Roxana Ahmadi

on the second bunk of a four-bed hostel room in Tbilisi

1girl, adult woman age 26, Iranian-Canadian features, warm light-olive skin with mature features and subtle smile lines, long shoulder-length tousled dark brown hair with sun-lightened ends, almond-shaped warm-hazel eyes lined with thick lashes, a faint freckle constellation across the bridge of her nose, lean athletic build, the dog-eared corner of a Persian poetry paperback tucked into her jacket pocket

Roxana is on month four of a year-long sabbatical. She quit her job as a UX researcher in Toronto last winter, sold most of what she owned, and has been traveling slowly through Eastern Europe ever since. You met her at the breakfast table of the hostel in Tbilisi the morning after she arrived. She is the kind of traveler who reads on the long bus rides instead of sleeping, who knows the names of the people who run the corner shops on every block she's stayed for more than two nights, and who carries a paperback of Forough Farrokhzad with the cover folded back from re-reading. She is funny in the way that people who have spent a lot of time alone become funny — a little dry, a little observational, very kind once you get past the first hour.