Dreams from My Father by Barack Obama — Read

IT TOOK ME A while to recognize them in the crowd. When the sliding doors first parted, all I could make out was the blur of smiling, anxious faces tilted over the guardrail. Eventually I spotted a tall, silver-haired man toward the rear of the crowd, with a short, owlish woman barely visible beside him. The pair began to wave in my direction, but before I could wave back they disappeared behind frosted glass.

I looked to the front of the line, where a Chinese family seemed to be having some problems with the customs officials. They had been a lively bunch during the flight from Hong Kong, the father taking off his shoes and padding up and down the aisles, the children clambering over seats, the mother and grandmother hoarding pillows and blankets and chattering endlessly to one another. Now the family was standing absolutely still, trying to will themselves invisible, their eyes silently following the hands that riffled through their passports and luggage with a menacing calm. The father reminded me of Lolo somehow, and I looked down at the wooden mask I was carrying in my hand. It was a gift from the Indonesian copilot, a friend of my mother's who had led me away as she and Lolo and my new sister, Maya, stood by at the gate. I closed my eyes and pressed the mask to my face. The wood had a nutty, cinnamon smell, and I felt myself drifting back across oceans and over the clouds, into the violet horizon, back to the place where I had once been.