I love traveling. It makes me feel that I am still alive, still becoming. Somewhere between who I once was and all that life has gently taught me, I learned to stop asking myself to arrive, and instead, to just keep growing.
I think I have always carried a restlessness within me, a soft pull toward roads that didn’t ask for permission. Even as a child, I wandered in small, unnoticed ways. Not to escape, but to feel something I couldn’t yet name. The world felt wide, and I felt drawn to its corners, the ordinary, the in-between, the slightly unknown. I did not call it courage then. Perhaps it was just curiosity, or a trust in my own steps.
And somewhere along those small wanderings, life left me with moments, some tender, some trembling that stayed.
Some days, childhood returns without warning. I see myself buying a butter bun before school, stopping by the bakery near the gate. The paper was warm in my hands. The bread softer than it looked. My heart light in a way I did not yet know how to name. It was an ordinary joy. It was enough.
I remember sitting between two railway lines, trains rushing past on both sides, the air heavy with fear. I was frozen, breath caught somewhere between sound and silence. I don’t remember how long I sat there. Only that at some point, the noise stopped. Or maybe I stopped hearing it. When I opened my eyes, I ran. As fast as I could. I ran home …
All that time, one thought held me captive: what if the people from the train take me away, and I can never come back home?
Even now, it returns, not as memory, but as feeling. The fear of losing home. The fear of being unmoored. Of not belonging anywhere long enough to rest …
Perhaps that is where my love for travel began. Not as escape, but as a practice of return. From city to city. From prayer to prayer. Carrying my past without announcing it, letting new landscapes make space for old feelings.
I often think of Mahmoud Darwish’s words: “I don’t have enough time to tie my end to my beginning.” Maybe that is why I keep moving. Not to outrun where I come from, but to walk beside it. Trusting that some things do not need to be resolved to be lived with. One day, the tying will happen. Until then, I move forward, gently.
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Roksana Tales 