We had coffee that morning at District Coffee Co., one of the few lights still on in a dim corner of downtown El Paso. I drank mine black—no cream, no sugar. Just heat and bitterness. Outside, the streets stretched quiet and empty, lined with sun-faded signs and shuttered storefronts. A city paused in mid-sentence.
It didn’t feel like a place where things begin. More like where something used to be.
But westward, the edge stirred. Concrete and metal rose like a second skyline—watchtowers, barriers, signs repeating themselves in two languages. The road narrowed into lanes lined with silence. Cars crawled forward. Faces hardened. The border revealed itself not as a line but as a labyrinth.
Crossing wasn’t dramatic. It was slow, clinical. No final checkpoint moment. Just the gradual letting go of one place and the uneasy entering of another.
Then: Juárez.
The contrast was immediate and total. The volume, the color, the scent of food in the air. People everywhere, in motion, in conversation, in life.
And there I was—suddenly, unmistakably—the outsider. The one who didn’t understand the language, who couldn’t read the signs, who stood at the edge of something vast and alive, unsure where to step.
There was no malice in it. No one pushed me away. But I was no longer part of the story—I was simply witnessing it.
Our next stop was breakfast.
A buffet, they’d said. Of food, yes—but also of culture. I felt the anticipation begin to rise, cutting through the nerves and dislocation like the scent of bread baking somewhere just out of view.
If the border was a crossing, breakfast would be my arrival.