I still remember the heat and dust of Dakar, how the wind smelled before a rainstorm. We left Senegal many years ago—my husband, our two little boys, and I—hoping for a better life in France. We ended up in Marseille, in a cramped apartment in a quartier nord where hope and despair sit side by side. I am 58 now. My hands are rough from years of cleaning other people’s homes, and my knees ache from standing too long in kitchens that were never mine.

There’s a photograph I keep folded in my wallet—creased and faded, the edges curling like dry leaves. It was taken in 1974, the last day I saw my younger brother. I was 25, he was 20, and we were standing in front of a bakery near Mapo, grinning like idiots, our arms around each other. He left for Germany the next week to work in a coal mine. He promised to come back rich. He never did.

I am a doctor living in Ashgabat, Turkmenistan. Every day I walk into my clinic, smile at the receptionist, greet my colleagues, and go about my duties as a gynecologist. But behind the sterile walls of one small, windowless room, I live a second life. For the past two years, I’ve been performing illegal abortions.

We arrived in Sri Lanka a week ago, and from the moment we stepped into the 5-star resort, it felt like we’d landed in a travel brochure. Palm trees, infinity pool, fruit platters shaped like swans. My parents were in heaven. I was trying to act cool, scrolling on my phone and pretending I wasn’t impressed. But honestly, it was paradise—and absurdly cheap, compared to what we’re used to in Zurich, Switzerland.

I met him at the worst possible moment—literally as I was wrestling with a souvlaki wrap that had exploded onto my dress. We were both waiting for the night bus in downtown Thessaloniki, Greece, and he just stood there watching me try to dab tzatziki off my chest with a receipt. “You’re losing the battle,” he said. I looked up, deadpan, and replied, “I already surrendered.”

When I got home last Tuesday evening, my clothes were soaked with sweat, and my head was heavy from the sun and the endless shouting at the construction site. I’ve worked there for years. It’s not what I dreamed of doing, but it pays enough to keep me afloat here in Abidjan, Ivory Coast. I live alone in a small flat in Yopougon.

The mornings are the hardest. The silence in the house is thick, almost physical. I open the shōji to let in the light, but it doesn’t fill the emptiness. My name is Sachiko, and I’ve lived in this same wooden house in Kyoto, Japan, for over sixty years. The tatami creaks the same way it did when my husband first carried me across it. He died twelve years ago. Since then, the rooms have been too quiet.

Sometimes I wake up soaked in sweat, my heart racing, convinced I’m back in that muddy trench. The war has been over for decades, but in my mind, certain moments are as fresh as yesterday. I live in Sarajevo, Bosnia, in a small apartment near Baščaršija. People here know me as the quiet man who writes letters to the newspaper and attends mosque every Friday. They don’t see the weight I carry.

I used to think anger was strength. Back then, I wore steel-toe boots and shaved my head, thinking I was invincible. I grew up in Toronto, Canada, in a quiet suburb, the kind with trimmed hedges and backyard pools. My father was the anchor of our family—kind, stable, funny. When he died suddenly of a heart attack, I was fifteen and completely lost. My mother tried, but we never spoke the same language emotionally. I needed connection; she offered rules.

The call came just after half nine in the morning. Emergency at a restaurant in town. Burst pipe in the basement, toilets out of order, flooding. I didn’t think much of it—I’ve been a plumber for over fifteen years, seen more than my fair share of leaks and messes. But this… this one was different.

When I was thirteen, I missed school for five days straight because of blood. Not an injury, not illness—just my period. I bled through my skirt during math class, wrapped my sweater around my waist while the boys laughed and pointed. At home, I cried. My mother, without saying much, tore a strip from an old cloth and told me to use it “until it stopped.” No explanation. No comfort. Just cloth and silence.

Sometimes I catch myself measuring silence. The silence here in Erfurt, Germany, is heavy, orderly, even peaceful — but it's never empty. In Damascus, Syria, silence was a warning. Here, it’s a sign that the tram is late or someone’s lost in thought. I’m still learning to trust it.

It always starts the same way—I check the hallway before I open the door. Not because I’m afraid of my neighbors, but because I don’t know who might be watching them. Or me I’ve been writing and posting for two years now. At first, it felt like shouting into the void—facts, thoughts, questions.

I had just finished my morning coffee when the call came. A man from the hospital, polite but brisk, asked if I was the owner of a black Yamaha NMAX. My stomach tightened. I knew that scooter. A young Dutch couple had taken it yesterday—excited and tanned, with matching helmets and clumsy Bahasa. They were engaged, they told me. This was their first trip together.

Yesterday I found myself shouting in the hallway again. It wasn’t even about anything dramatic—just that my younger son had used toothpaste to "paint" the mirror while the older one blasted some YouTuber with a screeching voice from the tablet. It’s like living inside a never-ending pinball machine where I’m the ball.

The first time I brought my son to Chacabuco, he was seventeen. I had waited years to decide whether I should take him. He had grown up in England, spoke Spanish with a London accent, and thought of Chile as a warm place where his father sometimes got quiet at dinner. I never told him much about the camp before that trip. He knew I had been a prisoner, but not the details—not how my ribs still ache in the cold, not how the smell of rusted metal can make my stomach turn.

Beach season is coming up again, and with it, the knot in my stomach. Every year, as the days get longer and the first real warmth hits Lisbon, Portugal, my friends start planning weekends at Costa da Caparica or Praia da Ursa — endless days of bikinis, salted hair, and sunburned noses.

The sun beat down hard on the zinc roofs, the heat rising in thick waves from the concrete. I sat in front of my house in Kingston, Jamaica, watching a stray dog nose through a pile of old newspapers across the street. Around here, the days roll slow, like smoke curling from the end of a cigarette.

The air was dry that afternoon, and dust blew across the old main street of Kleinzee, South Africa. I sat on the front porch of my small house, the one I moved into as a young bride when this town still rang with the clanging of machines and the voices of miners. Now, silence fills the gaps between the few remaining souls. I’m 85, and the days feel both heavy and hollow.

Most mornings, I lift the shutters of my small snack bar before Brussels really wakes up. It’s a modest place, squeezed between a laundromat and an old bookstore, just a few tables and a counter. I live nearby, in a small flat above a grocery shop. Life isn’t glamorous, but it’s mine. I’m 55 now, and even though my knees complain more than they used to, I still enjoy opening up early, breathing in the quiet before the city starts buzzing.