I love travelling. Not in a restless way. More because movement reminds me that I am still alive, still becoming. Somewhere between who I was and what life has slowly taught me, I learned to stop asking myself to arrive.
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?
That fear was too big for a child. And somehow, it stayed …
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 quiet 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 