What makes a home?

For many of us, the importance of a safe and stable home, a place we can call our own, has taken on even more importance in recent weeks. When you can no longer leave a place, home, or the lack of one, has the power to provide comfort and peace, or alternatively a sense of alienation. So too is home much more than four walls and a sturdy roof. It is human nature to desire a land to call our own, to live in a place where we feel we belong.

It is perhaps prescient then that this month, our contributors encounter people and communities who have lost homes. On page 18, Hadani Ditmars describes her journey under armed guard through the ruined streets of Mosul. In a flattened city, she meets those working hard to rebuild both the shattered architecture that scars the streets and a sense of community. It is this work that will, one day, mean that those who have lost everything can return home.

On page 34, journalist Ferdinando Cotugno and photographer Francesco Lastrucci meet a people desperately waiting for home in its widest sense. The Saharawi people are a splintered community. Spread across Morocco, Algeria and what they call the ‘Free Zone’, many live in refugee camps and have done so for generations. A promised referendum that would see the land of ‘Western Sahara’ officially declared their own, shows no sign of taking place and, among the young, talk of violence and war is once again surfacing.

And finally, in Uzbekistan, a new revolution is underway, as people open up their homes to tourists. On page 43, Nick Redmayne chats to the proud owners of new guesthouses. After all, as much as home is nice, there’s something to be said for sharing the pleasure with others. Another thing to look forward to.