Zine: "Home is a makeshift haven"

Through my zine "Home is a makeshift haven", I have expressed the contested notions of home and belonging as experienced in my journey of migration from Pakistan to Canada. The concept of home has changed over the years for me and overlaps with my experiences of marginalization, migration, acculturation, and identity formation. I also touch upon the transient nature of belonging and my positionality in a settler-colonial state.

This artwork was created as part of an expressive arts group assignment for the graduate course at UofT titled 'SWK 4658: Social Work with Immigrants and Refugees'. ‘Home is Not a Place – Exploring What it Means to Belong’ is a collection of student artworks. Through this project, my group members and I explore the various conceptualizations of home and belonging. We weave together our individual pieces by incorporating a ‘tent’ in our artworks which symbolizes precariousness and transiency.

Poetry:

I have many names for home,

they morph into one another on my tongue //

watan, ghar, makaan, hadeed, malir, karachi, wah, dunya, deen, dil, khuda, aap, mein, hum

I wasn't the only one who left home //

home was a traitor for leaving me too,
agonizing my soul, engulfing me whole

Home will remain a city that didn't love me back //
a land named pure // a land that felt foreign

The home that was supposed to be my refuge
was built on someone else's home //
I didn't wish to be an intruder, yet I am one

Home is forever changing and flawed as me

I have forgiven home for being amorphous //
I let it be a transient feeling, a familiar scent, a lovely moment //
nothing lasting, nothing grand

Home is now a journey of being a

migrant in this land,
migrant through time,
migrant through this life.