Dhaka, Bangladesh.

The smells of betel leaf, spices, and the unique stench of pollution wafted through the narrow streets as vendors began to move their carts beneath the awning of buildings; it was going to rain. My cycle rickshaw driver was weaving in and out of the traffic, a determined look on his face as he pedaled carefully over the potholes and puddles. He was determined to get me to the library before it closed. It was my fault, of course, for putting off getting a rickshaw until the very last minute. I’d been lucky to find one willing to pedal me three neighborhoods over during rush-hour traffic in bad weather. I would be tipping him handsomely in American dollars. I’d been warned that female foreigners should not travel alone here, but I urgently needed to catch a glimpse of Sufia Kamal National Public Library, the biggest library in the country.

It was my last night in Bangladesh. I’d come here for a ten-day international photojournalism workshop held by one of my favorite documentary photographers. I’d photographed faces, so many faces: children breaking bricks to earn less than a single US dollar a day, malnourished mothers nursing their babies in the street, men in small villages who’d survived tiger attacks, and the sun-worn faces of the men and women that fished in Bangladesh’s 700 rivers. I’d photographed grief, happiness, fear, anger—everything. While photography was my passion, it was books that were my true love.

When we arrived outside of the library, I paid the rickshaw driver and then bounded up the steps, shielding myself from the rain with my backpack. I could smell the sweet, musky scent of old books the second I walked in through the doors. The library would close in half an hour, giving me just enough time to browse and get a feel for the building’s history. My hands trailed along the bindings as I walked down the aisles, and old memories came bursting forth; the summer when Mom had lost her job, having nothing to our names as we moved from shelter to shelter, our futures so bleak that even the sunlight couldn’t brighten our days. Mom had taken me to the local library, gotten a card made for me, and pressed it into the palm of my hand.

“We don’t have money,” she said, “but we do have our minds. No one can take that away from us. I want you to go find a book and read it, Ginny. And when you’re done, read another, and another, and another. This library card is your ticket to freedom. You can go anywhere you want with the books on these shelves.”

It was the summer of my ninth birthday—a birthday that I’d celebrated with a Hostess cupcake and, to my shock and delight, one of those single-use cameras. It was a summer of dusty library books, of sitting for hours in the children’s section, of reading everything I could get my hands on, all while snapping the occasional photo. It was also the summer the library had held a writer’s workshop for kids, and for participating, we each were given a diary all of our own.

A diary.

I stopped in my tracks, and the memories dissipated. I hadn’t thought about it in years. The diary that had done so much for me, that had gotten me through my teen years, that had been my one and only friend in this world of lean, broken hearts.

The diary that, in a fit of rage, I’d thrown away on my eighteenth birthday.

I was still walking down the aisles of the library when my hand brushed over the spine of a thin book. The texture, weathered and worn, a star carved into it with an X-Acto knife—I’d know that spine anywhere.

“Oh, god,” I whispered, pulling the book out of the shelf.

It was the diary.

Why had it appeared now, after all these years? And here, in Dhaka, Bangladesh? It was as if I’d called to it, as if it had known, as if somehow, we were connected.

I knew, of course, that we were. I’d known since I was nine, since the day I’d first written in it.

And it had written back.

Taking the diary with me, I went to the nearest table and took a seat, flipping it open to the first page. There it was.

“Hello.”

Tears welled up in my eyes as I read the next line.

“Hi.”

I laughed a sniffly sort of laugh, remembering the way I’d thrown the diary across the room. God, that had scared me senseless. It had taken me hours to pick it back up, and when I had, there had been a new line in the book.