The train moves so slowly that I have time to visit cafés in small villages and climb high mountains and walk over lovingly cultivated fields. When the rails run parallel to the paved road, I’m even able to see what’s inside the baskets and boxes of the farmers, see how much the pomegranates and cucumbers and beets cost according to their carefully handwritten cardboard signs.

Not long after the first stop at a tiny station that wasn’t much more than a pole with a sign and a bench, a young woman in the seat opposite asks me what my name is. I understand that much even though her English isn’t extensive, but she wants to practice. I reply as I usually do—Hannah Ohlsson. When she doesn’t hear me at first, I try again, but this time I say Zana Lilaj instead. I’ve never said the name out loud before—wasn’t even sure if that was me.

I don’t really remember when the images started arriving.

Maybe I’ve always had them?

First just flashes, puzzle pieces from different parts of my mind about my early childhood. They started not long after I got my new room and new name and even new family. Now and then, often when I was least prepared, a little fragment would come to me, and I was able to put it together with all the others. The images expanded. Got color. Finally even sound and smell. I understood them.