Loic’s home

Hi

I’m Loic. I am a French / English man born in Bahrain to a Persian English Mother and a French Father who’s family in my 20’s all relocated from the Breton region of France to Quebec, Canada whilst my immediate family at the same time all relocated to the South of the UK.

From birth to the age of 6, I grew up in Bahrain. From 6 to 22, I grew up living in France, however our household spoke mainly English given that my Mother and Father have always conversed in English. 

I went to an international school that also used English as a 1st language. My 2nd language being French and I also speak Farsi and pretty good Arabic given my mothers Persian / Iranian roots. I am also pretty Fluent in German given that my late partner before she passed was from the Dusseldorf region of Germany.

We were together for 12 years from the age of 24 until 36 but she unfortunately passed from a long-term illness. We did live a couple of years together in Germany and I guess you could say I found a way to consider it home in the short time I was there but since she she passed, I haven’t returned

To me, home has always been where my family are. We are very close. So while my extended family all moved to Canada and we would visit on holidays and spend extended time with them, Montreal also became a ‘feeling’ of home. There was familiarity in the surroundings even though they weren’t mine. There was a connection that when we left felt far away and a longing to return after such time passed that kept us apart

After my partner and I finished our studies (we were good friends from Uni before we became partners) we decided to move to the UK so that we could both work and develop our careers in ‘the City’, London town. The Capital of all Capitals!

UK, in particular Hampshire became our home. Surrounded by fields, tranquility and mellow in comparison to the swing of the city we worked in, for years we had the best of both worlds but when she started to get sick, we decided that taking her home to her roots would be the best thing for her, so we packed up our house and home and for the next 3.5 years, I became a German!

The transition to living in Germany was pretty tough actually. I didn’t think it would be given that all my life seemed to consist of adapting and blending to different cultures and people but I think it was more our story that came with the reason that we moved that made it quite a tense transition

I found Germany much more red taped and official than the easy flow of the UK (which now is certainly not the case – This was some years ago) and I struggled to find my tribe if you will with the locals. 

We were living in a small town on the outskirts of Dusseldorf, however, I hosted a seminar in neighboring Cologne in our 2nd year there and met some wonderful friends and colleagues that helped me find a love for my new lands and certainly helped with the difficulties that we were experiencing with my partners health concerns. 

The last year and a half that we were there, I actually fell so in love with the place, remembering it now hurts my heart like nothing else ever could. We found such deep connections, discussed philosophies in little beer gardens, went to concerts and music halls, spent the weekends in villages and fields, trammed our way through the cities and had friends at every stop. It almost felt like a euphoric fairy tale and one I look back on as if time froze and stood still with the passing of my lover who unfortunately died on March 11th 2009 in a hospital in Cologne. 

I believe Kat also has a similar connection to Cologne and tells a story about time suspensions and certain places that freeze in the moment – She shares it here on her insta for those interested….

But when my partner passed, I had to leave. I found I couldn’t stay even though it had become my home and a place that opened my heart more than anywhere else ever had. A place most unlikely to do so…I mean, GERMANY, it is historically not a hearty, romantic country but this is my story and my time and it is the place I left my heart, most of it never to be found or felt again

I moved back to England to be with family and for me, England resembles roots. Stability. Security. Constance. Reliability. Trust. The protective Grandfather that will always have your back (Not so much lately I must say)

France to me, which was my childhood home, has never had this feeling. France resembles dreams. Memories. Creativity. Freedom in a way that once obtained cannot be repeated. Once it’s gone it’s gone. I never miss it but I fondly remember its magic. France, where the life is ignited but once you leave, you leave with the flame still burning

We used to visit Bahrain quite often also as children but less so since entering the working fields and most of my family there have also since moved away, though in the late January of 2011 after the passing of my partner, my cousin asked me to join him for Ramadan and bring my woes and leave them there so I could return home healed

I have to say, 10 weeks of Winter in Bahrain after a breakdown, where work signed me off and told me to go and find some sanctuary after so much grief became my pilgrimage. 

My cousin and his people took me all over. Places I somewhat remembered, places I am so happy to remember now as an older soul. Places I long for. Places I wish I could forget. But what a journey

Returning back to the place I was born as an almost 40 year old man with no family to show my past to was a dark experience. Like I was returning to start all over again. When he said to me ‘Come here with your sorrows and leave them here’ I thought he was being cute. The kind of thing you say to someone that needs to hear something comforting in the aim to help them out but it actually was exactly what happened

We went to the town I was born in outside the Western part of Riffa and as it was coming up to Ramadan all the town was quiet in preparation for the customary traditions. We spent time with family and friends in shared communal settings to eat meals around a sufra, a mat that is placed on the floor made out of palm leaves and meals during this time are consistent with rice, chicken or fish, legumes and unleavened bread. Preparing for meals involved a lot of hand washing both before and after and food is shared and eaten with hands, no utensils, no alcohol, no talking. In quiet contemplation but yet all together

We spent time walking the bazaars, visiting the mosques and visiting those in need for prayer and service. I was asked by those outside the mosque why I, as a white man, was visiting for prayer. I answered that my heritage comes from this land. That I was born here yet they could differentiate me from everyone else. I was a face that was strange and unfamiliar. Distinct from the rest of them

While back home in England I had suffered similar consequential conversations from my fellow English men who would often delight in telling me to ‘Go back to where you come from as everyone hates the French’ and I would say, ‘but my Mother comes from England. Her Father was born in Norfolk. His bloodline has consisted of generational lines traced only to the same region in Norfolk for 5 generations prior to him leaving. Surely this makes me somewhat English?’

Yet I found that having spent Ramadan with my distant family and their friends I had never known prior to arriving offered me a great comfort and perspective. I certainly found that in quiet prayer and contemplation of why this tradition was practiced made my grief and loss perhaps not fade away but gave me a newfound appreciation on the differences of time and places, love and spaces where we’re here in this moment and then we transition to somewhere else, for what and where we go who knows, but it gave me peace.

So I left my grief there as my cousin told me I should and I returned home to England with the decision to move forwards in my life in a way where I could put what I had learned from my time away in prayer into active awareness and direction. To focus on something that would give my life more meaning even if I had to do it alone

This was some 14 years ago and I spent 14 years since then working in the field of philosophical law and ethics, hoping to bring balance and justice into a system aimed at protecting us all and giving us hope that the future can be light, peaceful and connected

So when I am asked, ‘Where are you from’ all I can honestly say is that since my heart was broken and lost, I no longer have a home. I am from anywhere and everywhere that will have me as long as it is filled with love and connection. 

I cannot say I am from only one place when so many others have offered me sanctuary, deeply profound love, a space for healing in the strangest and far away spaces, the ability to grow as a person in lands unfamiliar to me, the light to see things differently from the familiar rooted lens of the 9-5 world I usually live in. 

I am a man of many places with a heart open enough to feel their beauty and become a part of it but with a heart so lost that I could never commit to anywhere ever again

Maybe one day I will go back to visit Germany again and find a way to feel something new for the end I left there. Or maybe I’ll go somewhere completely new and hope to find a fresh start in lands I’ve never walked

Can I do that? Should I do that? Am I allowed to do that if it’s not my ‘home’? 

If you’re like me and you’ve lived in many places and aren’t sure where home is, how do we even begin to answer that question?

I have a real pride for people that have never left their country, never stepped foot outside their country and are richly patriotic to their land. Not everyone has to move around as much as I did and I honor those people that stand firm in their land with structure and solidarity to wave the flag for their National unity. It is fantastic to see the loyalty and their allegiance to the roots that they aim to honour and protect

But on the other hand, they don’t know the heartache and affliction that those that wander carry and are ignorant to the journeys we’ve all been on in a bid to ‘find home’. 

For each of us the story will be different. For all of us, home here is only temporary. All I can say is that across all nations, however we choose to answer this query of National heritage, may we do it with open hearts and minds so that each country can reach out arms and hands to other nations and find peace and togetherness? For there is no one land better than another if it is filled with love