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		No Place Like Home What happens when the perfect nest becomes an albatross? By Herbert Hadad M y family lives in Pocantico Hills, New York, a picture-book hamlet twenty-five miles north of Manhattan. It has hills and trails, a schoolhouse, a pool and a ball field, two churches, a firehouse, and a couple of hundred houses. P. H. Chin and his wife, Ping, were the first people we met when we moved here. The Chins have been uncommonly good neighbors and friends for the past twenty years. Yet recently they have been gently reminding us they plan to leave soon, perhaps for a retirement community downriver. I haven’t had the heart to tell them our departure may precede theirs. There’s supposed to be a pattern. You establish a household, raise a family, and contribute something to your community, even if it’s only homemade Middle Eastern dinners for the sick lady up the road or corny jokes for the firehouse volunteers. You’re supposed to put down roots and stay put, conduct a career, distinguish yourself in some way, retire, and indulge in the pursuits of those who finally have the time and the money. Two days after we moved to our saltbox on State Route 448, surrounded by woods and next to a summer stream, Edward Salim said, “Dad, can we stay here forever?” I remember telling my son, who was five, “Edward, we can stay here as long as we like.” It was something the whole family believed. We loved and were proud of the house, and invited all kinds of people to join us there. The children listened and learned as doctors, lawyers, writers, and candidates for public office relaxed and chatted around our dining-room table. Small memories became fond tableaux. Sara Jameel, when she was four, joined me one frigid day in collecting firewood. She scampered over mounds of felled trees, selecting logs and calling, “Dad, is this a good one?” Of course, they all were good. That afternoon—the fire hissing and crackling in the stone hearth that dominates our living room, the children coloring, the adults reading, everyone sipping hot chocolate—was one of the simplest and best of my life. Charles Aram, when he was about eight, joined me outside one early spring afternoon as I hosed winter’s detritus off the house’s shingles. He broke the news to me gently. “Dad,” he said, “that won’t make the house grow.” Edward Salim came to love the house so thoroughly that when contractors completing a new den in the basement also repaired the upstairs doors so they clicked closed again, he was openly upset with me. “I liked it the old way,” he complained. A few months ago, many years after that small repair, my wife and I took Edward and two friends to visit the World Trade Center site and then to the South Street Seaport to warm ourselves with coffee and tea. I can’t explain how our expedition prompted it—beyond reflecting endings and new beginnings—but as we dodged speeding cars on South Street I confessed to my son that our home, the family’s anchor for so long, was becoming an albatross, that I wanted to sell to relieve our debt and move on. I didn’t tell him what was also true: I no longer loved the house as I once did. I tensed, awaiting his reply. “It’s your nature, Dad,” Edward said. “Do what you have to do.” I was so relieved I wanted to hug him in the middle of traffic. Having lived well but not ostentatiously, having sent three bright children to expensive colleges, my wife, Evelyn, knew as well as I did of the used-up second mortgage and the letters demanding overdue credit-card payments. But her observation, like Edward’s, suggested another reason for my wanting to sell the house, which surprised me. “You’ve always been a lonely person, even in your home surrounded by your family,” she said matter-of-factly, as if she’s known it since we first met. She wasn’t being accusatory. She was showing me that part of her love was trying to understand things in me I did not fathom. “In a way, you live your life feeling dislocated,” she said. Her words immediately made me think of my dad and his dream. Dad had always planned to take me to the Middle East. We were going to see what for eight centuries had been the family’s home in Aleppo, Syria; then continue on to Beirut, Lebanon, where he became a teenager; then travel to Jerusalem, to locate the grave of his eldest brother, Salim, for whom Edward Salim is named. Though we delayed taking the trip, waiting for the strife in the region to ebb, even into my father’s early seventies the plan was still real for us. One morning, Dad woke from a troubling dream. He’d dreamt he was back in Aleppo—he couldn’t remember if I’d been at his side—where all the streets were different and all the people were strangers. “Aleppo and Syria are not the same any more,” he sighed. After that, I began to worry the trip would be a mistake. Perhaps my father would not be able to immerse himself in his culture among his people, to take fresh nourishment from his roots. Perhaps at seventy-five he would feel like a stranger as he stood in front of his own house. Still, I tried to remember that my father was a charming and generous man, articulate in many languages, to convince myself our voyage would prove the crowning moment of his life. Then Dad fell on icy, hilly pavement outside his garden apartment in Hyde Park, Massachusetts. There followed a series of pains and ailments, which took him two years later. Now it may be time for us to plan for another kind of journey. If we are not to live in Pocantico Hills, I need to find the alternative. Though I used to tune out when acquaintances talked about the pleasures of living in a cooperative apartment or a townhouse, I’ve started paying attention. A woman on the train describes Scarborough Manor, an apartment complex overlooking the Hudson River. “The rooms are large and light; the layouts are really ideal. I’ll give you the name of the manager,” she says. A colleague who lives in Bronxville, a twenty-five-minute train ride from Manhattan, says how much she enjoys her village: “You let me know when you’re ready. I’ll tell you where the best areas are.” I write down all the suggestions I hear, and I consider all the possibilities. So it’s not surprising that recently, at a small Japanese restaurant, P. H. Chin and I found ourselves talking about houses and change, the future and mortality. Both P. H. and Ping were born in China and educated in the United States. He is a retired IBM engineer who teaches computer literacy classes for older people. Ping, after a half-century of service, still works with an organization dedicated to bringing efficient agricultural techniques to developing countries. “P. H.,” I said, “if you could be anyplace, where would you be the happiest, the most content, the most fulfilled?” “Shanghai,” he said. His small smile indicated he would not explain himself; this one word was his complete answer. We were silent for a while, and then he asked, “How about you?” “Aleppo,” I said. I was astonished by my answer. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that—at that moment—it was the truest, deepest answer. It was where I wanted to be more than anywhere else in the world. I pictured taking my hundred words of Arabic and plunging into Aleppo, into the souks and the museum, finding the Ottoman clock tower, searching for gravestones of my ancestors. I imagined visits to the ancient churches and mosques, then locating the remnants of the Jewish Arab population and their synagogue. “I would say to the townspeople, ‘Ena Hayeen Naseem Hadad, ibn Musa Hadad. Ena Halaby’—I’m Herbert Sidney Hadad, the son of Moses Hadad. I am a son of Aleppo,” I told P. H. “And they would blink at me, then conduct an agitated discussion among themselves, then suddenly throw out their arms and embrace me, and cry,” I said. “And I would cry with them. Some would be cousins, or nieces, or nephews. My blood. They would say in the most soothing way, ‘Ahalan-wa-sahalan, Hayeen. Hamdel a-Salemah.’ Welcome, Herbert. Welcome home.” P. H. smiled, more broadly this time. We had revealed to each other something neither had expected. We had revealed that, in the light of the splendid and fulfilling lives we have led in beautiful surroundings, with people who love us dearly, we were two foolish men who would fold our tents like the Arabs, and silently steal away. We had also revealed that we were exactly the same: two men destined to live out their lives in exile. Herbert Hadad, a Northeastern graduate and award-winning writer, still lives outside New York City. On a sad note, he reports that old friend Ira, mentioned in last issue’s “Alumni Passages,” passed away in February. The Roxbury Rowdies mourn him and will miss him.