Home is not land and borders. It's about people you love.

The words of Sarah Hegazi—“Home is not land and borders. It’s about people you love”—rise like a cry from the depths of exile and echo through the ages as a reminder of what truly anchors the human spirit. In these few, luminous words, she reveals a truth older than any nation and deeper than any law: that home is not a place drawn on a map, nor the soil beneath one’s feet—it is the presence of love, the bond of belonging, the warmth of hearts that recognize one another even in foreign lands. Her voice, tender yet fierce, speaks for all who have been displaced, all who have wandered far from their birthplace and yet found themselves again in the eyes of those who love them.

Born in Egypt, Sarah Hegazi knew the pain of being cast out from her homeland. Her courage to live and love openly came at the cost of persecution, imprisonment, and exile. When she said that home is not land and borders, she was not speaking from comfort but from loss. Yet even in exile, she discovered a truth that empires have always sought to deny—that the heart is larger than any nation, and that the spirit of home can dwell wherever compassion and kindness take root. She found that love can build what geography destroys, and that belonging can survive even the severing of one’s homeland.

Her words recall the ancient stories of those who, too, wandered yet found belonging beyond the boundaries of state or soil. Remember Moses, who led his people through deserts for forty years, not to reach a mere patch of earth, but to find unity in shared faith and purpose. The true “promised land” was not sand or stone—it was the fellowship of those who stood together beneath the same stars, trusting one another when the world offered no shelter. Likewise, Odysseus, though bound to Ithaca, found fragments of home in every heart that offered kindness along his perilous journey. For the wise of every age have known: home is where love is kept, and where one’s soul is known.

To say that home is about people, not place, is to understand the deepest law of humanity: that the human spirit is not sustained by soil, but by connection. Nations may rise and fall, languages may change, flags may burn, yet love endures. It is the invisible homeland of the heart, immune to the divisions of politics and pride. For one may live in a palace and still be a stranger, or dwell in exile and still feel at home. What makes a place sacred is not its geography, but its grace—the way hearts meet and hold one another through joy and pain.

In Sarah Hegazi’s life, this truth burned brightly. When she was forced to flee, she found refuge in the compassion of strangers—friends who became family, a new homeland built from empathy. Though far from Egypt, her spirit found belonging in love that crossed oceans and walls. And yet, the longing for home never left her. It was both her comfort and her wound. Her quote is thus both a declaration and a lament: a testament to how love can build a home even amidst the ruins of exile, and a reminder of the cost of a world that forgets its duty to compassion.

Throughout history, many have carried this same revelation. When Anne Frank, hiding in the shadows of fear, wrote in her diary, she did not write of Amsterdam’s streets or borders; she wrote of love, of hope, of the faith that human goodness could still exist. Even in the smallest attic, surrounded by despair, she found moments of belonging with her family—proof that home is not defined by safety or freedom, but by the love we hold through both. Her words and Sarah Hegazi’s are bound by the same truth: that to love is to resist displacement, to claim a kind of immortality that no exile can erase.

And so, the lesson is clear: do not seek home in the soil beneath your feet, but in the hearts beside you. Love the people who cross your path, for they are the true landmarks of your existence. Protect those who wander, for they, too, are seeking home. Build no walls between one another, for every border built by man is a wound upon the human soul. Remember that belonging cannot be granted by governments, only by grace.

If you must go into the world, go not in search of land, but of love. When you find it—in friendship, in kindness, in shared laughter—hold it fast, for that is your true dwelling place. And when you welcome another with love, you become their home as well. This is what Sarah Hegazi knew, and what the ancients would have blessed: that home is not a place you are born into, but a light you carry within you, and kindle in others wherever you go.