Fiction
We Were From Different Worlds
On travel, and how it changes us
Before she left again, Min said the world had changed. It was not something she could see or explain easily, and yet she was sure something was different. When I asked, she said it was like opening a book she had read a long time ago and realizing the story was not as she remembered it.
“The words are the same as they always were,” Min said, “but now there is new meaning in them, and I can no longer see them any other way.”
I thought of the books I’d read with this concept at their heart — where the characters discover hidden truths beneath a surface of well-crafted lies — and how I could always put them down and return to the life I knew. But for Min it was different. The world was a story she wrote as she went; she could not simply put down the book because the book was her life.
I met Min at the airport when she came home from studying abroad. She had a small suitcase, a backpack, and a plastic bag full of miscellaneous souvenirs. Her hair was a mess, and her eyes had the look of someone who has spent far too long in a confined space with other people.
“Thanks for coming to pick me up,” she said.
