Some roots don’t grow back—
but they can still hold you in place.
He moved for all the right reasons. A better job. A cleaner city. A future with more possibilities. The kind of place people write about in essays and brochures—where things worked, and people did too.
But some nights, it was the silence that hurt.
Not the kind outside. The kind inside.
Here, silence was efficiency. Smooth, sterile, well-lit silence. The kind that didn’t interrupt, didn’t touch you unless you reached first. It made space for everything except memory.
Back home, everything had a sound. The rattle of scooters weaving through narrow streets. The metallic clink of spoons stirring tea in mismatched glasses. Conversations that never ended—just paused for breath. Arguments and affection delivered in the same rhythm.
Here, people kept their distance—politely, respectfully, always. Even their joy felt translated.
On harder days, he cooked.
Not for hunger, but to summon something. Garlic crushed beneath the flat of a knife. Lentils soaked until soft. Spices toasted until the kitchen filled with a heat that had nothing to do with temperature.
It wasn’t nostalgia. It was survival.
Memory as sustenance.
Flavor as anchor.
In a quiet corner shop, tucked between a florist and a post office, he found jars that looked like home. The labels were in his mother tongue, printed in ink that had faded from the sun. The shopkeeper barely spoke, but nodded with a kind of recognition—You’re one of us, even if you’re far.
He went often. Sometimes to buy, sometimes just to look. To be reminded.
He didn’t regret leaving.
But he hadn’t known that distance could hollow you out—not all at once, but in quiet ways. How identity unravels not in storms, but in drizzle. Soft, persistent, barely noticeable until you’re soaked through.
What do you lose when no one around you remembers the same sky?
What part of your language dies when it’s only spoken inside your own head?
He didn’t have the answers.
But he had rituals.
He had the way he cut onions—how his mother taught him, fingers curled.
He had a lullaby he never sang out loud, but always remembered.
He had the scent of cumin rising in a warm room, on a cold day, in a city that didn’t know his name.
And some days, that was enough.
Enough to say—I am still here.
Enough to mean—I am still home.
Wabi-Sabi in the Aroma of Memory
- Home is not a place. It’s the way your hands move when you cook.
- Memory doesn’t fade—it simmers.
- You don’t need to be seen to stay whole. Just held, even if only by your own rituals.
- There is beauty in longing. There is wholeness in holding on.
- You carry your past not in your passport—but in your kitchen.
And when the oil sizzles, and the air fills with that scent again—
You are not lost.
You are just becoming more quietly yourself.
life 