Waiting to come home...

There is something about Australia that draws you to it. Curled up deep within your heart, calling you.

Today I had a conversation with an American sister who was asking me about Australia – the good the bad and the ugly. And I had a sudden realization that I am really deeply patriotic. I love my country. Not in the wave-the-flag-chant-slogans-and-run-with-an-unruly-mob -drinking-liquor type of patriotism. But the quiet patriotism bred of deep love for something very very special. Maybe it is simply the love of “home”, but I think it is more than that. It is the laid-back façade that smoothes over the hectic rush of city life, the easy-going attitude to everything and the sour taste that is left when one tries “too hard”. Its being trapped in peak-hour traffic on an arterial road and swearing at the miserable state of it all while re-electing the same party to power that got it the way it is – simply out of dislike for the “elite”.

It’s the memories of the beach that raised me. Running along the storm water drain only to scuttle back in an attempt not to be swamped by what I once believed to be a rather large wave. It’s the clambering over rocks at low tide discovering sucky-bottomed snails and sticking fingers into urchins waiting with a mixture of excitement and fear as they closed around them, all the while munching on buttermenthols and licorice. It’s the jumping off the wharf heart-in-throat suspended indefinitely above the water waiting for the stinging slap of impact.

The same beach that I grew up on. Sunbaking bikini-clad when the one-piece was no longer cool. Spending afternoons swimming when the parents thought I was at a friends doing homework. Smoking my first cigarette, have my first unwatched and under-aged drink, kissing my first boy (I think I was two). My place of escape when things got hard. My place to contemplate life and my place in it. Religion. The place that led me to change.

I think my love stems from the beauty that is Australia. The knowledge that Allah swt created that beauty and led me to Him through it. There is something in watching the waves roll in at night or in the early light of fajr that gives peace. Proof.

That’s why I love my country.