Welcome to Hackney

Every traveler feels a strange isolation when they arrive in any foreign country. It's a kind of shaky, vaguely nauseating, but not unpleasant sensation. I think it comes from not knowing enough. You don't know who to call if things go wrong. You don't even really know where your hotel is. You don't understand the lay of the land. Terra is not firma.

When you arrive in a foreign country expecting to stay - or to 'settle', as the immigration officer had called it, calmingly, like a teacher to a class of unruly children - that sensation is amplified to a level just short of unbearable. This strange place is home now. Home sweet home. Where you don't know what zucchini is called. Or shrimp. Or shopping carts. You don't know how to call an ambulance.

Home sweet home for me was Hackney. Jon had arranged for me to rent a room (to be a 'lodger', he called it) there. His co-worker, Adam, made money by renting rooms in his sprawling house near London Fields.

I rented it sight unseen. Jon's recommendation was not exactly enthusiastic, but he made it clear I had few options. At the end of a long, useful email, he'd said of Adam, 'I think maybe he's a good person, although I'm not certain. He means well... or at least I suspect he does. He's just a bit crazy, but not in an entirely bad way... usually. At any rate, you don't have to live there for long and it's a better than a bedsit.'

'What's a bedsit?' I wondered.

Hackney. It sounds unpleasant. Tired. Worn out. An old, used up concept is 'hackneyed'. I looked it up on the internet and found little to change my mind. Words like 'crime' and 'poverty' came up a lot. But Jon said it was really quite trendy, filled with people who worked in publishing and television.

He'd helpfully booked a minicab for me, but after my epic experience at the immigration counter, a small luggage fiasco (my bags clearly weren't made to last) and the long hazy blur of plane time, I emerged exhausted from the arrivals section at Gatwick Airport without a clear idea of just what a 'minicab' really was. Was it very tiny? Did it have an engine?

It proved to be a slightly battered blue Ford that seemed to belch air freshener from every orifice. My bags would not all fit in the UK-sized trunk, so a big purple suitcase sat beside me on the backseat. It was taller than me, and I held my arm around it comfortingly.

The driver was a very small, very polite man who told me he'd lived in London for eight years but his heart was really in Bangladesh. He said very little else during the two hours we spent together listening to tinny British pop music interspersed with the bellowing of incredibly enthusiastic British DJs.

When asked, the driver said we were in Surrey, and I stared out the window learning what suburbs looked like in England - tiny yards packed with clothes on lines behind toy-town houses, all surrounded by traffic jams - and thinking. Worrying, really.

We barreled onto a slim freeway that seemed to have been built at a time when everyone drove much smaller cars. It was already clear that the protective cushion of personal space I'd always taken for granted simply did not exist here. Not around people walking; not around cars driving. Nobody touched, but they missed each other by inches.

I had two hours to think about that as the Ford rattled alongside cars that looked little different from those back home, save for the lack of SUVs and pickup trucks. At one point, I tried to figure out why the landscape seemed so empty, then I realized there were hardly any billboards.

That's nice, I thought. You can actually look around you without being sold something.

I thought about everybody back home, and wondered what Sharon was doing right now.

Hmm, it's 2am. She's sleeping.

I wondered if she wondered how I was. I pictured my old apartment, with its polished wooden floors, and big windows looking out over the bustling street. Every Saturday morning I would throw on my yoga clothes, step over the clothes I'd thrown on the floor the night before, run a comb through my tangled hair and walk down to Perkys to meet Sharon for bagels and papers before we went to yoga class together. Perkys was our local coffee shop - its real name is La Perc but absolutely nobody calls it that. We knew all the waitresses so well we didn't even have to order, and we were sort of an institution there since we went there at some point virtually every day, and had for the last four years. Sharon was the only person allowed to bring a dog into the place, since everybody loved her fluffy Lhasa Apso, Dalai.

I wondered what the coffee shops were like in Hackney. I wondered how I would get along here without a real friend.

I felt lonelier thinking that.

Gradually the roads narrowed and we slowed to a crawl, driving by battered 19th-century row-houses on gray, dingy streets that seemed to dissolve into the sunless, white-gray sky. Surely this wasn't it? It looked as if some evil genius had developed a system to extract all the color from the world. It made me tired.

Actually, maybe I just was tired.

I really must be careful not to panic. I could come to love this place.

The car stopped.

'We are here' my Bangladesh-loving driver announced, sounding relieved.

We both sat for a second, staring at the perfectly ordinary buildings around us. He waited patiently for me to move, but for quite a few minutes I just didn't.

Was I ready for this?

Finally, with a deep breath, I opened the door. He was out in seconds, and helped me move suitcases nearly as big as him to the sidewalk from the back of the cab, before politely charging me £10 more than the agreed fare because he'd had to wait for me.

$100 for a cab ride. Amazing.

With a thoughtful wave, he drove away and I was alone.

I stood in front of number 55 Marlborough Road, taking it in. Its windows were closed tight, and the glare reflected off the glass revealing nothing of the inside.

The cool humid breeze ruffled my hair. I focused on the positives. This is it. My new life abroad begins right here, right now. Hello world! I have arrived! To do... something.

Grabbing one of the enormous cases by the handle I dragged it up the 10 concrete steps to the door and rapped the glossy black wood three times with my knuckles.

A few seconds later it swung open. Adam was about 6 feet tall, with wavy brown hair cut quite short. He wore a trendy striped purple button-down shirt and expensive glasses. His blue eyes protruded slightly behind them. He had a friendly but nervous smile.

'Hello! I thought you'd be here hours ago!' he gestured me in, then turned and walked a little way into the hallway. Inside the brick three-story building, the walls were painted bright yellow, and I thought they could really stand touching up, as they were quite scuffed in places. A bicycle leaned against the wall by the door, making the narrow hall even narrower.

I dragged my case in, propped it against a wall, then turned back for the other bags still on the sidewalk.

'Oh, have you got more?' he asked, leaning over to peer past me. He sounded a bit surprised. 'Well, I wouldn't leave them out there, people will think you don't want them and somebody will wander along and take them.'

I walked down the stairs, puzzled. What had he expected? That I'd move to England with just one bag? Of course I had more. Wouldn't anybody have more? And why would I leave them outside? Did he think I was an idiot?

Silently, I put the shoulder bag across one shoulder, then dragged the purple monster of a case up one step at a time. He did not offer to help.

'Just leave your bags here,' he said as I walked back inside. 'You must need a cup of tea! I've got to leave for work soon, but I'll put the kettle on.'

He had an accent like Emma Thompson, but not as strong, I thought. His voice was nice - rich, like a radio presenter.

He led the way into the kitchen. It, too, was painted vivid, matte yellow - although more lemony than the shocking yellow hallway.

By God there was color in Hackney after all, and it was all in this house.

It was a pleasant enough room, though, opening onto a comfortable lounge with two sofas covered in loose, navy blue fabric. It had wood floors, and big windows looking out over a green backyard.

He took two cheery orange mugs out of the blonde wood cabinet and set them on the counter, asking all the normal questions about my journey and the cab ride. He seemed almost nice - if a bit too distant for real warmth - and I was puzzled that he hadn't helped with my bags. Why not? Was it a British thing?

Adam, I would learn, had timed his life just right - hitting 25 in 1992, the same year his dad died, leaving him only slightly bereaved and with an inheritance of £40,000. All this happening just as the London property market bottomed out. So he used the money as a deposit on this meandering, four-bedroom house, which he got for 80 grand. He could sell it now, he would tell me frequently over the coming months, for £400,000.

He beckoned me to sit down at the table as the sun appeared suddenly outside, brightening the already bright room still further. He'd put milk in the tea without asking. Milk in tea usually makes me gag, but today it tasted rather nice, almost soothing.

'Right. So I've drawn you a little map of the neighborhood so you can find your way around,' he was saying, showing me the hand-drawn page, replete with little labels reading 'bus stop' and 'newsagent'.

'You'll be wanting to get some food first, I suppose, so head to the Tescos here,' he pointed. 'It's about a 10-minute walk or so. Or you could just go to the newsagent here, but everything there seems to be past its sell-by date.'

In my head I was translating:
Tescos = grocery store
newsagent = convenience store
sell-by date = expiration date

'Gotcha,' I said.

'Catch the 38 bus if you want to come into the center, it stops just at the end of the road,' he said, finishing his tea.

'Now, quickly let me show you around. This is your cupboard.'

He opened a small cabinet door showing me three dusty shelves.

'In some houses everybody just puts their food in together but I don't like that - people can accidentally eat your cereal, and then where are you? Now, here's the loo...'

He showed me a small, clean, somewhat old-fashioned shower room just off the kitchen, then we climbed the stairs to the top floor. He opened the door, and led me into a small room almost entirely filled by a low, wooden double bed. There was no closet, just a bar hung from the wall beside the bed. There was no dresser, but a cheap wooden bookshelf by the window could be used as one, presumably. The walls were painted matte pumpkin orange.

My heart sank, but I kept my face studiously blank.

'I hope you'll be comfortable here. It probably looks small to you - everything in America is so huge - but for a London flat this is actually quite a sizeable room,' he said, a bit patronizingly.

'Oh, it's very nice,' I lied hurriedly.

'That's great, glad you like it. Here are your keys; I'm afraid I must be off. I'm out tonight meeting friends - won't be in until late. Shazza, who lives in the room next to yours, is at work now, but you can probably meet her tonight unless she's out. She's nice, if a bit quiet.'

I stayed in the room as he rattled down the stairs and maneuvered the bike out the door. The door shut with a solid thump.

The house was silent.

I realised he hadn't left me any way to contact him in case something went wrong. It then occurred to me that nobody in this country knew me well enough to really care if something went wrong.

I looked around the orange room and I did not cry.

'Welcome to Hackney,' I said aloud.

Then I walked downstairs to get my things.