The Land That Pointed Me Home
OCT 20, 2025
The first time I landed in Japan, it was Osaka, 2018. I boarded a train to Kyoto with the weight of history in my head—decades of reading, from children’s history books to Shōgun by James Clavell. But no book could have prepared me for what waited outside the window: streets so clean they glistened, alleys safe enough to wander at midnight, silence so deep it felt sacred. Japan, at once foreign and familiar, received me like a place I had always known.
Kyoto was a mirror to my earliest years in Tehran. I had left Iran when I was only three, yet in Kyoto, the memories rushed back as if I had never forgotten—the public baths, the careful change of shoes indoors, tea rituals, futons folded neatly on the floor, rice cookers humming, men in dark suits on morning trains. Childhood, suddenly alive again, walked beside me on every street.
As I wandered through the Shōgun’s castle, recognition stirred. I seemed to know the hidden corners and the gardens that stretched beyond sight. I sensed the presence of a secret garden, a quiet escape from the palace’s busy life, hidden just out of reach. It wasn’t knowledge learned from books; it was memory—or perhaps premonition—awakening within me. Every step felt like reunion with a place my soul had long remembered.
After four days, I flew on to Hong Kong, where patients awaited me. But Kyoto engraved itself into my heart so deeply that I promised myself I would return—not just to Kyoto, but to the other faces of Japan, to see whether the feeling would follow me.
It did, though in different ways. In Tokyo, I explored a city that never sleeps, modern and restless, yet beneath its pulse I felt an undertone of stillness—ma, the sacred space between sounds and gestures that gives rhythm to life itself. Among the rush of neon and trains, I found silence between the sounds, a pause that felt like home. I met remarkable people there, including the Chabad rabbi and his wife, who welcomed me like family at their Shabbat table. Yet even with their warmth, it was Kyoto that whispered to me the loudest.
On my fourth visit, I escorted two women through Tokyo, Hiroshima, Osaka, and Kyoto. Conflict shadowed that journey—one of the women was difficult, even violent. Hurt and exhausted, I parted from them in Osaka and flew to Dubai. Still, Japan softened the wound. Even in disappointment, I found quiet triumph: navigating Tokyo’s subway alone, mastering the rhythm of bullet trains, sensing the subtle pulse of each city. And always, the cherry blossoms—tender, radiant, shedding petals like blessings. I stood beneath them and felt that I, too, was one of those trees: rooted in one place, yet scattering pieces of myself wherever the wind carried me.
Then came the stranger. In a market one afternoon, an old man took my hand. His words were simple, yet they struck me with the force of revelation: “Your place is Japan. Your love lies here.”
Love? I had long placed love aside. For thirty years, I chose solitude over pain, and solitude had been kind to me. I had no longing for romance. Yet his words lingered like a seed falling into soil I thought had turned to stone.
That night, and on the flight that followed, something awakened—an ancient thread from another dimension.
My dearest,
This journey began with a whisper—so soft, it echoed only within me.
Yet with time, the whisper grew.
Now, even in silence, I hear you.
The echo in my heart has awakened.
By the time I reached Dubai, I had begun writing love letters to a presence I had not yet met but always known. A book was born midair, out of silence and prophecy.
Japan gave me flavors, too—the many cups of matcha, the teas I carried home, the sake that never once made me drunk. But more than flavors, it gave me recognition. It felt as if the land itself knew me, called me, belonged to me as much as I belonged to it.
I believe every soul has a place where its energies align, where the land itself welcomes us home. For my patients, I often read these places and guide them there. For myself, I had never sought such knowledge; I preferred to let the future surprise me. Yet in Japan, recognition came unbidden. Each time I returned, the feeling deepened. I did not know the language, nor many of the people, but I knew in my bones: here is where I belong—or at least where the path begins.
Osaka taught me curiosity. Kyoto taught me stillness. Tokyo, motion. Hiroshima, humility. Each city mirrored a part of me. In Kyoto’s quiet I felt seijaku—the stillness that holds awakening. In Hiroshima’s resilience I saw gaman—the quiet dignity that endures. And through all my journeys, I learned kintsugi: the beauty of gold-lined fractures, the truth that our cracks are not flaws but openings for light.
There is a Japanese word—yūgen—that means a beauty too deep to be seen directly, only felt, like the shadow of a mountain in dusk. My connection with Japan lives in that place. It is not loud; it exists quietly, like moonlight behind a thin cloud.
Every pause, every silence between us, became a kind of zanshin—a lingering awareness that stays even when the moment passes. And perhaps this is what love truly is: not clinging, but mushin—a freedom of heart that allows everything to flow as it is meant to.
One afternoon beneath the cherry blossoms, I understood: Japan was never the destination. Japan was the mirror. It reflected who I had been and pointed toward who I am becoming. It was the land that pointed me home.
I arrived with no plan other than to let the land reveal itself to me. In return, it revealed me to myself. Each visit deepened the recognition: the silence, the stillness, the unspoken thread that connected me to something greater.
I do not yet speak of the work to come, nor of the doors that will open. But the certainty within me is absolute: what is whispered now will one day roar, and what is unseen will shine. Somewhere, hearts will stir, eyes will open, and the world will remember that love, vision, and courage are never lost—they only wait for the right hand to carry them forward.
And I, drawn by memory, by destiny, by the pulse of a land older than time itself, will be among those who ring the bell.
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