister explained that she has a severe fear of turtles because she witnessed the escape of one my brother brought home in a closed box. 

My siblings both grew up in Shahumyan, a village located in a small town in Armenia. If there’s one thing anyone should know about Armenia, it’s that the communities are tight-knit. Everyone knows each other, and this is how it has been for as long as time could tell. My brother and sister spent almost the entirety of their days outdoors, being bitten by bugs and playing with other kids from their neighborhood. After hours of wandering around, they heard their grandma shouting at them to come inside, take a break, and eat. They impatiently gobbled down some հաց ու պանիր, and back outside they went. When they weren’t outside, they built forts out of chairs and blankets, happily staying in the forts for hours. This was their life. They never had any luxuries or the comforts that American life can offer; something as simple as a showerhead was unheard of. Despite this, they were content. Today, they would do anything to be able to relive those treasured moments.  

Although I moved to Brooklyn at the ripe age of one and did not experience these same core memories, I found myself longing for the past they had. For many immigrants such as myself, immersion into American culture can be a point of no return as we experience a gradual disconnect from our cultural heritage and values. As someone who has unknowingly experienced this detachment for so long, I’ve grown to believe in the importance of remaining in touch with your roots in any way possible. For me, this came from a trip to California, the state with the largest Armenian diaspora in America, this past summer.

As my mother and I took our first steps into Glendale, a city we didn’t know was highly populated with Armenians, the first group of people we saw spoke in our native tongue. While exploring all the popular tourist sites, such as Americana at Brand and the Griffith Observatory,  we saw Armenians left and right. For me, this was a contrasting experience from the, at most, 10 Armenians a year I see living in New York. While my mother felt a sense of warmth and comfort amidst so many people from her native country, I felt the complete opposite. It felt strange to me that others could understand the conversations we were having, and that we could understand theirs in return. I felt inexplicably drawn to these strangers, yet I did not want to embrace this in the slightest. As I reflected upon this foreign feeling, I realized how much I had lost the connection with my culture. Although I had been feeling this loss for a while, this trip was a big turning point, helping me realize the sheer extent of my disconnect. 

The fact that there is a lack of Armenian representation in the media plays a major role in this as well. Whenever I see an Armenian content creator other than, of course, Kim Kardashian, I find myself immediately checking out their account. News outlets hardly mention Armenia, hence why I frequently find myself typing “Armenian News” into search engines or just hearing the stories from my mother, who watches Armenian channels. 

I used to dread visiting Armenia again, mainly because I have no recollection of my experience there as a toddler. However, I can say with confidence now that going back would fulfill the part of me that longs to regain that connection lost since I stepped foot on American soil. While not everyone may have the means to travel to their home countries, actions as simple as learning how to cook cultural dishes or even reading about your country’s history can do wonders. However, the first step is always finding the part of yourself that needs this connection. Now, as I stare at the “Product of Armenia” label on a jar of eggplant caviar in my kitchen, I think to myself how wonderful it would be to step into an Armenian market, where the produce would not even need that label. 

By: Maisha Thakur

These days, scrolling on any social media will bring you face-to-face with people from all over the world—speaking their native languages, displaying their cultures, and providing glimpses into their daily lifestyles. Growing up, this wasn’t the case. I immigrated to the US when I was six months old, so I have lived here for almost my whole life. However, for as long as I can remember, I have felt that “foreign” fits me more than “American.” I say this with no bitterness in my heart, but as a child, I sometimes felt that as immigrants, there is an invisible—at times internal—expectation to relinquish the parts of our native cultures that clash with the stereotypical American one. I say this internally and from personal experience—years ago, I would completely hide my culture and never willingly speak about where I came from, out of fear of seeming “weird” to my white-American friends. To give them credit, I am sure they would have been perfectly respectful and interested in what I had to say. However, younger me believed that if I ignored these vital parts of my identity, I could successfully distract people from the fact that we came from very different places. Back then, my fear of not fitting in cast a dark fog over the true beauty of our differences.

Another thing I greatly underestimated when visiting Bangladesh last summer was the bond I would feel with just about everything and everyone. Sure, I was born in a village there, but I was whisked off on a plane before I celebrated my first birthday. Yet, when I returned to that same village 16 years later, I was wonderstruck by how natural it all felt—how much I finally felt at home. Growing up in Queens, I am lucky to have seen aspects of South Asian culture around me, but in Bangladesh the main difference to Queens was the environment and being surrounded by my family. Never before had I been in this kind of remote village setting, but in less than a week, my mind and body somehow seamlessly adjusted to this completely different lifestyle. Of course, things back home weren’t how they were a decade ago—meaning we now had indoor flushable toilets, ovens, and multi-story houses—but I witnessed the world I thought I knew in a completely different manner. After years of hearing stories from my family about the country I was born in, I was able to fully experience it. Sometimes my father and I went on walks or bumpy rickshaw rides, and he pointed out the school he attended as a boy or the place he flew kites with his brothers. All these mementos increased the love I had for the country as a whole. 

None of this could have been possible without my family, whom I was surrounded by 24/7 while in South Asia. In the United States, this was one aspect of our culture that we did not typically partake in. In South Asia, however, one’s entire extended family tends to live together. For me, this was a wonderful experience. Trust me when I say I have never ever felt like I belonged somewhere more than those moments when my cousins and I sat in a circle on the roof at the crack of dawn, breathing in the unpolluted air and looking over the village and its palm trees as the muezzin yelled out the adhan for fajr prayer. Or those moments when we held meetings that would go on well after midnight, giggling, gossiping, and sucking on ice. Sometimes, my mother would find me absent from these group activities and instead discover me sitting on the balcony, staring down at the dirt paths and the less-privileged people who lived across from us. Other times, I’d walk from our newly made house to the older house my father grew up in. Contrary to what my mother assumed—that I liked the attention of the people who knew I was visiting from America—I made sure to dedicate some time every day to take in and appreciate this setting as well as the people I had neglected for so long. The kinship I felt with them is unexplainable, but I suppose it had something to do with the overwhelming sense of familiarity gained from the minute I arrived at the Hazrat Shahjalal Airport and was surrounded by people who looked so much like me. These were, undoubtedly, “my people.” Even though I am privileged enough to live in New York City, where many ethnic groups are present, it will never come close to how I felt standing on the soil I was born in; where after such a long time of being the minority, all I saw at that moment were people just like me.

      Many immigrant children are aware of that feeling when they are told that the ethnic dishes they bring to school for lunch are “weird” or that their traditional clothes are “strange.” This has been the case for me, as well. Yet today, I look at these aspects of my culture with pride, not just because I have learned to appreciate the beauty of these ancient yet beloved ways of life but because I now associate this culture with the people I love most. Instead of averting my eyes the way I used to when I saw shalwar kameez on store displays, now I wistfully gaze at them, imagining the same pieces on my beautiful cousins’ graceful bodies. Instead of pretending I have nothing to do with a certain dish because it smells so ethnic, l eagerly embrace the food, savoring the elaborate spices and remembering the times my aunts cooked and fed me these same meals. After my trip, the only thing I was embarrassed about was myself and my foolishness in neglecting such a beautiful part of who I was. 

Maybe it was in the gummy smile of my grandmother, the authentic meals of my aunts, my uncles’ melodious voices, or just standing in the very same places my parents and their siblings had grown up while breathing in the same air they had years ago, but my journey has healed me. I feel humbled, loved, and most of all, I feel like I have a place no one could take away from me. I finally understand the saying “Home is where the heart is.” I could live 50 more years in the United States, but I know without a doubt that if someone told me to close my eyes and imagine my home, I would think of a different place. My home is thousands of miles away, where my heart and mind have been reborn with the love and nurture of my people.