I Accidentally Shipped Literal Garbage from Egypt to Jordan

on traveling light and letting go

Hot air balloons rising over a field in Cappadocia, Turkey.

My dad was a frequent business traveler, the sort who would go as far as China or Japan or Sweden with just a small carry-on and a garment bag for his suit. There were few things he detested more than wasting time at a check-in counter or baggage claim—a quirk he passed on to me. 

He passed on all his packing tricks, too. I remember him kneeling on the high-pile wool carpet in my bedroom and demonstrating how to roll a shirt instead of fold: first tuck the sleeves over the chest, bringing the side seams slightly inward to make a clean rectangle. Then roll from the bottom seam up to the collar, smoothing the wrinkles out as you go, before nestling the bundle between the spines of your rollaboard.

As he did this, he would tell me, Sammy, always travel light.

I’ve been a persnickety packer ever since. I have dozens of space-saving idiosyncrasies that allow me to travel carry-on only, regardless of trip length. I put the bulkiest things in first, stuffing tank tops and underwear into any nook or cranny that’s left over. I shove clothes inside purses and socks into shoes. I leave no negative space, and I take pride in sacrificing luxuries like hair dryers so that I never have more than I can easily carry.

While I’m a pro at traveling light on trips, I generally fail at applying my dad’s advice to the rest of my life. There is nothing quite like an international move to reveal just how much useless crap you’ve been dragging around with you, so picture me on the day my household effects were delivered to me in Jordan, about to be reminded of all my shortcomings: I stood on the threshold of my apartment, eyes bright, eagerly watching as men unloaded wooden crates labeled “CHILDRESS–AMMAN” from a truck and shuffled up the porch stairs with labored grunts. The more boxes that screeched and scraped across our tile floor, the giddier I became.

It had been five months since Nick and I arrived in Amman, and our things were just making it to us from Cairo. We were told the delay was due to the Houthis threatening Red Sea shipping lanes—better to get your stuff late than have it blown up by a missile, right?—but thanks to a clandestinely placed AirTag, we had tracked our things as they went from Egypt to Belgium to Morocco, then back to Egypt before finally arriving at the Port of Aqaba. Never ascribe to malice what incompetence can sufficiently explain. 

But no matter. As I flattened myself against the wall to make room for the movers to bring in the mother lode, all I cared about was that our things were there. We’d gone so long living out of suitcases in an apartment with bare walls, and seeing our household goods again gave me a sense of permanence and control. The long transition period was finally over; we were about to make this house a home. 

I knelt in my grubby leggings and leaned over a box, ready to dig for buried treasure. I tore greedily at the packing tape, imagining the heft of a cherished pair of candlesticks (how smooth and cool they would feel in my palm!) and the earthy scent of my books. I popped open the top, flung aside a layer of packing paper, and revealed…a box bursting with literal garbage. Ramen noodles that expired in 2018. Crumpled receipts with ink so faded I couldn’t even tell what country they were from. A bag stuffed with shredded paper and a ratty pair of slippers I’d tried to throw away. 

Flummoxed, I thought back to the night Nick and I left Cairo for good. We had packed up our apartment in a hurry, not bothering to declutter—it’s always easier in the moment to throw junk in a box than it is to consider the merits of each object (and anyway, what if cough syrup wasn’t available where we were going and we ended up needing that half-empty bottle of Robitussin??). It wasn’t the packers’ job to curate our things, so they’d carefully packaged up full kitchen drawers’ worth of gummy rubber bands and cough drops with sticky wrappers, then shipped them halfway across the world and handed them back to us.

There was something crushing about that thought—that we’d moved heaps of trash from one country to another. I would spend the coming days not organizing and decorating, but sifting through a rubbish pile.

I thought of my dad—always travel light—and I felt heavy with remorse. He’d be disappointed in me. 

This was more than the weight of moving boxes filled with garbage. This was a spiritual burden. 

There’s a cycle of constant renewal that flows from moving and traveling frequently. Each time I arrive in a different place, I find I can’t live the same life I did before; I have to find new walking routes, new coffee shops, new brands of milk and yogurt. A new normal. I have to reinvent myself, if only just a bit, to fit within the contours of my new life and to live it to its full potential. The trick is always knowing what amount of reinvention is right.

It’s been months since the day our shipment arrived, and there is still a room in my apartment full of boxes packed with things from past lives—a life in New York, another in D.C., yet another in Cairo. They offer a sense of security that keeps me from culling them; better to have them than not, as no one can say for certain I won’t need them again in the future.

And yet, what is certain is that if I hold onto them, I’ll have less room for the things that matter to me now.

For years, I’ve resisted reinventing myself too much, too fast, and tried to cling to the life I had before moving abroad. I kept a U.S.-based remote job long after it stopped making me happy because it was something to fall back on if life overseas didn’t work out. It came at the cost of the joys that were staring me in the face: so many social functions I missed because of trying to keep up with D.C. hours, so many squandered opportunities to start learning Arabic, so much writing that never got done. 

I grew accustomed to living with unnecessary baggage, both physical and spiritual. Each move, each past life was another weight keeping me from this one.

My dad, ever my greatest teacher, is now traveling even lighter than air; he died at 64. I turned 33 on Saturday—the age at which his life was more than half over. 

It’s well past time that I travel lighter, in the way I believe my dad really meant it. 

So as of next week, I am leaving my day job. I’ll be taking an indefinite sabbatical to write and create full-time, and to better immerse myself in my life in Jordan (in between unpacking boxes and separating trash from treasure, that is).

I’ll be back next week to talk more about what that means for this newsletter. What I’ll say now is that you can expect more heartfelt examinations of life as a foreigner in the Middle East, as well as more travel stories that celebrate our differences, reveal our shared humanity, and leave us with greater awareness of the nuances of our world. 

I hope you’ll join me as I unburden myself. Let’s rise together, like a hot air balloon shedding its ballast.