You Won't Be Found Until You're Lost

Part One — Arriving

It was two in the morning when our plane entered the skies above Istanbul. The city was still lit up — buildings glowing in every direction, a skyline I had never seen before and did not yet know how to read.

I was coming from a country that war had turned to rubble. A country that could no longer keep the lights on in its own homes. For a moment, all that brightness was beautiful. And then the weight of it settled in my chest — back home, we lit our evenings with oil lamps because the government couldn't sustain the grid, or because the Taliban had blown up the power lines we'd imported from neighboring countries, calling it jihad.

The plane landed at Istanbul's new international airport — freshly opened, enormous, disorienting. I cleared passport control, found a taxi, and gave the driver the name of a hotel someone had told me was near the airport. The moment I opened my mouth in a language that wasn't mine, I understood: I was somewhere entirely new. The dusty calm of Kabul's streets was gone. Fear moved through me. What if the driver took me somewhere I didn't know?

About an hour later, the taxi stopped at the hotel. When I walked through the door, a young woman with curly hair and green eyes said softly: "Welcome."

For a moment I thought — maybe this is exactly what I needed to hear after a journey like that. Someone greeting me with warmth. Then she asked, politely: "May I see your passport?"

And just like that, I was a stranger again.

The room was beautiful by any measure — a wide comfortable bed, pillows soft as down, warm air on a cold night, a large bathroom that smelled of amber. Quiet. Insulated from the world outside.

I didn't sleep.

My heart raced. My eyes refused to close, as if my mind had sent them a warning: This place is foreign. The soil smells different. The air is unfamiliar. You are very far from home.

At five past seven in the morning, exhausted and sleepless, I got up. I wanted to walk, to see the city, to find out whether the Turkey I'd glimpsed through TV dramas and history books — warm, brave, hospitable — was real.

When I reached the hotel lobby, a young man smiled and said: "Good morning."

Two words. Enough to make me think — yes, maybe it's true. Maybe they really are like that.

Outside, the streets were empty. Shops still closed. The only sound was birds in the trees lining the pavement — which, in itself, was something. But the inner voice came back. Everything here is unfamiliar. You are very far from home.

No smell of Kabul's dust and diesel. No early-morning rush. The streets were clean, the parked cars clean — nothing like Kabul, where you'd park a clean car at night and find it coated in dust by morning.

In Kabul, people are up before sunrise. Work starts early, government offices open early, life begins at dawn. In Istanbul, the day starts later — most people don't get going until after nine, and many save their real living for the evenings, staying out late with friends and family. The opposite of Kabul, where nights were quiet — fragile security and power cuts keeping everyone indoors.

I was not in Kabul anymore.