Three years ago, I travelled across the world — 11,179 kilometres, to be exact — to a continent I had never been to before. As Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie wrote, I was fleeing choicelessness. I needed to find a city that could love me back. A place to call home. A place that could feel like home.

Some days, I think I have made that home in Toronto. Other days, I am not so sure.

my loved ones in Toronto know Pakistan as “back home”

we cross a busy road to get to Staples and I say, “back home,

I would have been harassed walking across the road.”

temperatures go below -10 degrees and I say, “back home,

it doesn’t get colder than 5 degrees.”

Toronto is so much colder, yet unbelievably warmer

you cannot forget a place you called home for 18 years

it holds you like a curse some days

back home, love is a precious jewel you hide, lest you be mocked

you cover every body part in loose layers, lest you be called behaya*

you learn to be conscious of the curves on your body every passing moment

you don’t talk about religion, lest you be charged for blasphemy

you don’t ask for professional help, lest you be called ungrateful

you don’t criticize patriarchy, lest you be told you’re wrong,

or called ungrateful, or charged for blasphemy

back home, you make yourself smaller

lest you be called a woman

in Toronto, I hug those I love outside the 7-eleven at Bloor and Spadina

I wear tank tops, skirts, my little joys, and maroon lipstick

I tell my friends sunsets are my religion and they know it’s true

I pick up my antidepressants from the drug store

in this home, I exist,

I get to experience joy

I almost even see the city love me back

until I take out my Pakistani passport to prove my identity

in this mundane act, I become a stranger in this home I built for myself

I can adorn my identity in sunsets, Mary Oliver, and good coffee

but the truth is a curse I have failed to get rid of

it shows on my skin, in my accent, in my back home

and the back home emerges to haunt me again

it will never love me back, but at least

I am not a legal alien back home

it takes 16 hours to go back home, but sometimes

all it takes is being the only one asked to open my bag

in a queue of white people, all except one; all except me

*behaya: An Urdu word meaning ‘indecent.’ It is a common word thrown around to refer to a woman who goes against the norms, who is seen as defying religion and culture; someone to steer clear of.