Marianna Shannon (2) - "In Baghdad, Dreaming of Cairo; In Cairo, Dreaming of Baghdad": Thoughts

  In class we read Rumi’s poem In Baghdad, Dreaming of Cairo; In Cairo, Dreaming of Baghdad. At first the poem was confusing to me, but the core idea stuck with me: that what you are searching for may have been waiting at home all along, and that journeying away was never necessary. However,  I found myself relating to it in reverse. I have lived in the same place my whole life, even CNU is five minutes away from my house. I never had to really “journey” anywhere. While Rumi’s poem warns against leaving home to find something always there, I sometimes wonder what I might have found if I had left, especially looking at other people’s stories. Maybe the poem works both ways. You can lose yourself chasing something far away, but maybe you can also lose something by never chasing anything at all.


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