Wandering Europe

I don’t remember the years. I remember the snow. The bread. The cigarettes. The bridge. The scar. The stone. The windmill. I remember Old Li’s face when he smoked. The way he squinted, like he was thinking about something good. I remember Anna’s laugh. Her eyes curved, like a moon. I remember the photo Muhammed showed me. His white shirt. The bridge behind him. “I made that,” he said. “Three years. Hundreds of drawings.” I remember the cold. The cracks on my hands. The dishwater turning pink. I remember the taste of spring rolls made from cabbage scraps. The doubanjiang my mother packed in my bag. The taste was not my mother’s. It was Warsaw’s. The taste behind the bread stand. I remember the women and men who came and went. Most of them I don’t remember their names. Their faces are blurry. Their voices are fading. But some of them stayed. They stayed because they were pushed. By wars. By borders closing and opening. By countries that no longer exist. By history. They were pushed to the same places I was pushed. To Warsaw. To Berlin. To Paris. To Naples. To Amsterdam. We were all pushed. We found each other in the cracks. We shared bread. We shared cigarettes. We shared vodka. We shared the stories we carried. The stories were heavy. But we carried them anyway. I was the one who listened. Because I could understand. Not everything. But enough. Enough to remember. Enough to write down. This book is not about the years. It is about them. About the snow in Warsaw. The light in Paris. The sun in Naples. About the bread Anna gave me. The cigarettes Old Li smoked. The bridge Muhammed built. The scar on Emma’s shoulder. The stone Zahra kept in her bag. About the people who came and went. The ones who stayed. The ones who disappeared. I write them down. So they don’t disappear.