New York Trip: Arrival

Diary Entry: September 7, 2024

When I first landed in the US for my master’s in 2016, I operated on a simple one-year plan, after which I would return home. This assumption made budgeting a straightforward affair. But a JSD, a venture spanning three to four years, shattered that simple arithmetic. Just a couple of weeks into the trip, a cold realization set in: the funds were hemorrhaging. My calculations were stark: at the current burn rate, my American venture would collapse by October.

I drafted a message to the International Education Center, the government agency underwriting this endeavor. I was angling for permission to retreat, refund the balance remaining in my bank account, and be released from the obligation. Their reply was a bureaucratic deathblow: I would be liable for the entire sum received. Retreat, it turned out, was a far more perilous proposition than I had ever anticipated.

* * *

The flight from Chicago to New York was a mere two, perhaps two-and-a-half-hour affair. I slept like the dead. I awoke only as we began our descent over LaGuardia, pressing my face to the window. Below, an endless patchwork of land plots scrolled past, finally giving way to the myth itself: an island of grey rock and soil, starkly defined by the surrounding ocean.

I moved quickly through the terminal and into the humid air outside. A formal queue of taxis idled, taking their turns. I scanned for a bus, but none materialized.

I had already secured a place via Booking.com, a room in New Jersey, as New York proper had proven impenetrable. This exposed an immediate, jarring difference between Chicago and New York. In Chicago, one could arrive with no accommodation and secure a room within an hour. Such spontaneity in New York seemed a fantasy, unless one was prepared to hemorrhage cash at exorbitant hotel rates. I suspect Booking.com is a limp tool here; perhaps the locals are forbidden, or simply unwilling, to rent out their homes to foreigners.

A circular taxi line snaked in front of the terminal. I approached one driver, a young man who looked to be of Arabic descent, and asked what he would charge for New Jersey. Instantly, two older black men materialized, launching into an emotional, high-volume debate. It was a rapid-fire assault about queues, or how I should be charged, or some other procedural chaos — all of it transparently designed to wrestle me away from the young driver and assign me to another. I ignored the theater and got into the young man’s car. As we pulled away, he muttered, complaining that “these older people don’t want to mind their own business.”

We departed, and the obligatory conversation began. The route to New Jersey, it turned out, required a full traverse of New York City. I watched the standard American highway infrastructure unspool: a glut of lanes, an oppressive abundance of road signs, tunnels, and a relentless flow of cars. The driver told me he was an immigrant, from Lebanon or perhaps another place like it. They had arrived as refugees, overstayed their visas, and were now mired in the legal system, lawyers retained, awaiting a trial date.

We entered New York over a beautiful, sprawling bridge, a structure that incorporated its own train railways and was choked with traffic. On the horizon, the famed tall buildings began to assert themselves. I asked him the banal questions: what kind of city was this? What were the people like? How easy was it to find work?

“Girls here,” he said, leaning into the warning, “are very dangerous. They get insulted easily. You can’t even tell them compliments. You try to be funny, or clever, and the next thing you know they are screaming that you are sexist and a rapist.”

He gestured toward the skyline. “The jobs are in New York City. Especially for you. You have good English, you can get a job easily.” He paused. “But the biggest problem is working documents. You should really get a lawyer and try to get the papers ready, to be able to stay and work here.”

We plunged into the city proper, and I immediately recognized its aesthetic from countless films: the specific grid of the streets, the architectural style, the elevated railways, the iconic skyscrapers looming over Manhattan, and the plumes of steam venting from the roofs of brownstone buildings. I found myself wondering why I was enduring this transit through the city only to leave it again, but I had no real concept of New Jersey’s proximity.

We approached a tunnel. My driver explained that this, and the bridge that followed, were the exit points. We were headed to New Jersey, which he described as a “lesser living area” just across a thin body of water. You can see New Jersey from New York, but the contrast is monumental. The comment reminded me of a colleague’s story from an Indian wedding — the shocking juxtaposition of a lavish, wealthy celebration on one side of the road while, directly across the street, someone dug through a garbage bin for food. Here, at least architecturally, the difference between New York and New Jersey presented a similarly stark divide.

We finally arrived. My phone, disconnected from the internet, was a useless brick, and a small panic set in that I wouldn’t find the house. My driver, sensing this, helped me locate the building before leaving. I paid the fare displayed on the meter.

The place was a street of houses lined up like dominoes, typical two-floor structures with small ladders or porches out front. The cars parked along the curb were old, many coated in a thick film of dust. I contacted the owner, who guided me through opening the door. I climbed to the second floor, entered my assigned room, and dropped my single piece of luggage: one yellow travel bag.

I was exhausted and famished. All I craved was a small puff, a moment to decompress, and then sleep. I went back down and saw my host standing by the entrance ladder. She was a middle-aged black woman. I offered a smile and said something innocuous, an attempt to open a conversation. She just looked at me, her lips parting in a shape that was neither a smile nor any other expression I could identify. I realized instantly that conversation with her would be impossible.

I circled the house and went into the backyard. It was a patch of wild nature, where overgrown trees and grasses were chaotically entangled with a barbecue grill and a table. I sat down and let the tension recede. My only thought was a profound desire not to see another human being; I just wanted to be left alone. Soon, I went back up the stairs and lay down on the bed.

* * *

The next morning, I woke with a plan that felt, in my state of exhaustion, almost ambitious: to return to New York, the city I had only glimpsed in transit. I grabbed my single yellow travel bag — my sole possession in this venture — and consulted my phone. A search, performed while clinging to the tenuous Wi-Fi of the house, suggested a bus stop was just a couple of dozen meters down the road.

The moment I stepped onto the street, the connection evaporated, leaving me digitally blind. I scanned the road. Nothing. No shelter, no bench, no sign. Just the dusty curb and the same line of tired, settled cars. A large black man stood on the pavement, possessed by the specific stillness of someone waiting. I approached him. “Where can I catch the bus to New York?”

He pointed a single, unmoving finger. “Right there.”

I followed his gesture and saw it: a simple metal pole driven into the sidewalk, bearing a sign so small it was almost an afterthought. BUS. This, in New Jersey, constituted a station.

I waited, the minutes stretching out longer than I had anticipated, a small pulse of anxiety thrumming — what if I’d missed it? What if he was wrong? Finally, the bus appeared, wheezing to a stop. I boarded and immediately claimed a seat. I was in no mood to stand, clinging to a strap all the way to Manhattan. The bus was a cross-section of humanity, populated by “different types” — the only unifying feature being a heavy, collective silence. Each person was locked in their own world. We trundled through the local streets, a landscape of the mundane, before finally merging onto the highway, a tributary flowing toward the great, grey ocean of the city.

As we approached the entrance, the atmosphere shifted. The tall buildings, which had been a distant promise, began to assert themselves. The highway swelled, lanes multiplying, choked with a kinetic crush of cars. A knot of traffic held us suspended for a moment, and then we were in. The bus performed a series of meandering, circular routes I couldn’t comprehend, and then deposited us at a station. I exited the terminal, stepped onto the pavement, and found myself on a long, straight-walled street. I turned, bag in hand, and began walking in the only direction that made sense: toward the city’s center.

New York announced itself immediately. It was viscerally, fundamentally different from any other place. It was a chaotic spectacle of human diversity — every color, every style, every possible walk of life colliding on a single pavement. A raw, almost feral naturalism thrummed beneath a veneer of cultural fascination. The air itself seemed to vibrate. I moved up the street, a solitary observer in this roaring river of people, my primary, animal instinct cutting through the awe: I needed to find a place to eat.

I eventually reached the green edge of Central Park, but I kept to the perimeter, walking on the borderline pedestrian road that separated the city’s grid from its manufactured lung. I walked, and I kept walking, tracking the entire length of the park. Only when I reached the other end, having spent hours in this pointless flanking maneuver, did I realize my error: I was leaving the best part of the city, the very core I had come to see. A wave of frustration hit me. It was already getting late into the afternoon, and I still had no food in me and, more critically, no room for the night.

I reversed course, circling back and cutting left of the park, plunging into the quieter residential areas. And there, an absurd and welcome sight: a Georgian restaurant. I went in without a second thought. I ordered Khinkali, Khachapuri, and a beer. As I ate the familiar, heavy food, a profound sense of release washed over me. For a moment, I felt free — unburdened by the logistics of survival, the looming financial dread, the alien landscape outside.

The bill, when it came, was a jolt back to reality: $108. It seemed an obscene amount, but I had no frame of reference. For all I knew, this was the standard price for a brief moment of peace in New York.

Satiated, I left the restaurant and walked south, back toward the dense heart of Manhattan. The time for exploration was over; I needed shelter. I walked for some time and finally, resigned to the expense, entered a Manhattan hotel. I rented a room for the night. It was precisely what one would expect: a clean, anonymous box, but its window offered a commanding view straight down a central, pulsing street. I looked out at the canyon of light and steel and had the absurd, cynical thought that a woman like Melania Trump might just materialize in the room, a fitting apparition for this monument to capital.

The receptionist was an interesting man, professional but with a spark of curiosity. We exchanged a few pleasantries as I checked in. He glanced at my passport. “Georgia,” he mused. “I have some Georgian neighbors in Brooklyn.”

An old, reflexive instinct flared up in me. “Oh?” I asked. “What kind of people are they? Are they representing our country well?”

He looked up, gave a noncommittal shrug. “They’re okay.”

The banal, lukewarm assessment was, I reflected, probably the most honest answer I could have received.

The next day, I knew, would be about course correction. I could not sustain this level of spending. My first task would be to find something cheaper, a shared room in a hostel I’d seen online, located on the other side of the city, beyond Central Park. It was cheap and, as its listing boasted, had an “international nature” — a euphemism for a bunk bed in a crowded room. Once that was settled, I would finally begin to roam the city. Not as a tourist, but as an investigator. I would take its measure, firsthand.