The Soft Thud of a Folded Home: The Moment I Walked Away, Leaving Myself Behind

By Malak Radwan

The act of unmaking a home is a violence done to the soul. Last week, I performed this violence upon myself. I took apart my furniture, piece by piece, each unscrewed bolt and disjoined plank, feeling like a dissolution of my own skeleton. I folded my life into neat, manageable squares of cloth, a pathetic geometry of reduction. With every drop of sweat and every short, ragged breath, I trembled—not from exertion, but from the sheer enormity of the subtraction. The…