Homebound But Unbound: Ruwaida Abela Northen On Returning To Your Roots

After 15 years away from her native land of Tripoli, Bazaar Arabia columnist Ruwaida Abela Northen returns to mixed, but magical feelings

It was December. The evening air was thick with the scent of jasmine, the same familiar fragrance that once filled the air from the tree in my grandmother’s house. And it was raining—the kind of slow rain that doesn’t rush but lingers. I felt like my hometown was shedding tears of joy for my return. 

Fifteen years since my feet last touched Libyan soil, since I last walked the streets of Tripoli that shaped my youth. Fifteen years of absence, of distance measured not only in miles but in memory, in all the versions of myself I left behind.

I boarded the flight with a stomach tangled in knots. Not nerves, exactly—more like the quiet unease of stepping into a past that no longer belongs to me. What will I find? What has changed? What has remained?

The Libya I left behind was a paradox—a country both beautiful and complicated, rich in culture yet restrained by silence. It was a place where the weight of expectations sat heavy on my shoulders, where I learned to shrink myself to fit inside the lines drawn for me. I left it behind in pursuit of a life that felt more like my own, a life where my voice wasn’t an echo but a force, where I wasn’t a daughter of someone or the wife of someone but simply me.

The moment I stepped off the plane, I felt the weight of a thousand versions of myself pressing in. The young girl who once was. Wronged, uncertain and restless. The woman who had since lived in cities across the world, carving out spaces in places that never truly belonged to her. And the person I am now—rooted, confident, untethered to a singular idea of home. Because I now know that belonging isn’t about geography.

There were mixed emotions. A pull, a push, an ache that I couldn’t name. In many ways, I was a visitor now, an observer. The streets carried the echoes of who I used to be, and yet they didn’t fully recognise me anymore. Maybe I didn’t recognise them either.

I sat with familiar faces that had aged in my absence, and I searched for something—some unspoken acknowledgment, some moment of quiet pride. I wanted to hear it, to feel it. That I had done well. That I had become someone worthy of their admiration. But words of affirmation do not come easily in my culture. Love is expressed in gestures, while I hoped for words. 

I had spent years proving myself, believing I no longer needed validation from anyone. But as I sat there, listening to the quiet clink of coffee cups, the murmur of conversation, I found myself searching for it in the silence between words. The absence of it lingered, heavier than I expected. I realised a part of me still longed for it, from them.

Tripoli is both exactly as I left it and utterly different. The roads, the buildings, the sea stretching endlessly along the coast are all still there. Though I sensed the city carries the weight of years I was not there to witness.

Fifteen years have sculpted me differently. I have shed layers, lost and found pieces of myself, become a woman who stands firmly in her own story. The girl who left Libya was still seeking permission—to speak, to live, to take up space. The woman who returns needs no permission at all.

Before heading to the airport, I took a detour. Into the Old City of Tripoli. The streets were worn with time, layered with centuries of history. The Marcus Aurelius Arch still stood, a testament to the ages, a relic of a world that existed long before us. This was where my grandfather’s home once was. These streets had once carried his footsteps, and stood witness to his stories.

We wandered into an art gallery—unexpected, tucked between the past and the present. It was founded by a man who had spent his entire life in Europe but had returned home, determined to breathe culture back into the spaces that had been forgotten. He did it with such conviction, with such pride, that it stirred something deep in me. I felt a connection to his homecoming story. Like it mirrored my own. Like he also sought a connection to his roots.

I walked through the shops that sold traditional jewelry and intricate outfits, each piece carrying a thread of history. And for the first time in this visit, I felt it—not just nostalgia, not just memory, but pride.

Pride for the thousands of years on which my country was built. Pride for the people who are working, in their own quiet ways, to bring back what had been lost. Pride for a place that will always be a part of me.

As I left, the rain had stopped, leaving the streets sparkling under the winter sun. I take one last loving look at the city as the plane soars. It is still complicated, still struggling, still breath-taking. So am I. And maybe, in that, we are still bound together after all.

Lead image supplied.

From Harper’s Bazaar Arabia April 2025 Issue.