Bako, My Beloved

Outsiders May Scorn My Hometown. But It Is Mine.

The headlights of my father’s car illuminate the road to Meadows Field Airport like something out of a Hitchcock movie. The fog swirls and eddies about us as we move along at 40 miles per hour. At 5:30 a.m., there is nothing we can do to thin it out. When we slow for a red light, the fog dawdles, gliding thickly over the side of our car. It smells vaguely of dirt and alfalfa and almost seems, in its coiling thickness, to be murmuring to us. As a child, I …