Finding Home in a Lisbon Attic

The stairs creaked with a rhythmic familiarity as I climbed to the fourth floor of the Alfama apartment. Outside, the Fado singers were just beginning their nightly lamentations, their voices drifting up through the open window like smoke. I realized then that travel isn’t always about the grand monuments or the checked boxes on a map. Sometimes, it’s about the way the light hits a dusty bookshelf in a room that isn’t yours, making you feel, for a fleeting second, that you have lived here in another life. The tiles outside were worn smooth by centuries of ocean air.