Choosing the word “home” as a keyword from the article, “WE REFUGEES” by Hannah Arendt is not as simple as it looks. The definition of “Home” is more of subjective and it is quite hard to give a precise definition. By the virtue of most common words of advice, and in some case arguments, presented over the years the global definition of home is, “Home is where the heart is.” It could be anywhere our beloved person is found, our favorite place, music, specific room, cloth, state, hobby, peace, spiritual life, wealth or something else. For me, home is when I keep staying in my bed early in the morning at my mom’s house and there is nothing makes me leave the bed until I want to.
From the diverse implications of home, Hannah Arendt used it in the article “we refugee”, “…only their new country now taught them what a ‘home’ really looks like.” Refugees or Migrants as preferred to be used according to Arendt’s article, usually have their sense of home before their exile but later some factors force them to create their new sense of home in the new country. The feeling of being fluent in a new language could guarantee a good position for happier life. Recognizing one’s identity, desire to be changed from being Jews for the sake of peace, and assimilation are some sense of home used in the article. Cheering when somebody dies also show that the person is resting from all those horrible troubles, hence death has seen as a home. Home is also “familiarity of daily life” for refugees; the confidence that they use in the world, naturalness of reactions, simplicity of gestures, unaffected expression of feelings, relatives, and, best friends.
People move from their place due to several reasons and that is usually for the sake of peace, freedom of wealth or occupation which are all representations of home in the article. However, the refugees couldn’t find their destination place as they wish, still trying to get what they feel want, stability, peace, their relatives and friends, identity recognition, their language, and so on. In their movement, they figured it out that it is possible to try to create their own state of home in the new country. That is how their movement makes meaning. Finding a new place and creating what they want in the new country, avoiding things exposing them to danger. Leaving identity aside for the sake of peace, home. Although it has several and controversial definitions, I found the word “home” most important in the article for showing the general demand of the refugees in the article. The very beginning of the article says, “we call each other ‘newcomers’.” Seeking positive acceptance in their destination place, peace, sense of home. All these points lead us to the point of finding something and that is home.
Hi Yohannes,
Let’s look at what Arendt wrote which to her defined home: the capacity to have a familiar daily life, an occupation, language, gestures that do not need to be interpreted., friends and family, private lives, and most of all, the capacity to remember what had happened to a person in the past. She writes:
“We lost our home, which means the familiarity of daily life. We lost our occupation, which means the confidence that we are of some use in this world. We lost our language, which means the naturalness of reactions, the simplicity of gestures, the unaffected expression of feelings. We left our relatives in the Polish ghettos and our best friends have been killed in concentration camps, and that means the rupture of our private lives.
Nevertheless, as soon as we were saved—and most of us had to be saved several times—we started our new lives and tried to follow as closely as possible all the good advice our saviors passed on to us. We were told to forget; and we forgot quicker than anybody ever could imagine. In a friendly way we were reminded that the new country would become a new home; and after four weeks in France or six weeks in America, we pretended to be Frenchmen or Americans. The most optimistic among us would even add that their whole former life had been passed in a kind of unconscious exile and only their new country now taught them what a home really looks like.”
So refugees pretend the past isn’t the “real” life – and that their present and future is a kind of re-birth.” But what do you do with that past, all of those things that had become natural and habitual, when you are “rebirthed” as an adult and everything is at first “unnatural,” an effort that can be compared to something else? At least the acknowledgement of the change can help the transition to becoming a newcomer — but home then becomes something that has to be made, step by step. Without an understanding of that hardship and help or support — what about the process feels welcoming, familiar or nurturing? How can an refugee hold become a newcomer without that opportunity to grow up into a place that also recognizes she or he has a past?