DURING THE LAST week there, I dreamt of vomiting. I vomited up the images of the silent villages alongside the roads, the gaunt faces outside the van window, the Great Leader slogans and the Great Leader songs and the Great Leader portraits that marked every building, every living creature, every hushed breath like a branding iron. In my dream, I threw up every last bit of my final days into a black plastic bag, which was so heavy that I had to drag it with both hands to dump it into a pit next to the teachers’ dormitory. Alone in the Siberian winds, I stood gazing down at the bag that seemed
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