Feel at home in a new house

One of our friends back home in Montreal lived the expat life for several years: first in remote northern Guinea, where her husband worked on a bauxite project, and then in Warsaw, where he managed the construction of apartment buildings in the Polish capital during the post-communist building boom. When Karen found out that my family was planning our own adventure living in the UAE, her first piece of advice - after being satisfied that we were indeed serious about the move - was to insist that we take our home furnishings with us. "You'll appreciate coming back to your apartment after work or vacation, or when things are really rough," she said. "It'll feel like home." And indeed, our three-bedroom flat in Abu Dhabi does feel like home. Just about everything in the apartment came with us: from beds to bookcases, artwork to tchotchkes. The only items my wife, Denise, and I bought here were of necessity. Because I came seven months before they did, I needed a bed to sleep on, a table to eat off and an easy chair to relax in after work. These were all bought new and inexpensively at Ikea; kitchen appliances were bought new at Lulu; cookery items and utensils I bought here and there, in the Mina Zayed outdoor souq, Nefertiti's used-goods store, Home Centre. As much as we would have liked to have brought all our household possessions with us, there was too much to fit into the apartment. We sold some items, including many books and music, in a yard sale. We gave other things away, such as our television sets, love seat and chair, and our elliptical trainer, to friends. We kept very few items in storage, nor did it make sense to leave them in the house we were planning to rent; mostly this was out of necessity: to have non-resident status for tax purposes, we needed to make clear to the Canadian government we had no significant ties back home. I assumed that to mean, besides family members, healthcare card and a driver's licence, no hammocks.We also left behind a few pieces of original artwork that we thought might not make it through customs inspections. We had been warned that nudes were frowned on and could be confiscated. As it turned out, our boxes were never inspected. We could have brought the paintings with us, though we knew it was best to be safe than sorry. Two of the pieces were hugely sentimental and worth a decent amount of money because they were the original art for the covers of Denise's short story collections. We stored one and a friend has hung the other. Our friend Karen, as it turned out, was absolutely right. Our flat feels like home in a city and country that in many ways isn't and won't or can't ever be. In the living room behind an Ikea lounge chair, we placed an easel upon which rests an original painting by John Pohl, a Montreal painter with a colourful palette and unique sense of humour. The title of the painting is Still Life with Manifesto. When it hung in our house back in Montreal, it was in a hallway near the kitchen and at the foot of the stairs from the second floor. It wasn't the first thing I saw every morning, but pretty close. Now, it's the first thing I see upon return from work each night. It's the same painting, seen at a different time of the day, but it speaks "home" every time I see it.