Raisa Choudhury
Part 1: The Passport Window
There’s something quietly electric about the moment just before a journey begins, that tiny pulse of anticipation you feel as you zip up your suitcase for the last time and check your passport compulsively even though you know it’s there, waiting like a silent witness to whatever this new chapter holds, and that’s exactly how I felt at 3:47 a.m. in my cluttered Delhi apartment, staring at the cab’s taillights as I locked my door behind me with a rush of both fear and freedom, not yet knowing that this trip would be the most intimate conversation I’d ever have with the world beyond my own, because no one really prepares you for the way a city you’ve never been to can shift something inside you, how its sky can become a mirror, and how the first stamp on your passport is not just ink, but permission to lose and find yourself at the same time, and as I sat in the backseat watching the sleeping city blur by, neon signs still blinking like insomniac thoughts, I knew I had finally said yes to the version of myself that had waited patiently through office hours and calendar excuses, and when I reached the airport, the lines and luggage trolleys and quiet chaos felt less like hassle and more like a rite of passage, because airports have a strange democracy to them—everyone stripped to essentials, identities in hand, waiting to be allowed somewhere else, somewhere imagined, and when I finally settled into the boarding gate area with a cappuccino in one hand and a copy of Pico Iyer’s “The Art of Stillness” in the other, I felt like time had folded into a neat little packet, suspended until the boarding announcement would crack it open again, and then it did—soft chimes, polite chaos, wheels dragging across polished floors, and I walked into that tunnel-bridge that connects the airport to the aircraft and thought how it always feels like entering the ribcage of a dream, and once seated by the window, I watched the tarmac glisten under the runway lights and let my playlist drown out the safety announcements because I already knew how to fasten a seatbelt but not how to slow down my thoughts, and as the engines roared and the world tilted slightly to let us fly, I gripped the armrest with the casual panic of a nervous flyer who still believes every takeoff is a minor miracle, and then, quite suddenly, we were in the sky, above the city I had lived in but never seen like this, a scattered constellation of ambitions and regrets twinkling beneath clouds, and the sky turned that velvet blue that makes you believe anything is possible if you just keep moving, and I slept, not soundly, but enough to dream in fragments—old memories rewired with new landscapes, a street in Rome wearing the scent of my mother’s kitchen, a canal in Amsterdam echoing the laughter of someone I used to love, and when I woke, my neck stiff and my throat dry, we were descending over Istanbul, the Bosphorus like a ribbon of ink dividing continents and stories, and my heart thudded with the kind of disbelief that says I am really here, I have really left, and as the plane touched down, the whole aircraft tilted slightly and so did my reality, because landing is not just about geography, it’s about emotional coordinates too, and mine had shifted just enough to feel like the start of something permanent, even if temporary, and once off the plane, the new air hit me like a shy handshake—foreign, hesitant, inviting—and I moved with the slow urgency of someone trying not to look too touristy while fumbling with Google Translate, passport in hand, wondering if the customs officer could tell I was carrying more dreams than clothes, and he barely looked at me, just stamped my entry like he’d been doing it for lifetimes, and just like that, I was inside Turkey, standing at the edge of a city I had only read about in dog-eared books and Instagram captions, and outside the arrivals terminal, the sky had turned a soft marmalade shade of morning, and the air was cool but carried the scent of history—warm bread, distant sea, diesel fumes, and something else, something old, like forgotten conversations between civilizations, and as my cab sped past minarets and trams and uneven cobblestone streets, I realized that nothing prepares you for your first real arrival, when the map in your head finally overlaps with the street in front of you, and you’re not just imagining the call to prayer in the distance—you’re hearing it, you’re there, and it’s in that moment, somewhere between jet lag and awe, that travel stops being a checklist and becomes a practice, a way of listening to the world without interrupting it, and as I reached my hostel in Sultanahmet, a cozy blue-painted building with vines curling around the balcony and a wooden sign that said “Welcome, Traveller,” I smiled because I wasn’t a tourist anymore, I was a traveller, someone who came not to collect cities but to be changed by them, and I checked in, dropped my bags, and sat on the rooftop cafe overlooking the domes and seagulls and orange-tinged skyline, sipping my first Turkish tea, sweet and strong, and thought, this is it, the window has opened.
Part 2: The City with a Thousand Eyes
Istanbul is not a city you arrive in—it’s a city that arrives in you slowly, like the second sip of a bitter drink that begins to taste like memory, and as I stepped out of the hostel that morning with my scarf wrapped clumsily around my hair and a paper map folded in my back pocket just for romance even though Google Maps was already buzzing in my hand, I felt like the street was watching me, not with suspicion but with a quiet recognition, as if the cobblestones and pigeons and the old man selling roasted chestnuts had seen a thousand versions of me before and would welcome a thousand more, and I wandered without destination, because Istanbul does not reward plans, it rewards surrender, so I let my feet decide what mattered, weaving through backlanes where laundry lines connected one house to another like private telegrams of daily life, and at the first street corner I was offered simit, that sesame-studded ring of bread that tastes like the sunrise smells, warm and crusty and oddly reassuring, and I ate it while walking because that’s what the locals did, and sometimes travel is nothing more than learning how to belong to someone else’s morning, and I walked past spice shops where pyramids of paprika and saffron made the air heavy with color, and the vendors called out prices with theatrical rhythm, smiling only if you looked them in the eye, which I did, not to buy, but to feel visible, and then I reached the Blue Mosque, where silence lives between stone and sky, and I took off my shoes and covered my head and stepped inside, unsure if I believed in prayer but completely certain that this was sacred, because something about that ceiling—a dome holding not just architecture but centuries of human hope—made me feel like breathing slower, like speaking less, and as the call to prayer began again, its melody rippling through the mosque’s empty spaces and pouring out into the square beyond, I closed my eyes and let it wash over me, not understanding the words but absorbing their shape, and that’s when I realized that the city did not have a single face, it had a thousand, each one turning gently toward the sun, each one telling me to keep looking, and from there I wandered to the Grand Bazaar, a labyrinth pretending to be a marketplace, with corridors that feel like rivers and stalls that sparkle with more than they sell, and I wasn’t looking for souvenirs but I left with two things—a tiny evil eye trinket pressed into my palm by an old woman who told me in broken English that it would protect my journey, and the memory of a conversation with a rug seller who didn’t try to sell me a thing but asked me what my city smells like, and I didn’t know how to answer that, so I told him it smells like rain on concrete, like deadlines and wet jasmine, and he nodded and said “then you must miss it sometimes,” and I nodded back even though I didn’t know which city I missed anymore, because Istanbul was already becoming one of them, and when I stepped outside, the sunlight had turned softer, the kind that flatters everything it touches, and I walked toward Galata Bridge where fishermen lined the rails like notes on a stave, each one writing a melody in slow motion, and below them the water danced with ferry wakes and light, and I took the tram to Beyoğlu, where walls wore graffiti and cafes wore stories and I found myself inside a secondhand bookstore that smelled like sleep and summer, and I bought a slim volume of Turkish poetry even though I couldn’t read a word, just to own something that belonged here more than I did, and outside, I sat on the steps of a side alley drinking thick Turkish coffee from a tiny porcelain cup, letting the bitterness settle on my tongue like a secret, and I watched the people go by—lovers walking too close, old men arguing about football, teenage girls sharing earbuds and laughter, and it occurred to me that cities are made not of monuments but of these unrecorded gestures, the ordinary grace of a place being lived in, and the more I watched, the more I felt myself becoming smaller in the best possible way, like a single sentence in a story so vast I didn’t need to finish it to be moved by it, and the sun began to dip behind the rooftops and the sky burned orange and gold and silver all at once, and I took the long way back to my hostel, past antique shops and döner stalls and stray cats that stared at me like minor gods, and when I finally reached the rooftop, the same one where I had watched the morning yawn into light, I found it transformed again, now dimly lit by lanterns, with travelers from different continents sipping wine and laughing over shared mistranslations, and I joined them, a little nervous but mostly eager, and soon I was telling the story of how I once missed a flight in Mumbai and ended up at a stranger’s wedding instead, and everyone laughed the way only people in liminal spaces do—completely, generously, knowing that these stories are currency, and that tomorrow we’d all scatter in different directions, but tonight we’d belong to the same map, and later, much later, I stood alone by the railing, watching the city glitter like a sky turned inside out, and I thought about the poem in my bag, the one I couldn’t read, and how that didn’t matter, because some things—like cities, like first days, like unspeakable joy—don’t need to be translated, only felt.
Part 3: Between Tea Leaves and Tram Tracks
The next morning began not with an alarm clock but with the clatter of trams somewhere below my window, the sound weaving into my sleep like the city whispering come back, come back, and so I did—I got up with the grogginess of a late sleeper in a foreign time zone, pulled on yesterday’s scarf, and stepped outside before breakfast, hungry not just for food but for more of that quiet, living magic that Istanbul seems to pour over everything at dawn, and the streets were half-awake, vendors just beginning to roll up their shutters, cats stretching across the pavements like royalty, and the air had that soft clarity that only exists when a city hasn’t fully dressed itself yet, and I wandered with no particular agenda through streets that twisted like conversations, eventually finding myself at a narrow alley near Karaköy where a line had already formed outside a hole-in-the-wall bakery, and I joined it instinctively, trusting the wisdom of strangers, and what I got was warm gözleme folded like a letter you want to open slowly, filled with feta and herbs and the kind of comfort that travels straight from hand to heart, and I sat on the curb to eat it, legs stretched, eyes skyward, because some meals are better when they’re messy and shared with passing glances and a breeze that smells like sea and stories, and from there I walked to the ferry terminal because today, I had decided, was a day for water, not roads, and I bought a token with the clink of coins and entered a boat already humming with quiet chaos—backpacks, briefcases, babies, old men with sunflower seeds in one pocket and newspapers in the other, and I found a seat near the rail and let the sea wind slap my cheeks gently, like a grandmother waking you up with both love and impatience, and as the ferry pulled away from the dock, the city revealed its other face—the waterfront skyline, mosques and towers rising like punctuation marks in a poem too wide to memorize, and gulls chased the ferry with the entitlement of creatures who believe the city is theirs first, and I couldn’t disagree, and on the Asian side, I got off at Kadıköy, the part of Istanbul that feels more like a wink than a declaration, less touristy and more lived-in, a place where grocery stores and art studios coexist without ceremony, and I wandered into a street market bursting with figs, olives, and dried hibiscus, where the vendors spoke no English and I spoke no Turkish and yet we managed, laughing through hand gestures and raised eyebrows and the universal language of pointing at things until you get what you want, and I ended up with a bag of roasted hazelnuts, some sticky lokum, and a sense of having earned them somehow, and further ahead I stumbled into a tea house tucked behind a bookstore, the kind of place where time stops because no one bothers to check it, and I ordered apple tea and wrote postcards to people I missed—some who would never read them and some who would read between the lines, and around me sat old men playing backgammon with the focus of chess grandmasters, their games echoing through generations, and I listened to the clicking of dice and sipped my tea slowly, knowing this moment would stay with me longer than most photographs, and outside, the sky had turned a lazy shade of grey, clouds like unfinished thoughts dragging across rooftops, and I walked along the Moda waterfront where couples sat with their heads leaning on each other and teenagers skated across smooth pavement with music leaking from tiny speakers, and I realized that even when you’re alone in a city like this, you’re never really alone, because everything around you is in dialogue, the wind telling secrets to the trees, the boats nodding across the waves, the buildings sighing with old memories, and by late afternoon I was back on the ferry, crossing the Bosphorus again, back to Europe, and something about straddling two continents in one day felt so poetic I didn’t even try to describe it—I just watched, listened, felt, and when I got off at Eminönü, the day was leaning into dusk and the city began to light its candles, one lamp at a time, and I followed the trail to a tiny café near the New Mosque where I ordered lentil soup and flatbread and sat near the window watching the traffic move like an unbroken sentence, long and winding and mostly impatient, and next to me a little boy was practicing his English by naming the colors of passing cars and his father kept correcting him gently, and I thought of my own father, of how he used to point out planes in the sky and tell me where they were headed, always certain, always curious, and I missed him so fiercely I had to blink it away, and as the soup warmed me from the inside out, I promised myself I’d call him that night, tell him how the sea looked from two shores, how the gulls chased the ferries, how Istanbul tasted of tea and translation, and by the time I walked back to the hostel, the streets were gleaming with post-rain reflections, and the city had softened again, not quieter, just more intimate, like a song that switches to acoustic in the last verse, and I stood for a long time outside a closed antique shop staring at a compass in the window, thinking how even instruments of direction can get lost if you hold them too tightly, and when I finally climbed into bed, the sheets cool and smelling faintly of detergent and salt, I fell asleep with the ferry horn still echoing somewhere in my ears and the feeling that tomorrow would ask new questions I hadn’t yet learned to answer—and that maybe, just maybe, that was the point of travel after all.
Part 4: Maps in the Margin
Some cities tell you when to leave and some cities never let you, and Istanbul was the second kind, it lingered on my fingertips and in my scarf and in the way I now paused before sipping tea, as if every cup contained a horizon, and when I packed my bag that morning I did it slowly, deliberately, folding clothes like pages I wasn’t done reading, and I kept the postcard I had never mailed tucked inside my book, a secret between me and a city I didn’t want to reduce to memory just yet, and as I checked out of the hostel and handed the keys to the sleepy receptionist who barely looked up from his screen, I realized that endings are never symmetrical, they don’t announce themselves or ask for closure, they just slip between moments, like that last bite of breakfast that tastes like both satisfaction and regret, and I wheeled my suitcase along the cobbled street that had felt foreign once and now held the weight of my steps with quiet familiarity, and I took one final ferry ride, standing at the front of the boat, hair whipped into knots by the wind, watching the seagulls circle like punctuation marks around every goodbye I couldn’t say, and at the airport I stared at the departures board longer than necessary, not because I was confused but because I didn’t want to be certain, certainty felt too sharp for how full I felt, and when the gate opened and people rushed in like water through a broken dam, I stayed back a moment, inhaling the scent of perfume and jet fuel, of wanderlust and worn leather, and I promised Istanbul that I would return, not as a tourist, not even as a traveller, but as someone who knows where to go without checking signs, and then I boarded, pressed my head to the cool window, and let the sky carry me elsewhere, and elsewhere, this time, was Athens, a city I had read about only in footnotes and museum brochures, a city I expected to admire but not love, and I was wrong, because from the moment I landed, Athens felt like a cousin I hadn’t seen in years but still remembered the way I laughed, and even the drive from the airport—long, dusty, peppered with graffiti and traffic and sudden glimpses of ancient columns—felt like a whispered invitation to pay attention, and I did, every second, because this city demanded it, and when I arrived at my rented apartment near Plaka, a tiny room above a bakery, the scent of honey and cinnamon curling up through the shutters, I dropped my bag and walked out almost immediately, barefoot in sandals, camera forgotten, just following the scent and the hum of the street, and Athens at dusk was different from any city I’d known, it didn’t dazzle or seduce, it leaned in, conspiratorial, as if offering you a secret you hadn’t yet earned, and I walked past old women knitting outside doorways, their hands fast and eyes sharper, and past young boys kicking a worn-out football against a temple wall like it wasn’t history but background noise, and past street musicians playing tunes I couldn’t name but felt somehow written into my spine, and I climbed the path toward the Acropolis even though it was closed, just to get close enough to see it in moonlight, and when I did, standing there, neck craned, looking up at a ruin that refused to disappear, I felt a hush come over me, not the silence of absence but of presence, because the stones still hummed with something old and unnameable, and I sat down on the steps nearby and looked out over the city, its rooftops like puzzle pieces scattered in dusk, and I realized that history wasn’t behind glass here, it walked beside you, barefoot and unapologetic, and later, back at the apartment, I lay awake listening to the bakery below as it came to life for the next day, the clatter of trays, the rustle of brown paper, the occasional burst of laughter, and I smiled in the dark because even cities sleep in shifts, and mine was just beginning again, and the next morning I woke up to a knock on the door, and it was the bakery woman holding a small bag and a shy smile, saying “for you” in careful English, and inside was a piece of warm bougatsa, flaky and sweet, dusted with powdered sugar and care, and I ate it leaning against the windowsill, legs dangling, the city already rustling awake below me, and I felt lucky in the quietest sense of the word, the kind that doesn’t sparkle but settles deep and wide, and I spent the day walking—through Monastiraki’s bustling flea market where old coins and faded books jostled for attention, through the winding lanes of Anafiotika where whitewashed houses clung to the hillside like forgotten lyrics, through Syntagma Square where protest signs and shopping bags moved side by side without irony, and I watched a street artist paint faces onto cracked tiles, turning broken things into portraits, and I thought maybe that’s what travel is, not escape, but repair, not running away, but gathering the scattered parts of yourself and learning how they fit into different frames, and by evening I found myself on a rooftop again, this time with locals and laughter and a glass of retsina that tasted like nostalgia and adventure had made a pact, and as the Parthenon lit up slowly like a breath being held, I whispered thank you under my breath, not to anyone in particular but to the moment itself, and the wind caught it and carried it off like confetti, and I stayed there long after the others left, alone but not lonely, thinking how some cities introduce you to the world, and some cities introduce you to yourself.
Part 5: A Room in Rome
Rome doesn’t wait for you to arrive, it barrels into your senses like a brass band crashing through a quiet lane, and from the moment my train screeched into Termini station and I stepped onto the platform, suitcase dragging behind me like an afterthought, I was already behind schedule for a city that had been moving for over two thousand years, and the air hit me like heat wrapped in espresso, thick, fragrant, and unapologetically alive, and I had no idea how to get to my hotel but I didn’t care, because already I could see slivers of domes peeking between buildings, scooters darting like punctuation through cobbled sentences, and that familiar electric itch of not knowing where you are but being completely fine with it, and after two wrong turns and one wildly overpriced cab ride, I found my room tucked above a gelateria on a street that curved like a secret, the door painted green and peeling in the most cinematic way, and the woman at the desk spoke no English but pointed at my key, then at the stairs, and then gave me a look like, you’ll be fine, and I was, because when I opened the window of that tiny room, Rome poured in—not the tourist Rome of postcard perfection, but the background hum of domestic life, the clang of a pot two floors down, a dog barking at a delivery van, the low chant of a football game coming from somewhere I couldn’t place, and I stood there barefoot, jet-lagged, holding a lemon-scented glass of water and trying to memorize everything at once, because some places don’t give you time to adjust, they throw you in and dare you to find your rhythm, and I accepted, because Rome demands a kind of surrender I was ready to give, and I didn’t unpack, didn’t check my phone, I just went outside with nothing but a small notebook and my half-charged power bank and started walking, and within twenty minutes I had eaten the best carbonara of my life at a place with no signboard, had almost been hit by three Vespas, and stumbled into a tiny chapel where a single old woman prayed beneath a fresco that looked like it was painted with light instead of paint, and outside, the shadows lengthened like stretched stories, and I found myself at the edge of the Tiber, watching the water move like time—slow, certain, indifferent—and I thought of all the lives this river had witnessed, all the emperors and exiles and lovers and liars, and how it kept flowing anyway, and maybe that’s the secret to cities like Rome—they don’t care if you understand them, they just ask that you show up, eyes open, hands out, ready, and I walked until my feet ached, until the map in my head blurred into instinct, and then I bought a slice of pizza wrapped in wax paper and sat on the steps of some ruin, I didn’t even know the name, and just ate quietly, watching a couple argue in fast Italian, their hands doing half the talking, and an accordion player drifted by, playing the same sad tune on repeat, and for a second I felt a lump rise in my throat not from sadness but from fullness, because I didn’t want to be anywhere else, and that night, back in my room, I couldn’t sleep, not from noise but from the way my brain replayed everything like a slide projector—clay pots in shop windows, graffiti on marble walls, the way the barista called me “bella” without flirtation, just habit, like the city itself was built on small, generous gestures—and when I finally drifted off, I dreamed of fountains and fire escapes and a hand reaching out of a train window, and the next morning I woke up to church bells and a sky so blue it almost looked artificial, and I took my coffee standing up like the locals do, fast and with focus, and then I walked to the Vatican not for religion but for awe, and I found it, not just in the Sistine Chapel but in the way people from a dozen countries all looked up at the same ceiling, heads tilted, mouths slightly open, and for a moment we were all one body breathing the same astonishment, and later I bought a gelato the size of my face and sat in the Piazza Navona just watching the day unfold like a hand-painted fan—painters, pigeons, old men playing cards, lovers taking selfies, children chasing soap bubbles, and the light kept shifting on the buildings like it had somewhere to be, and I wrote a single sentence in my notebook: “Rome doesn’t remember you, but you’ll never forget her,” and I believed it, because this city doesn’t need your affection, it’s overflowing with its own, but if you meet it halfway, it offers you something strange and lasting, not comfort, but clarity, like looking in a mirror and seeing not your face but your future self staring back, sunburnt, tired, and somehow more yourself than ever before, and by the time I returned to my room, feet dirty, heart thudding with the weight of everything I’d seen and not photographed, I knew I couldn’t explain this to anyone, not really, because some cities are not stories you tell, they’re languages you begin to dream in, and Rome had already begun to rewrite my grammar.
Part 6: The Paris Between Postcards
I arrived in Paris on a train that hummed like a lullaby made of metal and speed, my window fogged by the condensation of an early autumn morning, the kind that makes the whole city look like it’s still stretching in its sleep, and when I stepped onto the platform at Gare de Lyon, the air wrapped around me like an old poem I’d half-forgotten but still knew by heart, and despite the cliché of it all—the croissant stands, the cigarette smoke, the clatter of hurried heels—I felt like I was stepping into something deeply private, as though Paris had agreed to meet me not as a spectacle, but as a secret, and I skipped the taxis and walked, dragging my bag down cracked pavements past boulangeries already exhaling butter into the street, past couples slow-dancing through conversation, past windows filled with books I couldn’t read and jackets I couldn’t afford, and every turn felt curated like a museum exhibit titled “This is What You Came For,” and my tiny rented attic was six flights up, no elevator, the key barely worked, and the view was of someone else’s rooftop, crooked and laced with ivy, but it felt like mine the moment I dropped my bag on the bed and opened the single window to let the city in, and it came softly—bells ringing far away, someone playing a violin near the Metro entrance, a cat walking along a windowsill like a punctuation mark—and I didn’t even sit down, I just left again, arms swinging with the kind of lightness you only carry on your first day in a city you’ve loved from a distance, and I walked to the Seine, not because I had planned to, but because Paris is a city that guides you not by direction but by intuition, and the river appeared like it knew I was coming, the bridges low and elegant, the water the color of old stories, and I leaned against the stone and watched the boats pass, each one a tiny stage of lives I’d never meet, and then I kept walking, through the Latin Quarter with its cafes named after philosophers, through Rue Mouffetard where the fruit stalls overflowed like summer hadn’t noticed the calendar, and I ate an apple so crisp it made a sound I wanted to remember forever, and by the time I reached Jardin du Luxembourg, the sun had turned the leaves gold and orange and impossible, and I sat on a green chair by the pond watching children sail toy boats with a seriousness usually reserved for diplomats, and I felt time shift inside me, like I’d been waiting for this slowness without knowing it, and the hours unfolded like silk, one soft square at a time, until I found myself in a side street with no name where a jazz trio played for no one in particular, just letting the music float like perfume, and I stayed there longer than I meant to, watching as people slowed their pace for once, letting the rhythm realign their mood, and then came the Eiffel Tower, because of course it did, but I didn’t go up, didn’t even take a photo, I just sat on the steps near Trocadéro, eating a warm crepe with lemon and sugar, watching the iron lattice glow against the soft blue of evening, and I realized the monument was less about grandeur and more about presence, about the comfort of a thing being exactly where it’s always been, and I whispered thank you to no one, just to the moment, and then walked back home under a sky so pale it looked bruised, and that night, I read the label on the jam jar in my kitchenette and didn’t understand a word, and I loved that—I loved not knowing, not needing to know, just letting the unknown live next to me without fear, and I fell asleep to the sound of rain brushing the rooftops like a lullaby written in French, and the next day I woke early and decided to walk without map or goal, just street after street, and somehow ended up at Shakespeare and Company, the bookstore that smells like wood and whispers, where every corner contains a ghost and every book has been touched by someone looking for the same kind of silence you are, and I bought a copy of Baldwin’s essays and tucked it into my coat like a secret, and later I sat by Canal Saint-Martin eating a baguette that cracked exactly the way it should, watching ducks and lovers and little boys on scooters weave between benches, and I wrote a sentence in my notebook that said “Paris doesn’t give you answers, it gives you better questions,” and I underlined it twice, and I stayed out until the light changed its language again and the cafés filled with people clinking glasses and trading glances, and I let the noise wrap around me like a scarf, not drowning me but insulating me from the sharp edge of aloneness, and I ordered onion soup at a place with no menu and no smile but the best broth I’ve ever tasted, and the waiter called me madame in a tone that made it sound like an inside joke, and I liked that too, and on my last night in the city, I stood on Pont Alexandre III watching the lamps reflect on the river like fireflies caught between two breaths, and I knew I didn’t want to leave, not yet, but the train ticket was already bought, the bag already half-packed, and I told Paris the only thing that felt true—I’ll carry you, not like luggage but like a rhythm, and wherever I go next, I’ll walk slower, look longer, and sip everything twice.
Part 7: Tangier in Sepia
There are cities that you plan, research, map out in folders and notes, and then there are cities like Tangier that you stumble into like a whisper you accidentally followed, a name you circled once in a magazine and forgot until it surfaced again like a memory, and that’s how I found myself stepping off a ferry from Tarifa with the wind tasting like salt and cinnamon and something ancient, the Moroccan coast rising in layers of whitewashed buildings and call to prayer, and my feet touched the ground with the same uncertainty as they had on my very first journey, but this time it felt like coming full circle rather than beginning again, and the air in Tangier had that strange softness cities carry when they’re not quite awake, and I dragged my bag uphill through narrow winding lanes that curved like questions, through archways too low for certainty, and past doors painted blue like the sea had left its fingerprints behind, and I reached my riad with my shirt sticking to my back and my mouth dry and smiling anyway, because the woman who opened the carved wooden door greeted me with eyes that said I see you even before I see your name, and inside the courtyard was cool and quiet, the kind of quiet that smells like lemon and old stone, and I sat on a floor cushion drinking mint tea so sweet it rewired my brain, and I listened to the fountains trickle like tiny secrets being told under breath, and I didn’t speak, didn’t need to, because Tangier didn’t ask for introductions, it just opened its palms and let you fall in, and that afternoon I wandered through the kasbah, past cats sunning themselves like royalty and boys chasing each other through alleyways where even the shadows seemed to hold memory, and I stopped at a bookshop that leaned sideways into a corner, its walls lined with English, French, and Arabic titles, and the owner wore a cardigan and spoke in riddles, offering me Paul Bowles and tea in the same breath, and we sat on low stools while he told me how the city had changed and not changed, how some writers came looking for exile and found themselves instead, and I thought about what I had come looking for, and realized maybe it wasn’t something to find but something to feel, a kind of loosening inside me, a small crack where light could get in, and as I walked back through the medina, the colors began to tilt with the sun—spices glowing like fire in ceramic bowls, scarves waving from balcony lines, lanterns flickering into life—and the air was thick with cooking, cumin and smoke and something sweet I couldn’t name, and I let it pull me forward until I found a stall selling msemen, that flaky, buttery flatbread folded like origami, and I ate it with honey dripping down my wrist, and I didn’t care, didn’t wipe it off immediately, because in Tangier even mess feels holy, and later I stood at the edge of the cliffs at Cap Spartel where the Atlantic and the Mediterranean touch like two old friends pretending they aren’t still in love, and I watched the water swirl beneath me, loud and endless, and I thought about all the crossings made here, not just ferries and tourists but people with stories stitched into the lining of their coats, and I wondered if the sea remembered them all, carried their names in its tide, and I whispered mine just in case, and that night I climbed to the rooftop terrace of the riad and lay flat on a woven mat watching the sky bleed stars, the city humming below in a language that made me ache in the best way, and someone was playing a flute far away and it drifted up like incense, and I didn’t move, didn’t speak, just let it all wrap around me like a soft scarf, and when I finally slept, I dreamed not in images but in textures—brushed stone, hot sand, cool tile, heavy wool—and in the morning I woke to birds and bread and the smell of coffee, and I took my breakfast in silence, dipping pieces of khobz into olive oil, tasting each bite like it might be the last, and then I went walking again, this time toward the beach, where men in long robes watched the waves like they were listening for instructions, and I walked with my shoes in my hand, toes in the sand, letting the ocean edge kiss my ankles, and I wrote my name in the wet sand and watched it disappear because that felt right, and later I sat at Café Hafa, the legendary one clinging to the cliffside, sipping sweet mint tea from a chipped glass and watching Europe across the water like a place I had once known but couldn’t remember fully, and next to me two teenagers were sketching quietly, and an old man played chess with himself, and the air smelled of smoke and sea and memory, and the table was uneven but I didn’t mind, because I had learned by now that balance isn’t always the goal—sometimes it’s enough to sit still while the world tilts around you and know that you won’t fall, and when the light began to change again, that golden softening hour that Tangier wears so well, I walked back through the streets where the lanterns glowed like fireflies caught in jars, and I felt full, not in the way food fills you, but in the way a song you didn’t know you loved suddenly makes sense, and I didn’t take many photos, not because I didn’t want to remember, but because I already knew I would, not in pixels but in the weight of the air, the way the tea tasted, the sound of the muezzin’s voice rising like a thread being pulled through the sky, and I thought maybe this was what I had been searching for all along—not adventure, not escape, but presence, real and rusted and beautiful.
Part 8: The Silence in Kyoto
I landed in Kyoto on a Wednesday that felt like it had been folded in half, the kind of day that moves in slow whispers, clouded over in grey but somehow still humming with light, and from the moment I stepped out of the train station, all gleaming glass and soft announcements, I knew this city would ask me to listen differently, not with my ears but with something deeper, like bone or breath, because Kyoto doesn’t shout or perform, it reveals, quietly, steadily, in layers so delicate you almost miss them if you blink too long, and my guesthouse was tucked in a narrow lane framed by wooden slats and red paper lanterns, the kind of place that feels more like a memory than a hotel, and the owner bowed as she handed me my key and said “please rest here,” and I did, not because I was tired but because something about the tatami mats and warm lighting made me feel like I’d been walking toward this stillness for years, and I sat in the small window nook sipping barley tea, watching the maple leaves shift in the breeze like they were thinking of falling but hadn’t decided yet, and the silence was so soft it felt like velvet, not empty but rich, textured with unseen stories, and I spent the afternoon wandering through Gion, where geisha ghosts might still walk and the streets are lined with teahouses that carry centuries in their walls, and I watched an old man sweep the same doorway with the kind of care usually reserved for prayer, and I understood that here, beauty wasn’t performance, it was attention, and everything was an offering, the way the matcha was whisked, the way the curtains swayed at the entrance, the way shoes were placed side by side like old friends, and at dusk I crossed the Kamo River, its banks wide and quiet, couples sitting an exact distance apart as if following an invisible social choreography, and I sat too, alone but not lonely, and let the city breathe around me, and the lanterns began to glow, one by one, like small kindnesses lighting the path home, and that night I ate at a tiny izakaya with no menu, just the chef behind the counter deciding what you needed without asking, and I was served warm tofu in dashi broth, grilled eggplant brushed with miso, a piece of fish that flaked with the weight of a chopstick, and I ate slowly, not out of politeness but because each bite asked for it, and the woman next to me nodded once and said “you are quiet,” and I nodded back because she was right, and sometimes silence is the most honest language we speak, and I walked back in the rain, soft and rhythmic, no umbrellas, just the sound of it kissing stone and wood, and I let it soak my jacket and my thoughts until everything felt rinsed clean, and I slept with the window open and the scent of the earth rising from the garden below, and in the morning I woke to birds and bamboo and the distant sound of temple bells, and I visited Fushimi Inari before the crowds came, climbing slowly through the tunnel of orange torii gates, each one a breath, a step, a prayer, and I didn’t count them, didn’t rush, just followed the curve of the path as it wound through trees and mist and my own heartbeat, and halfway up I stopped to drink from a moss-covered fountain, the water cold and startling, and I laughed aloud because it tasted like the color green, and when I reached a clearing where the city could be seen below, blurred and soft in the morning light, I felt something loosen in me, like a knot that had been there for years finally undone without a sound, and I sat on a low stone wall eating an onigiri I had bought from a vending machine, grateful in a way that had nothing to do with food, and I walked down differently, slower, aware of every footstep, every bird call, every pine needle on the path, and later I visited a temple where monks chanted in deep, endless rhythms that felt like the earth itself remembering how to speak, and I sat cross-legged with my eyes closed, not meditating exactly, just being, and time passed like water, and afterward I wandered into a garden where koi fish swam in looping spirals and everything smelled of rain and gravel, and I watched a child drop petals into the pond and wait for the fish to kiss them, and I realized again that patience here was not a virtue, it was a rhythm, a way of life, and that night I wrote a single sentence in my notebook—“I am learning how to be empty and full at the same time”—and I didn’t write anything else because it felt complete, and I ended the day in a tiny bookstore café run by a woman who brewed coffee like it was a ceremony, her movements exact and fluid, and I sat near a stack of Japanese novels I couldn’t read and listened to the jazz playing low on the speakers, and I looked around at the quiet faces bent over pages and notebooks and cups, and I felt held by something invisible but steady, and I knew then that Kyoto wasn’t a destination, it was a mirror, one that didn’t show you who you are, but who you could be if you learned how to slow down, how to pay attention, how to listen without needing to reply.
Part 9: Brooklyn, Backwards
New York didn’t enter like the other cities did, it barged in, full volume and unapologetic, a brass-band heartbeat wrapped in concrete, and as the plane descended over the city’s unblinking grid, the sky turning that diluted shade of silver that belongs only to cities too big to fit into one weather, I didn’t feel ready, I felt wide-eyed, buzzed, slightly jet-lagged and somehow already running even before my boots touched the arrivals terminal, and the cab ride into Brooklyn was less a drive and more an initiation, the skyline flickering into view and out again like a stubborn memory, fire escapes stacked like metal poetry, murals bleeding into storefronts, and the driver humming a song I didn’t recognize but wanted to, and my apartment was on the third floor of a brownstone with a crooked stoop and a landlady named Marlene who gave me a spare key and a bagel in the same breath and told me the laundromat closes early on Sundays but the bodega never sleeps, and I stood in the tiny kitchen looking out at the opposite fire escape and wondered how long it would take for this to stop feeling like a film set, and I walked down Smith Street that afternoon just to feel the rhythm, the rush, the way strangers don’t look at you but see you anyway, how every coffee shop has a person in headphones trying to write the next great novel and someone else crying quietly into their cappuccino, and I liked that, I liked how the city didn’t try to edit itself for me, didn’t ask me to love it, didn’t care if I left or stayed, and that freedom felt bigger than any skyline, and I spent my first evening at the Brooklyn Heights Promenade watching the sun set behind the Manhattan bridges, the water below sharp and alive, the whole city exhaling in gold and then blue, and next to me an old woman fed pigeons while wearing rhinestone sunglasses and told me she’d lived in the neighborhood since before most of the buildings were born, and I listened because people like her carry maps you can’t buy, and when I walked home the subway roared beneath me like an underground river carrying every kind of story, and the streets buzzed with kitchen heat and ambulance sirens and distant laughter from rooftop bars, and I felt small but not invisible, just another pulse in the city’s wild, messy heartbeat, and the next morning I wandered into Prospect Park where a saxophonist played beneath an elm tree and joggers ran past like metronomes and the grass held a picnic’s worth of quiet joy, and I lay back and stared up at the sky because sometimes you have to stop chasing and just let a city come to you, and I stayed there for hours, letting the day stretch and yawn and shift, letting myself belong without trying, and later I went to a museum where Basquiat’s brushstrokes looked like they’d been carved out of bone, and I stood too long in front of a painting that made my chest hurt without knowing why, and I bought a button in the gift shop that said “stay curious,” and pinned it to my jacket without irony, because New York dares you to be sentimental even as it keeps moving past you, and I took the F train downtown, watching the stops light up like Morse code, listening to a kid beatbox so good the whole car forgot to pretend they weren’t listening, and I got off at Delancey without knowing why and walked until I smelled garlic and cumin and oil and ended up in a narrow diner where the menus were laminated and the waitress called me honey without looking up, and the food came fast and hot and exactly right, and I stayed until the booths emptied and the cook wiped the counter twice and the register beeped goodnight, and I walked home through streets that glowed faint and soft like they’d tired themselves out, and in the apartment I sat by the window watching someone’s laundry dance on a rooftop line and I thought how even here, with all the noise and speed and overwhelm, there were still pauses, still corners where you could exhale, and I wrote a single sentence in my notebook that said “some cities hold you at arm’s length but still let you lean,” and I underlined it twice, and in the days that followed I stopped checking maps and started reading coffee cups instead, following chalkboard signs into basements and strangers’ recommendations into alleys, letting the city be my compass, and one afternoon I found myself on a bench in Red Hook eating a lobster roll I hadn’t meant to buy, watching a kid learn to ride a bike, his mother cheering in Spanish as he wobbled and steadied and wobbled again, and I clapped too without thinking, and the boy looked at me like I’d always been there, and maybe in that moment I had, and that night I went to a rooftop film screening where someone handed me a blanket and no one asked for anything in return, and I watched a French film without subtitles, not understanding the words but feeling every pause, every glance, every unspoken goodbye, and when I walked back, the moon hung low and full like it was eavesdropping on the city’s dreams, and I felt the first tug of the end, the quiet reminder that travel always turns into departure, that every suitcase gets repacked, every window closed, and I wasn’t ready, not yet, but I also knew that maybe this wasn’t the kind of story you finish, just the kind you carry forward, folded into the rhythm of your steps, ready to be reopened when you need it most.
Part 10: The Window That Stayed Open
I didn’t notice it at first, the way home had changed while I was away, or maybe it was just me, carrying a different rhythm in my bones, something slower and deeper and more porous, as if all the streets I had walked had made small impressions on the soles of my feet, and now even my own neighborhood felt like a new city dressed in the same clothes, the trees on my street casting familiar shadows but the light between them somehow softer, slower, like it had learned patience from a Kyoto morning or the hush of mint tea cooling in Tangier, and when I unlocked the door to my apartment, the air inside smelled of dust and stillness, as if the rooms had been waiting politely, and I dropped my bag at the door and stood there, not out of fatigue but out of instinct, letting the space introduce itself back to me, the walls holding echoes I’d forgotten, the books on the shelf exactly where I’d left them but now wearing titles I wanted to read again with new eyes, and I boiled water for coffee without needing to look where anything was, but even that muscle memory felt foreign now, as though the act of returning was itself a kind of translation, and I stood at the window sipping from the same chipped mug I’d always used, but this time I was looking out, not just through it, and the view hadn’t changed—same neighbor’s laundry line, same pigeon-stained sill, same tangled wires—but it pulsed with presence now, alive with the soft certainty that even stillness can carry motion if you know how to look, and the days after returning passed like watercolor, edges bleeding into each other, sleep tangled by jet lag and dreams that smelled of rain and cumin and sea wind, and I didn’t rush to tell anyone the stories, not because I didn’t want to share, but because some stories aren’t meant to be told in summary, they need pauses, textures, breath between sentences, and sometimes I would sit with a friend and begin a sentence with “When I was in Istanbul…” and then just trail off, smiling, not because I forgot, but because the feeling didn’t always fit into words, and I took long walks around my city, the same paths I used to walk out of habit now became new, infused with the quiet ghosts of other cities—Rome whispering from the edge of a crumbling wall, Paris tilting her chin in a bookstore window, Athens humming from the cracks in the sidewalk—and it struck me that I hadn’t really come back to the same place at all, I’d arrived at a version of home shaped slightly differently by distance, and I started noticing things I hadn’t before, the way the barista near the metro called everyone “boss” with affection, the way the train platform always had one person reading Murakami, the way the park bench caught the afternoon light just right at 4:17 pm, and I began to write—not about the places themselves, but about the space they had made inside me, the small shifts in how I paid attention, how I listened, how I let silence be a part of conversation, and I remembered something I’d scribbled on a napkin in Brooklyn, a sentence I’d almost lost, “The world doesn’t wait to be understood, it just waits to be met,” and I pinned it above my desk where I could see it each morning, and slowly I found that I didn’t need to chase another flight or mark a new pin on a map to keep traveling, I just had to stay open, because the same sense of wonder that wrapped around me in the laneways of Gion or the ferry decks of Istanbul or the subway cars of New York was still here, in the way an old woman watered her plants with the same care each morning, or the way my neighbor played the same sad flute tune every Thursday night, or the way the rain returned on a Friday and made everything smell like the first day of somewhere else, and I realized the journey hadn’t ended, it had just changed direction, inward now, not smaller but closer, and I kept writing, not to document but to remain aware, to remind myself that even familiar streets have stories if you look up from your phone, if you smile at the stranger next to you on the bus, if you ask the man at the corner stall where his chai recipe comes from and then really listen to the answer, and I began cooking dishes I remembered tasting in foreign kitchens, not to recreate them perfectly, but to recall them imperfectly, to stir memory into the lentils and trace longing in the smell of sautéed garlic, and I lit candles not for mood but for memory, because some places deserve altars even if they’re made of scent and sound instead of marble and gold, and on one quiet evening I printed out one photo from each city—not the ones where I posed, but the ones where I looked through windows, or leaned against walls, or watched shadows stretch—and I hung them in a crooked line above my bed, a small reminder that I had once stood there, breathed there, existed fully there, and now that part of the world lived here too, inside the four walls that once felt too known, too narrow, and now felt infinite in their remembering, and I knew that I would travel again, not to escape but to expand, not to collect but to dissolve, not to find myself but to scatter pieces of myself across rivers and rooftops and rain-slick cobblestones, and I would carry this practice of noticing, of slowing, of tasting with both tongue and heart, because once you’ve learned how to truly arrive in a place, you start arriving in your own life with the same attention, and maybe that’s the final destination, not a city, not a country, but a state of being—awake, willing, and quietly transformed.
