Civilizational Anxiety
Something always felt foreign to me about the black asphalt streets, which sparkled in the summer sun as if encrusted with diamonds, of my hometown Palo Alto, California. Or maybe the foreign was me, with my black hair and dark brown eyes and skin that tanned easily. My family and I would take trips to Pakistan and Bangladesh so that my mother and stepfather could visit their respective families. Each trip was a two-week suspension of the sense that something was about to go wrong. The simple op-positions to Palo Alto – that car steering was on the right side,