a reflection: a (bitter)sweet return

tending the soil that remembers me

“How are you settling in?” is a question I’ve been asked every week since I abruptly arrived in Scotland in April. To which I always respond, “I’m finding my rhythm.”

I think of “settling in” like planting a seedling. You create space in the earth first, clearing and making room, before you settle it into the ground. Roots are already present, waiting for the soil to receive them. I realise now that this is my dùthchas¹, that ancient, place-based belonging that says the land doesn’t belong to me, but that I belong to the land. It is a birth-tie that didn’t wait for my arrival; it was held here for me by the soil itself.

And then comes the invisible part, the part nobody sees. The roots move downward, searching, feeling their way through the dark, finding nourishment, and finding their place. This is the dualchas² of my blood, the inherited spirit and stories of my matriarchs moving through me in the quiet, like branches of a family tree growing underground. Only when enough ground has been found does something begin to appear above the surface. A shoot, then leaves. And then, if the conditions are right, something flowers. The plant is no longer just surviving, but giving something back, in conversation with everything around it. It moves the way seasons do, not forward, but around.

I’ve been a seedling three times in the last 10 years. Parts of me remain in each place I uprooted, leaving behind fragments of a heart that has often felt like an archipelago, connected deep down but separate on the surface. I arrived tender. Roots were exposed and the cold was sharp. The “bitter” part is the weight of those ten years lost, the silence that grew while I was away, and the fifty-year loop of my family being “away” since the late 70s. I was born away, a visitor to my own motherland, feeling a long cianalas³, that deep, spiritual ache for a place I carried in my memory but had never truly lived in. To find this rhythm,I’ve had to leave the sun of the Gulf that raised me, and my mother, for a soil my skin had touched every summer as a child, but had never actually called home.

But now, back in soil that already remembers me, I am ath-fhreumhachadh⁴, the slow, vital process of re-rooting. The first thing I did was join a community garden. I may have touched this soil as a child - a sensory ghost of those fleeting summer visits - but now my adult hands are meeting it for the first time. It is a re-introduction to the ground that shaped my lineage. The garden reminded me that belonging isn’t something I own; it belongs to “all of us.” This is the Tuath⁵, the community held together by a shared care for the earth.

I go to the River Tay, Tatha, the “Silent One,” and watch her flow. She is a mirror to the Nile, the river of my Egyptian roots. These are two great, ancient currents holding my two halves in one single flow. I went to the botanical gardens and found a bed under the Beech trees, the “Mother of the Woods.” Resting on those crispy leaves felt like lying on the pages of an ancient book - the beech is the keeper of old wisdom - and the earth was finally offering me a place of sanctuary after the biting chill of my return.

My roots were already planted here long ago. This soil held my mother, my Seanmhair⁶, my great-grandmother, and the matriarchs before them. And it is the birthplace of my grandfather, who carries the stories of this land in his voice even now, from afar. He is my living Seanchaidh⁷, the keeper of the lore that guided me back. This land has held my lineage, yet it was also the place of my greatest parting. Ten years ago, my beloved grandmother returned to the earth.

I left at 20, in autumn, a season of release and endings, just as she was weaving herself back into the spirit of this land. For a decade, my relationship to Scotland was held in a suspended space of grief and distance. And here I am, returning at 29, in the shadow of Bealltainn⁸, the ancient festival marking the return of the light. My grandmother is the gatekeeper of this return. I stood at my window on my first dawn, a “thin place” where the veil between this world and the ancestors - the Aos Sìth⁹ - vanished. A blue tit landed on a bare branch, a small messenger of furan¹⁰. I cried softly. Then, I smiled.

The land didn’t hold a grudge for my ten-year absence; it only held a space. In the community garden’s sensory plot, I was handed lilies to put into the earth. They were my grandmother’s favourite flowers. I didn’t choose them. The garden chose to give her back to me. It seems the soil already knew what my heart needed to remember, proving that here, I am not just settling; I am being gathered back into the fold. In tending to my own grief, I am inadvertently tending to the community, planting an offering for the stranger who will one day breathe in a fragrance that feels like home.

I am not just “settling in.” I am rejoining the Tuath - the community of people, trees, and rivers. The land didn’t hold a grudge for my absence; it only held a space. I am the seedling that was waiting for the specific dewy air of Scotland to trigger the bloom.

Here’s to more spending time with her: Gran (Mother Earth).

A (bitter)sweet return

1. Dùthchas (Doo-chass) Beyond mere “belonging,” dùthchas is a spiritual and legal philosophy. It suggests that your right to the land is born from your responsibilities to it. It is the intersection of lineage, place, and the collective memory of the community. To have dùthchas is to know that the dust of your ancestors is the same dust under your fingernails in the garden.

2. Dualchas (Dool-uh-chass) Derived from the word for a strand or a loop of a rope, dualchas is the “braid” of heritage. It is the accumulation of what is handed down - not just physical objects, but the way a song is sung, the way a story is told, and the temperament of your bloodline. It is the internal landscape you carry even when you are “away.”

3. Cianalas (Kee-un-al-ass) Often flattened to “homesickness,” cianalas is much more profound. It is a deep, agonising pull toward a place that may no longer exist as it does in your memory.

4. Ath-fhreumhachadh (Ah-fray-vach-ugh) A compound of ath- (again/re-) and freumhachadh (rooting). In the botanical sense, it is the delicate moment after a seedling is moved when it must decide to survive in new soil.

5. Tuath (Too-ah) Historically, the Tuath were the common people of a territory, bound by a shared fate. It represents a social ecology - a belief that the health of the community is tied to the health of the soil. To rejoin the Tuath is to step out of isolation and into a circle of mutual care.

6. Seanmhair (Shen-a-var) Literally “Old Mother.” This term honours the grandmother as the foundational matriarch. In the Gaelic domestic sphere, the Seanmhair was often the keeper of the hearth and the primary transmitter of the dualchas (heritage) to the children.

7. Seanchaidh (Shen-ach-ee) Much more than a “storyteller,” the Seanchaidh was a high-status cultural officer who memorised genealogies, laws, and history. They were the living archives of the tribe.

8. Bealltainn (Byal-ten) The ancient fire festival marking the transition from the dark half of the year to the light. It is a time of "thinness," where the barriers between seasons and worlds are lowered.

9. Aos Sìth (Ees-shee) “The People of the Mounds.” They are the remnants of the old gods and the spirits of the ancestors. They inhabit the “thin places” - misty glens, riverbanks at dawn, or the quiet corners of a garden. They are not “gone,” they are simply “other,” watching how we tend to the land they once walked.

10. Furan (Foo-ran) A specific type of welcome that is active and joyful. It is the warmth of a hearth after a long journey in the cold.