Excerpt

I would become invisible. Thus self-searching turned into a path
branching in many directions, each station seeking an answer to
the same question: who am I, who will I become once I am no
longer where I started from? And will I truly live where I eventually
arrive? I constantly performed in class as well, imitating
teachers here too, just as I had done in elementary school. Several
times the teachers caught me, but there was no anger; they seemed
to enjoy it.
I travelled home only for the summer holidays and at Christmas.
During the journey, amid the clattering of the train, the same sorrowful,
mournful image always appeared before me: the entrance
gate before our house draped in black cloth, as was customary in
houses of mourning at that time, heralding tragedy. The dark material
swallowed the light dully; even daytime seemed to turn into
dusk beneath it. I constantly feared my mother’s death, feared that
one day it would no longer be her footsteps echoing across the
courtyard stones, but the whispers of strangers and bowed heads
filling the space instead. This fear settled inside me like a stubborn
shadow that neither laughter nor distance could dispel, but which
simply kept growing silently alongside me. Behind my closed eyelids
on the train, tears gathered. I wanted to surrender to self-pity,
but the strict self-discipline that over many years had become almost
reflexive prevented it. And when I opened my eyes, I smiled
so naturally at my carefree, chatting and laughing fellow passengers
that they never noticed from what cold inner landscapes I had
returned among them.
The city’s dawn lights appeared; familiar buildings, streets, bridges
slipped past the train windows. I felt none of the excitement of
arrival. The whole thing resembled a replay, as though we were
rewinding a film to understand something better, to discover
a detail previously overlooked, or after one final reckoning
consign it forever to the junk pile of the past. Quietly I lifted down
my luggage and stepped out of the compartment.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1926763874