Intersections: Confronting a concept many take for granted

By Liana Aghajanian

April 13, 2016 2:40 PM PT

I walked into a resale furniture shop last week and in one instant, all my childhood memories came flooding back to me — moments spent in church during baptisms, those weekend excursions to the graves of my grandparents, arriving at a relative’s home and knowing someone was in solemn thought.

In an aisle of used mugs, waffle makers and ancient televisions in Detroit, I was immersed in the smell of incense, trying to sniff it all in, as if doing so would somehow take me back to a place and time that does not exist anymore.

I approached the counter and asked the woman if it was what I thought it was, a mixture used during prayer for many people of Orthodox faiths made from the sap of certain trees with such a distinct, intoxicating smell that you would never forget it if you smelled it.

And when the Chaldean store owner smiled, and we had a long conversation about Iraq, and her Armenian neighbors in the Chaldean diaspora and so much more, I felt like I was home.

It’s been around two months since I’ve moved to Detroit, and the biggest adjustment has been coming to terms with the fact that I need to acquire furniture, and cooking utensils and towels, that I am not here temporarily like I usually am in other places, that this is not a place someone else is in charge of decorating, that this is not a space to be in for two weeks or one month and then leave.

My origin and background already make the concept of “home” very complicated, but the new, additional layers of attempting to make a home that’s mine has added to the entanglement.

I envy those who don’t have these feelings that they must confront and deal with. I envy the man I met recently who calmly told me that he simply has no desire to go anywhere else in the world, that he was born here, that he continues to live here and will probably die here.

But what do you do if you’re innately born between a few different worlds, between never feeling quite sure where it is that you feel “whole?” The idea of making a home for someone whose space of resigned comfort is being an outsider is challenging, the idea of acquiring “things” for someone who has lived untethered to any real possessions is startling.

But in the crowded aisles of a second-hand furniture shop, I found a source of comfort. I carried the incense in one hand, and a cabinet I found a great deal on in the other, thanked the owner for both and left.

I drove off, back to my street, my doormat, my desk and my bed knowing the one thing that has always remained a constant in my life that was now showing up in Detroit, too: home is not a place, it is a feeling and in a strange place that was slowly becoming familiar, I found myself pleasantly drowning in it.

LIANA AGHAJANIAN is a Los Angeles-based journalist whose work has appeared in L.A. Weekly, Paste magazine, New America Media, Eurasianet and The Atlantic. She may be reached at liana.agh@gmail.com.