amsterdam, 3:00am

It is very late at night, and I am lying awake in a hostel in a quiet part of Amsterdam. I watch a ceiling fan trace out circles above me. I run through all the familiar nags -- need to recover, long day tomorrow, important to synchronize sleep schedules. I dig my phone out from under my pillow, check the time, sigh. The fan goes around, around, around.

My feet go tap-tap tap-tap down the steps of a ladder, and the cheap metal of the bunk bed sways and groans. I rub my eyes in the brightness of the hallway.

Someone has placed some folding chairs and table in front of a television, just inside the hostel's doors. A girl with a thick German accent is talking to the man sitting behind the counter. She is blond, probably late teens, slightly overweight. He is dark-skinned, possibly Arab, reasonably muscular. I tap away at the yellowing keys of an old computer that's set up on one of the tables, pretending to check my email.

He's been working the night shift for three or four months now, he tells the German girl. Before that, he was a waiter, and before that he was in the trunk of a car, crossing the border from Egypt. He says that he has a cousin who lives a few towns over, who visits him from time to time. He shows her a video that his cousin took on his birthday, when they took a tour of the city together. He says, he misses his family but it is impossible to go back now.