In this house, we make The Korean Vegan’s banana bread on a semi-regular basis.
During the second week of July, I stretched my birthday flowers to the limits of beauty that cut flowers can realistically be expected to provide this time of year. In the unpredictable weather, I watched the sun hang low above the lake with my sister and her fiance while my husband cannonballed off the side of the jetty. In snatched moments between excursions for pancakes and picnics, between backs grown stiff at the kitchen table over hours-long games of Talisman, my phone kept lighting up. In our group chat, my mother was updating the number of Tory MPs who’d resigned as the U.K. descended even further into political chaos. ‘39’ at two minutes past midnight had become ‘48’ by morning.
Closer to home, each Scandinavian country had experienced a terrorist attack within the previous weeks. In Sweden, a man with links to a neo-nazi group stabbed a psychiatrist to death in broad daylight at a political event. With the election coming up in September, the numerous political parties–including the far-right, anti-immigration Sweden Democrats, who gained 17% of the public’s support in the last one–are in the swing of campaigning for power. Their marketing has proliferated in our local magazines and in the ad breaks of the morning news show we watch over coffee. Everything could change here. But with no citizenship, and therefore no right to vote, I feel strangely unmoored.
I haven’t lived there for over two years, but I’ve found it hard to let go of the British political landscape. I am rage-filled by every ruthlessly cruel, inhumane policy. I grow hopeless with every attempt to inflame non-existent culture wars to spark moral panic and endanger people’s lives and rights for votes. I laugh at the latest Munya Chawawa satire, or meme of one of them doing something breathtakingly inept because, sometimes, what else is there to do but laugh? I sign petitions and email MPs using old postcodes, but I don’t live there anymore, I live here. Here, where the ruling centre-left coalition are set to introduce a GCSE-level language requirement for permanent residence which immigrants are somehow supposed to acquire alongside the challenges of settling into a new country, not to mention family and work commitments (that’s if they’ve managed to get a job, with people who have ‘foreign-sounding’ names 15% less likely to have their applications followed up). Here, where ‘integration’ and immigration policy are hot topics, people’s value measured up by their contributions to Swedish society.
Beyond these basic (and unsurprising) starter points, there’s a swathe of empty space between me and the Swedish political system. I know vaguely which party I might vote for in 2026. I’m aware of myself as occupying a politicised identity: despite being humiliated to the point of tears as I tried to re-enter the country through the ‘All Other Passports’ queue, grace has been extended towards me and my faulty Swedish and joblessness that I am certain would not be given to people with darker skin or different names or connections. Until, and even once, I receive my Swedish passport next year (two years early on account of my marital status), home will always have a fragility to it, a hairline crack in the surface.
And so, I stay home in the politics of a country I no longer inhabit. Their clownery lives rent-free in my mind. The house falls apart around me, the facade crumbling away (although so many still find it appealing). I think about moving but I don’t have the language skills, voting rights or history to adapt. I try to build a new home, but there are hidden issues under the floors. I’m a little scared of what I might find. Besides, I’m not ready to leave. I believe, deep down, that staying might, somehow, help; that by screaming as every brick turns to dust, I can galvanise others into caring in a physical, all-consuming way, in a way that I can’t from this distance.
In moving abroad, one makes space within themselves for another place and its beauty, ugliness, mundanity, culture, language, politics. These aspects of the places we leave behind remain inside us, for better or worse, bridging gaps in our experiences and identities, dictating how we are perceived and treated by others. They can’t easily be left behind, and I think I may never fully vacate the U.K. as my political home, as the place where my fear and horror are most deeply felt, my angry voice at its loudest.
The Bookshelf
In this section of Home Comforts, I share a reading recommendation for a book or piece of writing that touches on themes of home.
Turning: Lessons from Swimming Berlin’s Lakes by Jessica J. Lee
Nature writing is, in my opinion, always dealing with ‘home’ on some level. In this quiet and contemplative memoir, Lee catalogues her project to swim 52 lakes surrounding Berlin over the course of a year, moving through every season and weathering loss and the rootlessness we find between places and phases of life. Lee is Taiwanese-Canadian and has lived in London and Berlin; her observations about language, heritage and home feel so full of truth and resonance. I saved this book to read over lake-swimming season, and it’s been such a joy to dive into over the last few weeks.
Do you have a recommendation I might like? If so, I’d love to hear from you!
My short story collection, Tools For Surviving A Storm, is out now.