Hello, I'm Lale Arakoglu and welcome to Women Who Travel, a podcast for anyone who is curious about the world and excited to explore places both near and far from home.

Today, we're exploring what determines living abroad.

There are people who say, go and spend a summer somewhere in Europe,

and it feels for them at the time, or maybe afterward, that they've lived there.

For me, it took much longer, years in fact, to accept the fact that I actually live in America.

I always thought, oh, I'll always go back to London.

I'm a Londoner. That is my city. That is what I'm tied to.

At some point, I think I just had to accept that maybe New York is actually my home. I've spent my entire 20s and now the early part of my 30s in New York.

I've grown up here ostensibly, and it's formed me as much as London has. Who would I be

if I had ended up somewhere else?

Yeah. as London has. Who would I be if I had ended up somewhere else? I moved out in 2006 out of Beirut.

I lived in Saudi Arabia, then in Bahrain, then 10 years in Dubai, and now I've moved to California.

Zayna Hashem Beck is a poet and author who moved from Lebanon several times to different countries.

Her writing explores whether, or if, or how much, we can put down roots when moving,

and also the extent to which we're obsessed with what we've left behind, and whether it's

possible to have dual loyalties to the old country and the new.

Music In my dreams, the sea is gone. The streets without people or cats.

Then I remember music on your balconies

in the cold, dear Beirut.

I carry a name in many cities.

They're light and they're heavy.

Tonight and every night,

...