# Istanbul By [Serra S.](https://paragraph.com/@serra-s) · 2022-06-10 --- It’s funny how a place you grow up can fit you like a well-worn article of clothing, even more than a decade after you’ve discarded it. The imprints find their way back exactly as you left them, from the memory of tastes and smells to the shrill tone you adopt arguing with your parents. Istanbul for me is finding my way back to these imprints. In the summer, it smells like honeysuckle and jasmin and sea salt and exhaust. It looks like the shimmers emanating from the Bosphorus in the heat of the afternoon sun, the Asian side as clear and as close as through a looking glass. It’s seeing your parents a little more frail every year you return and feeling that subtle but deep ache. It’s having a cup of tea with your mother, remembering the depth of love you have for each other without the need for any conversation. It’s marveling at your dads intellectual capacity, the fact that he is one of the savviest people you know in life, feeling the fury because of the way certain things turned out, and yet feeling a deeper empathy every year you grow older. Did you, in fact, walk in his shoes at all? And do you not recognize in yourself the same capacity to be hurtful? It’s the cool breeze that messes up your hair as you walk by the Bosphorus, and the intense, bright and lazy sun whenever you venture a few streets away from the coast. It’s the opportunity to be a little more calm and introspective, of having perspective. It’s being able to enjoy a lazy stroll by the seaside, a quiet Morning reading in the balcony, journaling, and writing. It’s stepping away from the mindless busyness and refocusing your priorities. When you read in the balcony, it smells like the fresh air that has just touched the leaves of the tree in your compound, and old books that you just pulled from your dads library. It’s home. It’s pieces of yourself you forget, whose absence you feel as that subtle discontent, nostalgia, feeling of loss. But when you’re home, when you’re sipping your coffee in the balcony and breathing in your dad’s old book, when your mom pops her head in to ask how you’re doing, you’re complete. --- *Originally published on [Serra S.](https://paragraph.com/@serra-s/istanbul)*