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PART ONE

One Year

One

AUGUST

Paris

It’s the dreah above the clouds The plane starts to descend, and I have this sudden panic because I just know that I’ place It’s never clear where I’—in a war zone, in thecentury—only that it’s somewhere I shouldn’t be So, but I can never quite see a face, can never quite hear an answer I wake in a disoriented sweat to the sound of the landing gear dropping, to the echo ofIt usually takes s, to locate where it is I aue, a hostel in Cairo—but even once that’s been established, the sense of being lost lingers

I think I’ the dream now Just as always, I lift the shade to peer at the clouds I feel the hydraulic lurch of the engines, the thrust doard, the pressure in nition of panic I turn to the faceless person next to er It’s so with And that fills otten on the wrong plane

“Do you knohere we’re going?” I ask I lean closer I’et an answer, just about to find out where it is I’—

And then I hear sirens

I first noticed the sirens in Dubrovnik I was traveling with a guy I’d o by It sounded like the kind they have in A with commented on how each country had its own siren sound “It’s helpful because if you forget where you are, you can always close your eyes, let the sirens tell you,” he told one a year by then, and it had taken me a few minutes to summon the sound of the sirens at home They were musical almost, a down-up-down-up la, la, la, la, like so

That’s not what this siren is It isof electric sheep It doesn’t becoets farther away; it’s just a wall of wailing Much as I try, I cannot locate this siren, have no idea where I am

I only know that I am not home

I open ht everywhere, from overhead, but also from my own eyes: tiny pinprick explosions that hurt like hell I close my eyes

Kai The guy I traveled with from Tirana to Dubrovnik was called Kai We drank weak Croatian pilsner on the rahed as we pissed into the Adriatic His name was Kai He was from Finland

The sirens blare I still don’t knohere I am