Asleep in his apartment right now is a going-in-the-right-direction girl. Nineteen years old. As American as apple pie and arcades and health clubs and Supporting Our Troops and teenagers having sex. She was blinded by his unblinking eyes, wooed by his foreign tongue.

I see deserts back there.

It started like that for her, like a rock slide, like a dream.

How it progressed for him is something else. More like a bicycle in molasses.

He sleeps with a knife in his hand. Even when he is not alone. Scared the shit out of him waking up and seeing blood all over that girl’s face. At first he did not realize what had happened, that the knife was so razor sharp she did not feel a thing when she put her hand around it and squeezed. He washed the blood off and bandaged her hand.

“Why do you sleep with that?”

“Have to be armed. Thieves flood downtown at night.”

“Why don’t you have a gun?” she asked as the last of the blood swirls down the drain.

“Might have to use it.”

He wishes she would leave. He doesn’t like that she is always there. Thinks for her own good she should leave.

Upside down isn’t good unless you can see the sky.

“What?”

He leaves instead. Goes to the park. Lying on his back in the grass he watches the clouds as thick as herds of unshorn sheep roll thickly across the painfully blue sky. He wears the sun’s heat like a blanket, does not shade his eyes to avoid the glare, which appears from behind those continents of cotton. They are so close he begins to wonder if God is approaching him, if He is about to offer him a blanket other than the sun’s heat. He stretches his hands up to grab the thick white rolls and is surprised at how far away they are, how unattainable.

Come lie with me. Cover me.

We are driving away now after driving around. Following my own uncle, and all I want to do is scream or puke, but Hamdi keeps talking, back to his Economics Professor voice, so much louder than the voices in my head.

“So now you know. Your uncle is like other men you see, except this one lies on his back in the middle of a city park and talks to pigeons and imitates statues. Clinically speaking he is bipolar, paranoid schizophrenic, but for real life he is crazy. For home he is crazy. Not one hundred percent crazy, but walking toward it at a rapid pace, catalyzed by God knows what monster inside him. We try to help, but there is not much we can do—there is not much anyone can do. I think you needed to see him now, while you can still recognize him.”

Uncle Hamdi is quiet, letting his words sink in.