“For the first time in history,” you open your merry ode to foreignness, “to be foreign is a perfectly normal condition” (“The Others,” December 19, 2009). The golden age of foreignness began a century or so ago, when many of “the well-off, the artistic, the bored, the adventuresome” left their homelands in search of distraction. But long-term foreigners eventually become exiles, you aptly warn. “The homeland that they left behind changes.” Everything they used to know alters—culture, politics, language. “They come to feel that they are foreigners even when visiting ‘home’.” The most wretched lot you do not even mention, though. These are the long-term foreigners who return home—say, to retire. If they ever start complaining, they still pose the same logical contradiction as all other foreigners, for they have returned by their own choice. Why do not they go abroad once again? Foreignness squared is when home vanishes from the face of the earth. For good.