The World Noticed Us

A security guard in Saint Petersburg sounded out a word on Dani’s map until he recognized the donut shop. A rickshaw driver in Jaipur waited for us to come back. A man with a broom at Amer Palace pointed toward a doorway I hadn’t seen. In Japan, a chef shook his head when I asked to take dinner back to the hotel.

Sometimes the person we remembered from a place was not the person we had gone there to meet. They were the one who stopped us, redirected us, warned us, fed us, or simply noticed that we were there.