VOICES columnist Amy Idem, originally from Lancashire, lives with her husband and three children. She writes about her cultural and life experiences here, and on her blog: https://memyselfandidil.wordpress.com/

I stood and looked around our apartment, really seeing things for the first time and taking in every detail. I marveled at the amount of work I would have to do to cram three years of making memories into five suitcases. I sat down and thought about how much I would miss our first family home.

Memories flashed before my eyes as I walked through the rooms. I recalled walking into the apartment when it was empty, when it had just been furnished.

I remember sitting down and being amazed at the fact that all of it belonged to us. The house held so many firsts for us and over the years we had really made it into a home.

In our first home we had properly together as a family, we experienced our younger children’s first laughs, words and steps.

I couldn’t believe how long I had spent complaining about the smaller minor inconveniences that the house would occasionally bother us with, when all this time I was living in what some would describe as their dream home.

It was as if I was only just beginning to realise how truly lucky I had been. Not only did I have an amazing family, I had a house for us to live in, we never went hungry and my husband had a secure job. Now all of that was going to waste and we were being forced to move on.

I spent years complaining about İdil, but I have always claimed that it doesn’t matter where we are, as long as I can be together with my husband I would be content.

I repeated that little motto to myself as I tried to decipher what to take and what to leave. I had to be brutal and take only the bare necessities, but I was adamant that I would take things that were important to us.

I filled the bags with souvenirs and other important things I had gathered over the years. I gave away bag after bag of clothes and shoes. My eyes filled with tears as I looked around the shell of our home. I could hardly bear to be in there.

I sat in the living room and watched television, not taking notice of anything on the screen but keen for anything to distract me.

As the day faded into night time I listened like a hawk for anything that could even possibly be mistaken for gunshots and glanced anxiously at the door waiting for my husband to come home.

As he knocked on the door and came into the house I don’t think I had ever been so happy to see him. We never spent nights apart from each other unless I was in the UK visiting family so to not see each other even for just one day was so strange to both of us.

The children ran to their Baba and hugged him and he hugged them back while telling me how much he had missed us all.

And that’s when I realised, it wasn’t the house that made us the family we are today. It was us, and the love that we have for one another and as I have been saying for years, it really doesn’t matter where we are as long as we were together we would make it work somehow.

It would take a lot of strength to leave the people who had made us so welcome in İdil, but I knew that we had enough strength as long as we had each other.