Home at last

And then one day on the 9th of August, 2004, Allah guided us to an estate agent who took us to see the outside of a house that really got my heart racing.  The road on which this house was built was a cul-de-sac with the sea at the end, and I could see that there was a space between the house itself and the outside wall so I knew it had some kind of outdoor space!  The agent did not have the keys so we were to come back the next day, which we did, but the agent wasn’t there and his partner was really embarrassed as he had no record (these agents actually kept records of appointments!!!!) of our visit the previous day and didn’t have a clue as to which house we had looked at the previous day.  Instead, to try and make up for it, he brought us to another house, again with the sea at the end of the road.  He didn’t have the keys but could we come back the next day?  Where had I heard that story before?  We agreed, but my heart was still on the first house we had seen and I asked my husband if we could still see it.  He said lets wait and see this one first.  So back we traipsed to the agents (we are talking about an hour and a half’s journey each way here) and he brought us back to the second house.  We went in and around, and then upstairs, and I went out on one balcony and saw the sea at the end of the road and felt myself holding my breath.  We went upstairs to the terrace and I took one look at the sea and across the bay to the El Aurassi Hotel, and thought “I could die happily in this house.”  We got into the car without looking at each other and then my husband said, “That’s it – that’s the house!” There was something about the house that reminded me of our home in England.  My husband said the same, and when Sarah, our daughter,  saw the house she said she knew what I meant but could not put a finger on it. It was so different and so much bigger and yet it had this familiar feel to it.

A few days later my husband brought the structural engineer to look at it and he was really impressed with it alhamdulilah.  Within two weeks of seeing it, we had bought it and two weeks later, just in time to enroll the children in school (as the previous owner hadn't found an apartment, he had nowhere to put all his furniture so we agreed to store it for him in one of our rooms),  we were able to move in – what a record for bureaucratic, paper laden, everything-has-to-be-the-most-difficult-way-possible, Algeria – the biggest importer of red tape in the world!  And that is when our life in Algeria truly started alhamdulilah.

Wisdom often comes with hindsight, and this was certainly the case with our search for a home of our own in Algeria.  The person from whom we had bought our house was an émigré who lived in France, but had bought it as a holiday home for him and his family when they visited Algeria.  He loved the house, but as his wife’s family were all on the other side of Algiers, she found it very difficult staying so far away from them when they only stayed here once a year, so he had decided to sell up.  The amazing thing is that he had only come to the country and put it up for sale just before we came to the estate agents, so this house wasn’t even for sale all the time that we were busy pinning our hopes on the other one in Bou Ismail.  It was as if Allah had planned this house for us and kept us busy with that one and all the other ones that we knew in our hearts weren’t what we wanted, until this one became available.  When people come and visit and admire our home, I always tell them that this was a gift from Allah because I always like to give credit, where credit is due. My husband’s nephew visited and, as he stood on the terrace and looked out at the sea, and then looked to the side across the rooftops to the minaret of the nearby mosque, he marveled as he said to my husband, ‘ you both got what you wanted – she got the sea and you got the mosque’.

One day I stood at the kitchen door and looked out on to our small back courtyard and looked at the honeysuckle that was creeping into our garden from a neighbour’s garden and the rubber plant in the corner.  And I remembered standing at my kitchen door in England looking out at our tiny back garden, and the honeysuckle creeping into our garden from another neighbour’s garden and wondering if I would ever have as nice a small outdoor space as this one.  Subhanallah Allah never takes one thing without replacing it with something greater.  I had had to give away all my cherished house plants including my rubber plant when we left England, and there was one growing in the corner of my little space in Algeria, along with the fig trees.

A house with a view

There were several “near misses” where we saw somewhere and it wasn’t anything that I wanted but my husband would say something like “maybe we could just take it for the moment until we sort ourselves out and then sell it again when we find what we are looking for”.  Usually my heart would sink but I would say nothing, we would think about it and then it would fade away to be replaced by another possibility.  The very first house we saw that helped me to at last visualize a home of our own in Algeria was one right on the sea.  It was old and hadn’t been lived in for a while, and it had a swimming pool that could be filled with water from the sea.  On the first floor there was a veranda that went around the front of the house and looked out over a small beach, and, of course, the sea!  It was so close that the veranda was wet with a mist of water from the huge waves as it was still winter.  The house itself wasn’t really big enough and needed extensive renovation, and there was a little road that went along the house down to the sea and we couldn’t help but notice the beer bottles thrown here and there.  We knew then, that in the summer this haven could easily turn into a hell.

We did find one home after a few months that got me really excited and had me planning how to furnish it.  We brought the children to see it and they loved it.  So that was settled then.  It was even further away from Algiers but that didn’t bother me. The view of the sea was in the distance, but by this stage I had resigned myself to the fact that you could either live right by the sea and not have any  sea view because of  the other buildings around you, or live at a distance on higher ground where you could see the sea above all the buildings.  We just had to wait while the seller sorted out some paperwork.  At last we had an end in sight and we waited, and we waited.  Sarah, our daughter, joined us at last having finished her exams in England,  and we were still waiting.  One day my husband brought a structural engineer to have a look at the house, and he took one look and told my husband to forget it – the builder had obviously skimped on the cement and he said that he thought it was extremely unsafe, especially in an earthquake zone.  We had been in Algeria 8 months and were back to square one.  That was such a horrible time, but alhamdulilah we had found out before we bought the house. We then found another possibility in the same area but when my husband described it to the engineer he said he wouldn’t even bother going to see it.  It had only 4 metal bars sticking out at the top on the terrace, which meant that the concrete was only reinforced with 4 metal bars, and that was 2 bars too little in an earthquake zone. This engineer was the son of our landlord and I am ashamed to admit, that in my desperation, I started to suspect that he just didn’t want us to move out!  I started thinking maybe I was asking for too much and very briefly I reduced my requests in my prayers.  And then I thought that Allah has told us to ask Him for anything we want and He will hear our prayers, and I thought, “I am limiting him astaghfirallah!  I shall ask for everything I want – if I don’t ask Him, who can I ask?”  I used to get up before Fajir to say the night prayer knowing that He was there asking if there was anyone who needed something from Him, and when I lay down at night to put my little one to sleep, I used to ask him to ask Allah for the perfect home for us.

Then I said to my husband “OK we have done it your way, now lets do it mine!”  He had said that it was doubtful if we could find a home by the sea.  I looked at him incredulously and showed him the map of Algeria,  “Are you trying to tell me that with all this coast line” I said as I gestured at the sea all the way from Constantine to Oran, with Algiers plonked right in the middle, “that there is NOWHERE for us to find a home by the sea?!!!!”  “Well I don’t want to live in Constantine or Oran” he said.  “OK, but how about the other side of Algiers?”  We had only been looking on the western side where we lived.  “I don’t know anything about that side of Algiers” he said.  “You mean to say that you went all the way to England, and you are afraid to go to the other side of Algiers, even just to look?”  I asked incredulously again.  So, leaving the older ones very happily at home with Sarah we got into the car and drove around the coast of the Bay of Algiers to the “Other Side!!!!!” stopping at every estate agent on the road.  Admittedly some of them were disasters and I had to learn to keep my mouth shut (a very difficult thing for me to do, but all in a good cause! – come to think of it, I think the reason my husband enjoyed the house hunt so much were those moments of bliss for him!) as otherwise the price skyrocketed.  “Well, I thought there was a house here” said the estate agent as we looked at a cement platform with four pillars.  “But the view is nice” he said.  Yes it is, I thought if you like a view of a motorway with cars careering up and down.  Another one wanted to sell us his home, which was not finished, and he and his family were living in the garage. But we also saw some really lovely homes, but they usually were on the big side with several floors each complete with bathrooms and kitchens and I had visions of my husband’s family all moving in with us!

A home to call our own

Moving to a different country can be difficult at the best of times, but when that country is so totally different in every aspect from what you are accustomed, even with the best will in the world, it can be very difficult making all the adjustments necessary. Yet, I can honestly say that I never once thought of going back – it just wasn’t an option. I just knew that somehow there was a better life to be had here…. if we could just find a home of our own.  Soon after buying our first car, my husband visited his Mum and she told him that a car was all well and good, but that ‘Evelyn won’t feel at home here until she has her own home’. Finding one seemed easier said than done.  We had decided, even before we left England, that we wanted to buy a house that was already built and finished as we didn’t have the patience to buy a plot of land and build our own house.

At first we depended on "word of mouth"- a most inefficient way of finding a property, if ever there was one. I remember one day my husband brought me some sweets wrapped in a twist of newspaper, and as I happily chewed away I idly read the snippet of newspaper and saw that it contained advertisements for estate agents and houses for sale.  I asked my husband to ask his family about this newly acquired information and he was told that they knew all about them but that estate agents were an expensive way of acquiring a house as they often took such a high price for finding a home. Sitting at home and waiting for people to come and recommend homes to us wasn’t getting us anywhere and so, against all advice, we started trawling the estate agents some of whom were rip off merchants its true, but some were really good and helpful. You wouldn't BELIEVE some of the places we saw - from huge monstrosities of homes with 3/4 kitchens and the same number of bathrooms to holes in the ground (literally). Some homes looked as if the rooms were added on as and when they could afford to build them - without any planning whatsoever! And as for the requested view of the sea: So many of the places we went to see did indeed have a sea view - if you hung off the balcony by the tips of your fingers, twisted your neck to an un-natural angle and screwed up your eyes you could just about make out a patch of blue in the far distance between an apartment block and a clump of trees!!

I wanted to live by the sea (if you’ve read any other posts on my blog and seen my pictures, I think you might come to realize what a penchant I have for water of any kind…. sea, river, stream, pond, waterfall, you name it), I wanted to live in a good Muslim area, I wanted privacy and walls around the house and space within those walls for my children to play, but most of all I wanted a home for us all to grow together as a family and to grow closer to Allah.   My husband wanted a Mosque within walking distance.  Was that so much?  After several months I got the distinct impression that people thought it was and that I was too particular. My husband’s nephew told us of the man who came to him to suggest a home for us, and when the nephew asked him if there was a garden, the man told him that there wasn’t one, at which the nephew told him that it wasn’t what we were looking for as we wanted a garden.  ‘But what about the children?’ asked the man incredulously. This puzzled me as I thought to myself ‘but the garden is for the children!’  Then my husband explained that the man’s outlook was based on having a house as spacious as possible so that when the sons grew up they could marry and have the space to bring their wives to live with them. This is one of the many times when I saw the gaping hole that appeared every so often between me and Algerians based on our different upbringing and life experiences.  Holes are good though….honest!