It took me five years to finish college. After transferring to a new school, I took medical leave for a condition known informally as lollipop head syndrome, caused by acute anorexia. I finally graduated and returned to D.C. I spent that summer working at a coffee shop on Capitol Hill and living with my mother, money saved at a price much greater than rent. Our interactions were practically marital: I’d help her make decisions about travel, pick up dinner for us, deal with the bills. She seemed to think of me as a husband while still treating me like a child she could reprimand at any moment. By the end of August I could afford to buy a round-trip ticket to Europe. I left in early September and wouldn’t be home for twelve months. By the time the trip arrived, I couldn’t stand to stay at my mother’s house for one more day.

“Via delle Carra,” I said to the bus driver outside the Santa Maria Novella station in Florence. It was the name of my street, and the first Italian words I’d ever spoken. I had rented myself an apartment before getting to Florence. I got to the building and walked into the courtyard, where a group of young people sat playing cards and drinking. They offered me a glass of Chianti and I spent the evening drinking with them. There was a redhead from Copenhagen who worked in a local government office. There was a chef from Kerala who lived in Liverpool and had an effortful Cockney accent. There was a journalist from Madrid who wrote a weekly fashion column. And a designer from Prague, who spoke with a lisp and looked like she was post-lollipop, too. Everyone was referred to by their country of origin. They called me Palestina.

I couldn’t sleep that night. Sleep would take away from my time there. Instead I stayed up with my Let’s Go Italy guidebook, marking cities where I wanted to travel. Siena or Cinque Terre? Definitely Naples, which I’d heard was a lot like Nablus, pre-’48. Sicily, if I didn’t run out of money by spring. I felt intoxicated by my levity. For the first time in years, I was bound to no one.

The following afternoon I enrolled in beginning Italian at the Dante Alighieri language school on Piazza della Repubblica. Every weekday I had lessons from nine to one with a mid-morning break at ten forty-five, which I would use to run across the street for an espresso. Sometimes I went to the deli next door for a pecorino sandwich or a Perugina chocolate. One morning a girl from class followed me there.

“Hey,” a voice from behind me called. “Which is the flat kind?”

“What?” I turned around and looked where the girl’s finger was pointing, at the bottled water, two kinds, marked frizzante and naturale. “Oh,” I said. “Naturale.”