The scent of grandmother’s kitchen still lingers in my dreams. Cardamom and cinnamon, the steam rising from the pot as she stirred, her silver bangles jingling with each movement. I was ten when I last saw that kitchen, when I last sat on that worn wooden stool watching her cook.

I remember the night everything changed. The whispers had been growing louder for weeks. Father would come home with worry etched deep in his face, and mother would send us to bed early so the adults could talk. But children have a way of hearing things, of piecing together fragments of hushed conversations.

That final night, we didn’t pack our photos. We didn’t pack grandmother’s copper vessels or mother’s wedding dress. “Only what you can carry,” father said, his voice steady but his hands trembling as he helped us gather bare essentials. My little sister didn’t understand why she couldn’t bring her favorite doll.

The streets were different in darkness. Places I had played just days before became strange and threatening under the cover of night. Some houses were already empty, windows staring like hollow eyes. Others still had lights on, and I wondered if those families too were packing, deciding what pieces of their lives to leave behind.

We joined others moving through the shadows. A stream of people carrying children, bags, and the weight of leaving everything they knew. Nobody spoke above a whisper. Even the babies seemed to understand the need for silence.

The journey itself comes back in fragments: the ache in my feet, the weight of my backpack growing heavier with each step, mother’s hand gripping mine so tight it almost hurt. The sound of distant explosions. Or were they gunshots? I was too young to know the difference.

We ended up in a refugee camp first, then a series of temporary homes that never quite felt like home. Years passed. I grew up, but that night grew with me. It lives in my bones, surfaces in unexpected moments – when I smell certain spices, when I hear distant fireworks, when I see children playing freely in their neighborhoods.

Now I have children of my own. They ask about where I came from, and I tell them stories of grandmother’s kitchen, of the fruit trees in our backyard, of the neighbors who were like family. They ask when we can go back to see it. I tell them “someday,” but the word tastes bitter on my tongue.

Sometimes I meet others who have similar stories. We recognize something in each other’s eyes – a shared understanding that transcends language, religion, borders. Our stories may have different settings, different dates, different political contexts, but at their core, they’re the same story: the story of being forced to leave everything you love, of carrying your home in your heart because you can’t carry it on your back.

Read two alternative endings for the story above

Kashmir

Last summer, my daughter found an old photo tucked in one of grandmother's books. It showed our house in Srinagar, the majestic chinar trees standing guard, their leaves turning golden in the autumn light. On the back was written "Pandit Mohalla, 1989."

"What happened to all the pundits, Papa?" she asked, having learned about Kashmir's history in school. I told her about that bitter winter when notices appeared on walls, when loudspeakers carried threats through the valley's crisp air. How the same neighbors who had celebrated Herath with us just months before suddenly looked away when we passed. How the Kashmir that had been home to my people for thousands of years became a place where we could no longer live.

Now, thirty years later, I sometimes watch videos of Kheer Bhawani temple during the annual festival. I see displaced Pandits like me returning briefly to pray, touching the sacred soil of their homeland, before leaving again. The temple bells ring, but the nearby houses where Pandits once lived stand empty, like shells holding only memories.

Palestine

Last week, my grandson found my old house key, the one my father carried with him that night in 1948. The rust has eaten away at it, but you can still make out the intricate design on its head. In our family, we call it the key of return.

"Why do you keep it, Jido?" he asked. I explained how the olive trees in our village of Lydda had just been harvested when the Zionist forces came. How the summer heat beat down as we joined the long columns of people forced to march east. How my father kept looking back at our house until it disappeared from view, clutching this key and promising we would return.

Now, seventy-five years later, I sometimes stand at the fence near our old village. The house is gone, replaced by new buildings, but the ancient olive trees still stand. Their gnarled trunks remember us, even if nothing else does. Each year, more old keys rust away, but we pass our memories down like inheritance, teaching our children that somewhere, behind concrete and fences, lies home.