Rivers was his real name. Or maybe not. He could no longer remember. But now, at the airport in Kalai, he was Abdul Salaam with a Jordanian passport in his hand. He glanced at it, bemused by the blurry photograph skillfully inserted into the real Abdul Salaam's passport. The lighting in the studio had been poor, and his face looked darker than it really was. Almost swarthy. His lips were pressed close together, eyes wide-open and cold. A man awaiting his execution without fear or regrets. Rivers flipped through the stamped pages searching for the expiration date. He would need a new Jordanian passport in a few months. He looked again at his photograph and then at the facing page with Abdul Salaam's name, nationality, date and place of birth. He wondered who Abdul Salaam really was. Several possible scenarios flitted through his mind. Architect, merchant, cleric, politician, terrorist? A man with a large closely-knit family? A man living alone on the edges of society by choice or ill fortune? Muslim, Hindu, Greek Orthodox, Christian? And within each religion, which sect or denomination? The possibilities were infinite.

He stood on the line snaking its way toward the ticket counter. Was he in Kalai or was it now called Rambai? He wasn't sure, but he knew whatever its name, it was a dusty, provincial town in the Republic of Y (or so he thinks), once a small district in the Commonwealth of Z, but after two decades of successive wars with three of its neighbors, civil wars accompanied by the mass slaughter of its minority populations, military coups, widespread drought and famine, the collapse of its obsolete urban infrastructure, now an independent country, with an ambassador to the United Nations living a comfortable, if dissolute life in New York and privately vowing never to return to Y or Z—not always certain what country he represents, especially after long, licentious alcohol-laden evenings in various Upper East Side high-rise apartment buildings where diplomats from developing countries mingled with high-priced call girls and arms merchants. Many of the other diplomats were also unsure which country they represented especially since they usually were not nearly as knowledgeable about whatever country they claimed as theirs as either the call girls or the merchants since not that many months earlier, they, the diplomats, had spoken on behalf of other countries, some a "parent" country with a history of at least several decades, some breakaways, some a patchwork of offshoots of a number of contiguous countries looking for ethnic and religious cohesiveness, an impossibility given the continual migration of the hungry, the landless, the dispossessed. The arms merchants had no interest in who represented what country; the ability to pay was their sole focus. Only the call girls could keep the countries straight, not surprising since most had emigrated to the United States from these very same countries, some from districts that were now new nations.

The line jolted forward, the businessmen in dark suits fingering their passports nestled inside their jacket pockets, briefcases and laptops dangling at their sides; the miners and construction workers who were returning to their villages leaning sideways or bent over, the weight of backpacks and duffle bags tilting them in one direction or another. Rivers stood out, his safari jacket, pants and hiking boots evoking a western tourist looking for adventure, only the dark stains on his clothes, the mud on his boots, his creased and sun-baked complexion suggesting that he was either a professional traveler, long on the road, or a mercenary on his way to another client state. He looked around the box-like airport terminal—two counters, a bar in one corner both isolated and exposed, gates off to the side, large expanses of the broken concrete floor empty except for an occasional rural family huddled around the one traveler in their midst, a tethered goat lolling nearby. Torn and defaced posters of faraway places were taped to the walls at odd angles. The poster for New York attracted his eye: skyscrapers jutting out of a giant apple, surrounded by singers and dancers. Rivers hadn't been in New York in years, but he had heard the stories about Y's (or was it Z's?) UN Ambassador from one of the call girls, a former basket weaver in Y's largest city. He had bought some of her wares, intricately designed beaded baskets, based, so she said, on an old tribal design, one she learned from her grandmother and brought with her when she migrated to the city from the countryside not long before she met Rivers. He asked her to make copies of the same design in different sizes for one of his New York distributors, slept with the girl for a few nights, and moved on.

Who was he then? Certainly not Rivers. Perhaps Abdul Salaam. He couldn't remember. It wasn't important, especially since he knew it was unlikely that today he would be asked about Abdul Salaam's career or family or religious preferences or personal habits of any sort. Nor would he be expected to speak any language other than English. Broken English. He had little difficulty speaking a halting, tentative English, the English of a non-native speaker. He often thought how fortunate he was not to begin speaking until he was almost three, a boy growing up in rural Kansas, isolated and then shunned for his stuttering and for long pauses between words that, when they came, were often garbled. His broken English, now a well-practiced and ingrained enhancement of his boyhood impediment, helped persuade even the most suspicious border guard or customs official that he was not a native English-speaker but from Y or Z or whatever country was indicated on the passport he was presenting.

The family in front of him on line suddenly moved forward, kicking and dragging their oversized luggage with them. Rivers stepped up to close the gap before someone cut in, and as he heard the faint, rustling sound of the two plastic identification pouches that were taped to his upper thighs, he became aware of the pressure of the pouches and could feel slight stinging sensations where the tape touched his skin. How many passports and other papers did he have? Perhaps a dozen in all. He had lost track of the exact number, just as he occasionally lost track of almost all of his identities. Whenever he planned to cross borders, he focused on two or three at once and tried to master each narrative although he had very little information about any of them. He had practiced answering questions about "Abdul Salaam" before he checked out of his hotel that morning, and he had two identities as back-ups in case there was a problem. Unlikely here, but certainly possible. It all depended on what was happening in Y "on the ground," as the television reporters, befuddled diplomats and aid workers always said when asked about what was about to happen, was happening or had happened, as if they knew or somebody they knew knew. Rivers knew that no one knew, which was the ultimate epistemological horror.

At one time, Rivers would approach an airline ticket counter or customs official or border check-point with his teeth clenched, his stomach churning, fearing his papers would be examined closely, that he would be interrogated, and, failing to be convincing as whoever he said he was, tortured and perhaps even killed. Today, though, he had no such fear.

The absence of fear was, he knew, unfortunate, almost as unfortunate and dangerous as excessive fear because it could lead to a dulling of the senses, an excessive narrowing of focus, a failure to anticipate and plan. But Rivers had nothing to hide, no information to give, no allies to expose. If caught and interrogated and even tortured, the authorities in Y or anywhere else would get nothing out of him.

Few of his interrogators had in the past believed him, at least first believed that he was unarmed, just a merchant flush only with cash—dollars, dinars, euros, rand, rubles, yen. What kind of a man, they would ask, would travel continuously, always in steerage, to destinations where few would venture. His answers were never completely accepted and when not overtly challenged, were found unsatisfying, his interrogators' skepticism filling the small ill-lit room, the light dim but direct, where Rivers was being questioned. He was, Rivers would explain, an ethnographic crafts merchant, a term he created to capture the breadth of his endeavors: constantly prowling for the bowl, basket, woven blanket, carved totem or mask that would differentiate the people of one nation or district or tribe or family from that of another family or tribe or district or nation. His aim was to find the cultural artifact before the family or tribe or district or nation would merge or migrate or be eradicated since cultures were continually in flux, usually at risk, their artifacts destroyed, buried, left to rot, and, ineluctably incapable of renewal as craftsmen died off, due to natural causes occasionally but more often from war or famine, their skills that had been transferred from generation to generation, buried as well. He was, he kept repeating, not a partisan, but just a merchant with an eye for the exotic, for the novel, for the native. Indigenous he would add, but only for those interrogators whose command of English rivaled his own. His protestations and explanations alone had not saved him, for if he were Abdul Salaam when he should have been Cecil Rampala or Nicholas Kristovic or Jose Marias or Hans Brueggleman or Borne Arneson, he would have been detained, tortured and eventually killed. To survive, he had to know for sure which of the passports in his hand or wrapped tightly around his thighs he should present when crossing borders.

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