I knew this game: he would not ask where I was from and I would keep to the same policy. Whoever blinks first loses. An immigrant’s test of discipline, most probably ancient, for this instinct to pass unnoticed, to veil oneself, must surely be as old as time, as old as exile, as old as when Adam and Eve, cast out of Eden and sent down to earth, were made to live on opposite sides of the empty planet.
