Story by Levon Gyulkhasyan
Script by Carlos Salazar
Page 1
Panel 1: The passport picture of a woman named Kamala Singh.
Panel 2: Kamala Singh standing in line at Logan airport from the perspective of the customs agent. Her face looks notably different. She is thinner, and some of the lines have changed. Her hairstyle is different. Her eyes look the same.
Panel 3-4: Two panels, side by side. The left panel is the right side of her face from the passport picture. The right panel is the left side of her face in the present. They are framed to show the incomplete puzzle of how her face has changed. From off of the two panels, a customs agent asks for a second opinion.
Panel 5: Two customs agents look at the passport.
Panel 6-7: Two panels framed the same, both showing Kamala’s eyes. One is above the other. The top panel is of Kamala’s eyes in the passport picture. The bottom panel is of her eyes in the present. From off panel, one of the customs agents comments that the eyes are the same.
Panel 8: Kamala looks at herself reflected in the window of a taxi, and in the background, Boston is in the skyline specifically The Prudential. She reflects on how it has been ten years since she has been home, in a part of Mexico so remote that she only rarely had internet.
Panel 9: A similar panel to the one above. Now the John Hancock is in the background. She thinks that she expected Boston to change, but it does not feel different at all, at least not from this distance.
Page 2
Panel 1: Kamala stands on the doorstep of her mother’s home, greeting her, her luggage behind her.
Panel 2: From off panel, the mother sees Kamala as she was when she left, standing on the doorstep. She says that the woman in front of her is not Kamala.
Panel 3: The mother stands on the doorstep, continuing to explain that there must be some mistake. A dog barks from off panel.
Panels 4 and 5: Another split panel. In this one the dog licks her face as she kneels on both sides of the panel. The left is how Kamala used to look and the right is how she looks now. The dog is noticeably older.
Panel 6: Kamala’s father stands in the doorway behind her mother, chastising the mother for not recognizing their daughter.
Panel 7: Kamala is sitting across from the dean’s desk in the anthropology department of a college. The dean remarks that a Kamala used to work here. Kamala says that she is that Kamala.
Panel 8: The dean narrows his eyes at Kamala and asks her to take this meeting seriously.
Panel 9: A woman pokes her head into the office and asks the dean a question. Kamala remarks in narration how this is Debra her old rival.
Panel 10: Debra’s perspective of Kamala. This is a split panel which is split 3-4 ways of Kamala receiving different accolades.
Panel 11: Debra snidely greets Kamala.
Panel 11: The dean looks flustered in his chair.
Page 3
Panel 1: A long panel that goes across the page. A variety of hands push and prod at Kamala’s face, and speech bubbles around her say that she can’t be who she says. One or two of the hands also hold up pictures.
Panel 2: This is a long panel that goes all the way across the page. Kamala moves across the panel in different stages of recovering from a nightmare. On the left side Kamala sits up in bed gasping for air. Slightly further to the right she stands grasping the post at the foot of the bed, steadying herself. In the middle she grabs a record from the shelf. An inset panel shows that it is Max Bruch’s Concerto for Two Pianos. On the far right side of the panel, she is putting the record on a record player near her window. A musical scale with notes plays from here across the last 4 panels.
Panels 3,4.5.6: These last panels go across the page, and correspond to the framing of Kamala’s room above. As mentioned above, a musical scale with notes plays above the panels. In each panel she does something different, in a different space of the panel. At her bed she reads. Next to her bed she does tai chi. She is making out with somebody next to her shelves, but in the last panel, she is again putting the record on the record player, in the same position as the Kamala above. Over the panels the narration comments on how her father played this record for her when , and long before he was born, somebody who went to a concert hall would have heard the same music, and would recognize it with just a few notes. She mentions in the last panel that it is the only record she has listened to since she has come back.