Somewhere after Omaha, a kind of memory rinse washed over me. It must have lasted a whole minute. A total erasure of all I’d seen and experienced along the way from Boston. All I saw in that moment was the road ahead of me. The fields on my right and left. The buzz of motion, of the vehicle dragging me forward. I felt my muscles relaxing. It was a wave of calm before my mind returned to its usual state, dredging up and amplifying my encounters and experiences along the way. A single memory stood out: a recollection of the short detour I took to see Barry, Indiana, a small town south of Lake Michigan and the birthplace of the modernist writer Harry Goddard. I still remember how scared I was by the ghostliness of the place, houses abandoned, lawns that had become little forests. I must have spent a maximum of fifteen minutes there in what I had thought would be a refreshing detour. Driving out, depressed by how neglected the whole town was, how it reeked of systematic abandonment, a remarkable sight caught my attention: a shirtless young black man playing the cello, accompanied by an elderly white woman on the violin. Their audience: a small group of people of all races, solemn, nothing fancy. The stage: the wide porch of a run-down house. I reversed and parked across the street, wound down my window, and at once felt the visceral tug of the cello, as if the shirtless boy was drumming his fingers on my chest. I couldn’t tell what the piece was, but it sounded like a cover of some popular hip-hop number. I got out of the car, crossed the road, and stood next to a man reeking of marijuana. He offered me a sombre nod. I could see tears streaming down the face of the cellist as he plucked and bowed away. His instrument spoke so many languages, so many silent words that landed on my heart with a gentle thud. And the violin caressed those silent words, fanned them out. It was both sensual and poignant. The cello began to cry a heart-wrenching solo, a procession into the dark. And when it was over, a small speech was made: a black boy was shot by the police, one too many, one too many, one too many, and it must stop, and it must stop, they must stop killing our brothers, they must stop killing our sons. I kept my eyes on the young cellist. A black boy with his cello, with his music, with his art. I could not tell what I was feeling at that point, but it all rolled into a type of anger I didn’t understand, that I did not know where to direct, that I felt too ill-informed to sort. What would I say if asked to speak to the dead boy’s mother? Sorry for your loss, ma’am? To what extent was her loss mine? I wanted to feel something more personal, something that said, ‘It could’ve been you, Frank Jasper.’ But I knew that my anger was diluted by a remote consolation that I would sooner or later leave the US to its woes; that I would go back to my own corner of the world with its familiar horrors. It was that consciousness of being a foreigner, a traveller, a stranger, that punctured what I was supposed to feel as ‘a brother’. Frustrated and feeling like an imposter among true mourners, I returned to the red Prius and drove away.