A house full of ghosts, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves

I woke to chaos

A symphony of the familiar and the brutal. The gulls cried their beloved, raucous song, but it was the mechanical grind of Istanbul, car horns, vendors, a city that never learned silence, that poured through the glass.

I surveyed the tiny, temporary box I had rented for eight days. Eight days – a self-imposed deadline to reclaim the parts of my life that had been stolen, then leave. Cream walls, neutral furniture, a space as emotionally sterile as my current state, a rental waiting for me to be gone.

I sat up and made coffee.

I stared at the “view.” Building on building. Clinging to each other. A cluttered, beautiful mess. You only love this oppressive city if you understand that mess, if you accept its suffocating embrace.

The cup was warm in my hands. Steam rose, a brief, fragile cloud against the windowpane. I sipped.

Nothing.

No rage. No pain clawing up my throat. Just coffee. Just noise. Just morning.

This was the city I swore I’d never return to. The city that held so much pain. Istanbul. The word used to be a wound.

I got dressed. Black, always. I stepped outside.

The streets were narrow, a chaotic, sprawling river of life. Shop owners rushed. This was the ancient madness of a city that has crushed and carried millions of bodies for centuries.

I walked through it with the proprietary stride of a native, yet saw it with the detached clarity of a stranger. The old thrill was gone. There was no haunting nostalgia, no familiar ghosts to greet me.

I traced my old steps to the grocery, the one I knew by heart. I piled my basket with a few delicacies I missed. Prices had soared, sometimes ten times what they used to be. I am usually sharp about money, but I had made a choice for this trip: I would not look at prices. Whatever budget I had, I was tripling it. Quadrupling it, even. The price of peace was non-negotiable.

I kept walking.

Until I was standing in front of it.

The house. My house. The place that taught me what cruelty looks like, the other face of Istanbul that foreign money rarely sees.

I leaned on the light post, staring at the windows. The one window.

That square of glass, the very frame where Atesh used to stand and watch. That life, once so fiercely beloved, was now utterly gone.

But it stirred nothing. And that was the terror. It was just another building now. Stone and glass. Someone else’s life.

I turned my and walked away.

How did I even get here?

I closed my eyes.

And I went back.

The Prayer After the Pond

Two and a half months in Georgia.

That’s where I need to start, even though Georgia itself isn’t the story. Georgia was the middle ground the place between survival and whatever comes next.

I’d been nomadic for years. Not the Instagram kind. The real kind. The kind where you don’t have a country that will let you stay, where your passport is an accusation, where every border crossing is a negotiation with fate. No house. No savings. Not one dollar in reserve. Just me and my backpack. Moving. Always one step ahead of homelessness.

I’d lived through a poverty so brutal it rewired my brain. Days without food. Nights in houses I had to leave the next morning. The financial terror that makes you understand why people break.

But then, grace. My financial situation flipped. Suddenly, I had enough. Enough to stop running.

I’d been praying. I asked God specifically for one year. One year without money worry. Time to figure out who I was underneath the survival. Underneath the armor.

Georgia gave me two and a half months of that year.

I traveled freely. I hiked mountains. I immersed myself in nature. I tried to ease into this new condition – having enough – but my body didn’t know how. I was still on alert. Still vigilant. Still moving like the ground would collapse beneath me at any second.

And then, at the end of those months, a near-death experience in the wilderness. The kind that kills you even in a hospital.

The old life ended there. Clean break.

I knew a fundamental shift was imminent, a geological correction beneath my feet, but I was still dazed. Adrift in the wake of the shock. I needed to walk a longer path just to name the thing I was looking for.

As I always do when I am stuck, or when I don’t trust the map of my own mind, I prayed. The words that came out were unexpected. Raw.

“I am tired, God,” I whispered.

My mind felt like a beehive that refused to relent, a constant, exhausting buzz of thought. I wanted that gone. I wanted release. I asked for a simple, necessary thing: rest, the kind only God can give. I prayed for a place to settle, to gather my papers, to accept the idea that I must stay put for a while. I needed to do something other than chase the thrill, the movement, the constant push. I needed a different kind of strength.

My immediate, tangible desire was the sea. I craved my sea paradise. A cottage by the sea, for as long as it took to quench that thirst, that salt-air love.

I sat in my rented room, opened my phone, and started looking at tickets. Somewhere in the Mediterranean, no doubt. Prices were beyond alluring: low season, cheap.

“Kosovo,” my mind said.

I brushed it off. It made no sense. It was landlocked, the complete opposite of the salt-air dream. Besides, the ticket price was a four-fold insult.

I tried to move on, but the name caught. I typed it into the search bar anyway, just to confirm my rejection. The first photos were of the capital, Pristina, raw and chaotic, full of young energy. But what stopped me was the topography. My mountains. The Accursed Mountains, the Peaks of the Balkans. The pictures hit me: the deep greenery, the promise of high-altitude solitude, the remote stone cottages. It was instant magic. The sheer, uncompromising nature of that cold rock pulled me in with a force I couldn’t ignore. This was the wildness I lived for.

My plan changed instantly. The sea was forgotten.

I would land, take a few days to get the vibe of the capital, study the country, then rent a car and drive the whole country hard. I would spend every daylight hour climbing the rock I loved. The hiking was the new focus.

The decision was already made. It was pre-written. The excitement was instant. My winter hiking boots and my shell jacket were laid out, ready. They were a commitment, physical and real, to a cold landscape I hadn’t even agreed to.

I booked the ticket.

TO BE CONTINUED …