Twelve by Twelve Read Free Page A

finished gloriously with the dome of the sky.
    “And it’s also round like this.” This time he traced a circle that began at his heart and went outward toward the lake, finishing two feet in front of his body. And the earth took that shape, as the lakeshore curled into the base of the distant mountains and then into the sky’s horizon, a perfect outward circle.
    “And it’s also round like this.” Keeping his hands two feet in front of him, he traced a slow circle back into himself. The circle finished at some hidden place inside, the outward world circling into our inner world.
    Somebody called over to Honamti; the ceremony was to begin. But before the Aymara man turned to go, I asked him, “Which of the three is it? What’s the shape of the world?”
    He answered by repeating: “What’s the shape of the world?”
    I opened my eyes: the lifeless Dow Chemical lake before me, Honamti’s question/answer echoing in my head. Did the world have to be flat? Was it too late to imagine other shapes?
    “ YOU’RE A MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY, ” my father said, looking up at me from his sickbed.
    I looked out the hospital window: three smokestacks blew gray smoke into a gray sky. The backs of adjacent six- or seven-story gray-brick buildings. Beside me, the muted beeping of an IV drip; the smell of fast food and Ben Gay. Fluorescent lights and the television’s flicker illuminated my father’s slightly ashen face.
    Suddenly, and despite the dreary surroundings, I felt a rush of love for him. He’d given me gifts of stability, diligence, and an appreciation for the power of ideas. He was telling me, his thirty-six-year-old son, that I was a man without a country not in criticism but out of love. He was right: acute culture shock had pushed me into a kind of exile.
    I touched him on the shoulder, pushed the hair back off his forehead, remembering something from my childhood. One year, during the Fourth of July barbecue, he taught me how to grill London broil. On that humid day the forested spaces around our Long Island home were alive with box turtles. This was before urban sprawl defined the island, before our magical woods were cleared for McMansions. My sister and I found a turtle and brought it home and set it loose. Billy , my dad called over to me, I want to show you something . As I watched his hairy forearm expertly flip the meat, I loved him. The sound of fireworks in the distance; a red, white, and blue flag up on its pole, where my father raised it every public holiday. I felt organically connected to my home, my family, and our prosperous society; to the yard, the turtle-filled woods, the smell of meat grilling.
    The sound of sizzling meat drew me out of my reverie, back to the hospital room: a Wendy’s ad on TV, reminding me of the hospital’s preferred food option. My father dozed off to the sizzle of burgers and a corporate jingle, and I walked through the labyrinth building, past hundreds of patients, to the source of many of their health problems and heart disease: greasy hamburgers. UNC Medical Center had outsourced meal service to Wendy’s.
    I brought a tray of burger and fries to a table by the window. Outside was a parking garage, its asphalt stacked five stories high, packed with vehicles — the source of many of earth’s health problems. I checked my voice mail; still no response from Jackie. I considered calling her again but decided against it — I’d already left three messages. Beyond the parking lot, a monoculture of pines and the highway to the mall. I tried to feel something for the landscape, but it lacked shape.
    Worse, doubt gnawed at me that the past decade of my professional life had been for naught. I’d labored incredibly hard as a humanitarian aid and conservation worker in places like Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Bolivia. Part of my job was to help people living on the borders of the rainforest improve their lives economically while defending their forest. I’ve got a toolkit: