Where’s my home?

I travel in reverse: not to escape, but to always feel at home.

For me, travel works the other way round: I travel so I can feel at home. To know that wherever I decide to go, I will always find someone ready to welcome me.
I remember almost all of my “welcomers,” scattered across many corners of the world. I remember the military‑style hospitality in Smyrna; I remember Akbar, a young Iranian from Yazd with whom I spent an entire morning helping him prepare for an English exam in exchange for tea and stories of his city.

I remember Tung and Trang and their house on the outskirts of Hanoi, where for more than a month they treated me like the aunt from the West. I remember Don Luis, a Greek fisherman who, spotting me at eight in the morning on a rock in his “marine garden,” somehow guessed I was Italian and brought me a cup of coffee with biscuits. I remember Mounir in Shiraz, and the waxing at his home — and since it took forty minutes to get there and forty to return, at first I thought he wanted to kidnap and rob me!

 

And I remember how I felt in Israel and Palestine, thanks to the wonderful figure of T. M., who cared for me like a sister.
That’s it: when I am “at home” I often feel like a stranger, while when I travel I almost always feel at home. In the people I meet I rediscover fragments of myself — thoughts, habits, tastes, quirks.

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