The last time I attempted to nurture this space of mine was years ago. Back then, I lived three-thousand miles away in a city founded in the seventh century with cobblestone pavements, with unlimited public transport that cost 50 Eurocents a day, with underground pubs where a glass of wine was less than €2, and with shops where one could buy books by the kilo for dirt cheap. The city was Prague and the year was 2019.

Metaphorically and physically, I’ve come a long way since then. In the middle of the global pandemic, I traded the beautiful but landlocked forests of Central Europe for miles and miles of desert, sandy beaches, year-round sunshine, and an infinite supply of falafel. Ahoj! was replaced with Yalla! and Staroměstské náměstí with the view of Burj Khalifa. I landed in Dubai exactly five years ago on this date, and in perhaps the biggest plot twist of my life, Dubai became my base. What’s more, it became my home. Another one.

I spend a lot of time thinking and writing about home; as a sentimental concept, a geographical entity, and a third undefined thing, with a meaning that’s only clear to me. Thinking about home is what the old space used to be about and the legacy that remains. Moving across countries and continents, rediscovering my passions both as a reader and a writer have slowly led me back here. Slowly and with uncertainty because the internet has changed. Hell, the world has changed. Still, this tiny corner of the World Wide Web has been in existence in one form or another since 2007; it is something that I have invested an immeasurable number of hours into and that has always been mine in a way that nothing else ever belonged to me. The truth is, a part of me never really left, even though my words got lost somewhere along the way.

I often think of a quote I had pasted in my journal as a teenager: “If I could find my way to the first word I’d ever written, I could maybe find my way home.”

So here I am.