I, like many others before me, have decided to start a monthly newsletter. Welcome to the first! Apologies in advance for clogging up your inbox but I hope you’ll click on at least one instalment and find writing that entertains/informs/makes you think/is a breath of fresh air to punctuate the busy life that you lead.
Writing is my day job; words are what make me money (albeit not very much). But, I tend to write about serious things - my friend jokes that my specialism is genocide which is sort of accurate (among other stuff). I promise there will be no mention of genocide in this newsletter, however if you’d like to read my journalism, that would be great. This, however, is a place for more light-hearted musings which I hope will resonate, as well as recommendations and stories of all kinds.
“We tell ourselves stories in order to live” wrote the literary legend (and my idol) Joan Didion. That expression has really come into its own over the past year and a bit, when narratives in all their diverse forms helped us weather a global pandemic, from TV shows that caught our imagination and shook us to our core (I May Destroy You and Lupin were my favourites), to books that saved us from pulling our hair out with boredom (I’ll include a list of recent ones I’ve enjoyed below) and journalism that entertained us or held those in power to account.
Stories remind us that we are not alone, that despite our differences we share the same feelings, journeys, dreams and dilemmas. They’ve also given me a lot of hope; hope that soon the world will be open and we can, once again, live our lives fully. So, here’s to stories! May we read them, write them, and live them.
How do you know when it’s time to say goodbye to a place?
I remember my first time visiting London. I was a child, probably around 10 years old, on a trip with my family. It was after the 7/7 bombings and I spent much of the time on the tube crying because I was so scared it would happen again (as you can see, I’ve always been overly anxious). Above ground, I was a little more calm. Although the crowds, blaring traffic and sky-high buildings were still overwhelming for a girl from the countryside.
When I moved here to study some years later, the things that had once overwhelmed me, now enthralled me; the crowds that envelop you and allow you to slip into blissful anonymity, the buzzing streets, the towering buildings, the vibrancy and mash of cultures, the variety of people and things to do and see. I wanted to see it all and do it all.
It was a warm September when I arrived; the leaves on the trees in the parks were on the cusp of turning. Not yet brown or red, they were golden. Everything was golden in those first few months - bathed in sunny possibility and excitement. Or at least that’s how the memories are coloured in my mind - it could also be down to my heavy use of the Sierra Instagram filter on all my photos at the time.
Coming to London for university was something I had always wanted to do. It had been drilled into me that London was where all the opportunities were; the capital was where you went to be successful. To call London home was the stepping stone to a fulfilling career and a glamorous life. I quickly realised, however, that a place doesn’t determine someone’s success or happiness.
This September will mark the start of my eighth year as a Londoner. It’s been a long, dedicated relationship - with the occasional dalliance in the embrace of another city - but we’ve stuck it through. We’ve aged together. I’ve endured the coffee prices. People have come and gone, but the Big Smoke has always been there. It’s skyline welcoming me back as my plane descends into Heathrow, the smell and sounds and little quirks making me feel at ease.
But that’s the thing.
The city that once made my stomach churn with excitement is now familiar. Its streets no longer thrill me; I’ve walked up and down most of them. I know the shortcuts, the best underground lines (District), the places to avoid at rush hour. The cityscape that stretches out before me as I stand on top of Parliament Hill is beautiful, yes, but it isn’t new any more; it doesn’t scare me, it doesn’t fill me with awe. It is brimming with memories from east to west and north to south - but the shine has worn off; there is no glow, no spark. I’m comfortable - and I don’t want to be.
Leaving a city is probably much like leaving a relationship. It hurts to pull yourself away, untangle yourself from them and their ways, but you know you should. You might have been feeling trapped or you were just going through the motions - your heart wasn’t in it. So you leave, right? And if you feel that way about a city, do you leave too?
“It is easy to see the beginnings of things, and harder to see the ends,” wrote Joan Didion in Goodbye to All That, her essay on leaving New York. “I can remember now, with a clarity that makes the nerves in the back of my neck constrict, when New York began for me, but I cannot lay my finger upon the moment it ended, can never cut through the ambiguities and second starts and broken resolves to the exact place on the page where the heroine is no longer as optimistic as she once was.” Funnily enough, Didion stayed in New York for eight years before she realised it was time to move on to pastures new.
She goes on to write that “I still believed in possibilities then [in her early twenties], still had the sense, so peculiar to New York, that something extraordinary would happen any minute, any day, any month. [...] Just around every corner lay something curious and interesting, something I had never seen or done or known about.”
Knowing when to stop waiting for something extraordinary to happen is the hard part, because months turn into years very quickly and before you realise it you’ve spent ten years in a place waiting for that extraordinary thing. And the deeper your roots grow, the more difficult they are to pull up and plant afresh - that takes guts.
“All I mean is that I was very young in New York, and that at some point the golden rhythm was broken, and I am not that young any more,” concludes Didion. Perhaps that’s it: we grow up and change, the naivete and curiosity of youth fades and we become more cynical, easily bored, less patient and more prone to looking inward instead of out. But I also think that staying in the same country/city/town/village for a long time can induce this. Sometimes we need to pop the bubble that forms around us in order to remind ourselves of the world beyond, to shift our perspective, to lower the drawbridge. There is nothing like being in a new, completely different place and feeling like anything is possible. I want to feel that again (…perhaps I just need a holiday).
I also realise just how lucky I am to be able to have the choice, when there are many people around the world who have been forced to leave their homes out of fear and would do anything to be able to return.
Of course, if I ever left London I would miss it like crazy (and don’t get me started on the people). I would miss walking through Victoria Park on a Friday night when the city is sighing a huge sigh of relief and people are on their way to the pub, the tangerine light hitting the water on the lake as I run to meet my friends (because I’m inevitably late). I would miss getting annoyed with someone standing on the wrong side of the escalator going down into the underground. I would miss sitting on the top of a double-decker bus going over Tower Bridge and looking out over the Thames snaking its way through the city.
There is that oft-quoted line from Samuel Johnson: “When a man is tired of London, he is tired of life.” I am not tired of London per se, just yearning for something different. I’ve been lucky to call London home (and continue to do so for now), but there are plenty of other cities out there. And extraordinary things can happen in any place - not just in New York or London.
Reading
The Mars Room by Rachel Kushner – I found this novel beautifully written but with a strangeness that creeps up on you and lingers long after you’ve put it down. It follows the story of Romy Hall, a stripper who killed her stalker, as she enters a women’s prison in the US, meets the other prisoners who become a family of sorts, and attempts to survive and break free of the system. It is unflinching and shows the harsh reality of poverty and mass incarceration in America, but there are moments of warmth and the narrator has a great sense of humour.
The formidable charm of Omar Sy - For fans of the French series Lupin this New Yorker profile of the lead actor is a must-read. The writer, Lauren Collins, gives a masterclass in how to write the perfect interview.
Lebanon’s year from hell: a diary - As we approach the one-year anniversary of the devastating Beirut port blast, this FT piece does a good job explaining what has happened in the country since, from the lack of accountability and political inertia to the never-ending power cuts and plummeting currency.
‘We tried to be joyful enough to deserve our new lives’: What it’s really like to be a refugee in Britain - If you read anything from this list, make it this.
The Sound of My Inbox - The Cut on email newsletters (apt!) and the emergence of a new literary genre.
The Education of an Idealist by Samantha Power – Wow, what a woman. I’ve almost finished this compelling memoir which delves behind a person who, even from a young age, strives to make a difference and challenges conventional wisdom. Power is now the administrator for the United States agency of international aid, but she was previously a journalist – she got her foot in the door by faking an editor’s letter to get UN accreditation to cover the Bosnian War (!)
Watching
Speaking of the Bosnian War (and I apologise as this next bit will break my earlier promise of not mentioning genocide), I urge everyone to watch the film Quo Vadis, Aida? by Jasmila Žbanić. It is a gut-wrenching story about a woman called Aida who works for the UN as an interpreter in her hometown of Srebrenica when the Serbian army take over. It looks at the failure of foreign policies from governments around the world to stop the unfolding atrocities and exposes, in particular, the failure of the UN peacekeeping officials. Watch it and weep.
Motherland – the funniest thing I’ve seen in a while. Anna Maxwell Martin as Julia is hilarious (and Kevin! And Liz! In fact, they all are).
Writing
For The Guardian, I chatted to members of the Hijabeuses, an inspiring group of young hijab-wearing women who are fighting for inclusion on - and off - the football pitch in France. Their main goal is to end the French Football Federation's ban on hijab-wearing women playing in official matches, but at the same time they are battling people’s preconceptions about Muslim women and are striving to create a more tolerant and open society in a country that has seen a rise in Islamophobia.
"We're not trying to promote our religion," Founè Diawara, their co-president, told me. "We're just here because we love football, like any other people. It's just about the game."
Check out the full article, here.
And on that note, thanks for reading!