You Are My Home!

The HOME Within

You Are My Home!

 

If my home was a tattoo

I would engrave it on my heart

And rest! 

What does home stand for? Is it the place where one lives? When I was stationed away from home, (ironically in my ancestors’ homeland) I started to question what really constitutes a home.

Quite frankly, I was worried that I might go down at any moment from a sniper shot, mortar, or IED. However, I never felt helpless or scared, simply because death is everyone’s fate. This undeniable fact was first spoken in The Epic of Gilgamesh ^[1]  thousands of years ago[RG1] !

My major concern was that no death is justified if not for love! 

Defending home sounds right, but what really is home, and where is home for each one of us? For me, the whole earth is my home, but in particular, my beloved sweetheart is my ultimate home!

Many famous artists have recreated their artworks for one reason or another, including Francisco de Goya, Claude Monet, Piet Mondrian, Pablo Picasso, and more. Some of my old works vanished when their collectors passed away and the inheritors, who were uneducated in art, did not keep them. Other works of mine were looted from museums. Several artworks were destroyed by the evil forces I stood against them when I was young.

The 2012 artwork, Homeland, was always motivating me to redo it differently by playing with the main shape and colors. Therefore, the 2022 artwork, Homeland of Life, is an echo and a reshaping of the 2012 artwork. Homeland of Life is a mix of the complexity of thoughts and simplicity of a shape based on one Logogram symbol referring to the word home and pronounced as Ki/Bit in ancient Sumero-Akkadian^[2] culture, aka Proto-Kaldi^[3].

 Home is like love; you do not have to write a bulky book about it. A tender eye contact or a gentle squeeze of the hand is enough. Actions speak louder than words! 

¹ Gilgamesh was the first hero in ancient Mesopotamia and worldwide mythologies. He is the protagonist of the Epic of Gilgamesh and the first superhero who stood up to cosmic evil forces to help humanity.

² Sumero-Akkadian; relating to, or constituting the Sumerian and Akkadian languages, cultures, or people. 

³ Proto-Kaldi: In 1988, historian Amer Hanna Fatuhi named pre-Sumerian culture Proto-Kaldi. This term was first used in his study entitled “Ur of Chaldeans - An Iraqi Perspective.” Subsequently, it became common among Iraqi scholars in the 1990s and worldwide in 2004.