Searching For My Edinburgh

Many people spend their lives searching for their Jerusalem or their Mecca. A place that all roads seem to lead back to. A destination that makes the journey of life worthwhile. I began a similar search a year ago, but rather than searching for my Mecca, I was searching for my Edinburgh. Edinburgh, Scotland hardly has the same cultural significance that Mecca or Jerusalem have, but its importance in the life of author J.K. Rowling was like a pilgrimage in some ways. Rowling has said before that the majority of the Harry Potter series was written in the city of Edinburgh. A place that, for her, yielded inspiration in a way that she had never experienced previously. As a writer, this is what I long for. A place where a masterpiece can almost be written just from the sights and sounds itself.

"It is one of the most hauntingly beautiful places in the world, the history is fascinating, the men are handsome and the whisky is delicious. But don't eat the macaroni pies."

- J.K. Rowling

For nearly two years, my stories have largely been constructed while sitting in my bedroom in my apartment or in the deli of my university, with the sounds of other stressed out students surrounding me. I never minded the noise though. I did my best work in places with lots of noise, which was why I've always hated taking tests in school. There was never any noise besides pages turning and the sounds of erasers and pencils scratching across a paper. There were no sounds of human interaction to draw inspiration from. So sitting in a crowded university deli was the perfect place for my writing to happen. The only problem was the clock ticking. Knowing that I would have to get up too soon to head to my next class. On several occasions, I would stay there, ignoring the clock and writing well into my class time, but my abandoned responsibilities and the tens of thousands of dollars I spent on tuition always gnawed at the back of my mind. It is hard to create freely with the guillotine of time and wasted money hanging over your head. Thus began my days looking for Airbnb's and plane tickets in search of my own personal Edinburgh.

My Initial Edinburgh

The first place I looked into was Germany. I have been fascinated with Germany ever since I started learning German in middle school after finding out that my father's ancestors came from there several generations back. I looked into big cities like Hamburg and Munich and Berlin. And then I looked into smaller cities like Dusseldorf and Dresden, the whole while searching for a place where I could imagine myself sitting in a cafe or on a bus, people watching and writing, trying to fit the foreign sites into my American stories like Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. I imagined practicing my German with some of the locals and eating German foods and retreating to my German Airbnb, with a fresh outlook on life. And for a few months as I planned this trip, knowing that it would take awhile to actually do with my limited funds and a global pandemic threatening the world, I thought that Germany was for sure my Edinburgh.

My Actual Edinburgh

When my stories started to change colors, so did the location of the Edinburgh I had created in my mind. Suddenly, in the middle of a pandemic, my main project became one about a land that has influenced me my whole life. The home of my mother: Liberia. My Liberian heritage has been a major influence on who I am today. The foods I eat, the music I listen to, the jokes I tell, the words I use. So much of it is Liberian, to the point that sometimes I have trouble differentiating between what parts of myself are from my Liberian upbringing and what parts of myself are from my American environment. This land that had inspired and taught me for so much of my life suddenly became the place I was longing for, like a childhood home that I had never lived in.

I've dreamed of going to visit the place where my mother was born and raised since I was a child, but I always felt like it could wait until I became settled in my career and financially stable. Now, I feel the need to go there to write an authentic account about this land that I have only ever traveled to through stories and pictures and videos. And I can imagine myself sitting on the beach, writing about the taste of the salty Atlantic Ocean air and the feel of the warm tropical breeze, the sound of the grass beneath my feet and people shouting through the streets. The rich sounds of a country full of history that was interrupted by a brutal civil war.

I'm a serious optimist. I come from a country where you have little to be hopeful for, and so you have to always be an optimist.

-Leymah Gbowee

My mother has said in roundabout terms before that sometimes Liberia no longer feels like home to her. Because everything she knew before she left, the places and the people, have largely been destroyed by war. And though I never imagined my Edinburgh being a place where my mother's pain was bred, as a writer, I know that some of the most beautiful things can come from pain. And Liberia and its people and its culture and its heart and soul and yes, even its pain, are all beautiful. It is a place that will allow me to create something that has been waiting to be released from my mind and my heart for twenty-two years and the place that will be a turning point in my life. I always knew that Liberia was my Mecca, the place that all roads led to and the place that I needed to go before leaving this Earth, but now I know that it is my Edinburgh.