Searching for Home
Sha Tin College, Angela Fu, Fiction: Group 4
A
s the shivering sun casts the first of its auburn rays onto the shifting sand, the desert
reveals itself from underneath the shadow of night. It is the beginning of a new day.
I breathe in the sharp clean scent of the morning and revel in its familiarity. In the
haziness of the morning light, the blanket beneath my fingertips feel like warm wisps
of cloud, despite the fact that it is laid on a cool patch of dirt. I look at the people lying around
me. They are not family – but they feel like family, and that’s what matters most. The word ‘home’
can conjure many images in someone’s mind: maybe a warm bed that smells like a dream, or a
messy room littered with memories, or even a simple meal laid out like a painting on a dinner
table. But for me, when I think of home, I think of the desert. I know: dry, parched, deserted; why
would anybody think of the lifeless expanse of the Gobi Desert as home?
This is why.
To tell the truth, I never really had a family. Sure, there was a woman I called “mother” and
a man I called “father”, but those were just meaningless terms, words that held no strings to
my heart. My parents were both – how should I say it, cold. Every time they looked at me – no,
beyond me, as if I did not exist, it was like a slap against the cheek. I had one recollection of a
moment when we were all happy, but I can’t remember if it was just a dream or an actual memory.
In the end, is there really a difference? But as a child, this was the only shred of hope I had, and
so like a hopeless dog, I chased after it wildly, hoping that one day I could make them smile –
really smile at me. I tried to make them notice. I tried with my grades, I tried to look pretty, and
when all else failed, I tried to get into trouble. When I finally did, they seemed to look at me as if I
was a buzzing nuisance who needed to be gotten rid of as quickly as possible. So I never felt like I
belonged. Even when I was in a room full of people, I still felt alone.
I was the urban nomad; the loneliest child in the world.
When I was 18, I ran away from home. I just felt like it was meaningless to spend my life with
people I didn’t care about, or people that didn’t care about me. I packed my belongings into a bag
lying on the ground if five seconds – there really wasn’t much to bring. I guess one benefit of
being me was that I didn’t have the burden of having to leave anything behind. For the first time,
I felt the frightening excitement of freedom, and it was the most thrilling feeling in the world.
“Do not start if afraid, once begun do not be afraid.” I had begun and though I felt fear, it did not
mean I was afraid.
I wandered around my city, living off of a meagre supply of money I had been able to salvage.
I was free, but I still felt empty. All around me, I would hear people talking about going home,
missing home, leaving home, but I still had no idea what ‘home’ was. I was, in a metaphorical and
suddenly literal sense, homeless. So I kept searching, even though I didn’t know what I was trying
to find. There was this desperate yearning inside me for something that remained unknown. And
so I searched blindly across the whole city, valiantly trying and failing, again and again.
I had found work at the railway station, where people from all over China passed through,
working as a saleslady in one of the small convenience stores. While it was a bland and ordinary
job, I was able to meet people who indulged me in the adventures of their travels. Of course,
most of them were travelling for domestic or business affairs, but for a girl who had always been
