My children are asleep as I write this. The house is quiet. The school bags are packed for tomorrow. And I am finishing, for them, something I began writing for the world.
Every argument in it was tested against one question: does this help my children understand the world they are growing up in? And every page was carried by one hope: that by the time they read it, the world will have proved me wrong.
I want to be proved wrong. I want to grow old in this country and never need a single contingency I have argued for.
But I would rather give them the truth than a promise I cannot keep.
The truth is that this is their country. It is the only place they have ever known: the streets, the accents, the friends, the weather they complain about. I believe that completely and without reservation. This is theirs.
And the truth, with equal completeness, is that this country has a history of revoking belonging from people who look like them, pray like them and carry names like theirs. Not in theory. In practice, across a thousand years and a dozen populations.
So I have asked them to do two things that sound like opposites.
Love this place. Love its terrible weather and its stubborn decency. Love the neighbours, most of whom are good people who did not build the machine and would be horrified if they understood it. Love it honestly, which means seeing it clearly, including the parts of it that do not love you back.
And prepare. Build here and be ready to go. Commit, and keep your options open.
I know how that sounds. I have lived with the tension every day of my adult life.
But the tension is the truth. The lie says everything is fine, you belong completely, the future is secure. The tension says everything is beautiful and everything is uncertain, and you must live fully in both at once. The lie is easier. The tension is honest. My children deserve honesty more than they deserve comfort.
I did not write to frighten them. I wrote to arm them. Fear paralyses. Knowledge mobilises. A child given a torch can find the way through the dark.
There is a supplication the Prophet, peace be upon him, taught for entering a new place. It translates roughly as: O Allah, I ask You for the best of this land and the best of what is in it, and I seek refuge in You from its evil and the evil of what is in it.
I have made that du'a for this country many times. I have made it for them.
I do not know which half will be answered. What I know is that they belong to something larger than any country.
And that is their freedom.