And the moment I saw that Berlin was not a film set but a real, dark, and thrilling home to so many vagabonds, I knew I’d make it my home. I’d build a new Leyla here and hide her from eyes that knew us before, voices that wouldn’t stop telling us what we could not do. And I did it. I moved here less than a year after that cold November night.

I did more than that. After some years of watching the Danish happiness bandwagon roll relentlessly on from a distance—interspersed with regular visits that, if anything, only served to confuse me more (Weather still shitty? Check. Tax rate still over 50 percent? Yep. Shops closed whenever you need them? Oh, yes)—I moved back there.

I have always lived in the myth of New York more than in its reality. It is what enabled me to live there for so long, loving the idea of something more than the thing itself. But toward the end, in those weeks of walking and taking pictures, I came to know and love the thing itself. This was partly because I loved the work of documenting it. Even