Athens, almost like home

During a mini-trek across the Tusheti highlands, in the Georgian Caucasus, there was a wooden house along the trail with a garden absurdly rich in flowers. Cushioned benches, handmade blankets, books, and that clear light typical of summers at altitude. A girl with long, dark hair was hanging laundry under the porch. She came toward us unhurried, smiling. Yes, it was a café, of course we could sit, and soon strong, sweet tea arrived, with fritters on the side. We were in a valley so remote you'd struggle to find this house even knowing it was there, and yet this girl had left Iran and, following the paths chance lays out, had ended up right here.

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Her touch, soft, pastel-coloured, was everywhere. This wasn't a place she was just passing through; it was a real home, at least for that season. I don't remember her face, but I remember the question that lodged itself in my head that day, as I kept walking through villages that empty out every winter, their people returning once a year for a feast of grilled meat and chacha: when does a place start to feel like home? How long does a home last?

I had no answer then. Behind me were some twenty moves and a string of apartments where I'd lost or left behind objects, never bothered to hang a single photo, where the one pet I'd had left me too soon, and even the cacti weren't doing especially well.

And yet it took only opening the door of this big, empty house with its wide windows and its hideous bathroom tiles to understand that I, too, had finally arrived somewhere. A real home: the olive tree that shudders on windy nights outside the bedroom window, the cat that slips off across the roof, the bougainvillea inching up the power lines.

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Here is almost Athens, but not quite. About twenty kilometers further south, just far enough that the air starts to smell like the sea, and winters can be spent in peace. Here I worry if the fisherman isn't on the dock by ten, and I straighten my back walking past the Pilates studio. I know the best beaches, when to go, how to reach the ones still not overrun. I know where to order the best fried calamari and where to buy the good yogurt. But the strangest thing is that wherever I am in the world, I now have somewhere to come back to. Somewhere I miss if I stay away too long.

I still don't understand all the Greek spoken around me, and I catch myself too easily slipping into English instead. Maybe that's why a comment overheard on the bus, or a remark caught on the street, can't ruin my day the way it might elsewhere. I know I'm living my own version of this stretch of coast south of Athens, filtered through the places I lived before, the people I met elsewhere. Sometimes I wonder if understanding everything around me would unsettle this sense of being where I belong. But then I look at the bay, how it shifts color with the seasons, hour by hour. The same bay, never quite the same twice. So many shades starting to feel familiar now. And I tell myself: no, this is fine. We're still getting to know each other, with the patience of things built to last.

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All images by Giulia Grimaldi