l’ve moved cities enough times to know that leaving is never just about packing boxes. After spending eighteen years in London, I found myself applying to a number of different cities, including Oxford, for university. All my London friends were shocked at the thought of anyone willingly leaving the capital, especially with the countless high ranking universities already at our doorstep. After a year at Oxford, I found myself shocking them again by packing my bags for Yerevan, Armenia. Four months later, I am awaiting my visa for Dushanbe, Tajikistan. For me, the hardest part about moving has never been adapting to somewhere new, but instead figuring out how to leave the place I was already calling home. So, where and how does one hold on to their old city when they move to a new one? Where do cities go when we leave them, and how much of them do we take with us?
When I first arrived at the Lodge in Wadham College, the porter said something along the lines of “Westgate is like your ‘Westfield’ in London”. That sentence alone made me feel at ease. I realise now that I was searching for pieces of home. I had hesitated before cancelling my subscriptions and memberships to clubs, galleries and museums in London. I’d still read through all their event emails, refusing to tell myself that I wouldn’t be able to attend. My face would light up if I ever heard a distinct London accent or if anyone said that they were also from London. Without realising it, I was continuously searching for London in Oxford’s smaller, quieter streets.
London doesn’t just have a place in my heart;, I’d say it is my heart, and with the constant changes in the landscape, gentrification, communities and social life, I wouldn’t say I grew up in London, but rather I grew up with London. There are words, sounds and smells that only a Londoner can understand. A pace of life and a hectic routine that only we are accustomed to.
Every weekend, I’d force myself to stay in Oxford, trying to navigate my new city and build a community in a place I would be calling home for the next four years. Oxford seemed more gentle and orderly compared to London and people were often much friendlier. When I spoke to my friends who were still back in London, they’d complain about the high cost of living and their chaotic daily commutes on the tube. They reassured me that I wasn’t missing out, but my heart would still ache to step in their shoes and have their university routine, even just for a day.
But then, something changed. After my second term, I came home for the holidays and for more than a split second, I truly missed my dorm room. Even though I reminisced as I passed by my old school, watching all the school children leaving to catch the bus, the tube, or to walk home together, just as I once did, and found comfort in London’s multicultural streets, I was still counting the days until I could pack up and move back to Oxford. I was finally accepting Oxford as my second home, without feeling as though I had to leave London behind. I added words and phrases like ‘college mum’, ‘plodge’ and ‘subfusc’ to my vernacular, new vocabulary which I now needed to explain to my non-Oxford friends, just as there had been certain references which only fellow Londoners could understand. These new words summoned a feeling of deep nostalgia for the place I now was able to call home.
So when I moved to Armenia, I now had to figure out how to leave yet another city behind. At first, moving beyond UK borders didn’t exactly feel exciting or adventurous. Not speaking Armenian meant that I couldn’t effectively communicate with locals and at times my own landlord; I couldn’t read addresses or ingredients, which were usually in Armenian script.
I quickly learnt that taking taxis was the norm, that all fruit and vegetables were organic so expired quickly, and that my usual walking pace was considered ‘rushing’ to Armenians. To my surprise, the metro only had one line, and the local Asda down our road in London was much larger than supermarkets in central Yerevan. Neighbours always said hello to each other and the social etiquettes and daily rhythm of life differed to anything I was ever used to. The pace of life was even slower than Oxford, and while I felt that I had the opportunity to ‘breathe’, it also felt boring at times.
In an attempt to cope with my new environment, I followed London news daily. The news I was met with, though, didn’t often fill me with the reassurance I sought. I watched as hundreds flooded my city for the ‘unite the kingdom’ march. I learned that as a gesture to intimidate and separate, our local area in London was covered in Union Jack flags, and that a few people I knew had stopped sending their toddlers to nursery for safety concerns. In the short time I had been away , London had turned upside down. People outside London will always joke that the capital isn’t ‘safe’ or ‘peaceful’, but I know my city for how it really is and I know how to navigate its streets. But in Armenia, the London I saw in my news feed was almost unrecognisable.
So instead I sought comfort in small, familiar things, such as ordering English Breakfast Tea at coffee shops. The sound of rain would instantly transport me back, and having classmates from London gave me a sense of belonging (although hearing us say “Come off it” or “Are you having a laugh?” was met with a great deal of confusion by my American classmate). For me, confusion also arose when I heard Americans say “crosswalk” instead of “zebra crossing” and “truck” and “trunk” instead of “lorry” and “boot”. Our cities and their influence on our character live within us, expressed in the pace of our walk, our mannerisms and how we speak. Regardless of where we are in the world, our cities show up in our accents, mannerisms and conversations.
When I look back on my initial days in Oxford and Yerevan, I had not experienced these cities beyond their tourist attractions, and any interactions with locals and residents were surface level conversations. Yet, when I was close to leaving, I felt that I was leaving behind a part of me, and a part that I wanted to hold on to, even if it was time for me to move on. If there’s anything I’ve learnt from adapting to different cities and building homes in once unrecognisable landscapes, it is that our time spent in different cities are not separate chapters that we leave behind, but rather, should be thought of as sedimentary layers. My London layer shaped my Oxford layer, and both influenced my Yerevan layer. In turn, each of them will shape whatever comes next in Dushanbe. I’ve learned that there is no need to store cities elsewhere, to file them away. Cities are identities that follow us, evolve with us and have taken root within us.
