One hand, five homes. A lifetime in a fist.

“Remember that you and I made this journey, that we went together to a place where there was nowhere left to go.”

And yet these events have formed Gogol, shaped him, determined who he is. They were things for which it was impossible to prepare but which one spent a lifetime looking back at, trying to accept, interpret, comprehend. Things that should never have happened, that seemed out of place and wrong, these were what prevailed, what endured, in the end.

Afterword:

The battle with myself, my origins, my place in the world, goes on. New identities, languages, and settings have been incorporated, former habits and passions have made space for others. Were I to stop fully waging this battle, I would cease to know myself, and my guess is that I would stop writing.

In response to the perennial human drive, whether implied by choice or by necessity, to migrate, to cross borders, the message, in the United States, and in Europe, and in Great Britain where I was born, is now to stay put, for diverse populations to remain distinct and separate, turning identity into a concept that is static and not dynamic, no longer open-ended but closed.