People always ask me what I'm doing after graduation. On Tuesday, I'm flying back to Brooklyn. My mother and I will take a cab from the airport, and when we get home I'll climb our stoop, open the front door, walk upstairs and lay down on my bed in a room that has changed remarkably little since I left it five years ago. It will be dusk, and I'll be tired from the whirlwind of commencement festivities. The air conditioner will be on. I'll probably take a nap.

I'll wake up on a beach in Sicily. Waves are lapping against my feet, still sore from a day of digging in the dirt for pottery shards. I decide to go for a swim. I paddle over to an jagged, rocky island and climb to the top. Looking down forty feet into the shimmering aquamarine sea, I cross myself and jump. I sink down, down, and then start rising, rising and surface with a huge breath.

I'm gulping for air now. It's 8-all, and my squash racquet feels like a sack of bricks. It's game four, and I don't have enough in the tank for a fifth. I serve. After a 20-hit point, my arm flailing like a rubber hose, I smack a hard cross-court that's too much for my opponent.

"9-8 from the left. Game, match ball," the marker calls.

I step into the box and look at the crowd. My coach smiles at me, and I wink back. I toss the ball in the air and then thwap!

It's the sound of a screen door closing. Fred Masiga is walking towards me. He has a knife in his hand. The chickens look up at us and then go back to pecking the red earth.

We grab one, but the other flies out the open gate. A neighbor girl, no more than five, corrals the run-away bird for us.

I step on one wing, then the other. Fred shows me how to pluck the neck hairs, and then I start sawing. The blood is trickling out. The chicken is convulsing, trying to break free. The jerking becomes twitching, and then it goes limp.

"Now you are Ugandan!" Fred laughs. He slaps me on the back.

I spin around.

"Drei Euro achtzig," the vendor says, his blue eyes smiling.

I take a Styrofoam cup of steaming Gluhwein. I dip my tongue in but recoil from the bitterness. Another gust of wind tears through the Christmas market and all of a sudden I appreciate this boiling hot mix of cheap wine, spices and rum. I take another sip and it tickles my mouth, my throat and then finally my stomach. Cheered, I push on past a sea of flushed Teutonic faces. I'm related to them, through some distant grandparent or great-uncle.

"Entschuldigen," I say, picking my way through the crowd. I imagine that I am Louis Herbert, that I haven't yet taken that steamboat to New Orleans and then that riverboat up to Cairo. "Entschuldigen."

I turn my cup upside down, and the last drop falls on my outstretched tongue. I close my eyes and savor the taste.

I open my eyes. I'm in Brooklyn. The air conditioner is on. I was dreaming. And I ain't done yet.