Symmetry and the Beatles

A (heavily edited) repost from an earlier essay I rewrote for a contest. Te

This is the farthest from home I’ve ever been. It is night, and we are on the roof of our hostel, watching the stars appear in a velvet sky over the Mediterranean Sea. I’m not just far away from home, from family and friends. I’ve left behind any trace of what I’ve used my entire life to define myself: the markers and keys I’ve used to map my position. I’m in uncharted territories, vast swathes of my own mind I’ve yet to explore. I haven’t slept much over the past few days, but a strange bubbling giddiness is keeping me wide awake. Across the Bosphorus, I can see the light slowly fading over the Asian shore of Istanbul.
A new Turkish friend has invited us up here to the roof. In the cafe, when he heard that we were from Seattle, his face had lit up. “We are cousins, then.” With no further explanation forthcoming, we followed him up the narrow spiral staircase.
A few days previously, I had flown alone to Barcelona. After spending the night on the airport floor, I took an early morning flight and arrived tired, hungry, and unwashed, but determined. It was my first time traveling completely alone, but I knew enough Spanish to get along, and I was not going to waste my first taste of independence. I sat down in a small café, determined to be an adult and hold it together. In this cozy sidewalk café, I was succeeding, until the familiar strains of “Yesterday” by the Beatles drifted on the Iberian breeze. Any dignity dissolved, and I retreated to a corner and bawled, a homesick teenager in over her head.
When we reach the roof, he is leaning over the rail, smoking. The stars are just beginning to appear. We watch in silence as he snuffs out his cigarette and explains to us that Seattle is not just another foreign city. Seattle and Istanbul are sisters. I smile politely, but I really don’t have any idea what he could mean. Seattle is the city I grew up in, the corners and cracks I explored when I was just discovering myself. In high school, I longed to be free of it in the same way one longs to be free of oneself.
He must have sensed my doubt, for he looked at me earnestly. “Seattle and Istanbul lie on the open ocean, but are protected by the sound. This harbor allows us the freedom of the open sea, but protects us from its brute strength.” He smiled knowingly in the dark, white teeth flashing against that indefinable black velvet sky. “We must be the same, with such hearts.” Asia, across the water, is now dark. I smile, but then wonder at my own doubt. Leaving Barcelona for Istanbul, I thought I would feel more out of place, but the opposite had happened. When I was walking down wide, sunny boulevards, or dodging crowds in towering spice markets, through it all was the ever-present smell of the sea, a comfort and memory.
He is humming a tune. When we ask him, he said it was a traditional Turkish song. Would we like him to sing it for us? We settle in with our warm cups of tea, and listen. He finishes, and there is a moment of silence. Then, with a knowing smile, he glances back at us. “Perhaps one you would know?” We nod. He clears his throat, and begins a refrain I learned too well. “Yesterday…” My own throat tightens. There is some mystery in the world, some symmetry, and some understanding. The last thing I expected to find on the other side of the world was family, friends, and home.