Never Been Abroad

Author: iSab

  • Charcoal sketch of Rio de Janeiro's mountains and bay at dusk, the city crammed between them - never been abroad

    Rio de Janeiro

    I have wanted to stand in Rio de Janeiro during Carnival and see what a city looks like when it hides nothing — I, who hide almost everything.

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  • Charcoal sketch of Marrakech at dusk, the Koutoubia tower over the low city, snow-capped mountains beyond - never been abroad

    Marrakech

    I have wanted to walk into the great square at Marrakech at dusk and learn how much of a city a photograph leaves out — its smoke, drums and heat.

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  • Charcoal sketch of the present-day Jakarta megacity, a vast low sprawl under a soft haze with modern towers, the National Monument needle rising from its green square - never been abroad

    Jakarta

    Jakarta is a sinking megacity its own country is abandoning — thirty million people running out of time, and I keep assuming I can go later.

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  • Charcoal sketch of Galle Face Green in Colombo, kites over the sea wall and the city behind - never been abroad

    Colombo

    The tea in my cup has come from the island behind Colombo all my life — the abroad I taste every morning and have still never once been to see.

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  • Charcoal sketch of the Giza pyramids and Sphinx at the edge of modern Cairo, the city pressing to the desert - never been abroad

    Cairo

    I have wanted to stand at the foot of Cairo’s pyramids and feel how small a life is beside a thing that has outlasted every empire that came to gawp.

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  • Charcoal sketch of a Buenos Aires avenue of balconied buildings at dusk - never been abroad

    Buenos Aires

    I have wanted to fly the whole length of the earth to Buenos Aires for years — the far city I suspect I would understand before I left the airport.

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  • Charcoal sketch of a wide changeable sky over the low Melbourne city, half bright and half storm, tram wires across the foreground and a thin line of the bay - never been abroad

    Melbourne

    Melbourne is the city I have built almost entirely out of weather and side streets — a place that changes its mind four times before lunch.

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  • Charcoal sketch of Montreal under snow seen from the mountain, grey rooftops running down to the wide frozen river, the great dome of the oratory faint on the high ground - never been abroad

    Montreal

    Montreal is the city I think of as a clerical error — a piece of Europe entered, somehow, in the wrong column of the atlas.

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  • Charcoal sketch of the Danube dividing hilly Buda from flat Pest at dusk, the river wide and pale between them, a bridge low across it - never been abroad

    Budapest

    Budapest is two cities that married late and kept separate beds — a flat one and a hilly one, with a grey river running down the gap between them.

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  • Charcoal sketch of a wide brown tidal river between low mangrove-forest banks under a big hazy sky, a small boat on the water - never been abroad

    Sundarbans

    The Sundarbans are my own home state’s wild edge — the world’s largest mangrove forest where the great rivers meet the sea, and the tiger that swims between islands.

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