Far-Flung Postcards is a weekly series in which NPR's international team shares moments from their lives and work around the world.
If I'd had my microphone with me, you'd hear the bright coloratura of willow warblers and chiffchaffs, the resonant mezzo counterpoint of blackbirds, the soft rustling of leaves in the breeze and the odd jumbo coming in to land at Heathrow — the sounds of the Thames valley and the reassuringly familiar soundtrack to my childhood summer afternoons, minus the roar of Concorde jets.
This peaceful setting is a mature woodland in the making, tucked upriver away from the fray of the capital. It is also a burial ground, where interred ashes fertilize the soil in which young oak and beech trees grow. Sitting at this bench, I have been contemplating where home is after years of living overseas — a question that many international reporters ask themselves after a beat or two.
The answer is rarely short, but it strikes me how being able to return to see family is the privilege of peace, even once they've passed. It is the privilege of being able to take leave of loved ones and afford them dignity. As colleagues — far braver than I am — witness how the horrors of war take many thousands of lives and deprive families of being able to mark their deaths properly, I am aware of how lucky I am to have this bench under a cathedral-like canopy of trees to which I can return again and again.
See more photos from around the world:
- Greetings from Guhagar, India, where newly hatched turtles get some help into the sea
- Greetings from the Negev desert, where traces remain of a vanished ancient civilization
- Greetings from the Dubai airport, where a long layover can also be a destination
- Greetings from Paris, where you can swim in the Seine for the first time in a century
- Greetings from Gujarat, India, where a banyan tree is a place for rest, prayers and play
- Greetings from Khartoum, Sudan, where those with the least offer their guests the most
- Greetings from Moscow, Russia, where Lenin's tomb attracts a new surge of visitors
- Greetings from New Delhi, India, where performing monkeys spark delight — and ambivalence
- Greetings from Damascus, Syria, where a crowded bar welcomed post-Assad revelers
- Greetings from Alishan, Taiwan, whose red cypress forests offer timeless beauty
- Greetings from Odesa, Ukraine, where a Black Sea beach offers respite from war
- Greetings from Shenyang, China, where workers sort AI data in 'Severance'-like ways
- Greetings from Palmyra, Syria, with its once-grand hotel named for a warrior queen
- Greetings from Mexico City, where these dogs ride a bus to and from school
- Greetings from the Galápagos Islands, where the blue-footed booby shows its colors
- Greetings from Afrin, Syria, where Kurds danced their hearts out to celebrate spring
- Greetings from Dharamshala, India, where these Tibetan kids were having the best time
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