{"id":4566,"date":"2026-04-24T15:53:07","date_gmt":"2026-04-24T12:53:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/malathinitiative.org\/?p=4566"},"modified":"2026-06-03T00:32:16","modified_gmt":"2026-06-02T21:32:16","slug":"sh-03","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/malathinitiative.org\/en\/sh-03\/","title":{"rendered":"When the City Becomes Strange"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tFree Voice\u00ab<\/span>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/span>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/a>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t
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Last<\/span>\u00a0a city living under siege, it\u2019s not just the roads that change \u2014 relationships change too.<\/span>
<\/span> Sometimes, personal loss becomes part of a larger loss, making everything feel strange\u2026 even ourselves.<\/span><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t

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The city\u2019s streets looked unfamiliar, as if they had removed their usual faces and put on features that did not belong to me.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>
\u2014 Arseen<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/figure>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t

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The road wasn\u2019t long\u2026 I was the one who had grown smaller.<\/span>
<\/span> No one saw me off.<\/span>
<\/span> I left them the way a shadow leaves a room \u2014 no one turned, no one said: <\/span>\u201ctake your time,\u201d<\/b>not even a half\u2011hearted glance. I just left, wearing a light summer shirt in a night whose cold doesn\u2019t kill, but knows how to sting \u2014 so you remember your loneliness.<\/span>
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<\/span>I felt as if I were walking inside someone\u2019s pocket \u2014 dark, cramped, meaningless. I took out my phone and wrote to her: <\/span>\u201cI\u2019ve left.\u201d<\/b>Then I switched it off, like closing a door on a heart that no longer served any purpose. I lit a cigarette\u2026 I couldn\u2019t taste it. I was walking, but I didn\u2019t know where. The road moved, and I clung to my thoughts like a drowning man clutching a broken plank.<\/span><\/p>\n

The city\u2019s streets looked strange \u2014 as if they had taken off their familiar faces and put on features that weren\u2019t mine. The sidewalks were empty, the orange streetlight like a dead pulse about to go out, as if the city were asking me: <\/span>\u201cWhat are you doing here?\u201d<\/b><\/p>\n

I saw a grey cat cross the street alone. It gave me a long look, then disappeared behind a dumpster. I felt I was watching myself in that moment \u2014 that I was that cat: walking without a map, without a home, without a clue. Everything reminded me of her\u2026 the stairs, the window that resembled her laugh, the wall she once leaned her back against one evening. Everything. And everything said: <\/span>\u201cYou are alone\u2026 and you chose to stay that way.\u201d<\/b><\/p>\n

I was walking in the dark \u2014 literally. No lights, no signs, no colours. Only blackness, and her face repeating inside me as if I were whispering her name without sound. I walked a long way\u2026 so far that I no longer knew whether I was truly lost, or just lost inside myself.<\/span><\/p>\n

Then my apartment appeared \u2014 like the last sentence of a book no one wants to finish. I didn\u2019t feel glad to arrive, didn\u2019t feel relief. I entered like someone entering their final cell before execution. I sat on the worn\u2011out sofa, put my head against the wall, and wept. But it wasn\u2019t crying. It was something like crying \u2014 but without tears. A silent spillage of something inside that had broken long ago and never told anyone.<\/span><\/p>\n

I thought of her. Of what she would have said if she had seen me like this:<\/span><\/p>\n

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  • \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 <\/span>Would she have laughed?<\/span><\/li>\n
  • \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 <\/span>Would she have written me something long?<\/span><\/li>\n
  • \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 <\/span>Would she have said, <\/span>\u201cNo one will ever love you like I do\u201d?<\/b>\u061f<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n

    I don\u2019t know\u2026 maybe she wouldn\u2019t have said anything. In my head, images ignited: a child running after his father who doesn\u2019t look back; a girl sitting before a broken mirror, combing the shadow of her hair; a man holding a map with no places; me, in the middle of the road, searching for something that resembles me \u2014 finding nothing but the echo of my own footsteps repeating in the emptiness.<\/span><\/p>\n

    Am I lost? Or was I lost from the very beginning? Was I searching for her? Or for myself? All I know is that I came home, but I didn\u2019t come back as myself\u2026 maybe I was never myself at all. And all that remained \u2014 a dead cigarette, a switched\u2011off phone, and a question I don\u2019t have the courage to ask: <\/span>\u201cWould anyone have asked about me if I hadn\u2019t made it?\u201d<\/b><\/p>\n

    Yes\u2026 she would have. Who else?<\/span><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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    \n\t\t\t\t\tWritten by:<\/span>\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\tArseen<\/span>\n\t\t\t\t<\/span>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    In a city living under the pressure of siege, it's not just the roads that change... <\/p>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4966,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"elementor_theme","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4566","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-personal-experience"],"blocksy_meta":{"styles_descriptor":{"styles":{"desktop":"","tablet":"","mobile":""},"google_fonts":[],"version":6}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/malathinitiative.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4566","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/malathinitiative.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/malathinitiative.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/malathinitiative.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/malathinitiative.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4566"}],"version-history":[{"count":35,"href":"https:\/\/malathinitiative.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4566\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7546,"href":"https:\/\/malathinitiative.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4566\/revisions\/7546"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/malathinitiative.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4966"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/malathinitiative.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4566"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/malathinitiative.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4566"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/malathinitiative.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4566"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}