July 6, 2020, the First Wholly Theoretical National Holiday

All days having blended into one, and the country having proclaimed itself unworthy of celebration.

My dreams in the night were full of violence and terrorism, in a small Islamic country.   In one I ran towards my home in a posher section of the capital, only to be beaten repeatedly over the head into unconsciousness.   In another, a boy of seven or eight stood at an intersection with an AR-15, gleefully taking in a cornucopia of tempting targets, including me.   But in a third, I had the charge of a female toddler, not my daughter.  By mistake I placed her on the shoulders of a strange man who was watching a football match.  She enthralled him with precocious conversation, as if I were a ventriloquist and she my dummy.