u/hamidsahab

Most of us left Pakistan with a very specific picture in our heads.

The street you grew up on. The smell of rain on hot concrete. The chai at the same dhaba every morning. Neighbors who knew your name. A pace of life that was chaotic but somehow familiar and comforting.

That Pakistan felt like home. This one — the one on the news, the one relatives describe, the one you see on your visits — sometimes feels like a different country wearing the same name.

So the honest question is — are you returning to a real place, or to a memory?

And even if you made peace with the fact that Pakistan has changed — there's another fear nobody really talks about openly.

Are you afraid of integrating back?

Not the paperwork, not the logistics. The social reintegration. Walking into a room full of relatives and feeling like a guest in your own family. Your cousins have inside jokes you don't get. Your siblings have friendships, routines and a whole life you were never part of. You laugh a little too loud, dress slightly differently, have opinions that make the room go quiet.

You're family — but you're also somehow the expat cousin.

And it goes both ways. Does your family back home still treat you as one of their own — or has the distance quietly changed that too? Are you the one they're proud of, or the one who left? Sometimes both at the same time.

Some returnees say it took them a full year to stop feeling like a foreigner in their own country. Others say they never fully shook that feeling and came back abroad.

Has anyone here actually gone through this? Did you ever feel truly home again — or is home now somewhere in between?

Nobody talks about this one openly. But I think it quietly lives in the back of every overseas Pakistani's mind.

You moved abroad for opportunity, for a better life, for your kids' future. And it made sense at the time. But somewhere along the way your parents got older. The video calls started showing more grey hair, slower movement, a tiredness in their eyes that wasn't there before.

And you're still here. Thousands of miles away.

For a lot of us the deal was always "I'll go back when the time is right." But the time never feels right. There's always one more year of saving, one more school year to finish, one more promotion to wait for. And meanwhile they're getting older every single day without you there.

Some of us fly back as often as we can afford to. Some send money and tell ourselves that counts. Some have moved parents over abroad which solves the distance but creates its own complicated guilt — uprooting a 70 year old from everything they know. Some have siblings back home and quietly rely on them carrying the load, which creates a whole different kind of guilt.

And some of us have already lost a parent while being abroad — and carry that weight in a way that never fully goes away.

There's no clean answer to this one. But I think pretending it doesn't hurt is worse than talking about it.

How do you handle it? Have you found anything that actually helps — or is this just the price we pay for the life we chose?

This is something I think about a lot.

Our kids are growing up abroad. Urdu is not their first language. Their friends are from everywhere. Pakistan to them is mostly Eid, one visit per year, and maybe a WhatsApp call with relatives they barely know.

So how do we keep that connection alive — genuinely alive, not just surface level?

Some families I know speak only Urdu at home. Others send their kids to Pakistan every single summer no matter what. Some tell stories, show old photos, cook Pakistani food together. Some have given up trying and quietly accepted that their kids are just — from here now.

There's no right answer. But I'm curious what this community does.

• Do your kids identify as Pakistani, or is it complicated?
• Do they want to visit or is it a chore for them?
• Has anything actually worked to make them feel connected?
• Or are you just hoping it clicks when they're older?

Would love to hear real experiences — especially from those who have kids who genuinely love Pakistan despite growing up abroad. How did that happen?

So this poll was specifically for two groups — those who have been abroad 10+ years, or those who have kids. The people for whom the decision is the hardest and most real.

119 of you voted. Here's what stood out to me.

40% said "no, this is home now." That's a firm, settled answer. No hesitation, no "maybe someday." For these people the chapter is closed and honestly — there's nothing wrong with that. Life moves forward.

But here's what I find genuinely interesting — the remaining 60% haven't fully closed that door.

13% are already planning with a timeline. 15% want to return but haven't figured out when. 13% are waiting for the right moment — kids' age, finances, the stars to align. And 18% said unlikely but never say never — which in Pakistani parent language probably means "ask me again in 5 years."

So if you add it all up — 41% are either returning or seriously considering it. That's not a small number. That's almost half of a group that has been abroad 10+ years or has kids — the two biggest anchors keeping people away.

The door isn't as closed as the "forever goodbye" poll suggested a few weeks ago.

Maybe the idea of homecoming is more alive than we think.

What's keeping you in your category — whatever you voted? Drop it below.

View Poll

The poll is closed and the numbers are in. I thought this would be a simple yes/no situation but turns out — it's not.

The biggest group, 42%, said money solves most problems in Pakistan. And honestly? Hard to argue with that. Good neighborhood, private school, car with a driver, backup generator, solar panel - a lot of the daily frustrations of living in Pakistan become very manageable when you're not counting every rupee.

But here's what caught my attention — a combined 36% said money either doesn't fully fix things or wouldn't change their decision at all. That's more than I expected.

The 25% who said "there are deeper issues money can't fix" — I'd love to know what they mean. Rule of law? Political instability? Air quality? Social environment for their kids? Because those are real concerns that a good house in DHA doesn't solve.

And then there's the quiet 12% who said they wouldn't return regardless of money. That's a firm door closed. For them Pakistan isn't a money problem — it's a decision already made.

So what does this actually tell us?

Pakistan is genuinely a good life if you have financial security — but roughly one in three of us believes there's something broken that money alone can't fix.

What's your "deeper issue" that money can't solve?

I've been noticing a pattern among Pakistani families I know personally who have actually made the move back. Most of them had kids in primary or middle school — roughly under 10-12 years old. And when I asked them why they chose that specific time, the answer was almost always one of these reasons:

• Kids were going through an identity crisis
• They wanted kids to grow up knowing their roots, language and culture
• Pakistani private schools are actually excellent and surprisingly affordable
• The cost of raising kids in Pakistan vs UK/USA/Canada is drastically lower
• "Now is the perfect time — before they get too settled abroad"

The ones who didn't move back? Either they had spent less than 10 years abroad and felt it was too soon, or their kids were already in secondary school or older. Not because they didn't want to return — but because uprooting a 15 year old from their friends, school and life felt too disruptive to justify.

So it made me wonder — is there actually a window? A specific age where returning makes the most sense for families?

Has anyone else noticed this pattern — or been through this decision themselves?

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Yesterday, one of us asked in this community, Is Pakistan the retirement plan or the forever goodby? One of the member suggested to ask the same question as poll and then analyze the results. So here's the question transformed as poll.

Retirement plan means, you will eithet come back in old age or come back without the kids.

Homecoming means, you will come back with family with enough energy to start something here, not just to retire.

Forever goodbye means never coming back permanently

View Poll

Two days ago, we conducted a poll survey where we asked, How long have you been living outside Pakistan?

From the poll results (115 total votes):

Duration	Votes	%
Less than 2 years	15	13%
2–5 years	16	13.9%
5–10 years	23	20%
10–20 years	27	23.5%
20+ years	34	29.6%

Nearly 53% of you have been abroad for 10+ years — this is a deeply rooted diaspora, not recent expats. You've built lives, careers, and families abroad.

So the real question is — what's the end goal?

Do you plan on staying there forever, or is moving back to Pakistan always somewhere in the back of your mind — maybe in the later years of life?

View Poll