May 15

On this day ten years ago, I booked a one-way ticket and showed up in New York with rudimentary English, no plan, and not even ONE familiar person. I found myself thinking a lot about that period recently. It’s been a decade. The woman writing this essay doesn’t have a single cell in common with the woman who landed at JFK. That woman’s anxiety outpaced her experience. That woman didn’t know how to navigate the subway or use Google Maps. For her first week, that woman walked only straight lines to and from her apartment for fear that with one wrong turn, she would be lost forever. 

Yet, my nostalgia for that time impacts me like a mother's silly smile in the aftermath of a toddler's scraped knee: bruises and blemishes wiped from memory. What I remember today is how generous New York and its people have been to me. So this essay is a love letter to New York. The city that started it all. Writing about New York isn’t novel. I can’t possibly compete with what amazing authors have written about the city. Instead I want to use some of these authors’ quotes as prompts to write my own experience of New York.

“I run through the streets of this gigantic city, and shadows run after me. I gaze with a thousand eyes and listen with a thousand ears all through the day; and when I come home late at night I find more things to gaze at and more voices to listen to. New York is not the place where one finds rest. But did I come here for rest?” – Kahlil Gibran from Beloved Prophet

Ten years ago, I came for a short ESL course. That short time was enough to convince me that I must do everything to stay in NYC, and everything I did. In New York, being amazed and curious is habitual; it is a way of being. At any turn, so many things can surprise you, and they often do. One day, you’re eating falafel with Elmo and Spiderman in Times Square, the next, you’re meeting Robert De Niro outside your apartment building. 

I grew up in an insular community where not much happens. In my small Saudi hometown, today is like yesterday, and tomorrow will look like today. I was a relatively naive and boring chap back home. New York elevated me. New York became the backdrop for many firsts of my life. My first paycheck, my first concert, my first yoga class, my first snow, my first night fully alone. New York witnessed all my earliest triumphs and stupidities. I was illiterate in the language of life, and New York became my mother tongue.

“I was in love with New York. I do not mean “love” in any colloquial way, I mean that I was in love with the city, the way you love the first person who ever touches you and never love anyone that way again. [….] I still believed in possibilities then, still had the sense, so peculiar to New York, that something extraordinary would happen any minute, any day, any month” – Joan Didion, Goodbye to All That

I stayed in New York for four years. I came in 2013 and left in 2017. The leaving part was sudden. I applied for the US work visa lottery. Because I wanted the visa so badly, I assumed I’d get it. WRONG. I woke up one morning and found out I wasn’t selected for  the lottery. I had 60 days to pack, say my goodbyes, and leave. Sudden. I told you. 

I was angry. I loved New York. It didn’t love me back. I wanted to make New York regret rejecting me, so, like a bitter ex-girlfriend, I decided to date the world. Screw settling. I safaried in Kenya, skied in Switzerland, hiked in Kyrgyzstan, and shopped in Dubai. I managed to get over New York. Yet, in the midst of these adventures, I always found myself trying to scoop out a home. I didn’t want to be perpetually transient. I wanted to settle, but where? It’s hard to look for a home when you don’t have the slightest notion of what you’re looking for. Until I read an essay by Najib Mahfouz where he said: “Home is not where we’re born but where all our plans to escape cease and we want to stay.” And using that definition, I knew where my home was. 

Could I find my way back to New York? I had to do everything to return. And everything I did (once again). 

“The city has spent a considerable amount of time and money putting the brochure together, what with all the movies, TV shows and songs -- the whole ''if you can make it there'' business. The city also puts a lot of effort into making your hometown look really drab and tiny, just in case you were wondering why it's such a drag to go back sometimes.” – Colson Whitehead from The Colossus of New York

Four years, three visa lotteries, and one pandemic later, I moved back to New York in 2021. I was terrified of how the city would greet me this time. I also wondered how I would feel about New York. 

Let me tell you: some things changed. I’m wiser. (Well, wiser-ish). I don’t take the subway after midnight. I drink matcha with oat milk. I recycle and compost. New York has changed, too. The number of sexy moms pushing strollers in Central Park is now unreal. My favorite bookstore is gone. I see more millennial pink stores than I remember. I don’t think this color suits NYC (or anyone who isn’t a Glossier model, for that matter). Jokes aside, New York is equally magical and bizarre, just like the first day I met her. And just like the day New York met me, I’m here to admire her.

“Maybe we become New Yorkers the day we realize that New York will go on without us. To put off the inevitable, we try to fix the city in place, remember it as it was, doing to the city what we would never allow to be done to ourselves. The kid on the uptown No. 1 train, the new arrival stepping out of Grand Central, the jerk at the intersection who doesn't know east from west: those people don't exist anymore, ceased to be a couple of apartments ago, and we wouldn't have it any other way. New York City does not hold our former selves against us.” – Colson Whitehead from The Colossus of New York

What makes this place special is the people (no shit, not the rats or the violent pigeons?). There are many cities that are diverse, multi-dimensional, cosmopolitan, yada yada. I love these cities. But New York is more. New York attracts the stumblers and the awkwards. God knows what these New Yorkers went through to come out here looking for belonging in an expensive city filled with garbage. But they do (and I do). They take all the unpleasantness and create art, music, books, films, poetry, and companies.  I’m nourished and richer by all of the experiences New Yorkers offer me. If I’m lucky and the stars are aligned, some of these fellows become my friends. 

“The city knows you better than any living person because it has seen you when you are alone. It saw you steeling yourself for the job interview, slowly walking home after the late date, tripping over nonexistent impediments on the sidewalk. It saw you wince when the single frigid drop fell from the air-conditioner 12 stories up and zapped you. It saw the bewilderment on your face as you stepped out of the stolen matinee, incredulous that there was still daylight after such a long movie. It saw you half-running up the street after you got the keys to your first apartment. It saw all that. Remembers too.” – Colson Whitehead from The Colossus of New York

If you feel like an outsider in this world, join us in this circus here. Every human should live in New York at least once in their life (just get the fork away from my neighborhood. It’s already expensive). 

May 15

On this day ten years ago, I booked a one-way ticket and showed up in New York with rudimentary English, no plan, and not even ONE familiar person. I found myself thinking a lot about that period recently. It’s been a decade. The woman writing this essay doesn’t have a single cell in common with the woman who landed at JFK. That woman’s anxiety outpaced her experience. That woman didn’t know how to navigate the subway or use Google Maps. For her first week, that woman walked only straight lines to and from her apartment for fear that with one wrong turn, she would be lost forever. 

Yet, my nostalgia for that time impacts me like a mother's silly smile in the aftermath of a toddler's scraped knee: bruises and blemishes wiped from memory. What I remember today is how generous New York and its people have been to me. So this essay is a love letter to New York. The city that started it all. Writing about New York isn’t novel. I can’t possibly compete with what amazing authors have written about the city. Instead I want to use some of these authors’ quotes as prompts to write my own experience of New York.

“I run through the streets of this gigantic city, and shadows run after me. I gaze with a thousand eyes and listen with a thousand ears all through the day; and when I come home late at night I find more things to gaze at and more voices to listen to. New York is not the place where one finds rest. But did I come here for rest?” – Kahlil Gibran from Beloved Prophet

Ten years ago, I came for a short ESL course. That short time was enough to convince me that I must do everything to stay in NYC, and everything I did. In New York, being amazed and curious is habitual; it is a way of being. At any turn, so many things can surprise you, and they often do. One day, you’re eating falafel with Elmo and Spiderman in Times Square, the next, you’re meeting Robert De Niro outside your apartment building. 

I grew up in an insular community where not much happens. In my small Saudi hometown, today is like yesterday, and tomorrow will look like today. I was a relatively naive and boring chap back home. New York elevated me. New York became the backdrop for many firsts of my life. My first paycheck, my first concert, my first yoga class, my first snow, my first night fully alone. New York witnessed all my earliest triumphs and stupidities. I was illiterate in the language of life, and New York became my mother tongue.

“I was in love with New York. I do not mean “love” in any colloquial way, I mean that I was in love with the city, the way you love the first person who ever touches you and never love anyone that way again. [….] I still believed in possibilities then, still had the sense, so peculiar to New York, that something extraordinary would happen any minute, any day, any month” – Joan Didion, Goodbye to All That

I stayed in New York for four years. I came in 2013 and left in 2017. The leaving part was sudden. I applied for the US work visa lottery. Because I wanted the visa so badly, I assumed I’d get it. WRONG. I woke up one morning and found out I wasn’t selected for  the lottery. I had 60 days to pack, say my goodbyes, and leave. Sudden. I told you. 

I was angry. I loved New York. It didn’t love me back. I wanted to make New York regret rejecting me, so, like a bitter ex-girlfriend, I decided to date the world. Screw settling. I safaried in Kenya, skied in Switzerland, hiked in Kyrgyzstan, and shopped in Dubai. I managed to get over New York. Yet, in the midst of these adventures, I always found myself trying to scoop out a home. I didn’t want to be perpetually transient. I wanted to settle, but where? It’s hard to look for a home when you don’t have the slightest notion of what you’re looking for. Until I read an essay by Najib Mahfouz where he said: “Home is not where we’re born but where all our plans to escape cease and we want to stay.” And using that definition, I knew where my home was. 

Could I find my way back to New York? I had to do everything to return. And everything I did (once again). 

“The city has spent a considerable amount of time and money putting the brochure together, what with all the movies, TV shows and songs -- the whole ''if you can make it there'' business. The city also puts a lot of effort into making your hometown look really drab and tiny, just in case you were wondering why it's such a drag to go back sometimes.” – Colson Whitehead from The Colossus of New York

Four years, three visa lotteries, and one pandemic later, I moved back to New York in 2021. I was terrified of how the city would greet me this time. I also wondered how I would feel about New York. 

Let me tell you: some things changed. I’m wiser. (Well, wiser-ish). I don’t take the subway after midnight. I drink matcha with oat milk. I recycle and compost. New York has changed, too. The number of sexy moms pushing strollers in Central Park is now unreal. My favorite bookstore is gone. I see more millennial pink stores than I remember. I don’t think this color suits NYC (or anyone who isn’t a Glossier model, for that matter). Jokes aside, New York is equally magical and bizarre, just like the first day I met her. And just like the day New York met me, I’m here to admire her.

“Maybe we become New Yorkers the day we realize that New York will go on without us. To put off the inevitable, we try to fix the city in place, remember it as it was, doing to the city what we would never allow to be done to ourselves. The kid on the uptown No. 1 train, the new arrival stepping out of Grand Central, the jerk at the intersection who doesn't know east from west: those people don't exist anymore, ceased to be a couple of apartments ago, and we wouldn't have it any other way. New York City does not hold our former selves against us.” – Colson Whitehead from The Colossus of New York

What makes this place special is the people (no shit, not the rats or the violent pigeons?). There are many cities that are diverse, multi-dimensional, cosmopolitan, yada yada. I love these cities. But New York is more. New York attracts the stumblers and the awkwards. God knows what these New Yorkers went through to come out here looking for belonging in an expensive city filled with garbage. But they do (and I do). They take all the unpleasantness and create art, music, books, films, poetry, and companies.  I’m nourished and richer by all of the experiences New Yorkers offer me. If I’m lucky and the stars are aligned, some of these fellows become my friends. 

“The city knows you better than any living person because it has seen you when you are alone. It saw you steeling yourself for the job interview, slowly walking home after the late date, tripping over nonexistent impediments on the sidewalk. It saw you wince when the single frigid drop fell from the air-conditioner 12 stories up and zapped you. It saw the bewilderment on your face as you stepped out of the stolen matinee, incredulous that there was still daylight after such a long movie. It saw you half-running up the street after you got the keys to your first apartment. It saw all that. Remembers too.” – Colson Whitehead from The Colossus of New York

If you feel like an outsider in this world, join us in this circus here. Every human should live in New York at least once in their life (just get the fork away from my neighborhood. It’s already expensive).