MY WIFE AND I conceived our second son last fall, and in the winter doldrums at the end of the first trimester, we dreamed, longingly, of our summer baby. In January, I began to read about the novel coronavirus in China. I had lived in Mongolia during the SARS outbreak in 2003 and since then had cultivated an interest in infectious diseases. I had considered traveling to Hong Kong in 2007 to write about the avian flu and its aftermath, though personal issues prevented the trip. When my wife and I started dating, I would read to her at night, and one of the books I read was David Quammen’s Spillover: Animal Infections and the Next Human Pandemic (2012), a wonderful work of science journalism about zoonotic diseases.

To communicate “together” in American Sign Language (A.S.L.), you press your knuckles together and hold your hands close to your chest before circling them counterclockwise and bringing them to rest below your heart. Like many signs in A.S.L., it seems to convey several meanings at once: linkage, firmness, circularity. It was a sign in frequent use one day last September, in a hotel conference room outside Boston, where the Gallaudet University Bison, the country’s only college football team for the deaf and hard-of-hearing, was trying to figure out whether and how to protest during the national anthem. It had then been a year since Colin Kaepernick sat, and then took a knee, during the anthem to protest racial injustice in America.

The homecoming game falls on a brilliant, unseasonably warm Saturday afternoon in late October 2016. The sun streams through the multicolored leaves of oak trees and dapples thousands of alumni and fans in patches of light and shade. Pop-up booths have been erected behind the football stadium: The Class of 2019 is selling crepes; the Class of 1992 is selling T-shirts; writers for the student newspaper, The Buff and Blue, are hawking the latest issue. Little kids terrorize the person dressed as the school mascot, a bison, by pulling his tail and then squealing in delight. The smells of fraternities grilling cheeseburgers waft through the air. Previous classes gather in anticipation of their march around the track, where they will be honored for their fifth, 10th, or 25th class reunion. Despite all the enthusiastic activity, everything is just a bit quieter than you might expect, like the volume has been turned down a notch or two.

The Qasabji bar in Damascus, on an unremarkable road just outside the Old City, was where Khaled Khalifa and I had our best conversations. Khaled always entered first and greeted the customers sitting at tables near the door. He bent down, kissed the men, flirted with the women, and strutted to where Nabil, Qasabji’s owner, had cleaned a spot for us. He ordered either a glass of arak or the local Damascene beer, Barada, pulled a cigarette from his pack, lit it, and added to the purplish haze of smoke. Qasabji was a singular room shaped like a boxcar, crowded with wood tables, benches, and chairs that pushed against one another and three walls. I only saw it at night, crowded and smoke-filled, loud, dim. Khaled always faced out, better to see the men and women, but mostly the women, and when an attractive one entered he banged the table with his fist and hooted like a wolf.

My favorite Mongolian commercial opens with a regal Chinggis Khan shouting for a sip of airag, fermented mare’s milk. The Great Khan’s attendants, whose eyes glisten with fear at the prospect of incurring Chinggis’s wrath, realize no airag remains and so pour another thick, milky-white substance into a jewel-studded silver bowl. Chinggis sips, remnants of the drink dotting his moustache and beard, and after he swallows, he grimaces and bangs his fist on the arm of his throne. “This is not airag,” he shouts. His attendants recoil, as this is clearly among their final moments. But wait, Chinggis takes another sip, licks the white drippings from his moustache, and asks in a more cheerful, curious tone what he has drunk. A brave attendant, sensing a possible reprieve, inches forward and says in a quavering voice: “Heinz Mayonnaise.”