Author: iSab
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Sydney
Sydney sits on the far underside of the planet — the longest flight there is, the seasons and the stars turned upside down. I dream of it for the distance alone.
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Jaisalmer
A golden fort I first met in black and white, as a boy who could not picture the gold. It took me twenty years to see the colour, and I still have not stood in it.
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London
The foreign city I know best without ever seeing it — read my whole life in a borrowed language I made my own. I write even this in the tongue it sent us.
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Jerusalem
A single walled hill that three faiths trace to the same root and have fought over for millennia. I come from outside all three, and I would like, once, to stand on it.
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Darjeeling
The one time a Darjeeling trip in my family was ever real, I cancelled it — by being conceived. My own state’s hill station, and I have still never been.
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Mangalore
Three times this coast reached for me by a side door, and three times the door shut. I can name its food dish by dish and have never once tasted it at source.
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Istanbul
A man who has never crossed a border, dreaming of the one city that is itself a crossing — where you change continents in the time it takes a tea to cool.
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New York
Of all the cities I have never seen, New York is the one I have seen most — pre-dreamed on my behalf, in advance, by everybody.
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Hong Kong
Hong Kong I dream of vertically — a city of millions folded onto a few scraps of land, assembled mostly out of things that are quietly leaving.
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Leh–Ladakh · Pangong Tso
Ladakh is the place I have the fewest excuses about. It is in my own country. There is no ocean here to blame — only me, and a road I keep not taking.
