Perhaps home is not a place but simply an irrevocable condition.

The line reframes “home” as something internal and inescapable rather than a stable geographic refuge. Read this way, Baldwin suggests that what one carries—memory, history, identity, and the marks left by family and nation—can be more binding than any address. “Irrevocable condition” implies permanence: home is not easily chosen, revised, or escaped, especially for those shaped by exile, racialized belonging, or estrangement from the places that claim them. The quote also hints at ambivalence: if home is a condition, it can be both sustaining (a source of self-knowledge) and burdensome (a fate one cannot undo).