Asia Literary Review No. 27, Spring 2015 by Asia Literary Review

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Is this the Year of the Sheep, Goat or Ram? Is its character gentle, wily or cantankerous? In this issue of the Asia Literary Review you’ll hear a range of voices – some mild, others outspoken, but all original and authentic.

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No. 27, Spring 2015

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No. 27, Spring 2015

Publisher Greater Talent Limited /Asia Literary Publishing Director and Editor in Chief Martin Alexander Director: Business and Finance Phillip Kim Senior Editors Justin Hill, Michael Vatikiotis, Zheng Danyi Poetry Editor Kavita A. Jindal Consulting Editor Peter Koenig Production Alan Sargent Proofs Shirley Lee Main Cover Image © 2015 Boaz Rottem Back Cover Image © 2015 Boaz Rottem The Asia Literary Review is published by Greater Talent Limited 2/F 3 Sha Po New Village, Lamma Island, Hong Kong asialiteraryreview.com Subscriptions@AsiaLiteraryReview.Com Submissions@AsiaLiteraryReview.Com Editor@AsiaLiteraryReview.Com Editorial@AsiaLiteraryReview.Com Sales@AsiaLiteraryReview.Com Advertising: Admin@AsiaLiteraryReview.Com Poems from Over the Moon by Imtiaz Dharker printed with kind permission of Bloodaxe Books Ltd. Images in ‘Masks’ printed courtesy of Boaz Rottem Images in ‘Challenging Convention’ printed courtesy of Namgay Zam Images in ‘Land of Light’ printed courtesy of Frank Light

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Contents From the Editors

Fiction from After the Turn of Dark

Shin Kyung-sook, translated by Shirley Lee

And Now There Came Both Mist and Snow

Clara Chow

Beijing Hospital

Jeremy Tiang

Comfort Woman Eleanor

James Tam

Run

125

Phillip Y. Kim

The First Noble Truth

147

Nathan Lauer

Childhood

165

Mona Dash

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Poetry Lamp Lighting At Swallow Rock

10 51

Chen Dongdong, translated by Michael Martin Day

Ghazals on the Grundig, Pingling in Pollokshields Bombil, Bumla, Bummalo Drummer First words Mumbai? Kissmiss?

28 30 32 34 35

Imtiaz Dharker

Chinese, Not Han

Reid Mitchell

Event • Writing

106

Yu Jian, translated by Simon Patton and Tao Naikan

Distant Sea on a Summer’s Day

114

Li Yawei, translated by Denis Mair

M. F. Husain’s Goddesses

123

Usha Kishore

Peng Chau

138

Zheng Danyi, translated by Luo Hui

Forgetting Jiaocheng, 1970 Notes from South Xinjiang The Sun and Rain of West Lake

160 161 162 163

Song Lin, translated by Li Dong

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Non-Fiction The West Sea Battle

Jang Jin-sung, translated and introduced by Shirley Lee

Seeing the Monet

Suzanne Kamata

Land of Light

Frank Light

Challenging Convention – The Kung Fu Nuns

109

Namgay Zam

The Sinking City

115

Bill Tarrant

Which God is Ours?

175

Angela Smith Kirkman

Photography Masks

Boaz Rottem, text by Elizabeth Solomon

Contributors

186

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From the Editors From the E ditors

hether Sheep, Goat or Ram, it is that year. Because the yang (㕞) in the Chinese zodiac could refer to any of these animals, precisely which of them is being represented is a topic of debate in the English-speaking world. In any event, those who follow the Chinese calendar consider a defining characteristic of the year to be mild manners – sheepishness, so to speak. It’s been widely reported that mothers across China chose to deliver their babies in the last days of the Year of the Horse, with all its auspicious associations, rather than risk giving birth to a meek and vulnerable lamb. Such planning might be as much a result of prudent pragmatism as wild superstition. After all, even the most rational in other cultures avoid walking under ladders or undertaking risky enterprises on Friday the thirteenth. Meanwhile, Hong Kong’s embattled Chief Executive C. Y. Leung greeted the New Year with a plea to citizens that they should be like ‘mild and gentle’ sheep, and ‘pull together in an accommodating manner to work for Hong Kong’s future.’ This message didn’t go down well with those who spent the latter half of the Year of the Horse refusing to be reined in to docile obedience. Elsewhere in the region and around the world, much of the last year has seen clashes between stridently independent voices and those who prefer the sound of bleating sheep. Many in Thailand and Burma have bridled against regimes that deny them a voice, a denial that remains widespread. Keyword blocking on Weibo (the popular messaging service) and other censorship pressures in China have intensified. North Korea took exception to the portrayal of the assassination of its leader in The Interview and lashed out by hacking into Sony Pictures’ email servers. In the United States, people suffering prejudice protested that they ‘can’t breathe’. And, of course, there was the Charlie Hebdo tragedy in France.

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From the Editors

Writers have a special duty to seek truth as they examine the human condition: to record experiences faithfully and fancifully as fact and metaphor, to question underlying beliefs, and to speculate about the consequences of real and imagined events. Their voices help make sense of the world as it is. Though not necessarily intended to be so, the written word can become political when truths are proscribed by terror, religion or government. Atrocities committed around the world to stifle freedom of speech are all too horrifyingly real. Thus, the special duty of shedding light and seeking answers requires a great deal of courage, not least in the difficult act of speaking out for peace in the face of fear. This issue of the Asia Literary Review is an eclectic collection of writing that reflects the striving of people to make their voices heard. The most extreme example is in The West Sea Battle, Jang Jin-sung’s account of his debriefing of North Korean sailors after a skirmish with the South Korean navy. In a country where nobody dares to speak the truth to anyone, his task was to persuade the sailors to risk saying what they had genuinely thought and experienced, rather than what they believed was expected of them. James Tam tells a harrowing tale of sexual slavery in World War II, the larger truths of which are denied by many even today. In Nathan Lauer’s novel extract, he dares to offer a disturbingly contrarian view of Tibet and the aura of the Dalai Lama, a perspective focused on subjugation rather than liberation. Namgay Zam introduces us to nuns in Nepal and Bhutan who have exuberantly cast aside the constraints of tradition by mastering kung fu. Mona Dash and Phillip Kim take us to more intimate family settings, where people fail to acknowledge their histories and fictions, to themselves and each other. Jeremy Tiang’s protagonist in Beijing Hospital has a macabre change of heart in a story that reveals an uneasy marriage between commerce and justice, and where the central characters are forced to live with the consequences of their complicity. Other contributors allow us to consider seemingly familiar topics from a fresh perspective. Boaz Rottem’s photographs invite us to see what lies behind Asia’s exotic façades. Bill Tarrant warns of what may be Jakarta’s fate as he watches the city sink into the wetlands from which it

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From the Editors

had risen. Meanwhile, Shin Kyung-sook’s protagonist loses his sense of self in a capricious and inscrutable world, and Clara Chow’s vision of Singapore is of a city encased in ice and snow, victim to catastrophic climate change. From Britain, the poet Imtiaz Dharker celebrates the joyous muddle of her identity as a Pakistani Glaswegian – but in Drummer, an elegy to Lee Rigby, she has no doubt about where she stands. ‘Hack at you,’ she says to him, ‘and the city bleeds.’ In her poem we hear the drum that ‘speaks the difficult name, the name of peace.’ We at the Asia Literary Review believe in the vital importance of beating that same drum in the pursuit of original ideas and authentic voices. We don’t wish to debate whether this is the Year of the Sheep, Goat or Ram. We simply acknowledge the virtues of the animal – gentleness, consideration, persistence, thrift. We also note that the pictogram for yang (and the animal depicted on our cover) has horns. We therefore draw energy from the notion that, whether mild sheep, wily goat or cantankerous ram, each of us has the means to take a stand. Martin Alexander

Phillip Kim

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Chen Dongdong

Chen Dongdong Poetry

translated by Michael Martin Day

Lamp Lighting Shine the lamp into a stone, make them see the shape of the sea in it, make them see ancient fish in it you ought to make them see the light too, raised high on a mountain, a lamp. The lamp should also shine into a river – make them see living fish, make them see a soundless sea you ought to make them see the sunset too a firebird fly up from the forest. Light the lamp. When I use my hand to block the north wind when I stand in a narrow gorge I think they will crowd around me they will come to stare at my words like lamps.

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from After the Turn of Dark from Aft Shin Kyung er t he - sook Tur n of Dar k

Shin Kyung-sook translated by Shirley Lee

he man looked as if he were about to turn round and leave. But instead he asked the woman, as she held out her hand to receive his entry ticket, whether he could just enter, as he had no money. His expression suggested that he was not capable of making jokes, and his intonation was quite aggressive. The woman withdrew her hand and stared at the man for a moment. She had been about to tear the receipt off the entry ticket, which of course anyone wishing to pass the barrier would have purchased in advance. Her eyes were neither large nor small, her skin was clear, and her lips were firm. She was the type of woman you might not notice unless you looked consciously, but one to act with propriety even when her feelings had been hurt. This isn’t going to work, the dispirited man thought. He was about to turn round and leave when the woman spoke. Yes, go ahead. Her voice was flat but resonant. The man had not expected the woman to answer so readily. He hesitated for a moment before passing through the outer gate of the temple. He walked a few steps, then turned to look behind him. The woman’s dark hair came down to her shoulders, lapping in the sunlight. She was checking the ticket of the next person in line and looked to have forgotten about the man already. The man did not walk any further. When there was a pause in the queue and the woman took a moment to stretch her back, the man walked back towards her. Excuse me, he said. The woman turned round. Her pupils, dark as a cow’s, stared at the man. The bridge of her nose was a little wider than

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from After the Turn of Dark

average. Perhaps this was what gave her an easy-going air, despite her immaculate forehead. As if he had given up on shame or modesty, the man spoke to the woman as she stared at him. I’m really hungry. Will you take me for a meal later? The woman kept her eyes fixed on the man for a few more seconds. Then she replied, All right. By the time I was in my thirties, I was fated to die, said the murderer, now in his forties. He spoke again. Murder is my profession. My side-job is to pose as a policeman, then extort from people. I murder only if it pleases me. Perhaps he had become numb to feeling after killing so many. It looked as if the murderer had already transcended matters such as life and death. In any case, although he was held in custody for a murder case that was still pending, be betrayed no sign of anxiety or fear. Locked up in a juvenile centre for theft in his teens. Spends eleven years in prison for fourteen counts of aggravated theft, sexual assault and other charges. Marries a masseuse in 1991 and has a son. In May 2002, wife sues for divorce and it’s granted without contest. Begins to hate women. Receives treatment in hospital after showing symptoms of epilepsy. Abandoned by girlfriend after she finds out about criminal record and past marriage. On release from prison in 2003, sets himself the goal of murdering one hundred people before first snowfall. First murder committed in a private villa in Sinsa-dong in Gangnam-gu area of Seoul: a retired academic couple. Twenty-one murders verified. The man claims he has killed five more women. Victims tend to be rich and elderly, or women. Methods of murder daring and meticulous, leaving almost no trace. Murder weapons include a hammer he’d crafted, and a knife. To destroy evidence, he sets deliberate fires, or chops up the bodies and buries them in the mountains. He takes cruel measures, such as scraping fingerprints off the victims, in order for their identity to remain unknown. Regarding the man who described his profession as murderer, this was the curriculum vitae that could be read in the newspapers. The man began to walk along the fir-tree-forest path. It was easily a kilometre long. The circumference of one fir tree looked to be just over half a metre. Under the sunlight, each tree was overbearing. The trees would block out most of any rain that fell. An old man who had been

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walking alone ahead of the man suddenly took his shoes off. He took a few more steps, then took his socks off too, and proceeded to walk the path barefoot. As it was late afternoon on a weekday, there were not many entering the temple; more people were leaving at the end of their visit. He turned to look behind him from time to time, to catch a glimpse of the woman’s back, which was just about visible through the thick fir trees. The woman stood amidst the last of the evening light that was shining through the mountain bamboo that covered the area below the fir trees. All right. Let’s do that. Although he had only stared at her for a moment, the woman’s frank reply lingered in his mind. The man’s common sense told him that she should have scowled at him or refused. A complete stranger had asked to enter the temple without an entry ticket, and even asked for a free meal because he was hungry, yet the woman had not demanded an explanation. All right. Let’s do that. Did I look pitiful? The man examined himself, which he had not done for a long time. He was wearing a grey coat, and grey cotton trousers that he had not taken off for nearly a month, let alone washed. When it became cold, he had bought a brown V-necked sweater that he wore over the cotton T-shirt that he always wore under his grey coat. As for his underpants, he wore them day after day; and when he really couldn’t continue, he bought a new pair from a shop and changed in a toilet cubicle, putting the old pair into the packaging that the new pair had come in, and then putting them in the bin. There was a stench in the socks that he wore continuously for a week at a time. His hair had grown to cover the nape of his neck and because he didn’t clip his nails, there were three that had broken off. Anyone could tell from his smell that he lived on the streets. The man turned to look at the woman’s back again, but his shoulder knocked into a middle-aged woman and bumped her on the head. Only after a scolding – because a younger man should be looking where he is going – did he stop turning round every few seconds to look at the woman, and lower his gaze. The man despaired of the situation he found himself in: that he had no choice but to accept the arrival of one who said his profession was murder.

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from After the Turn of Dark

The man did not know how to respond. The only thing he was sure of was that he could no longer live in that house. Like one carrying out his last rites, he made an effort to regain his senses and rented a small villa. There, he scattered the belongings he had brought from the office, as if abandoning them, and began to wander the streets without having spent a single night in the villa. He had no thought about where he was heading. Only after embarking on a train, after buying a ticket for some random destination that had caught his eye, did he realise that his ATM and credit cards were among the belongings he had left in the villa. He opened his wallet in the train as it clattered along, and found a few cheques and a bundle of 10,000 won notes. Closing the wallet, he decided, Only until this money runs out. When had that been? The man does not even remember when he arrived in this province. Until the moment he set foot in this temple, the man had drifted without purpose. He had no desire to go anywhere or do anything, and so he did nothing but wander aimlessly. He had disembarked at some station and not boarded another train, so the places he wandered to would not be far away. One day, he stood before a field that stretched out endlessly; on another, he had regained consciousness in a grove of holly trees; on another, he found himself looking towards the far horizon; on another, he woke in front of a dolmen marking graves; on another, when he came to, he was seated, facing barren, reddish fields; on another, he found himself looking at a salt farm that still had a water-wheel turning. The man did not want to remember any of it: where he had been, whom he had met, what he had eaten; so where he had been and what he had done had no meaning. He boarded buses to random destinations, he ate whatever meals he was given, and he slept anywhere. Only after coming to the entrance of this temple had he realised that he had no money left even for an entry ticket. He was about to turn round and leave, because he did not have a pressing reason to enter. He was surprised to find that he didn’t even have small change, but at the same time he was struck by a groundless optimism that it would all somehow work out. He was about to go back the way he had come but had asked the woman without much thought as to whether she would let him

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enter, even though he had no money for a ticket. Unexpectedly, the woman had said she would, and that is why the man is now shuffling in to the outer entrance of the temple. At first, it had looked like a crime of vengeance. Not just one person but three had been slaughtered, and in such a way that you could not but shut your eyes as soon as you looked; yet nothing had been stolen. It was quite a serious case, and all the possible scenarios were being considered. But when they could not think of anyone who might have committed this crime out of vengeance, they thought it might have been a family member in need of money. As the whole family had been murdered except for the man, they were, in effect, referring to him. The man had been planning to resign from his job at a bank when the time was right. His dream was to open a musical instrument shop specialising in pianos. Although he could not play any musical instrument himself, they mesmerised him. The piano was his favourite, but he was also drawn to the zither, the flute and the cello. Even if he didn’t make much money, he felt this proximity to musical instruments would allow him to get out of bed each morning with enthusiasm. But this very dream of his had led the police to suspect him of committing the murders. In fact, the crime had occurred just as the man had begun to undertake detailed market research in preparation for opening his shop. Now the only thing the man wanted was to hide himself. Even the prospect of meeting a familiar face was frightening. After it was suggested that a family member might have committed the murders and the police interrogated the man – albeit without accusing him of the crime – the man resigned from his job at the bank. He then disappeared into a strange block of flats that had been marked out for demolition. There was no glass remaining in its windows and no one else was there. There were doors off their hinges, heaps of rubbish, used briquettes, insects that sucked his blood, and trees that cast gloomy shadows at night. This abandoned block of social housing was a building the man had driven past without much thought on his way to work each morning. The building was a blight on a mountain pass covered in trees, empty of the inhabitants who had once led their busy lives there. Not a door remained, and all that stood were the empty

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from After the Turn of Dark

frames. The plan had been to construct a park in its place. But the demolition had not yet been carried out because the issue of compensation had not come to a satisfactory conclusion. Living in hiding was not enough for the man. As long as the criminal guilty of the murders had not been identified, the man remained a suspect and had no choice but to remain cut off from the outside world altogether. Once, when he had left the decrepit block of flats to charge his mobile phone and buy the minimum food required for sustenance, he had plucked up the courage to visit his old house. The neighbourhood was in the shelter of a large hill. Although it was only fifteen minutes away from the centre of town, the area itself was free of crowds and had fresh air. There were no blocks of flats, only low-rise family homes. The man’s house stood out in the neighbourhood because a church stood on the other side of the path. The man’s mother had planted a tree in their garden, which she looked after so carefully that in every season except for winter the garden wall was covered with flowers. The wall was in fact a flowerbed, and the congregation that came to worship at the church on weekends looked at the home and and smiled without knowing why. He found the house now stood abandoned, with an air of fear and hurt and sadness. There was no light left in the place, let alone any flowers – and, from the other side of the wall, the man looked upon the house in which he had lived as if it belonged to some other family. A silly thought occurred to him: that the wall once covered in flowers was too low. His mother had thought back to her childhood as this house was being built. Her childhood home had had a low wall, a flowerbed, a back porch and an area for keeping storage jars; and she had recreated these features in her new home. Although she was no longer on the face of this earth, he remembered her telling him that in her childhood home there had been a flowerbed parallel to the front gate, and there had been a well at the end of the flowerbed. She had sighed, saying how wonderful it would be to have a well in the house. But the man had not agreed. It was foolish to pay a lot of money to dig a well that served no function. The prospect of having a well in the yard was a depressing thought for the man, whereas his mother found the idea comforting. When the man

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did not consent, the mother pleaded with him, reasoning that growing up with a well in the house would surely have a positive impact on the children. She said it wasn’t a good thing for kids nowadays to grow up in small and identical spaces. The man replied that both he and his older brother had grown up in a flat and added that there was no one in the family who was a child. The mother became upset and said that she had wanted from the start to raise her children in a house with a yard and a well, and that she could not bear the thought of a future that did not include them. There might not be any children in the family now, she added, but there would be in the coming years. The man did not respond. He knew she was not referring to his autistic older brother, who had not even completed his education and had almost no contact with anyone outside his immediate family. He hardly ever left the house and constantly needed to be cared for by his mother. The man felt sad that his mother might be building a house according to considerations detached from reality, and in the belief that if her older son had been brought up in a house with a well or yard, he might not have been autistic. This was why the man had decided in the end to go along with all his mother’s suggestions, despite disagreeing at first with many of them. After his father died and the family assets had been sorted out, they started to build the house and the mother was full of enthusiasm. Although they didn’t know what the future might hold, the mother designed the house to be a space in which she, the older brother and the man would live together. Even the marriage that the man had not begun, and the children he had not yet had, became part of the house. But the mother in the end was not able to complete the well. It was not because the man opposed it, but because they couldn’t hit water. The mother suffered many sleepless nights, mourning that she could not have her well, and saying that it would have been wonderful for the children to grow up with a well in their yard. What would you like to eat? There was nothing in particular that the man fancied eating. Nevertheless, he was hungry. He hadn’t eaten anything all day. Would you like oyster porridge? I know a place that makes it really well.

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from After the Turn of Dark

The woman led the way. The man adjusted his almost empty backpack and followed the woman. We have to walk for a bit and take a bus. Is that all right? The man nodded. They didn’t speak until they had arrived at a street lined with restaurants facing the sea. The woman paid the bus fare, waited for the man to step down from the bus and, when she noticed that the man had fallen back, waited and then kept pace with him. She didn’t ask any questions and neither was she particularly friendly in her manner towards the man. She showed the conscientious behaviour of one who was carrying out her promise of taking the man out for a meal. Of the many restaurants on the street, she went into one that had a red sign outside: ‘Sunkyung Restaurant’. The couple who owned the restaurant greeted the woman warmly, saying that it had been a long time. I’ve brought someone who is very hungry, she said. Please make him some good porridge.

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And Now There Came Both Mist and Snow AndaNow Clar ChowThere Came Both Mist and Snow

Clara Chow

good Singaporean ice harvester never forgets her tools. This is what you do before dawn: pull on your clothes in the dark; yet another ice storm has knocked out the electrical grid. On goes the chevron-striped fur coat that makes you look like a white tiger. Drink your kopi-O standing in the kitchen by candlelight, wool cap and leather gloves bunched in one hand. When you’re done, pinch out the flame. Gather the long-handled chisel, the saw with the oval handle and the ice cleaver from where they lean in their customary place against the foyer wall. Strap the steel ice-cleats to your boots. Then lock the door behind you. As the snow falls around them Lily can only see as far ahead as her sister’s back. Opal’s head is down, her fur-clad spine and shoulders rounded against the cold. Aurorae play faintly above them, snapping from side to side like live wires on the ground. The girls press ahead. The pond is just a few hundred metres away. Lily hopes that the ice there has frozen sufficiently. She hopes they will not have to clear too much snow to get at it. Behind them the Pinnacle looms, never diminishing in size no matter how far they go in any direction. Years ago, further back than either sister’s memory stretches, the Pinnacle had been just a Tanjong Pagar apartment building, though the tallest public housing block in the country. Rising up to fifty storeys high, it had stood, a concrete accordion, stiff in the heart of a tropical city.

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And Now There Came Both Mist and Snow

Then the cold had come. Those who heeded the warnings left before the freezing flood waters, the crackling formation of ice floes on reservoirs. Those who did not ended up encased like natural history specimens in a museum, clutching their digital devices as though their lives still depended on them. Homo iphonus. For months after, one could still see the ghostly, flickering lights from the screens of those trapped gadgets in the ice underfoot, lithium-ion batteries inexplicably prolonged by the cold. Occasionally, snatches of music could be heard through a sudden fissure in the ice, sound travelling in strange ways through the infinite chambers of crystallised water. These days, only the top seven floors of the seven towers of the Pinnacle are above ice level. The tip out of the iceberg. Cold air smells of nothing. Not of petrol fumes, mosquito fogging, overpowering cologne. Not of vanilla, frying pork lard, aromatic curry and frangipani either. Cold is anti-smell. It rolls unobtrusively onto the tongue and robs you of the ability to curl-snare-sample a snow flake. When Lily and Opal reach the pond, they pick their way carefully, lifting their legs high out of the snow like marshmallow babies. When they reach the centre of this irregular shape, this topographical amoeba, they get on their hands and knees. With gloved hands, they brush away the snow on the ground, exposing the glassy surface they seek. Readying their saw, Opal taps the ice with its jagged-shark-smile-tip. Plotting her line with her eyes – as her mother had taught her when she’d been alive, the way other mothers once taught their daughters to thread needles – Opal strikes fast and strikes true. She leans her weight on the saw’s oval handle until a loud crack rings out in the twilight. She keeps pushing, her pressure melting the ice, allowing the saw to penetrate by degrees, burying it almost to the hilt. Then she alters the angle by a fraction and pulls it out. To and fro, she works the saw. Opal is strong. Underneath the layers she wears, her nineteen-year-old body is well-oiled machinery, her freckled arms smooth and muscular. Younger by two years, Lily is the delicate calla bloom that exaggerates her sister’s solidity. When Opal has finished scoring a precise rectangle in the ice, Lily bends down. With the chisel, she chips at the outline until the block of

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ice breaks free, floating white on the dark lake. Water slaps icy underside, a muted sound. The sisters repeat the sawing and chiselling. They work without speaking, faces muffled against the biting frost, stopping only to massage life back into numb fingers. Soon, ten, twenty blocks are bobbing in the pond. Prodding and batting with their gloved hands, occasionally using a skinny forked spear, they float the blocks back to the Pinnacle. A unit at the base of the building serves the sisters as ice storage. There the ice stays, wrapped in silvery insulating material, until a helicopter arrives to hoist them away to one freight station or another, destined for the balmy climes of the former deserts of the Middle East – where royalty wait for their supply of pure, exotic equatorial ice to flavour their sorbet, cut into balls to chill their tumblers of sherry-casked whisky, and carve into fantastical shapes for their banquet tables. Lily stops. A black shape is moving in the ice, under it, like a parasite beneath skin. She crouches and looks carefully. A face looms out of the depths to meet hers. Its eyes are closed: a man. Without thinking, Lily brings her chisel down to the right of the face. She stabs the ice several times in rapid succession until she punctures its armour, then plunges an arm into the hole – splinters of shock shooting up to her armpits – and grasps him by the hair. Now Opal is next to her, helping to heave him onto ice by the hood of his parka. His body is sopping, sobbing, slippery like a baby seal. Opal takes off her fur coat and wraps him in it, while Lily runs to the ice house to fetch a sled. Together, they drag the man back. They lay him on the ice house floor. He is slight, slim-hipped. Opal is five-foot nine, and her coat swaddles him like an infant. A faint moustache daubs his upper lip. His drenched hair is long, each wavy lock now shrivelling into curls. Looking at him, Lily’s heart starts to pound. With some effort, Opal slings him over her shoulder, his fingertips trailing limply at the back of her knees. Then she mounts the stairs and carries him up to their flat on the second floor from the top.

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And Now There Came Both Mist and Snow

Trailing behind, Lily feels she has performed a Herculean task. The young man regains consciousness on the third day. ‘Unngh,’ he says. Lily and Opal look up from the books they are reading. ‘Annhj,’ he adds, blinking at the white fluorescent tube on the ceiling above his bed. They leave their rattan chairs to go to his side. Opal holds his thin, pale hand. He stares at her, uncomprehending. Then he turns his head on the pillow and sees Lily standing a few steps behind her sister. He opens his mouth to speak but no word comes. Only rude gagging sounds. He gives up and, still fixing his gaze on Lily, smiles without guile. ‘What’s your name?’ asks Opal. He considers the question long and hard, frowning with the effort of it. ‘I don’t know,’ he finally whispers. The sisters meet George, the owner of the hardware store downstairs. It is he who tells them about the wrecked snowmobile he had found a little way from the Pinnacle. ‘Mangled like a tin can,’ says George, his double chins wobbling. ‘No driver in sight. Some fella must have hit something and crashed through the ice.’ Lily hovers in the background, picking up and setting down cans of lubricant at random. Opal nods sagely and asks what George intends to do with the salvaged vehicle. ‘Put it up for sale on Snapweb,’ he says, tapping the lid of his hand-cranked laptop with two fingers, like it’s a disobedient pet. ‘If someone sees the plates, they might trace it to me. But the data would be purged by the time the police get here.’ Neither girl says anything about the man they’d rescued, nor how he might relate to George’s find. When the nights become longer, the world going slowly belly up, the sisters venture out to harvest ice again. There is the tab at George’s, also at the Pinnacle’s in-house grocery store, to settle; new tools to pay for. Oil sheikhs, knowing that demand for Singaporean ice cannot be high, drive a hard bargain. They move, single file, metamorphosed into a trio. The nameless man holds Opal’s forked spear and a torch – Opal worries that he will put a

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foot wrong and fall through the ice again. He studies Lily in front of him; her pelt-bundled form, the determined grace of her walk. Lily feels every pinprick of his unwavering gaze. Ahead of them both, Opal lopes, sure-footed as a mountain goat. I was on my way to Phuket, he says, the fog lifting momentarily from his busted cortex, his hampered hippocampus. I’d heard that temperatures were climbing there. That the ice was receding, the sand returning. A gale picks up his voice and thrusts it forward – first into Lily’s small conch-shell ears, then Opal’s firm unremarkable ones. Please don’t let his lucidity clang shut, like the little iron plate nailed behind a peep hole, prays Lily. Say more, say more. Hearing his words, Opal’s peasant-strong heart constricts, chills. She knows Lily is receiving them like spring dew. In their apartment, laid like objects of worship on a teak console, are the relics of the eternal summer that used to envelope their birth place. Mother had held their hands when they were toddlers, gently lifting their forefingers to help her point as she named each treasure: Dried coconut husk. Orchid (dipped in gold long ago). Saga seeds. A faded photograph of strangers, ancestors, wearing only grins and triangles of fabric; eyes patched against the sun, arms akimbo, a mutant toadstool raining water into kidney-shaped wading pools behind them. Pointing at the photograph, Mother had delivered a mysterious incantation: Toa Payoh Swimming Complex. Mother, whose knowledge of submerged addresses conferred power upon her: she’d named lost things as Adam had named the animals in paradise. The girls had squirrelled away the place names, meaningless and dislocated, acorns for their winter. He is saying: I must have skidded on the ice and hit something buried on the banks. If not, I’d have sunshine toasting my face now. Opal knows Lily is listening, seduced by the promise of heat and glow. A stone weighs down her soul: My little sister is going to leave me. As she slices open the ice, filleting its epidermis, Opal wishes for hook, mooring, ballast. Anything, to hold onto life as she knows it. The woman arrives that day.

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And Now There Came Both Mist and Snow

She is outside the ice house waiting for them, when the trio returns, pulling perfect cubes of ice on their rusty sled. ‘Mike! Thank god!’ she cries, rushing to him. Shucking her mittens, she produces blue fingers to brush back his hair and examine his face like braille. The bruises marching across his forehead have faded to yellowgreen. ‘It’s me,’ she croons. ‘Kim.’ Then she turns to the sisters, arranged on each side of the sled like mismatched garden nymphs. Unconsciously, Opal clenches her fists. Lily bites her bottom lip. ‘I don’t know what to say,’ gushes the woman named Kim. ‘You two are saints for finding him. Taking care of him after the accident.’ Lily feels her lips parting, the syllables bubbling involuntarily from a rancid maelstrom: ‘How did you find us?’ ‘I saw his smashed-up snowmobile online and my heart just sang. He’s alive!’ Kim shoots a loving look at the man now Mike. ‘I contacted George on the Snapweb, and he told me where he’d found it. Wasn’t easy. I had to convince him I wasn’t CID.’ Nervous tinkling laugh. ‘Then I had to beg your freight chopper to drop me off.’ Pulling Mike’s arm into her embrace, Kim nestles her head on his shoulder. For a while, nobody speaks. ‘Well, you’d better come up then,’ Opal says finally. This is what you do when your beloved’s fiancée comes back to claim him: You stomp into the apartment and tweak the light switches furiously. Then you mutter that the blizzard’s punched out the power again, and leave the room to start the generator in the corridor. It starts, not without a grumble, then emits a low roar like a hurt animal. And then there is illumination again, by which to avoid one another’s eyes. The four of you take your seats around the square card table that serves as buffet, work desk and dressing table. It feels ridiculous, as though you’re about to engage in a séance. You announce that you’re going to bed. The others barely acknowledge you – their faces are three pearls hanging from a crowded lobe. You want to leave the room. You are afraid to leave the room.

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Clara Chow

Opal wakes, summoned by retreating shadows. She feels that she has just come out of a coma. The light streaming into her bedroom is crisp, dazzling, the sky devoid of any hint of cloud. Things are reborn when this light touches them: abandoned cars gleam as though they have just rolled off the assembly line; scratched plate glass windows sparkle. There is a renewed symmetry in the blocks making up the Pinnacle. They stand out against the sky, vivid as basalt rock on a shore. Stumbling a little, as the details of the brilliant morning assail her senses, brambles catching at a fairytale princess, she opens her bedroom door. At first, Lily and the young man look merely pasty, entangled on the couch. Next to them, Kim cradles her head in her arms, rocking soundlessly in agony. Outside, the generator continues its torpid choking, its emphysema. Idly, Opal’s mind notes automatically that someone has forgotten to open the ventilation louvres in the room. She has cautioned Lily a hundred times: carbon monoxide could pour into the room and poison them. Opal takes a step toward the menage à trois. Kim looks up, tears tracking down her face. Opal looks again at the still couple and blanches. No, no, no! Idiots, idiots! Wrenching open the front door, Opal pulls Kim out and into the corridor. The woman flops like a fish as Opal props her up, chest over the parapet, coaxing her to take deep breaths. Fresh oxygen floods her lungs and Kim begins to vomit. The ice, already thawing under the influence of a few hours of this unseasonable, abominable weather, is easy to cut. Opal saws determinedly and soon produces an opening, exactly six by six feet, into the crepuscular bottom. Kim stands uselessly beside her, dabbing at her eyes with a handkerchief. When Opal has finished, she drags the bodies from the sled and returns both of them to the fluid from whence he came. Watching their descent, she raises a fist then opens it, sending Mother’s treasures after

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And Now There Came Both Mist and Snow

them: the coconut husk, the orchid, the saga seeds. She keeps the photograph. Perhaps, she thinks, some verses are in order. A makeshift cemetery has sprung up to the west of the Pinnacle, snaggle-toothed with grave markers. She has been to funerals before: the freezing farewells to elderly neighbours in whipping winds. Mother’s, when they were girls. Opal wracks her brains for some poetry. Nothing suitable comes, so she decides the family’s old chestnut – as good as their creed and business motto – will do. Her voice wobbles, and then finds its footing: ‘And now there came both mist and snow, And it grew wondrous cold: And ice, mast-high, came floating by, As green as emerald. ‘The ice was here, the ice was there, The ice was all around: It cracked and growled, and roared and howled, Like noises in a swound!’ She knows she has excised a stanza. Such is the obliteration, not of grief, but of familiarity. Literature had not been a priority in the Pinnacle’s school room, attended by all the residents’ children. History was even lower down the list of priorities. She wondered if, like Mike, they had all been suffering from amnesia. When Opal stops reciting, Kim gives a loud sniff, like an actress making sure she has the audience’s attention before delivering her lines. ‘He left me at the altar,’ she says. ‘Told me in a note that he couldn’t go through with it. When I realised he didn’t remember what he’d done, I thought, “Here is our second chance”.’ Opal thinks about summer. She thinks about the stories Mother used to tell her and Lily. People used to complain all the time about how horribly hot it was, said their mother, as she pumiced the rust from neglected cleavers and hung the ice

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Clara Chow

tongs back on the wall. They lived in their air-conditioned shopping malls and office complexes, and wished aloud that their forefather’s Chinese junks and Indian fishing boats had been blown off course – north, to Korea or Japan – instead of here. Opal paused, open-mouthed, the weighing hook she had been playing with forgotten: Tell us about the ice cream! Well, said Mother, People would deliberately suck on ice popsicles to cool down. They ate bowls heaped with colourful shaved ice, red beans, white seeds hidden like prizes. What about the domes? asked Lily. Domes! Domes! Domes! Mother nodded. They built climate-controlled domes to place over their huge parks, full of plants from all over the world. Thousands of people could walk about under those domes like ants in a bell jar, at a place called Gardens by the Bay. The girls would squeal with delight at such ludicrous ideas, until Mother shooed them out of the ice house. Now, Opal feels doubt stealing in. About warmth ever existing in this land. And whether it had ever been blanketed by anything other than white.

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Imtiaz Dharker

Imt iaz Dhar ker Poetry

Ghazals on the Grundig, Pingling in Pollokshields The moon of the fourteenth day or the first light of the sun, I swear to God, you are beyond compare. The moon. . . . Out of its massive grey body, Grundig TK20 is singing reel to reel, unspooling love songs in Hindustani, a voice that is sometimes female, sometimes male. Lahore arrives via Germany on Sunday mornings in Pollokshields. What does it mean? Time, Ammi translates, and sighs, Time has played such a joke on us You are no longer you. I am no longer I.

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Imtiaz Dharker

We learn Hindustani from Grundig, singing along with the tragic song. Ammi says we must speak English, Say it like this, excuse me, thank you, but when I say the words they come out Glaswegian. To her it all sounds the same. She finds new ways to speak the new tongue, delighted by the birds on television, waddling to the sea, Pingling! Pingling! and the chorus girls who come out highkicking when the sequined curtain goes up, Nappy! Nappywali! Sometimes she lapses, negotiates meals in Urdu, swears by accident in Punjabi, Ullu di patthi! But if I am the daughter of an owl who is the owl? Grundig’s barrel body is rumbling to release the voice, pitched impossibly high, juggling the world from spool to spool. Time has played this joke on us, says Grundig, You are no longer you, I am no longer I.

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Poetry

Bombil, Bumla, Bummalo At Britannia Café on Ballard Estate late one afternoon, the poet was discovered buying Bombay Duck to take away, waiting to have it wrapped up in a brown paper bag before he carried it home fresh-fried and hot. This was where, by chance, you met. Simon Rhys Powell and Arun Kolatkar sat on bentwood chairs and talked about the art of frying and eating Bombay Duck, how the bones were soft and melted down the throat, how it could be swallowed whole, with limba-cha-ras, just like that. The poet smacked his lips, you ate his words as if they were Welsh, both of you savoured the name itself, the taste on your tongues of Bombil, Bummalo, Bombay Duck. Two strange fish swimming in the mirrors of the café like long-lost friends, bosom-buddies

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Imtiaz Dharker

brought together by a stroke of luck. Two lives too big to be packed away in a brown paper bag like a take-away, you will stay, you will still be there on Ballard Estate when the boxwallahs have come and the boxwallahs have gone.

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Poetry

Drummer The pavement is a drum beneath your feet. When you return as usual, crossing the square, walking down the familiar street, you need no signposts to take you home. You feel the hum of buses, trains booming underground, strong and close as your own heartbeat. Drummer, you know these thoroughfares, you have played them. These roads lay claim to you. So when the blade meets skin, the whole street stops, feels the sting. Hack at you, and the city bleeds. Even in broad daylight, the alleys turn dark and glitter with long knives, but the nightmare cannot hold you in. You fall out of it. You fall back into the city’s sickened heart, and it beats harder, begins to speak

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Imtiaz Dharker

in every language, deep down where the blood thunders Not in my name. Not in my name. the city’s heart becomes a drum, dhak dhak, dhak dhak, dhak dhak. It speaks the name you understand, the difficult name, the name of peace.

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Poetry

First words (for Ava)

Her fingers scrabble at glass, over floorboards, table legs and chairs to catch the word that runs away from her, sifted through leaves, snatched up on a breeze, stolen by clouds, returned. Propelled on bottom, elbows, knees, with silent determination, she follows it and only when it spills out of her hand, whispers, like someone in a church or library, sunshine. She knows the moon even when it is nothing more than a curl on blue, or half an ear listening for the next star. Even the disc of milk in a bowl is moon. She says the word and drinks it in.

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Imtiaz Dharker

Mumbai? Kissmiss? Of course! Who is not knowing this, that after Happy Diwali comes Merry Kissmiss! Impossible to miss, when allovermumbai, Matharpacady to A to Z Market, roof tops are dancing in chorus and alloversky is fully full with paper stars. Hear! Horns are telling at midnight on every street, Happy Happy Happy! We know very well to make good festival, and Saint Santa is our honoured guest in Taj Hotel. We are not forgetting. And allovermumbai alloversky is fully full with paper stars. See! Tree is shining and snow (cottonwool but looks good, no?). Small child also face is shining, licking icing, this must be what snow tastes like under the paper stars.

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Poetry

And allovermumbai alloversky is fully full with paper stars.

Poems by Imtiaz Dharker from Over the Moon (Bloodaxe, 2014)

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Masks Mas B oazksRott em and Eliz abeth Solomon

Boaz Rottem text by Elizabeth Solomon

f we are the towers of our own construction, then our faces are our façades. We maintain, we sequester, we reveal. We look into our bathroom mirrors and examine our morning reflections. First we face ourselves, and then we craft fronts to face the world. We are everyday warriors. Yet, do our masks hide our truths or are our truths exposed in our concealment? Human façades span a plethora of weird and wonderful forms. Each one is a narrative told in the vocabulary of human skin, embellishment

Spiderweb tattooed Burmese woman 37

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Masks

and, sometimes, pain. Like good fiction, each is a story left partially finished, deposited with the viewer to complete and decode. ‘I never edit my images. I don’t believe in manipulation,’ says photographer Boaz Rottem, a connoisseur of the dying art of the raw image. His photographs capture this quest for identity across Asia. Krishna might walk the streets of Andhra Pradesh. In Kathmandu, a serene sadhu stares into the lens, smeared in vermilion and the ashes of the freshly cremated. A Burmese elder is smoking her cheroot, her wrinkled face tangled in tattoos. Blackened tribal teeth of the Lu and Aka grin ominously for the camera in Vietnam and Myanmar, challenging definitions of beauty. The Kalibo carnival of Aklan in the Philippines features tarry black faces, with no two costumes alike. Some are made of coconut husk, others are embellished with cloth, and still others flaunt paint, polyester, plastic and papier-mâché. They are as bright as parrots, wearing flames of red in their hair, or as pale as parchment. They hinge on the

Sadhu, Kathmandu 38

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Boaz Rottem and Elizabeth Solomon

grotesque; they calm the senses in blissful hues of blue. There are clowns and queens; there are paupers and kings. Further north, performers of Nanjing’s Kunqu opera transform from gruff chain-smoking men into exotic Chinese birds of paradise who sing at a pitch that would shatter glass. Meanwhile, coy, red-kneed Japanese schoolgirls enter Harajuku station’s public toilets dressed in uniforms only to reappear as fierce cosplay characters. At times, the horror can lie in the removal of the mask and its contortion. At the ironically named Vegetarian festival of Phuket, entranced men and women impale their faces with everything from machetes to machineguns. Yet, through the many layers caught in these images, a singular truth lies exposed – we all have our secret identities. We edit the face we want the world to see. We Photoshop our digital profiles; we proofread the narratives we want others to read. In the definition of self, our stories sometimes lean towards the hyperbolic. As in Rottem’s images, our façades can range from the sad, soulful and horrible to the powerful and exquisite. These images also act as memento mori – a reminder of our vulnerability. The more we examine these photographs, the less we seem to know about ourselves. The photographer, hidden behind his lens, uses the medium of raw untouched documentary to make us hunt for the truth – look closely and we will find fragments of ourselves in the bizarre and the beautiful.

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Masks

Ati-Atihan Festival, Kalibo, Philippines

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Boaz Rottem and Elizabeth Solomon

Aka woman, Myanmar

Lu woman, Vietnam

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Masks

Krishna, Andra Pradesh, India

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Boaz Rottem and Elizabeth Solomon

Cosplayers, Harajuku, Japan

Vegetarian Festival, Phuket, Thailand

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Masks

Kunqu opera performer, Nanjing, China

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The West Sea Battle The West Jang Jin-sung Sea B att le

Jang Jin-sung translated and introduced by Shirley Lee

n North Korea, the pursuit of truth – that is, the pursuit of truth as we know it – is an act of treason. The state requires unquestioning loyalty and obedience to upholding its own narrative, which the whole population, from birth to death, must learn and relearn as the narrative develops. Control even of rumour and ordinary vocabulary is an integral part of the state’s monopoly over narrative. The word ‘mother’, as used to refer to the Korean Workers’ Party, describes a mother far superior to any birth mother; the word ‘love’ as reserved for the Leader describes a peerless love, far superior to love for any mere human being, living or dead. Adherence to the narrative of the Korean Workers’ Party, which upholds the absoluteness of the Leader, must always be the purpose of any words destined for the public domain, whether written or spoken. Those who question this or deviate from it must be punished. No ordinary person is authorised to read, hear or share anything that might undermine the official narrative – unless commanded to do so – and this is the context of the following account. The notion that people might say what they really think about the Party’s narrative to anyone other than a trusted confidante equally bound by great mutual risk is alien. The very idea that private thoughts and opinions have any place in society is to be regarded as blasphemous. On the run in China, Jang Jin-sung is asked whether Kim Jong-il cared more for his soldiers than for ordinary citizens, and he takes these issues into account in his reply.

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The West Sea Battle

I considered how to give an adequate answer. Instead of abstract theorising, I thought it would be better to relate a first-hand experience. In 2002 I had met with and debriefed injured personnel from the West Sea engagement against the South Korean navy, as part of a United Front Department (UFD) operation to formulate psychological warfare campaigns. Our task was to collect accurate information to be considered in the formulation of strategy at the highest level. Of course, the accounts we collected were not for public consumption. Other officers in the Propaganda and Agitation Department might be charged with fabricating stories of victorious heroism to be published in the state media, but our job was different, and we took careful notes. The men injured in the battle were admitted to and treated in the Korean People’s Army No. 11 Hospital, located in the Moonsu-dong part of Daedong-gang district in Pyongyang. One of the surgical wards had been closed off as a special zone reserved for injured soldiers from the naval command’s eighth flotilla, and was guarded by Defence Command personnel under the auspices of the Ministry of People’s Armed Forces. In a country like North Korea where propaganda celebrates only the continuous victory of our forces, wounded and defeated soldiers were not supposed to exist and they were kept well out of sight. First, we gathered together in a room all the injured soldiers who had participated in the engagement. There were about a dozen, five of them young men of eighteen or nineteen. A section chief of the UFD who travelled with us explained where we had come from, and that we were there to debrief them so as to write an accurate report of what had happened during the engagement. He added that we were not interested in listening to heroic lies, but wanted their honest views of the engagement. At that moment, one soldier covered in bandages was brought in in a wheelchair. Almost in unison, the other men pointed to him and said, ‘That boy was hit by 230 fragments.’ As we stared in consternation, the military surgeon explained that this was the number of shrapnel fragments that had been found lodged in the soldier’s body. He showed us an X-ray spattered with white dots. ‘He was hit by a shell. It exploded above him, and hundreds of fragments fell on him like hail.’

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Jang Jin-sung

Another soldier asked, ‘Can we really speak our minds honestly?’ ‘Yes, all of you. Speak your minds.’ The soldier answered hesitantly. ‘Actually, we’re not at all afraid of fighting, but those exploding shells are really scary.’ This was what North Korea’s famously fearless sailors dreaded most in South Korea’s arsenal. ‘At the “Ready for Battle” order, those enemy bastards disappear below deck. But we do the opposite and come up on deck to do battle. Exposed like this, if they fire an exploding shell, we suffer the first losses in battle. ‘You know how in the movies people call each other by name during an engagement? Well, when you’ve really fought in a battle, you know that that depiction is total bollocks. Once the first cannon shot has been fired, all you can hear from then on is a loud ringing in your ears. So when we needed to find someone or communicate something, we hit each other’s helmets with empty casings.’ A soldier who introduced himself as the master sergeant spoke next. ‘May I make a request? We don’t envy those enemy bastards’ boats. But we do envy their flak jackets. If the ones they use are too expensive to be made available to us, maybe we could be equipped with thick cotton-padded jackets, so we would not be so vulnerable to shrapnel.’ The section chief standing next to me made careful notes, underlining words for emphasis. When he asked the soldiers to describe the rest of the battle in detail, an officer replied. ‘On the day the operation began, we had no idea what was going to happen. Our captain was still on the way back from Pyongyang, so we were taking our time in making preparations to leave port. But when he returned, the captain’s first action was to give an unusual order: we were to fill the ship’s fuel tanks right up, and we realised that something out of the ordinary was going to happen.’ I asked a question, ‘Do you not usually do that?’ ‘There’s not enough fuel. In any case, the only ships that are guaranteed regular fuel are the destroyers. Right now, we have two Soviet destroyers from the 50s. One is stationed in the East Sea, one in the West Sea. But because of the fuel shortage, even they can’t complete patrols as planned. What they actually do is enter the operational zone, drop anchor and then carry out radar surveillance. Then they return to port. For our cor-

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The West Sea Battle

vettes, the fuel situation is even worse. No patrol is possible: they basically approach the destination and come straight back. And when the ships return to port, officers siphon off the remaining fuel to use for heating at home. For a long time now the fuel depot has been giving us less than half the fuel we actually need.’ A senior naval officer chimed in with his complaint. ‘It’s also been a long time since we received any anti-fouling paint.’ ‘What’s that?’ asked the UFD section chief. ‘As our ships are always in the water, barnacles and the like are always attaching themselves to the hull. That slows the ships down and they use more fuel. You have to apply special anti-fouling paint regularly to cut down on rust and keep the vessel up to speed, but we’re short even of that.’ The officer who had spoken earlier, impatient to get another word in, added, ‘That day, the captain not only ordered that the fuel tanks should be filled up, but that the ship should be fully loaded with missiles and ammunition. Then he inspected the rails attached for reinforcement to the front of the ship, and asked us to weld them even stronger.’ ‘Why rails at the front of the ship?’ ‘During the first West Sea engagement, the battle started with the ships ramming each other. The enemy ship’s armour was so hard that our ship was badly damaged. So the captain came up with the idea of the rails, saying it would increase our chances of victory.’ ‘Didn’t you submit a proposal about the strength of the steel plating after that first engagement?’ ‘We did. It was reported to General Kim himself. He issued an order for the world’s strongest steel plating to be fitted to our ships. Yeon Hyong-muk, the Party Secretary for Jagang Province (where North Korean military industry is concentrated), as well as engineers from the military factory of Jagangdo, visited our ship several times.’ ‘Did that not solve the problem?’ ‘If you make the plating too thick, the ship will become unbalanced, and some of the tank-cannons must be lowered to compensate. Actually, our real advantage is the tank-cannons. Even when the waves are fierce, we can maintain good accuracy of aim. And the firepower is great

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Jang Jin-sung

enough to blast holes in the enemy ships. But if we remove that advantage, how can we fight a proper fight, when we are also slower than them? So after a lot of consideration, it was decided that instead of strengthening the steel plating, our firepower would be increased. The automatic cannons of the enemy fire at 3000 rounds per minute, while ours can only manage about 600. After the first engagement, we fitted a Soviet four-barrel Vulcan cannon. With that, we can fire 1500 rounds per minute.’ As he finished, a young sailor muttered, ‘Another thing – we fire from on deck, but those enemy bastards, we can’t even see where they fire from. Their ships are frighteningly modern.’ ‘Shut your mouth, you little son of a bitch.’ The master sergeant picked up a pillow from the bed and threw it at the soldier. ‘You keep your fucking mouth shut too.’ The officer admonished the sergeant for his outburst and continued to speak. ‘After fuelling up and loading the ammunition, we took a break. But for some reason, the captain, who was inspecting the ship more thoroughly than usual, called the chief engineer and scolded him, saying that the auxiliary steering system was broken and that he must repair it at once. The auxiliary system allows you to move the ship manually when the main steerage has a problem. Looking back, if the captain hadn’t ordered for this to be fixed, we would not have made it home alive.’ ‘Why? How did that save you?’ ‘The enemy hit our engine room with artillery, and the main steerage stopped responding. So for a while, our ship was turning in circles. Even the enemy probably thought it strange.’ The younger sailor, unable to restrain himself, interrupted again. ‘Did you see what happened next? The enemy came up on their deck and stood there watching us. We should have fired at them then and there.’ The older sailors kept silent, looking distressed. The section chief moved on. ‘Describe the battle itself.’ The officer spoke first. ‘We approached the enemy ship and attempted a collision. At the captain’s orders, we were the first to fire our cannons,

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The West Sea Battle

but our captain died with the enemy’s first shot. According to the rules of engagement, when you start a battle, you must have the agreement of the ship’s surveillance officer, who at the same time holds the position of political officer. So after the captain was killed, the surveillance officer led the battle. We were well prepared and determined that day, so the enemy suffered great damage to their ship. But if the mission lasts too long, we are at a disadvantage with regard both to firepower and hull strength and losses on our side become inevitable. Fortunately, the steersman, who had kept in radio contact with flotilla command, soon ordered a withdrawal, and we returned using the auxiliary steerage. The strange thing is, the captain has three daughters, and three shrapnel fragments were retrieved from his body.’ The UFD section chief paused and looked around the gathered men. Then he asked, ‘Do you have the courage to engage the enemy once more? What do you say?’ The sailors replied in military unison, ‘Yes!’ But I learnt something during that meeting. Although the younger sailors were possessed by a heroic frenzy, the older the sailors were more disconcerted by the up-to-date equipment of the South Korean military, and even fearful. When we left the meeting, the officer followed us out and repeated his request, pleading with us. ‘Really, It doesn’t have to be shell-proof jackets, but could we be guaranteed provision of padded cotton jackets? That would be enough to stop our boys getting so badly injured by the shrapnel.’ When Kim Jong-il received our report of the second naval engagement, he said that although the first had been a defeat, the second had been a victory; and he sent appreciation letters and gifts to the sailors of the navy’s eighth squadron. The captain was named a Hero of the Republic, while the surveillance officer received a First Class Decoration. The other sailors received Second Class and Third Class Decorations, along with a colour television set embossed with Kim Jong-il’s name. The dead captain was later brought back to life as the protagonist of a play, which featured ‘Three Shrapnel Fragments’ as the inheritance passed on to three vengeful daughters by a heroic father.

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Chen Dongdong

Chen D ongdong Poetry

translated by Michael Martin Day

At Swallow Rock From Nanjing’s Swallow Rock I look down on the river. At noon, a fierce wind is scattering clouds and shadows like a horse in hot pursuit of the day. By my side, an insurance company girl I’ve known only two days bares a breast of bright sunshine. In her office of large windows a phone rings urgently startling a probationary employee intent on a card game. A freighting client can’t find her. Just now, her body’s stretching toward a tranquillity rarely found on the Yangtze. An iron boat. Safety hats. A rubber conveyor belt sprays coal on a small dock below a granule of death grows slowly large

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Poetry

its solid core rust-stained. Its peach-skin surface has the fine hairs of erotic sensation. The river’s like an enormous python spots of cloud-shadow roll on the water On Swallow Rock my hand takes hold of an iron railing and an old machine. I point out to her a flagpole amidst the green growth on the opposite shore. What sort of daydream has climbed to the top of it? What sort of female breast brings forth a flower a set of lips, brushed lightly by the soft wings of waterfowl her waist accommodates. Her briefcase lies idle on the grassy knoll above us the copy of the Rubaiyat I placed in it heating up. One line of a Persian poem fits Swallow Rock.

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Beijing Hospital B eijing Hospit Jeremy Tiang al

Jeremy Tiang

hen Doctor’s words confound Sophia’s patchy Mandarin, she says, Pardon, but he just grows unhelpfully louder. Finally she begs, Wait, wait, and dials a number. As the phone rings, she imagines the aunt’s ungainly progress through the apartment’s camphor-scented air, catching her knee on the rosewood armchair, swearing in pungent bursts. A click and muffled thud as the aunt pulls at the cord and demands, breathlessly, Yes? I don’t know what Doctor wants. Can you ask him? Sophia has learnt that the aunt regards hellos and how-are-yous as wasted words. She hands the phone to Doctor and Sophia leans her head against the smeary window as they have a quacking conversation. From four storeys up, the view is bleak, gunmetal grey. Yet whenever she mentions the pollution to a local, the reply is always, You should have seen it before the Olympics; it was a luxury to see blue sky. A finger jabs her impatiently: Doctor, thrusting the phone back. The aunt says, He wanted to know about – a jumble of sounds. I don’t— Sophia begins, and the aunt sighs. Artificial heart, she says in English. Machine. We didn’t want that, protests Sophia. Gu Ma, can you tell him— she calls the woman Gu Ma, Aunt, even though she is her father’s cousin, not sister, from the branch of the family that stayed in China instead of coming to Singapore half a century ago.

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Sophia passes the phone back to Doctor and they squawk away again. Both have Beijing accents, their voices arch and slurred. Her head aches. The noise is amplified by the narrow corridor, which smells not of antiseptic but of concrete and radiator dust. The doctor slots the phone into her hand as if she were a wall socket and marches away. She lifts it to her ear, but the aunt has already hung up. She retrieves her bags of supplies from reception and continues to Nicholas’s ward. At visiting hours, families leave their doors open so the building feels like a many-storeyed village, children shuffling in corners and wives noisily recounting the latest gossip. She had wanted Nicholas to go private but the aunt vetoed that – the care wouldn’t be as good. Korean surgeons, she sniffed. Japanese nurses. They have at least insisted on a private ward. It is important that Nicholas has restful surroundings before his operation; he can always earn the money to pay for this after recovery. She turns a corner and the grinding of the lift fades. The doors are farther apart here. They are the only foreigners in this section, though if she does not speak she can pass for a local. Nicholas is watching television when she comes in, although he doesn’t understand a word of Chinese. He claims to follow the sense, but she thinks he just wants a voice in the room. She has left him a small stack of index cards on which the aunt has scrawled ‘Bring water’ or ‘Turn down heating’. A chaste kiss as always; then she begins to pull containers from her bags. Over Sophia’s protests, the aunt insisted on doing the cooking. Your food is the reason he’s sick, she’d said, and there was enough truth in that to silence Sophia. She still remembers the consultant talking about malignant hypertension, blaming diet as well as stress. Her guilty recollection of all those steaks fried in butter, all that French patisserie. The hospital does not provide food. This had surprised Sophia, but then she wouldn’t have trusted anything they served. She pushes the folding table across Nicholas’s bed, and places the plastic containers within easy reach. He will not eat all of this; the variety is to stimulate his appetite. Double-boiled soup – just a little; they are supposed to be restricting

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fluid intake – stewed pork, steamed fish, fluffy white rice. He brings a shaky spoonful to his mouth. Sophia goes to the market every morning with the aunt, paying pennies for an array of meats, and fish lifted live from a basin and splayed open in front of them, making sure everything is fresh and untainted. She has heard terrible stories about processed foods. One is playing out on the news at the moment: a milk powder scandal, babies dying from formula adulterated with melamine. She shudders, imagining sniffing at a bottle – Something’s off. A bit too chalky? No, I’m sure it’s fine. . . . When Nicholas has had enough, the food goes back into the bags it arrived in, boxes slotting neatly together, cutlery wrapped in a paper towel. She pours him tea from a thermos and blows coolingly before touching it to his lips. In the first days, she felt the need to keep up a stream of chatter, filling the dead air. Now she sees her presence is enough. She can sit with him and time will pass of its own accord. She reads him an article from The Economist – something about Elizabeth Warren, which he snorts at, a glimpse of his old self. The nurses come as usual, day shift handing over to night. Both are young, alike enough to be sisters. They smile and jabber rapidly over his chart. Sophia is sure they linger in the doorway longer than necessary, still taken with the novelty of a white man on their floor. Finally, she thanks them pointedly and they go. They did more tests today, says Nicholas, shrugging as if to forestall her next question. Who knows what for? They took some blood, labelled it, and packed the vials neatly into a plastic box that whizzed off on a trolley. So much of him, circulating in unknown parts of the hospital. Sophia nods, and then remembers. Doctor said something about a mechanical heart. I got Gu Ma to say you’d never wanted one – This was an option they’d been offered in Singapore, when it became clear Nicholas did not meet the criteria for the transplant waiting list. It seemed plausible at first. What is the heart except a pump? What does it do that a machine cannot? But this would only ever be a temporary measure, and he didn’t want to live a patchwork life, buying one year at a time, never knowing how much longer—

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They already have this information, he says. They keep asking me the same questions. I hope there isn’t— Gu Ma says nothing will go wrong. You’re a textbook case. The aunt works with livers, but knows someone in the heart work-unit and managed to get Nicholas admitted that way. As long as we’re able to pay, they’ll do a good job for you. They slip into another silence. She straightens his bedspread, which is too short for him; his feet stick out. She notices his toenails need cutting, but has not brought clippers. When the sunlight has gone she puts on the light, which shows up stained linoleum, grimy salmon-pink walls. She has never actually seen a cockroach in the building, but suspects they lurk out of sight. When Nicholas collapsed, her first thought was this must be one of his opaque practical jokes, embarrassing her in the middle of IKEA. She stood helpless, cross, until people came running. A store assistant started CPR. Understanding only came when the ambulance arrived. She sat in the back, thinking, This doesn’t happen to people like us. How long ago was that? Months? Weeks? So hard to pin time down in the eternal summer of Singapore. She sometimes passes on news of the outside world – a new Goldman Sachs outrage, some faraway natural disaster – which he contrives to seem interested in, but really, the world has shrunk to the two of them: just these walls, just the stubborn passages inside his heart which will not function as they should. We’re so lucky Gu Ma brought us here, she says ritualistically, unsure whether she is trying to arouse gratitude in herself, or merely to appear grateful so the universe will not take even this chance away from them. Yes, says Nicholas. Very lucky. They could never, on their own, have negotiated their way into this hospital, not without the aunt to speak to certain people, to scribble her way through swathes of paperwork with the élan of someone who’s lived her life in a low-tech bureaucracy. They play a word-hunt game on her iPad and Nicholas cheats flagrantly, which she pretends not to notice. It is a relief when Nurse comes to tell her to please leave, come again tomorrow. Sophia kisses her husband’s dry lips and joins the families clustering in the hallways, laughing and shouting at children to stop running. Her insides are heavy, as if the grey

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sky outside has taken up residence in her. She is somehow unable to fit into the rhythm of the people around her, and they keep bumping into her. Her phone rings as she reaches the car park. She knows it will be the aunt, and breathes in-out rapidly three times before pressing ‘answer’. Gu Ma? Finished? Can’t pick you up today. Meeting. The aunt has a lot of meetings. Sophia has not been able to decipher what these might be – something to do with the Party? She does not want to know. That’s fine, she says. I’ll take a taxi. She remembers to use the proper Mandarin word, ‘gongche’, not the Singaporean ‘deshi’ – a bastardisation of the English. Don’t tell the driver where you’re from. I’ll just say I’m from the South. The aunt insists Beijing taxi drivers, being rogues, will overcharge her mercilessly if they find out she is foreign. Don’t know what time I’ll be back. Eat without me. Yes. Sophia hesitates, but the words bubble up. Gu Ma, will he be all right? The aunt sniffs. Don’t worry for nothing. Old Cheng will do a good job. He’s done so many hearts over the years – for him, it’s just like putting a new battery in your alarm clock. Old Cheng is the former colleague. Sophia isn’t sure how they are connected. Campmates in the time of reeducation? Something like that. Thank you, says Sophia to the click of the aunt hanging up. The sky is inky blue as she walks round the front of the building. The roadside trees are sharp silhouettes. She thinks of the Chinese word ‘qing’, which means something between black and green: the exact colour of a tree at dusk. That was a good phone call. Talking to the aunt is an obstacle course, especially with her limited Mandarin. She counts a conversation successful if it passes without real awkwardness on either side. It doesn’t help that she barely knows the aunt – their families were only able to get back in touch after China opened its borders in the eighties. She has a childhood

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memory of a loud-voiced woman visiting once, her clothes plain and washed thin, smelling of unaired rooms. She is in her sixties now, a squat figure with formidable powers of persuasion. It can’t have been easy being a female doctor, and perhaps this is why the aunt never married. Sophia knows she should show an interest, but can’t find the energy to ask questions, and there are always more pressing things: Nicholas’s food, Nicholas’s medicine. She remembers her father once saying something about high-powered friends, how she could have risen higher if not for political factions – but this is part of the wall of unknowing that now surrounds Sophia: China, the aunt’s past, Nicholas’s illness. Each overwhelming, too large to contemplate. Outside the hospital, there’s a sculpture on a tall pedestal. High overhead, two bronze hands clasp, each the size of a man’s head, the lower hand clearly being pulled from danger. The upper hand is fringed with the edge of a sleeve, on which it is just possible to make out the emblem of a five-pointed star. Her own hands clasped for warmth, Sophia walks to the pavement. Even though winter is supposed to be on its way out, the air is chilly. She shivers as she checks that her bags are all there. A man is selling roast chestnuts nearby, his brazier exuding charred, smoky fumes. If only I could be saved, she thinks, stretching her arm out into the road to stop a taxi. At two in the morning, the concrete walls begin to sweat. They must turn off the heating at night for the building to chill so rapidly. This is Nicholas’s worst time, when he gives up trying to force himself into sleep. Perhaps it is better this way, rather than sleeping through what could be his last hours of life. He tries to divert his mind but now it slips into well-travelled lines. If he dies on the table; or if he lives, but is no better off than before; or if they magically remake him the way he was before, strong and whole, and he can go home! None of these possibilities feels real. There seems no reason he shouldn’t be here forever, in this dank bunker of a room, listening to the coughs seeping in from adjacent wards.

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Most of all, it seems inconceivable that a stranger’s organ will beat inside his chest. He has spent the day visualising the heart of each person around him, doctors, cleaners, even Sophia – stripping away the layers; skin and bone and fat, laying bare the dark red core. He imagines scalpels filching one swollen muscle, neatly replacing it with another. It has been a year of strangeness. The blank disbelief on Sophia’s face as they stretchered him through IKEA. All the way to the hospital, she squeezed his hand – though she says it’s impossible he could remember this; he didn’t recover consciousness until later that afternoon. Now he keeps his recollections to himself. His vocabulary has expanded over this year. He has learnt the precise medical terms for each of his symptoms – the heaviness keeping him awake is pulmonary oedema, his weak heart no longer able to pump the fluid from his lungs. He knows the difference between aortic and ventricular aneurysms. Some of this comes from doctors, but also hearsay, piles of medical journals and, most of all, the Internet. The last few days have been a release – no Wi-Fi at the hospital, preventing Sophia even from reading out good wishes on Facebook: the deadening parade of friends who feel they ought to say something. He makes a list in his head of people who might miss him. He has no family to speak of. Sophia, of course – but for how long? And friends – but again, he can think of only a couple he would want in the room right now. Can he remember the names of all thirty-four MBA classmates, all twenty-seven people from his college choir? How many of them will remember him? But this is morbid. He reaches for his bedside water bottle before remembering it has been taken away, the nurses placing their hands firmly across their mouths in a gesture of abstinence. He remembers an episode from his childhood: their family cat wasn’t supposed to eat anything the night before spaying, but jumped up on the breakfast table and snatched a scrap of food. They took it to the vet anyway, and it died under anaesthetic, choking to death on regurgitated ham. If Sophia were here – and now he feels resentful that she is not. She would have stayed, but he sent her away. He couldn’t allow it. He’d be fine: he was a big boy. All the things he felt obliged to say. And so she’s

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spending another night on the aunt’s creaky sofa, probably little more comfortable than on a plastic hospital chair. He feels she might have offered one more time. And once again his mind fills with Sophia. If she were here, if she were to attain one of her rare periods of calm – when she is still, her outline no longer flickering, her voice suddenly gentle. If she would just pull her fingers through his hair, just once, knead the precise spot on his neck that makes all the tension leave his body. Tears prickle at his eyes and he is horrified. To be sniffling like a schoolboy when he will see her tomorrow! He imagines himself whole again. Perhaps a year, Doctor said – at least according to Sophia’s translation, which he mistrusts. He suspects her of eliding inconvenient statements, glossing over words she does not understand. At her school, she once told him, it was fashionable to speak Mandarin badly, to flaunt ultra-fluent English – and he has noticed her anxious, furrowed concentration when Doctor speaks. Nicholas is still a young man with almost all his hair, but must privately acknowledge his outline is not as firm as it once was. He runs his hands over his belly, comfortably flat now he is lying down, and wonders if this degradation is the result of a year of no gym, no five-a-side – or the inevitable decline of a man in his middle thirties, the first supports giving way before the entire edifice collapses. When I am strong again, he promises, I will start jogging. The wall clock is barely visible. He squints through the gloom, trying to distinguish the minute hand from shadow. Is it before or after three? He doesn’t want to turn on the light and bring himself to full wakefulness. At least in the dark he can glide along the surface of consciousness. Several times now he has felt a shift, as if he’d fallen into a stretch of light sleep, or at least had his mind empty momentarily. This is his eighth night in Beijing, a city he has visited many times before, but never really seen. His memories are mostly of the insides of buildings – meeting rooms, cocktail bars. A world of work that once seemed barely tolerable, a laughable exercise in moneymaking until real success found him. Now he finds he cannot wait to get back: to knot his tie, step into polished shoes, allow the numbers to run through his brain, familiar as slipping into a warm bath.

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He has been out with Sophia only once here, on a day when the low winter sunlight seemed too enticing to ignore. They took a taxi to one of the large parks, full of humanity even on such a cold day. Huai Hai Gong Yuan, Sophia read doubtfully off the sign at the entrance. ‘Hai’ is ‘sea’. Maybe that’s the lake? His skin was grey in full daylight: actually grey. The afternoon was a disaster. Sophia’s brittle cheerfulness gave way and she snapped at him for making fun of a woman’s hair. She probably doesn’t speak English, he protested, but she was already marching stiffly ahead. He was in hospital slippers, which forced him to shuffle like an old man. Next time, he resolved, he would make an effort and put on lace-up shoes. Only Sophia never offered to take him out again. The walls feel impenetrable. He has never felt so constrained. Both alone and with Sophia, he has always been able to board a plane to take him where he needed to be. The first sealed door wasn’t actually the illness; it was being told by the hospital in Singapore that he was considered a poor candidate for a transplant; it was learning from a harassed-sounding woman in a Newcastle call-centre that, having lived outside the UK for so long, he was no longer eligible for NHS treatment. The cost of a private operation made his eyes widen. Why hadn’t they saved more? Or bothered taking out insurance? He remembers his watch and rummages for it in the drawer. It is designed for diving and lights up at the touch of a button. A minute after four. He must surely have slept a little, even if he wasn’t aware of it. He can’t have been up all these hours, chasing thoughts in circles. Even now the lines in his head will not stay orderly; they bend and twist around each other. This is wrong. He isn’t supposed to be agitated. Even though he hasn’t smoked since university, he desperately wants a cigarette. It is so still, the quietest hour of the night. He thinks he can hear his own heart: normal, no stutter, just a regular thud. What will they do with it? A bin full of medical waste somewhere, and— his imagination fails him. Presumably the risk of contamination rules out landfill, so the incinerator? All those scraps of bodies: fat melting, little hairs catching fire, igniting skin.

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He feels a knot inside him dissolve as if made of sugar, and he is calm. The city letting out its breath, a pause before it draws the next. For the first time in weeks, there is no pain between his shoulder blades. This may be the resignation of a condemned man approaching the scaffold, but there is strength in it too. You can do nothing further to me, he thinks. After the trapdoor opens, gravity takes over. A bubble of noise just outside his door: creaking, rattling wheels and rough voices. He is routinely woken just before dawn by the cleaners, who will not enter his room till much later but announce their presence, distributing cleaning supplies at regular intervals along the corridor like peeing dogs marking their territory. They chatter constantly, louder than can possibly be necessary. Sophia may be hesitant when she speaks Mandarin, but at least her tone is pleasantly modulated, obviously educated. He closes his eyes for a moment, and when he opens them again the corridor is silent and sunlight has appeared on the wall, the yellow of broken egg finger-streaked through Venetian blinds. Something unhooks inside him – excitement from a past life. Spring is on its way. He has lived in Singapore too long, absorbed too much of its constant tropical sun. Now he remembers the pleasure of seasons, the sudden lightness of a coat-free afternoon. Nicholas feels his anger slip away. It isn’t fair that his parents are dead, that he is alone in this box of patchy walls, his own body betraying him. But he lets this drift away, and soon it is beyond his field of vision. Sophia’s moods, her maddening aunt, the head-drilling voices of the cleaning staff – one after another they float into darkness. He has always been the kind of man who builds up quiet rage over weeks. Not now. He inches a toe forward until it just touches the pool of sun, convinced he feels a gradual warmth blossom over his body. By the time the nurse comes in – without knocking, as usual – he is able to watch her placidly. She seems unnerved by his attempt at a smile. There are a few things she must do – take his temperature, check his chart – and she goes through them studiously, as if he is a puzzle requiring great attention to solve. Perhaps it is the sleepless night, but the next hour passes in a fog. He is wheeled down a corridor and his chest is shaved. So many lights. They

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flare above his head, making squiggles across his retina. Each time he opens his eyes, his surroundings have shifted. Everyone is speaking, but probably not to him. Sophia flickers past, though later he can’t remember if his eyes were open or shut when he saw her. They inject various liquids into him. He feels oddly little pain, then none at all. Soon you will be going home, says the aunt. Sophia jumps. She’s been staring out the car window. Maybe, she replies. Probably. It depends what Doctor says. I’ve enjoyed having you here. The aunt is unusually abstracted today, not shouting at other drivers, even though they have been stuck in traffic for forty minutes and motorcycles keep veering close enough to threaten her wing mirror. We’ll visit again. There is more that Sophia wants to add – how grateful she is, how sorry she doesn’t know the aunt better – but the right words fail to come. There must be polite formulae for these situations. I should have watched more TV, she thinks. How many soap opera scenes there must be of awkward car journeys, family members reaching tentatively towards each other – stock phrases used by lazy screenwriters. Instead she says, Gu Ma— and then stops. She should not, but the question comes unbidden. Are you sure everything’s going to be okay? The older woman shows no exasperation at being asked again, for the third time since breakfast. Of course, right as rain, she says, her intonation and phrasing consistent as a fairy tale. Why are you so worried? You hear so many things— Don’t listen to things. I read on the Internet about someone dying. He had cancer and they gave him a new liver, but he died later. It turned out the liver was HIV positive. The aunt laughs. That might happen at a private clinic. At this hospital they choose good organs. When I was still on the work-unit, we had to match the tissue samples very carefully, to make sure everything was compatible before the executions went ahead. The patients who came through us always made full recoveries. Sophia isn’t sure she has understood correctly. Executions?

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The condemned prisoners were tested several times, everyone on death row, until we found something suitable. So much work. We had to inject them with an anti-coagulant before they were shot. I didn’t – I thought it was car accidents, or brain death – in most countries— Is it? Well, not in China. Who wants to meet their ancestors with half their insides missing? A swoosh of relief, as the traffic starts to move again. The aunt nudges the car forward, jaggedly overtaking. Sophia wonders if she already knew this. Half-remembered magazine articles about forged signatures on consent forms, men and women appearing in court with jaws wired shut to prevent them speaking out. Why did she think this had nothing to do with her? The aunt seems to guess what is bothering her. You shouldn’t feel guilty. These are all people who’ve done bad things. This way at least they can pay something back to society. But how— and again, her limited vocabulary trips her up. How can someone in that position really consent? Did our heart, the one now in my husband’s chest— But there are no words in any language to ask such a question. She tries not to think what a short wait they had for a match. Don’t think about it, says the aunt. I knew a lot of comrades who were sent to work in the abattoirs during re-education. They stopped eating meat after that. It’s best not to think about it. They are moving at speed now, the traffic suddenly smooth again. Buildings streak past, concrete slabs studded with neon signs. Between bright pink beauty parlour hoardings and homely restaurant names, familiar images appear: Starbucks, the Gap, Taco Bell, English names replaced by Chinese characters but still instantly recognisable. I could go into a shopping centre and pretend I’m home, she thinks. For the first time since coming here, she allows herself to imagine their Tanjong Pagar apartment. Perhaps in just a few days – stepping out of the lift, with their luggage. Opening the familiar door. Her mother’s domestic helper comes round twice a week, so there’d be no dust, just the faint lemon scent of floor polish. They’d walk slowly through the

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rooms as if to reclaim possession. Turn on the air-conditioning. And then? She has not experienced this since school: an event so ominous it becomes impossible to see beyond, the quiet desolation of the day after your last exam. Relief, of course, but also a dull ache: absence, like a missing tooth. The aunt is speaking again, something about messages to pass on to her mother, her cousins. This is a family visit, and now that the main complication is over, there are protocols to negotiate, souvenirs to be bought. Sophia nods at the right moments. She will do this, but already she knows this is all, these messages from the aunt are the last real contact they will have. The Chinese do not send cards at Christmas, so there is not even that. Will she call the aunt, if she and Nicholas find themselves back in Beijing at some point? Well, perhaps, depending on their schedule. So awkward for Nicholas, who doesn’t speak a word of Mandarin. They parallel park on a side street. A warden comes over and mechanically recites: Ten yuan for the first hour, five for each subsequent half hour. The aunt cuts him off. I’ll give you twenty, just let me park here as long as I want. They haggle and settle on twenty-five, and he’ll keep an eye on the car for her. It is not far to the hospital, but the walk there is littered with the usual hazards: uneven pavements that end abruptly, drivers who treat traffic lights as no more than suggestions. At one point they have to step out onto the road because the entire pavement is taken up by a donkeycart, from which an old couple are selling watermelons. Sophia follows closely behind the aunt, trusting in her to navigate the hostile terrain. The safety wall before the hospital entrance is covered in earnest graffiti, made with marker pens rather than spray paint: some slogans that mean nothing to Sophia, and a great many phone numbers. She’d vaguely assumed these were prostitutes advertising. Now, she realises, most of them are preceded by the same single character: ‘shen’. Kidney. Something gives way around the level of Sophia’s own kidneys, some kind of air lock that suddenly empties her body of air, the rush of it leaving her barely able to stand. For a moment she cannot draw breath, and she must put a hand on the sliding doors to steady herself. Not now. Deal

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with this later. Her chin snaps up, and she makes the effort to pull herself upright. She becomes aware the aunt has said something. Pardon? I’ll let you see him alone, says the aunt again. Don’t worry about me. I’ll go have a chat with Old Cheng. Gu Ma – thank you. This seems inadequate, but the older woman nods firmly, reassuringly, and trots off into the depths of the hospital. Sophia watches her aunt’s sturdy legs and broad back, mind filling with unexpected tenderness. All the way up the stairs, Sophia studies everyone she passes, trying to work out who is grieving, who is hopeful, what each person must long for. Something like a song grows inside her, a lightness that breaks gradually, step after step. By the time she reaches Nicholas’s floor, she is humming. There is queasiness beneath this, the rumble of upset waiting to make itself known, but she is able to push it far down and skate over its surface. The nurses smile politely as they pass her in the corridor and she decides they are not so bad after all, these girls. When she opens the door, Nicholas is in bed, the television on, a scene so familiar she feels for a second the jolting fear that nothing has changed. But no, she’s been watching him all week through the glass window, bandaged and blurry from anaesthetic. Now he is finally out of Intensive Care. Now she can approach. He looks up when she comes in. They warned me that the anti-rejection meds might make me go a bit funny. If I seem odd, it’s temporary. She cannot speak. Already he is like his old self, confident, his dark blue eyes no longer vulnerable. There will be months of therapy and years of pills, she knows, and nothing can be certain. Yet the air of fearfulness that cloaked them for months is dispelled. Light through grey clouds. She cannot possibly say anything to break the joy of this moment. What would be the point? What can they do now, either of them? Gu Ma’s here, she says. She’ll come and say hello in a bit. Maybe – when you feel up to it – we should take her out for a meal. Of course. His voice is smooth with politeness. She’s done so much for us. I’ll ask her to pick a restaurant. She must know somewhere nice. So easy to slip into practicalities.

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A strange new animal has taken up residence inside Sophia, and she will have to learn to reach an accommodation with it. It only rears its head if looked at directly, but otherwise remains dormant, only noticeable from its cold weight against her gut. The whole of this grey city seems bound up in that weight. She suddenly wants, more than anything, to feel Nicholas’s warmth along the length of her body. How are you? she says, in a way that requires no answer, and abandons her chair to snuggle next to him. The bed is too narrow to accommodate them both, but just for a moment she wants to remember the familiar way they fit together, her chin against his shoulder. This is better. She runs her fingertips over the valley of his collarbone, convincing herself he is real. The thickest bandages have come off and now there is only a swathe of gauze down the middle of his chest. She is careful not to go anywhere near that, and the tender scar it hides. They stay like that, watching television. Nicholas must be feeling better: the remote is in his hand and he is scrolling freely through the channels. She translates, but before she is halfway through a sentence he has flipped again. They see scraps of game shows, overcooked period dramas, what appears to be a travelogue centred entirely on food. He hovers for some time on a strange chat show, set outdoors. A man on a hard chair, in handcuffs, his head shaved. What is this? says Nicholas. It takes Sophia a few seconds to work it out. They’re interviewing death row prisoners before execution. Asking what they’ve done, why they did it. Nicholas laughs, a warm sound she hasn’t heard for too long. Brilliant. I’m surprised Geraldo hasn’t thought of it. The interviewer is a youngish woman, very fashionable – feathery, cropped hair and a loose silky top. Do you repent? she asks. Are you even sorry? The man looks down, unable to meet her eye. Of course I’m sorry. What would you say to the parents, if they were here? All those families? And now Sophia recognises him. He has been on the front page of every newspaper, along with his colleagues – the men and women in charge of the company that cut their milk powder with melamine, national villains, baby-murderers. No wonder the interviewer looks at him with such contempt.

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Poor bastard, says Nicholas. Why would anyone agree to this? I suppose he’ll be languishing in his cell now. At least he got his fifteen minutes. Sophia does not tell him the program is a repeat, that the man is already dead, executed by a bullet through the right side of his chest. Always the right side, the aunt said, so as not to damage— Those innocent children! hectors the interviewer. The only hopes of their families – no siblings, because of our unique national circumstances. Such cruelty. A single tear glistens in the corner of an eye. She dabs it away, examines her fingertip. We didn’t intend this, says the man quietly. We just wanted to cut costs to avoid bankruptcy. No one was meant to— His voice wisps away along with his face. Nicholas has pressed the button, and they are now on a cooking program. Strange, strange country, he says. I can’t wait to get home. And they are silent again, watching the presenter demonstrate the preparation of Chongqing hotpot. Not that they will ever try this; within easy reach of the Tanjong Pagar flat there are three restaurants that serve excellent Chongqing hotpot. Still, it is fun to watch. Sophia continues to rest her head against the side of Nicholas’s chest, carefully avoiding the scar, enjoying the rise and fall, and that ferocious thumping, as if something inside is struggling to get out.

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Comfort Woman Eleanor Comfort James Tam Wom an Eleanor

James Tam Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. – George Santayana

‘B

anzai! Banzai! Tennouheika Banzai!’ The cheers filled Eleanor Thompson with disgust rather than horror. There was no fear left in her: only revulsion, pure and intense, burning in her numb body. Her stomach contracted. A mouthful of acid erupted. She choked, biting hard on the stick tied across her mouth to stop her chewing up her tongue. Pungent liquid spouted from her mouth. Some shot up her nose. She coughed and blew it out, surprised by the force. Beasts. Vile beasts. No! Beasts don’t do this. No other animal would line up – drinking, smoking, singing, exchanging hometown tales – while waiting to force sex on another animal tied to a chair. Only these demons could do such a thing. Yes, rape happens in wartime. She had heard many stories since she’d become a military nurse, horrifying stories that would have been unimaginable for a girl like her just a year before. War had abruptly assaulted her carefully protected innocence, revealing the stark new face of a brutal new world. That women must bear the consequences of men’s aggression seemed nothing new. But it had never been so brazen, so organised, so officially endorsed. Never like this. . . . She looked down. The blanket had slid from her shoulders, bunching at her waist. She was trembling, from rage rather than from the cool 69

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December air. Vomit and blood were dripping down her chest. She could not feel it on the skin, but the sight was gratifying. ‘Good. Filthier the better!’ She heard her own exhausted voice, as though from the far end of a long, dark tunnel; then she closed her eyes. May all of you, and your children and grandchildren, burn in eternal hellfire. ‘Banzai! Banzai! Tennouheika Banzai!’ Then there was an eerie silence. The young soldier walked over and began to wipe her chin and neck with a yellow cloth, avoiding her breasts as if he were too shy and polite to touch her naked body. He poured some water into her mouth. She swallowed what she could. She had not eaten all day. Starvation was a gratifying prospect but she couldn’t resist water. She felt her withered flesh soak it up. Eleanor stared at him, trying to burn a hole in his head with the power of her will. He focused on her chin, wiping it gently, meticulously; almost ceremoniously. Ha! These fiends and their impeccable manners. She felt her lip convulse in an imperceptible sneer. He returned to his chair by the door and stared at the floor. A voice came through the loudspeakers downstairs, harsh and strong. Uproarious shouts of Banzai! Banzai! punctuated the victory speech. Then they began to sing. He hummed along. You and I are from the same cherry blossom, / blooming in military school. / Once we’ve bloomed, we’re destined to break up. / Let’s break up splendidly for our country. . . . Ichiro had sung Doki-no-Sakura a thousand times, but had never seen cherry blossom at military school. His training was tough and hasty, and in the wrong season. But he had always loved cherry blossom. Sakura! So brilliant. So poetic. Two years before, in his hometown, he’d sat with grandma in a blizzard of falling petals. He had no memory of his parents. Grandma had

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brought him up. They had each other and not much else. There were tears in her eyes. ‘Obaasan, you never cry!’ ‘Just the wind Ichiro.’ She squeezed her eyes shut. ‘You take care in the army.’ ‘So sorry I can’t be around to serve you, obaasan.’ ‘Don’t be silly. I don’t need serving. You’re a big boy now. You have a duty to the country and the Emperor.’ A petal landed on her cheek. She picked it off and dropped it. ‘Why are we at war?’ she murmured. ‘Obaasan!’ Ichiro was embarrassed. ‘So sorry. Only Japan can liberate Asia from the colonialists. It’s our duty! Our destiny!’ Grandma did not answer. She looked up at the drifting flowers and sang in a broken whisper: Sakura petals fall. / Look how splendid! / Nature dances, / from treetop to me, back to the soil. / A new life has been seeded. . . . But now, instead of new life, Ichiro saw that sakura fell because they had died. His thoughts returned to the room. This morning she looked my age. Now she looks thirty years older. ‘Your turn, Ichiro! You’re last!’ He was reluctant at first. ‘What’s the matter? Too soft down there?’ ‘Prefer a Chinaman’s arse instead?’ Ha ha! Ha ha! ‘Fools!’ he bawled, and dropped his trousers. ‘Watch!’ But his penis was limp. It made him furious. He barked at her: ‘Whore! Cow!’ then slapped her and spat in her face. The soldiers hooted with laughter. ‘They’re beasts. Treat them as beasts,’ Saburojiro had told him. He was two years older, and had joined the army a year before. ‘Spit on them! Then you won’t feel bad about killing them, any more than you do squashing a worm.’ Saburojiro had been shot in the throat in Sai Wan, on their first day in Hong Kong.

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‘Cow!’ He spat again, chin wet with the froth of his saliva. The tantrum somehow woke his penis. He gripped the arms of the chair, knuckles white, khaki trousers around his ankles, and entered, moaning far too loud. He saw her cringe, eyes narrowed to a slit of searing contempt, injecting venom into his soul. He avoided her eyes. ‘Never look into a cow’s eyes,’ Grandma had told him. ‘It brings bad luck.’ The soldiers cheered him on, clapping to his fitful rhythm. He lost his erection, and pretended to have climaxed. ‘So fast, Ichiro!’ That, he supposed, was his first time with a woman. Kan bei! Kan bei! The drinking had resumed downstairs. Victory! Commander Takashi Sakai was now the Governor of Hong Kong. Takashi Sakai Banzai! Although he had to keep guard and could not join the celebration, Ichiro felt pride rising in him. Saburojiro had died for a good cause. His spirit could now go home to find peace and beauty among sakura trees. A wave of melancholy overtook him. He started humming Doki-noSakura, dedicating it to Saburojiro. Although we die somewhere else, / in Yasukuni Shrine we shall be cherry blossoms, / and meet again at the same treetop come springtime. . . . This gaijin woman, now they were alone, spooked him. The thought of the boys returning for more of her also tormented him. She was his woman now, somehow, secretly. After becoming a soldier, he had often felt unsure and empty. ‘Never feel or think. Just do what everyone else does,’ his youthful mentor Saburojiro had advised. But this stratagem had collapsed since the morning. He was now torn apart by anger, sadness, shame, regret, and intense loneliness. One minute he had a burning desire to try it again with her, just the two of them this time. The next, he wanted to shove the bayonet into her heart, and then drown in her blood.

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Enraged by his confusion and weakness, he sprang up, kicked the chair over, and stepped outside. The guard in the next room poked his head out. ‘Everything okay?’ ‘Ah! Just too happy about victory! So sorry to have disturbed you.’ ‘Let’s drink to that later, Ichiro!’ ‘Yes we will. Let’s celebrate!’ She loved everything about Christmas: presents, carols, knickknacks, pudding, stockings, goose, ham, cranberry sauce and – most of all – gingerbread. ‘Eleanor’s the best ginger-house architect in the Empire!’ Papa had said. It was a manor with a paddock ranged by two biscuit ponies, guarded by a snow-couple with long frosty noses. The manor was owned by a happy family: Papa the engineer, Mama, who roasted the best goose in England, Little Thomas who’d turn thirteen next March, and Eleanor, the best architect in Gingerland. ‘If I were a boy,’ she had told Papa. ‘I’d study to be an architect.’ ‘Girls can now be architects too, darling. Believe it or not, a woman designed the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre.’ ‘Goodness!’ She pondered this novel possibility. ‘The boys’d be afraid of you,’ Mum warned, playfully, but with an anxious frown. Eleanor decided to join Queen Alexandra’s Military Nursing Service instead. Mama and Papa were sad but encouraging. ‘Darling, it’s our duty. We’re proud of you.’ After dinner, she continued to decorate the small banyan tree that Captain Hickey had trimmed into a coniferous outline. Billy Boy, a recent amputee, had helped. The young man would turn twenty on Christmas Day: one year more and one leg less. But his spirit had won everyone’s heart. There was something about these Canadians. They seemed a good balance. More relaxed than the men back home, quite at ease with women, but still polite and respectful. ‘If I were a boy, I’d become a fighter pilot, then study architecture after the war,’ she told Captain Hickey as he put the tree up.

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‘Why not be an engineer with us?’ Hickey was referring to the Canadian Army. ‘My Papa’s an engineer too, you know.’ ‘But you’re a girl, Sister Eleanor,’ Billy teased. He had felt a throbbing pain in his stump, and was lying down next to the tree to rest what was left of his right leg. ‘Thank you for the prudent reminder, Private Billy.’ ‘At least you don’t have to face the Japs in battlefield and risk losing a leg,’ said Billy. ‘You’ve only lost half of one. Don’t exaggerate!’ Hickey smiled, patting Billy’s good leg gently. He nearly added: ‘What about Nanking? Women are committing suicide rather than face the Japs in occupied territories.’ Eleanor was pensive, fighting a similar thought. She fixed Father Christmas, represented by Sister Margret’s old red socks, to the top of the tree, then turned to reassure the Canadians: ‘We’re safe here. Great Britain has never surrendered. We can take reasonable comfort in that, can’t we?’ ‘Yes!’ Hickey agreed without looking at her, his eyes focused instead on the cardboard snowflakes he was hanging on the branches. It was December 17, the day before Japanese forces would cross the harbour from Kowloon, something that Eleanor had felt sure would never happen. The wind had been freakish. The school bell tolled erratically in the middle of the night. ‘It’s creepy,’ her roommate Sister Margaret had remarked. ‘The clapper tie’s come undone, that’s all.’ She had tried to sound reassuring. ‘The sound of bells on Christmas Day! What a good omen!’ Before dawn, like a nightmare coalesced into reality, they precipitated out of darkness. ‘We’re unarmed Sir. This is St Stephen’s College Hospital. You’re not—’ In the ward, they listened to the voices of Doctor Black and Captain Whitney. The nurses and patients were holding hands, palms cold and sweaty. Nobody seemed to be breathing.

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As they were taking the young nurses away, Hickey lunged forward and grasped her by the arm. It was the last time she felt a human touch. ‘No!’ he screamed. Bayonets plunged into him. No warning. No fuss. She heard a faint hiss. It could have come from her own heart. ‘You can’t do that!’ cried Billy from his bed, bouncing one leg. A soldier, smelling of alcohol, shoved a bayonet into him. There was a hellish squeal as he yanked it out, releasing a jet of blood. Another hiss. Maddened by the sight, the other soldiers descended on the patients, shrieking savagely. ‘No!’ was also her own last word as they dragged her away. Ichiro stole a lingering glance. Her eyes were shut, shrivelled lids collapsed into sunken sockets. Her exotic golden hair had turned rusty. Her nose was tiny rather than typically long. Slightly upturned, it reminded him of the mischievous forest dwarfs in the gaijin fairy book obaasan had given him long ago. Her alabaster thighs were now blue, green, red and yellow. She seemed more at peace than she’d been a moment ago. She could have been very pretty, he sighed. Sakura petals fall. / Look how splendid! / You and I are from the same cherry blossom. . . . Kan Bei! Kan Bei! The celebration was becoming rowdy. They would be up soon. He felt a twisting pain somewhere inside. He barked at her from the doorway: ‘Slut! Whore!’ The sleigh glided noiselessly over fluffy clouds. Father Christmas held the reins. Behind him, she leaned on the Reaper’s bony arm, comforted by the roughness of his cloak, safe against his faceless form. She closed her eyes and started to hum Papa’s favourite Christmas hymn: Remember Adam’s fall, O thou Man, O thou Man Remember Adam’s fall From Heaven to Hell!

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Remember Adam’s fall, How we were condemned all To Hell perpetual, There for to dwell. . . .

Captain Hickey, Doctor Black and Captain Whitney were among the victims of the massacre at St Stephen’s College (a field hospital at the time), in Hong Kong on 25th December 1941. The Imperial Japanese Army cremated over 100 bodies in the schoolyard the following day. Eleanor is a fictional character but the crime committed against her and countless other women is not. Doki-no-Sakura was a popular Japanese military song.

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Seeing the Monet Seeing Suz annetheKamata Monet

Suzanne Kamata

‘D

o you want to go see some paintings?’ I ask my thirteen-year-old daughter Lilia. ‘With a robot guide?’ It’s a Saturday and we have nothing scheduled. My husband is playing golf and my son is at baseball practice. Left to her own devices Lilia will spend the whole day texting ‘friends’ on my smartphone. I’ve been thinking that she’s old enough to enjoy the Otsuka Museum of Art in nearby Naruto, and that it might be good preparation for our coming trip to Paris and the Louvre. Plus, a quick look at the website reveals that since my last visit, a robot has started giving museum tours. Lilia likes robots, or at least she was a faithful and ardent viewer of the recent Japanese TV drama My Girlfriend is a Robot. ‘Ikkitai!’ she says, pointing her finger in the direction of the door. It’s almost noon, but she’s still in her pyjamas and her hair is sticking out. She obviously hasn’t brushed it yet. ‘Hurry up,’ I say. ‘We’ll go right after lunch.’ She hastily changes her clothes and arranges one of her many handbags. She has a pile of them because they’re packaged as free gifts with the monthly girls’ comics that she devours. This one features a fake fur flap. I put on some make-up and change into a funky tunic and leggings, and a necklace made out of toys, in case we run into someone I know. One of my university students works in the basement café, after all; I don’t want her to think that I’m frumpy. This is all very spur of the moment, and I have a nagging feeling that I should have prepared Lilia more. We should have made an earlier start, for one thing. We also 77

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should have watched some movies about artists, or at least reviewed the manga biographies of Van Gogh, Picasso, and Marie Laurencin. But if we don’t get a move on, we’ll miss the last robot tour of the day, and who knows when we’ll have another chance to go. I grab a Japanese picture book about Monet and hand it to Lilia in the back seat to read on the way there. I first visited the museum shortly after it opened, back in 1998. At the time, I thought it bordered on cheesy. Also, I was taken aback by the 3,000-yen entrance fee, which I defrayed by writing about my experience for an expat magazine. When my husband told me recently that it had been voted ‘Most Satisfying’ by museumgoers in Japan, I raised my eyebrows. After all, the museum doesn’t house great paintings and sculptures. The works on display are ceramic-board reproductions of many of the world’s most famous works of art. They’re made of sand from the straits of Naruto. At the time, the grotto featuring replicas of ancient petroglyphs smelled of chemicals, not must, and it was hard to pretend that I was looking at something old. The effect was undeniably fake. The Otsuka Group, known in Japan as the makers of the ubiquitous sports drink, Pocari Sweat, and also as the manufacturers of the Soy Joy bar (which I was pleased to spot in an episode of The Closer) among other things, is one of Tokushima’s biggest and most generous employers. (Roughly 7,000 of its 23,000 employees are from Tokushima.) Friends and relatives who work for the company’s various subdivisions have long vacations and drive nice cars. The head of Otsuka often welcomes visiting dignitaries, such as the German Chancellor. I sometimes get to hear about these visits from my friend Claire, who’s on call as the CEO’s interpreter. Claire tells me about parties on yachts, and fabulous dinners. It’s impossible to be unaware of the Otsuka Group if you live in Tokushima. I’m reminded of it every time I take my kids to the nearby Otsuka-created science park, Astamu Land, to see an exhibit of live beetles or robots, or to visit the planetarium. I’m reminded when I cross the bridge that traverses the Yoshino River because there is a sign at the stoplight advertising Soysh, Ostuka’s carbonated soy-based drink. I’m reminded when I hear that the local pro soccer team, Vortis, has a home game at the Ornamin C Stadium, which is named after one of their

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vitamin drinks. I’m sure even Lilia has some notion of the company’s reach. She’s a big fan of their chocolate flavoured CalorieMate bars. Otsuka constructed the three-storey museum, which now houses the largest permanent exhibit in Japan, to commemorate the seventy-fifth anniversary of the corporation. Six committees selected the work to be reproduced from 190 museums and private collections in twenty-five countries. Among the works of art that made the cut are the Mona Lisa, Picasso’s Guernica, Rembrandt’s Night Watch, and over a thousand other masterpieces. The paintings were then duplicated in exactly the same dimensions as the originals, using a technology developed by Otsuka Ohmi Ceramics Company. The project was rubber-stamped by Pablo Picasso’s son Claude and the grandchildren of Juan Miró, as well as by curators and museum directors from around the world. On my first visit, I recall walking up a steep hill from the bus stop, but I know that a shuttle bus is now in operation. I pull into the nearly deserted parking lot, which has a view of the Inland Sea, and haul the wheelchair out of the back. From across the parking lot the attendant sees us and hops on a bicycle. He pedals over and tells me that since we have a wheelchair, we can park up the hill at the museum. I thank him profusely and get back in the car. The attendant radios ahead and we are directed to a back entrance. After the security checkpoint, we drive through a tunnel into a parking garage. Another guard shows us to the elevator and escorts us to the museum lobby where Mr Art, a squat robot which reminds me of Star Wars’ R2D2, is just beginning to move away from his docking station. Although I’d read that Mr Art can give the tour in French or English, his default language is Japanese. Apparently visitors have to make special arrangements to hear the tour in another tongue. An elderly couple follows the slow-moving robot. Lilia wheels herself companionably at his side, even though I know she doesn’t understand the words coming out. Ordinarily, she pieces together facial expressions, lip-reading, context, and signs with aural input to derive meaning. Mr Art’s lips don’t move. We accompany the robot into the Sistine Hall, where the Creation of Adam is replicated on the ceiling. Church music is piped in to create

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atmosphere. Now that the aroma of chemicals has faded, it’s easier for me to pretend that I’m in Italy. I wander up to the front of the hall for a closer look, but Lilia is reluctant to stray from the robot. Next, we take in El Greco’s gilt-framed altarpiece and the Scrovegni Chapel with its blue ceiling, which is sometimes rented out for Westernstyle weddings. Lilia is impressed by the images of hell. ‘Please enter the room of Pompeii at your leisure,’ Mr Art urges in Japanese. ‘I’m very slow. I can’t go everywhere.’ I convince Lilia to part from our robo-guide, to linger for as long or as briefly as she likes in the galleries. We step outside to take a look at Venus on the half-shell (Botticelli’s Birth of Venus); then we move on to Antiquities. The paintings were reproduced with existing imperfections, such as the divots in the twelfth century fresco Journey to Bethlehem, but they will suffer no further degradation in ceramic. As the museum brochure states, ‘The originals cannot avoid discoloration or aging from pollution, weather, or natural disasters. Often they must be encased behind protective materials to minimise such effects, but this detracts from the viewer’s full enjoyment of the works.’ There are no glass cases or velvet ropes to hold back visitors, no uniformed women sitting on chairs in the corners, ready to scold if a finger strays near a frame. I skim over the titles of the works, but Lilia conscientiously reads the descriptions in Japanese. Since we are the only ones in the gallery, there is no current of visitors to carry us along. I like the privacy, but due to our leisurely pace, by the time we’ve reached the end of Antiquities, an hour has passed and Lilia is tired. ‘Misugi,’ she signs. I’ve looked too much. ‘But we haven’t seen the Monet!’ I tell her. ‘Or the Mona Lisa!’ There are still two floors to go, and less than two hours till closing time. ‘And here, look at this!’ I draw her attention to a reproduction of the medieval tapestry The Lady and the Unicorn. I figure it’s a refreshing departure from the solemn Biblical scenes she’s been studying up till now. And yes, she’s delighted by the unicorn, the rabbit, the bright red, the young woman at the centre of it all. She snaps some photos and we move to the next floor.

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I try to interest her in Rembrandt’s Night Watch, but she shakes her head. ‘Monet’s not here,’ she signs. Oh, dear. Does she now think that Claude Monet is the only artist worthy of her time? ‘Look at the lace!’ I point out details in a Dutch portrait. ‘Look at those shoes!’ I show her the interesting wooden clogs. And then, finally, we go outdoors onto a patio to view the reproduction of Monet’s Nymphaes. There is a pond nearby, featuring ceramic carp and water lilies. I try to imagine I’m in Giverny, but I can see the cars going by on the Japanese highway just beyond the museum. Lilia, on the other hand, seems satisfied. We take pictures of each other standing before the wall-length ‘painting’. Mission accomplished. Although I’d been planning on taking a coffee and hot chocolate break, I find that the Café de Giverny has already closed. I peek at the menu anyway, expecting crêpes or some other French treat. Instead, I find that the restaurant serves Loco Moco (Hawaiian!) and hot dogs (American!), and rice topped with roasted sea bream, presumably from the straits of Naruto. With only about thirty minutes to spare, we rush over to view the rest of the Impressionists. I’m pleased to see a blond woman in a red kimono – La Japonaise, also by Claude Monet. Lilia recognises it from the cover of my latest book, a short-story collection. We take more pictures. And then Lilia spots something that she recognises from one of her manga biographies – a self-portrait of Vincent van Gogh. She pauses reverentially before it. She reads the captions and snaps a photo. By now, Moon River is streaming through the intercom system, indicating that closing time is drawing near. I regret that we didn’t have time to try out the face recognition function of Mr Art, the Robot. I’m curious to know which painted figures we resemble. And I regret missing out on being served cake by my university student, and not having time to see Guernica, or The Scream or Gustav Klimt’s Kiss. Meanwhile, Lilia is thirsty. Instead of the café, we stop by the inevitable vending machine selling Pocari Sweat and other Otsuka products. Lilia digs some coins out of her pink vinyl wallet and buys herself a chocolate CalorieMate bar. I opt for a blueberry Soy Joy and

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canned coffee. Then I ask directions back to the special elevator that will take us to the garage. A woman shows us the way. ‘I wish we’d come earlier,’ I say. ‘There’s so much to see, but it’s expensive to come again and again. How about setting up an annual rate?’ ‘Well, admission is free the first Monday in June,’ she tells me. Good to know, but I’m usually at work then, and Lilia is at school. ‘Oh, and in August, after 5 pm, it’s open for free.’ Also very inconvenient, I think. But what do I expect? This is a private museum, great for entertaining corporate clients, but not funded by the government, as are many museums. Still, it’s an excellent place to learn about art and I plan to bring Lilia again sometime. It’s not until we get home that I realise I’d neglected to tell Lilia we were viewing fakes. ‘We saw the Monet!’ she tells her father. Wait, wait. ‘That wasn’t the real thing,’ I hastily tell her. If she thinks she’s already seen all of the world’s masterpieces, it’ll be difficult to get her excited about the Louvre. ‘We’ll see the real one in Paris!’ She nods enthusiastically. Then she mimes cutting off her arms and her head. She flutters her hands behind her like wings. Ah, yes. Winged Victory of Samothrace. I laugh. ‘We’ll see that, too.’

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Reid Mitchell

Reid Mitchell Poetry

Chinese, Not Han 1 The student from Tibet tells me, ‘I do not know what makes me hate them more. ‘Being kept out of temple or made to go to temple to demonstrate our complete religious freedom.’ 2 After teaching Euripides’ Medea The Mongu girl stops me after class – and outside the teaching building – to speak what she could not say before: ‘That is how my roommates see me I am their northern barbarian I am their Medea.’

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3 Selling hashish in Beijing, the sharp-dressed salesman says, ‘We Uighurs are China’s niggers.’ 4 My Bai friend explains what good would accrue to me, moving to her hometown in Yunnan. ‘Kinder people. Better food. Best of all, fewer Han.’

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Land of Light Land of Frank Light Light

Frank Light

fghans used to call it Kafiristan, Land of the Non-Believers. It was renamed Nuristan, Land of Light, after the Afghan king’s soldiers pushed through in the 1890s and forcibly converted the inhabitants from animism to Islam. Not much else changed in this remote region of Kunar province. Nuristanis still spoke their own languages – there were at least five – distinct from the Pashtu and Dari spoken elsewhere in the

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country. Afghanistan’s last king had a hunting lodge built in the area, and a rough, rocky road ran to it. That was the extent of development. The government’s writ didn’t extend much beyond Kunar’s provincial capital, Asadabad, when the US Peace Corps sent me there for the winter and spring of 1972. I’d spent the previous year in hot and dusty Jalalabad, south of Kunar. There my housemates and our neighbour Jeffrey would talk about going on a holiday weekend to the Afghan Shangri-La that had enticed Kipling’s fictional heroes in The Man Who Would Be King, and Eric Newby on his Short Walk in the Hindu Kush. Stories of Sufis and other mystics finding sanctuary there fuelled our fantasies. We imagined that Nuristan was to Afghanistan as Afghanistan was to America – a refuge from modernity, with all that that implied for us survivors of the sixties. A visit might give us a new outlook on the country and our relation to it. That was easier said than done. Jeffrey had heard of trophy hunters paying large sums for a guided trip to the lodge in search of Marco Polo sheep and other rare game, but we had no money, no guns, and we knew the police in Asadabad would check for permits. That kept out foreign poachers and hippies. Being neither, we applied. Not yet, we were told. We lacked the connections to overcome a bureaucratic fear of the unknown. Jeffrey never made it to Nuristan, though it would be the subject of his master’s thesis. I was luckier. The Peace Corps dispatched a driver, three Afghan ‘engineers’ and me on a wheat-for-work programme designed to prevent starvation from drought – though nobody was starving in Kunar, the wettest province in all Afghanistan. Things could be different in Nuristan, I reminded the team. Could be dry as a bone. My colleagues scoffed. Nuristan wasn’t far as the crow flew. Nevertheless, it was enough of an unknown that they couldn’t argue to the contrary. We got off to an early start the day we left, too soon to tell if the sky would clear. Hills pressed in on the valley as the road led north from Asadabad to Barikot, by the border with Pakistan. The hills gradually squeezed out the farmland and forced the road up against the Kunar River. Logs had tumbled over the banks. Others lay on the shoulder like remnants from another age. The logs had come from higher up. Though

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most people thereabouts farmed, the real money came through illegal logging. In a country with so few trees, scarcity drove demand. The valley widened again at Barikot, and a bridge – too flimsy and narrow for logging trucks – crossed into Pakistan. Two branches of the river converged there. The one to our right channelled snowmelt from Pakistan. The one on our left flowed from the Hindu Kush, the fabled mountains of Nuristan. A small fort on a slender promontory overlooked the junction. From that point north and for quite a ways south, the border was unguarded, leaving a haven for smugglers and criminals. In later years insurgents and terrorists would move in. Nuristan begins in Barikot, the governor had said when we briefed him on our plans. He was suggesting that Barikot was far enough for us. But as we left that meeting the director of provincial development who, unlike the governor, had spent his whole life in the province, smiled and said in Pashtu, Please, Barikot’s the lowlands. The air would make a Nuristani sick. Like the governor, the director had not travelled beyond Barikot. He had no funding for projects and would have found himself a long way from home if his pickup broke down. Our presence changed the calculus for him: we brought a vehicle, a programme, and connections to the ministry in Kabul. Not only could the director associate himself with progress, he could contribute to the cause. And his contacts were ready for us. Moving quickly, we commissioned several new wells and ordered repairs to an underground irrigation channel. Erosion had taken its toll on the road past Barikot, both from the hills above and the river below, and we undertook to shore it up once we found a mason. We pushed on to Kamdesh, a large village high above the road with only a footpath angled up toward it. As we got out of the van, stretching, peeing, buttoning our jackets, the sun also emerged. Its warming rays fought with gravity for the rain that had recently fallen. Their radiance made the earth shine. A breeze smelled like the first day of spring. Come on! I urged, unable to hold myself back. I was lean and clean but out of shape from a recent bout with hepatitis. I knew the engineers

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and director would catch up, just as I knew our driver would remain with the vehicle, a Peace Corps Travelall. I’d stopped trying to assure him I’d be responsible if anything happened to it. He was like a cowboy with his horse. Hurrying toward us in the jiggedy-jog of old men going downhill, a hastily composed delegation met us halfway up the path. We were glad they spoke Pashtu in addition to the local language, which none of us knew. Some even looked Pashtun – the cold-weather sort, with boots and wool vests – while others could have stepped out of the photos in Eric Newby’s book.

Kamdesh, 1972 88

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Carpenters shaping a house beam looked up from their work and waved. Most of the men had gone to the high meadows, the elders reported. Women and girls watched from log houses with dried mud and stone in the chinks, the ground underneath so steep that the roofs served as front yards for the neighbours behind. Barefoot and bare-chested boys hopped on the dirt roof in front of a porch where the director invited us to pause for tea and biscuits. They held one foot with one hand while trying to topple their friends. It was survival of the fittest, all in good fun. Shirted and booted, I gave it a go. They were better, but I was bigger. After tea, the elders led us through highland pastures to a spring in disrepair. There, on a southern slope, wild flowers bloomed. Across the way, snow still whitened the slopes. Down from the melt line, a goatherd and his charges turned to stare. The joy that bubbled within me was lost on the team. I think they saw me as a tourist oblivious to the issues that mattered to them. A newly minted engineer who had bought street shoes in Kabul had had a rough go of it hiking to Kamdesh; he didn’t even attempt the climb to the spring. He and others noted that the village was as green as the rest of Kunar, and they dismissed the project as something its residents could do, as they’d always done, on their own. We could have said that about everything we did. On such occasions I tried to remind the team our fundamental job was to shake up the system. Outsiders could do things insiders couldn’t. What with drought, famine, student strikes, and murdered foreigners elsewhere in the country, plus the dismemberment of Pakistan, the government was nervous. Kabul wanted to show, at minimal cost, that it cared. Clean drinking water, I added. It saves lives. Kamdesh wouldn’t be so green in the dry season. Water sought the low ground; Nuristanis the opposite. We could tighten the link. The elders didn’t quite get what we were up to but played along on the off-chance that we meant what we said. At their suggestion we also estimated the man-days required to renovate a leaky aqueduct. We needed two or more projects to justify the trip and I wanted a reason to come back.

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Over bread and grilled mutton, the elders agreed to the terms. They even sent a watchman down to the road so our driver could join us. Between mouthfuls, the driver said he’d seen a fox. There’s more than that, the elders replied. Those Marco Polo sheep, for example. The king’s lodge lay around the bend, but the temperature was dropping and our team had had enough for the day. Lowland Kunar was challenge enough. And that was it. When faced with a task, you didn’t ask about Sufis and mystics. Your quests were more practical. Wheat-for-work taught me that a visit changed nothing. You had to stick around. You had to engage. To my knowledge it was another thirty years before anyone from the US government returned. After I joined the State Department in 1978, I kept track of Afghanistan as best as I could from faraway posts. I didn’t imagine the rebels stood a chance against the Soviet war machine. I assumed the absence of trees meant the absence of places to hide. I should have thought of caves: I’d met my future wife coming out of one! I hadn’t reckoned on Stingers, Pakistan, the Soviet Union’s weakened condition or the resurgence of Islamic fundamentalism. I hadn’t expected State to close our embassy just as the Soviets pulled out, and neither did I expect the Afghan communists to hold power for three more years. After they were finally defeated, I thought tranquillity would return and our embassy would reopen, with positions available for my wife and me. Again, I was wrong. I thought it might happen two years later, when the Taliban imposed peace over much of the country. It turned out to be peace on their terms only, and the rest of the world didn’t much interest them. That didn’t sound like the Afghans I knew. Finger on trigger, certainly. Harsh? Well, so was the land. Intolerant, perhaps – but ideological and inflexible? I was sure the Taliban couldn’t last. Not after 9/11. I was in the Pentagon that day, detailed to counterterrorism policy. We stayed until the smoke forced us out. In the summer of 2003, I returned to Jalalabad as State’s representative on a Provincial Reconstruction Team. PRTs, as everyone called them,

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were experimental in those days. As the only one in eastern Afghanistan, ours was responsible for several provinces, including Nuristan. Some twenty reservists and I squatted in one-third of a three-house compound. Civilian operators and a special forces team occupied the other two-thirds. In all there were about forty armed Americans and me, the in-house diplomat. It was their first time in Afghanistan and they focused on the immediate, the near versus the far. If a person’s experience wasn’t tactically useful – and mine wasn’t – nobody was interested. We were relieved that Jalalabad’s infrastructure had come through the wars largely unscathed. The most striking differences were cultural: beards, burkhas, and references to the Koran. In the countryside there wasn’t much to ‘reconstruct.’ This was fine, as Washington had resolved to do Afghanistan on the cheap. That was where PRTs fitted in. We were given three objectives – to enhance security, promote development and help extend the authority of the national government. As the State representative, I was seized with a fourth, albeit unstated, objective – to shed light into obscure places whose loyalty might go either way. We did a lot of our work through projects, and we added value to the overall effort by going to places most NGOs, the UN, and Afghan officials couldn’t or wouldn’t go because such destinations were too long and rough a ride or too dangerous. Guns made us different. They gave us range (I always travelled with soldiers). We had another advantage – the ability to call for backup, as long as our radios worked, which was about half the time. Unpredictability kept any possible ambushers guessing. We never pre-arranged meetings outside a town, and we never informed our interpreters or guards of our destination until we were underway. But Nuristan was too hard to get to. That had long been its history. After the king conquered the region in the 1890s, he had lost interest. His descendants lacked the drive and resources to put their stamp on the region. Their totalitarian successors possessed the drive, but they couldn’t be everywhere. The communists hived Nuristan off into a separate province, but it turned out to be more a quarantine than a jurisdiction. Nobody in. Nobody out. That was fine by the inhabitants. They had more than held their own against the Soviets early in the jihad. Saudi Arabia and Pakistan eventually recognised

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Nuristan as an independent state. That association and Nuristani religiosity restrained the Taliban, who kept tabs on the province through proxies. The province was primitive in terms of administration. It had no government infrastructure and only two roads – the one to Kamdesh in the east, and another in the west that ran north–south. None connected east and west. The capital lay somewhere in the middle. Nobody we talked to had been there or knew anybody who had. An American in Jalalabad who had done research in Kamdesh many years before thought it was accessible only on foot. A UN agency had contracted for a road to the capital, but the Afghan contractor was out of pocket, and nobody knew how much progress he had made. Neither our embassy nor US military headquarters at Bagram could give the capital’s name or location. That’s your region, they told us. From Jalalabad, the drive and walk would take two days even if the known roads were safe, which they weren’t. As for helicopters, we had had use of them only for Tora Bora, a special case because Osama bin Laden was last seen there. The worst they can do is say no, I told Rob, the PRT commander. I reminded him that his colonel wanted us to hit all the provinces, and I told him how Nuristan was unlike any other. It had forests, monkeys and bears; goats with unicorn-like horns, those famous Marco Polo sheep, snow leopards, and ordinary leopards, wolves, foxes, snakes and peacocks – even parrots, or so I’d heard. Villages clung to hillsides and the houses were made of wood, not mud-brick like those in the lowlands, or stone like Tora Bora. Men wore leggings instead of baggy trousers. Fierce in battle, tranquil in life, those mountain men went out with their flocks, maybe smoked a little hashish, were gone for days. Which left the women. I raised my hands and lifted my eyes. Those lonely women. Rob laughed. They do all the work, I continued – tend the fields, cook, clean, sew, raise the children. True, a foreigner didn’t interact with them any more than in other parts of Afghanistan. But at least they didn’t wear the burkha. The women merely draped scarves over their shoulders except when a stranger approached. The young ones paused before pulling them over their heads. The old ones never bothered.

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Mountain men near Parun

You’ll see red hair, I promised; blue eyes. Legend had it the Nuristanis were descendants of Alexander the Great’s army. Until their conversion, they were famous for their wine. Another legend had them as the original Afghans, pushed into the mountains when Muslim invaders swept in from the west. Rob asked me to help draft the request for the helicopter. Couching it in language that would persuade officials at Bagram and Kabul, I passed on reports of activity by a terrorist group called the HIG, short for Hezb-i Islami Gulbuddin, led by a psychopath named Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. He had benefited more than anyone from US support to the anti-Soviet resistance in the 1980s, and his henchmen now reportedly controlled the timber trade. That wasn’t the only hazard. Each month that summer some twenty Nuristani women had been brought to the hospital at Jalalabad for landmine injuries suffered in the fields. Sixty of them had lost legs in the last two years alone. There were rumours of al-Qaeda and even Osama himself moving in. Lacking schools, fathers sent their sons to the madrassas 93

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in Pakistan from which the HIG and Taliban drew their most dedicated recruits. One village burned another. Shepherds shot shepherds. Most violence went unreported. In Kabul the one ethnic Nuristani minister in the cabinet told the chargé d’affaires and me that it was tribal, village against village. The people would remain quiescent, he maintained, so long as we stopped hounding a mullah in Kamdesh who had severed ties with the HIG eight years earlier. But if we arrested him, as the minister believed our special forces were intending to do, the people would rise in protest. Special forces had also tried to detain a HIG mullah in the central part of the province. Reportedly posing as doctors, they had become his houseguests. He had slipped through a trap door when he heard the helicopters and had been on the run ever since. Certain NGO reps loved to tell that story. To them it illustrated everything that was wrong with the American intervention. Nuristan remained as all Afghanistan had been to us in the decade before 9/11. As I said to Rob, we saw how that turned out. Wrapping personal motives into public policy, I argued for giving the Nuristanis something to think about, something new. And something old, though I didn’t say so to him: a resumption; redemption, almost – if we followed through. If. A UN official gave us the name of the capital and its coordinates. To our surprise Bagram came right back with approval and a date. Two days before D Day, we resubmitted a different name for the capital – Parun, we now thought – and new coordinates. Though Rob was embarrassed, I said it was all the more reason to go. And better a revision ahead of time than getting off the helicopter in the wrong place. Not often in life do peripatetics like me get to revisit – in this case, fly over – our past. I made sure to get a seat with a view out the back of the helicopter. Back in my Peace Corp days, Kunar was where I had learned to live alone. At first I tried sleeping along with the others on the floor of the development office. After a few nights of their snoring I rented a room over the bazaar and arranged for a rough-hewn table with chair and a

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rope bed for my sleeping bag. At night I draped a shawl over the window. Some might have called the room cosy, though it had no heat, electricity, or plumbing; and there was no public bath. The only electricity was down at the governor’s. He had a one-kilowatt hydro plant that powered his refrigerator in the day and a few light bulbs at night. Nobody had a generator, which would cost too much to run. Kerosene lanterns hung from shop eaves and a bright, mantled version burned at the tea-house. I bought candles for reading and had a flashlight I stopped using outside the room. I thought I could see better without it. Morning and evening I’d wash in the ditch out front. Every Friday around sunset I’d get a bucket of hot water from the tea-house and take it behind a wall in the fields near the river. I’d take a soap dish, shaving cream and razor, and a towel that never completely dried. That field also served as my toilet. I can’t remember doing any laundry. I employed an old army trick – when you can’t bathe, dispense with the underwear. Some on the team were superb – effective, composed, and wise. They tended to be older, and it made me wonder if their generation had been raised differently. The youngest was always looking for an excuse to go back to Kabul. Only the oldest was fluent in Pashtu, the predominate language of Kunar. The other two preferred Dari, which I hadn’t trained in. The governor spent his days either in Kabul or in the official residence. He knew better than to trust a young foreigner who lived over the bazaar. His attitude changed once the wheat arrived. After that we couldn’t get him out of our hair. Our most effective support came from a feudal lord, or khan: a tall, thin man in his forties, dignified and naturally tonsured, who helped us resolve disputes among the villages and convince them, against their better judgment, they’d be better off cooperating with us and each other than propounding competing claims to land and water, like dogs in a manger. One day, we went for a long walk along a canal where work we had initiated was going better than expected. A few village men stepped forward to pay their respects and ask for wells. We then passed a waterwheel at an abandoned mill alongside mulberry trees, with a pool that boys had used

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to swim in during the summer. Everything else man-made was falling to ruin because the headman of the next village had died and the villagers did not agree with either the governor’s choice for a successor or the sharing of the cost and effort to maintain the pool. The khan said, It’s crazy, isn’t it? He said this in English, not Pashtu. Taken aback, I saw him in a new light. He never wore a hat, I realised, and the hair above his ears grew out untamed and curly to compensate for the bald spot on top. Most men in the valley who could afford it wore a sports coat at that time of year. He always appeared in a sweater. I asked why he hadn’t let on about the English. I want you to learn, he replied. He could be Delphic at times, one of those quirks you put up with in a friend. I could have asked, learn what? But if it wasn’t Pashtu, I didn’t want to know. I asked how he had learned. Nobody else in the province came close. He stopped for a dip of snuff. I took out a cigarette, and we resumed walking. In English, the khan said his father had also been a khan, and the governor at the time had asked him to turn in his weapons. His father had mortars, machine guns, and rockets – in Pakistan you could get anything. His family, employees, and neighbours depended on him, so he refused. Some time thereafter, the governor invited him to a dinner at his residence. This khan’s father was suspicious, but he couldn’t say no, and he assumed that the code of hospitality would protect him. At dinner’s end, the governor announced he had a gift. He clapped his hands, and a soldier came forward with a package. The khan unwrapped it. Inside were handcuffs. More soldiers entered the room. They took him to Jalalabad and then Kabul. The minister of the interior threatened to kill him unless all his sons aged ten and over reported to the capital. So the khan I knew went to jail. He was twelve at the time. Fortunately, conditions in the prison were decent. The family had money, and the father hired English tutors for his sons so their time would not be wasted. After seven years they were released. The khan seemed to bear no grudges.

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To my further surprise, the director accompanying us understood him. Do you also speak English? I asked. No, he said in Pashtu. But I know the story. The lesson I took from Kunar was that projects are not so important. People are. Not all memories were so pleasant. Toward the end of my time in Kunar, I was travelling to the burial of the daughter, not quite two years of age, of my oldest colleague. He came from a district downstream of Asadabad. It was warmer there; already we could feel it, and poppies were sprouting. We drove through a fork in the road where a madman, a leewanai (from the Pashtu for wolf ) stood chained to a nearby tree. Our passage seemed to rouse him. Hunched over, hair matted, shirt not much more than a rag, and shoeless, he prowled the ground between tree and road and gestured at us, wild-eyed, hands moving to his mouth. I asked my companions if he was hungry. The man was skin and bones. An earthen jar, probably for water, sat next to the tree. The mullah blessed that tree, responded my colleague. The practice goes way back, he added. Our fathers’ fathers. It’s supposed to cure him, said our driver, whom we called Haji because he’d made the pilgrimage. A modern man in a primitive place, he wanted to believe. There’s a shrine near Jalalabad, I remembered. A shrine for the insane. That costs money, our colleague said. And this is closer. Here was a man who’d lost every one of his kids to disease. Malaria, he said. Bad water, I guessed. The cemetery lay outside the village, in a field of white pebbles, the child’s grave already dug. A mullah presided. Family and neighbours stood in support. The mother moaned. Our grieving colleague stayed the night. For all the grey in his moustache he might have been in his thirties, his wife – his only wife – probably younger. The rest of us drove on to Jalalabad for a little R&R. We had a quiet meal at a restaurant and went to a place I knew for some live music – instrumentals, no singing. I found a room in a cheap hotel. Jeffrey was at university, my former housemates had left or moved to Kabul, and I

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didn’t know the new volunteers well enough to stay with them. I mean, not well enough to want to talk with them. The other men stayed at a tea-house with outer walls like a caravansary where Haji parked the Travelall. We stopped for our colleague on the way back. I asked how he was doing and he said something in Arabic that probably corresponded to the Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away. He shrugged, then grimaced. What could he do? At the fork in the road the leewanai was gone. It worked, Haji commented. In the front passenger seat, I looked over at him, a city dweller who wore Western trousers and a karakul cap. He looked at me. Almost everything he said could be taken two ways. Good, I responded. We all wanted to believe. Only once did he lose his composure. We were on that same road, a week or so later but before the trip to Kamdesh. We were shot at, sort of. Pop pop, nothing automatic or close. I heard but didn’t understand until he pointed to two lanky youths on a rock toward the back of a knoll receding into the distance. They were leaning against it, leering and sneering, rifles at rest. Single shot, most likely. Haji had his foot to the floor, and we were soon out of range. They want this, he said, patting the dashboard. I supposed they’d never seen a Travelall before. By the time we reached Asadabad, Haji was proposing we pack up for Kabul. He wasn’t frightened. He was angry. I argued it was random, meaning them on that rock and us on that road at that time. And if it wasn’t random, why return so soon to the shooting gallery? That road was the only way out. Were we going to let two derelicts destroy everything we had accomplished? He looked at me as though to say, Think about what you just said. Okay, I acknowledged. Everything we’d started. I couldn’t stop him or the engineers from quitting. The youngest two thought they’d get another assignment. The oldest wasn’t so sure, and he wanted to stay close to home. Whatever they did, even if it was nothing, they would do as a group. Safety in numbers. You didn’t always see that in Afghanistan. While they consulted the director of development, Haji

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drove off in the Travelall and I walked to the governor’s office to call Peace Corps Kabul. The country director got on the line. Interrupting me, he asked, What’s with these death threats? His special assistant must have gotten that from our youngest engineer, who claimed locals had given him a heads-up about additional attacks. I told the country director what I told the engineer. No way it’ll happen. Pashtun code, you can’t do that to a guest. Nobody had it in for us. They had it in for each other. Sometimes we got caught in the middle. What happened on that road could have happened to anybody, anywhere. Did he want to pull us for that? Mmm, he grumbled. For political reasons the government needed a program in Kunar, and Peace Corps wanted to be part of the solution. I’m counting on you, he said. Use your head. Haji was back two days later, a pistol in his pocket, a smile on his face. He had met with our country director, and the pistol seemed to give him peace of mind. We got a lot of wells dug, roads improved, irrigation systems enhanced, mouths fed, and were never shot at again. The earplugs you wear on a Chinook tend to keep you to yourself. You can mug and gesture, but you can’t maintain a conversation with anybody who’s not next to you. Eddie, a civilian operator, sat on my right, but he was talking to his interpreter Saddiq, on his right. On my other side was the back door, ramp down for a view of where we’d been. There’d been some discussion about who would go. Bagram reserved space for its own and so had been parsimonious with seat allocations, giving us only nine – Rob, his interpreter, a civil affairs captain, three soldiers from the headquarters shop (which now included a woman), Eddie, Saddiq, and me. That left no room for our resident Special Forces. As it turned out, there were plenty of extra seats. The Chinook arrived early that morning with only five passengers – young American men in civilian backpacking attire. Each carried an M-4 rifle. Beards were optional. We followed the Kunar River north to Asadabad. Seeing the road below us reminded me how it sometimes ran right beside the river and sometimes crept up the cliffs that formed the valley walls. At the high

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points you could stop and take a reckoning. Where touched by water, the valley was so intensely green and different from the rest of the country that we volunteers used to take visitors there on day trips out of Jalalabad. We had once stopped to ride the currents on inflated animal skins a miller had lent us. Another time we took a ferry to the east bank and chatted with a party of nomads hauling wet firewood to their camp. They were our zoo; we were theirs. Unless heavily armed, foreigners didn’t cross the river anymore. The border region that looked down on it was still unguarded. The infantry base and then Asadabad came up. It seemed larger and leafier than I remembered. From the town centre, the Chinook swerved west into the Pech Valley. In 1979 the communists executed more than a thousand men and boys in the first village up, the most infamous massacre of the war. The khan, the director, and I must have started our walk to the waterwheel from near this killing field. We wanted to see how the work was going. Some men were knee-deep in the Pech River hauling rocks to form a weir. Others were digging a diversion ditch that led to an existing canal. Later they would build a protective wall. It was our most ambitious project, a scene out of a movie. This is good, the men had said. But it’s hard. You should pay us more. I smiled until they did, too. Mud-splattered faces made their teeth look whiter than they were. They were working together, not a common occurrence, and they liked it. On a trip our team took into that valley, a truck overturned on the road to Asadabad at the edge of a precipice, blocking the road. The cab stuck out over the cliff. When we peeked in, we saw that it was empty. Boys told us the driver and his assistant had crawled out and were down in the nearest village. The sub-district chief came along to say he’d have the village headmen take care of it. He never followed up. It took us several days to round up enough men to right the truck so that we – or any vehicle – could pass. We trekked up side valleys to look for potential projects, waving as we walked at fathers and sons shovelling snow off their roofs, boys sledding on slabs of cardboard. One day we stopped to talk to four men with iron

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staves who had journeyed down a trail from the north. Their breath came out in billowy puffs. Snow was on their clothes and in their hair. Bigger than us, they had the bumptious, ebullient air of country boys on a lark. They were looking for work. In Asadabad, they hoped. If not there, then Jalalabad. Most people we talked to were friendly. But not all. One group of men we met as we started the climb to their village said they wouldn’t be needing any help, thanks. They didn’t want to talk to me, the foreigner with the bad Pashtu. That didn’t stop them from staring. Kafir? they asked my colleagues. Perhaps I was their first non-believer. I tried to smile but it wasn’t in my heart. My oldest companion replied on my behalf that I believed in the Bible. A Christian. They nodded. At least I wasn’t a pagan. A man with a wheelbarrow looked up at the helicopter as we passed, shading his eyes. He must have felt our shadow over him. A farmer in a nearby field gawked, mouth open, at the pantomime before he too looked up. I wondered if any vestige of wheat-for-work, any memory of the outsiders who prompted it, remained. Whereas those men might have wanted to fly like us, I envisioned my feet on solid ground, with them. Crazy. I was happy going to Parun. Kamdesh a second time would have made me even happier. In that area the Pech veered northward. The Chinook followed, flying below the ridgelines. Downriver, scrub trees too small to log marked the canyon walls. Up this way, trees covered the slopes. The helicopter slowed; the pitch changed. Fifty-seven minutes after take-off, we landed by the headwaters of the Pech, here a shallow stream in a high and narrow valley. The mountaintops glistened with snow. A forest of deciduous trees, a rare sight in Afghanistan, blanketed the hillside between us and the sun. The leaves were changing colour. Upstream the valley broadened into cultivated fields and wooden houses perched on a sunlit ridge to the west. A man approached to say the governor’s office was in the village ahead. It was a relief to find we’d come to the right place.

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We were surprised to see power lines. A local entrepreneur had set up a mini-hydro plant and charged a monthly fee to those who would pay for the electricity. The government had built a new provincial headquarters on flat ground below the village. The concrete and wood structure included a reception room on the second floor with a red carpet and cushions against the wall. A deck overlooked the Pech and a valley to the east. The governor and provincial director of security kept offices on the floor below. Other officials – there weren’t many – worked from home. The governor was in Kabul and it was his deputy who received us with the quiet authority of an older man. A fuzzy, grey beard you could imagine grandchildren tugging covered his cheeks. The security director’s beard was stern and black, well suited to his uniform, with its epaulettes, tie and saucer cap with braided brim. An official from a neighbouring province was also present. His winter jacket showed him to be a lowlander not accustomed to the mountain air. The deputy insisted, as Afghans tend to do with strangers, that Nuristan was totally safe. He had walked the breadth of the province without incident. The people supported the government. They just wanted teachers, doctors and donors. What about the missing mullah? Living peacefully in a side valley down the Pech, the deputy replied. He squinted, pointing toward where the helicopter had landed. A little past that. We could go ourselves. He smiled as he thought about it and corrected himself. Perhaps, he suggested, it would be better if he arranged a meeting. That might take a day or two. His eyes took on a sly look. We weren’t planning to spend the night although we had packed for it in case the helicopters didn’t make it back that day. A servant brought tea on a polished, silver platter. The glasses sparkled. And the mullah in Kamdesh, I asked, the one who used to be with the HIG? The deputy didn’t know. Kamdesh was a world apart. The path to it crossed over the mountains, a difficult passage this time of year. Kamdesh people weren’t like Parun people. They were political, he said. They sold off their timber.

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Will you sell yours, I asked, when the road comes to Parun? The road’s already here, he said. We hadn’t seen any vehicles or other signs of it. It needs work, he explained. Not a month old, and the river was already nibbling at the verges. Snow would close it five months a year. This was the one place I would not recommend a road. They’d be better off not improving the UN project or starting new ones that would let the logging trucks in. They gave us a lunch and afterward a chorus of boys sang of their homeland. We never saw a shop or a woman, a school or a clinic. But the Nuristanis understood that isolation had costs as well as benefits. We hiked back to the stream bed that served as a landing zone. The village men had come to watch, most of them squatting in a line.

Parun villagers bid farewell

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One man stood apart. A wiry, white-bearded farmer, he tied a rope to a large stack of hay then looped the other end around his foot. Tumpline around his forehead, he rolled back onto the haystack, kicked forward, rocked up, and staggered off with his load. He’d been around long enough to know you made hay while the sun shone: a storm was blowing in fast from the north. A rain squall came to within a kilometre or two before helicopters approached low out of the valley to the south. An Apache circled and a Chinook eased in, keeping close to the eastern slopes. In an unexpected whoosh it blew the leaves off trees in a flash of red and yellow. They fluttered like leaflets, and I grabbed one out of the air. Continuing its descent, the helicopter sent out a refreshing spray as it landed in the stream. I confess part of me had been hoping for a no-show. Just for a day. Maybe two. Travelling to remote destinations made them not so distant any more, especially if multiplied by time spent there. What became distant was that which used to be near. We understood this without thinking through the ramifications. And of course the perspective reversed itself after our return. For me that occurred in segments, like the chapters in a book. The three officials who had hosted us waved. The hundred village men on their haunches gave no farewell. For me, one day – a few hours, actually – wasn’t much more than a tease. We hadn’t surveyed a single project. That missing mullah represented other unfinished business. He must have been lonely. The Sufis were long gone. Rob assigned follow-up to the headquarters team. But the problem was helicopters. Civil affairs found them hard to come by. On the flight out, I felt good, better than good, and much better than I had a right to feel. I think we all felt that way. We felt like pioneers. Not pioneers. Explorers. The trick was not to become occupiers. Countries with muscle and money tended to go down that road. We had reason, and we hoped we could give the Nuristanis reason, to believe we would prove the exception to the rule. Yes, Americans went everywhere. But then we moved on.

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Waiting for a lift, 2003. Author shown wearing wool cap A few weeks after that, the 10th Mountain Division launched Operation Mountain Resolve in Nuristan and Kunar. In the course of it, four American soldiers died in a helicopter crash and another in a Humvee hit by a mine. Afghan civilians died in US airstrikes, according to news reports. Several months later, two British contractors for the UN were gunned down with their interpreter in western Nuristan. HIG or Taliban, the government said. Bandits, others speculated; it was anybody’s guess. Nobody was arrested. The president appointed a new governor, an Afghan-American said to be a cousin of the missing mullah. And then Nuristan grew quiet again, as best I could tell from afar. The quiet caused some to wonder if the West was neglecting Nuristan. As though to disprove that notion, American forces seeded the area with outposts. When that led to some of the war’s bloodiest battles, including one at Kamdesh, the US decided there was no better place to start the drawdown. The opinions and characterisations in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent official positions of the United States Government. The names of two people mentioned in the piece have been changed. 105

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Yu Jian

Yu Jian Poetry

translated by Simon Patton and Tao Naikan

Event • Writing The darkest event in life ‘writing’ will never arrive What we call ‘writing’ is a marathon form of escape Digging a tunnel out of language’s dungeon that will never reach the surface Because it is directed towards what is called ‘depth’ While its destination lies on the surface with the tongue when it moves, it is the site of speech It sets out from the brightest place a blank sheet of paper a pen and a hand’s grasp of the pen this is writing An ancient yet undying form of work to pick up the pen means to suffer pain suffer distress suffer hardship ‘passing by like this river’ (Confucius) there are always those who devote themselves to the cause, and those who are ready to carry on the work All roads lead to Rome but writing leads to a rock you push it uphill and it rolls back down it was this that immortalized Sisyphus You do the same work but God doesn’t give you the same reception you only make life hard for yourself Writing the most glorious event of any age the death and resurrection of words plain sailing or pitfall 106

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A magnificent detail resides in a word emerging from concealment revealed for what it is and arriving at the square on a sheet of writing paper it was destined for You can’t just do as you like in writing freedom is confinement to escape is to arrive a Nazi-style dominance Compelling you to speak like a buzzing bee to grow a sting to gather pollen to build a hive To make honey on 5 March to employ metaphors in lawful sequence and to arrange subjects and adverbial modifiers Forcing you to think of writing whenever you take up a pen and to be concerned that others will read you obese swamp rape without genitals This despot is not the Third Reich not stone walls not barbed wire fences not the gas chambers It is in the place you cover with writing in the blanks in your manuscript in your evasion in your siege-defence In your compromise surrender laziness the dragging out of your miserable existence in calm or hysteria. It glows radiantly endless darkness ceaseless continuation without cover or shelter The writer is forever excluded from what he writes he cannot fight hand-to-hand with what he has written words are not pieces of wood on a chessboard The state of the contest altered with a movement of the hand the hand that holds the pen can by no means create what you’ve written isn’t something you can touch When a bunch of flowers is named, it forces you to allude to a woman as well when you refer to a bald eagle others might think you are praising power The assassinated has no way of identifying who the assassin was the long letter sent in a desperate autumn is misread by the recipient as an editorial To say something like I came I saw and I uttered I’d count myself lucky if I didn’t get stuck fast under that rock

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A lifetime bent over a desk I remain outside what I have written outside my pen and ink outside my tongue All my phrases sentence structure methods of composition symbols metaphors eloquence the lines I am most proud of Are without exception rubbish traps shotguns snares sponges or fat In the clamorous printed matter of our entire generation writing is the one thing incapable of speech Oh, God, let me write, and may my tongue be saved!

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Challenging Convention – The Kung Fu Nuns Challenging Namgay Zam Convent ion – The Kung Fu Nuns

Namgay Zam

here has been a surge in enrolment at the Druk Gawa Khilwa nunnery in Kathmandu, Nepal. The primary cause for the spike in interest? Kung fu. The nunnery is a part of the Druk Amitabha Mountain – a spiritual practice centre of the thousand-year-old Drukpa school of Buddhism, and now home to the increasingly popular ‘kung fu nuns’. The kung fu master is a sixteen-year-old nun from Bhutan, Jigme Wangchuk Lhamo. Lhamo took only months to cover stages that generally required years of practice. She now leads the kung fu group at the nunnery. ‘Kung fu helps us concentrate better (on our studies). It makes us 109

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stronger, and more compassionate too. People take us seriously,’ she states matter-of-factly. She says she has never felt bolder, more powerful and more compassionate than at the nunnery. The kung fu master became a nun at the age of eleven. Lhamo’s parents and relatives initially tried to dissuade her from leaving school to join the nunnery as they felt she was too young. Lhamo says she listened to her heart instead, which told her that she should follow the path of the Buddha and travel to Nepal. She had heard of the Kathmandu nunnery from her uncle who is a disciple of one of the spiritual masters of the Drukpa lineage. Lhamo confesses that she was homesick when she first arrived at the Druk Gawa Khilwa nunnery. She was the only Bhutanese at the time, and although most nuns are multilingual and hail from different regions, no one spoke any of the Bhutanese languages. She admits that she cried several times from loneliness; however, she picked up Tibetan in just two months and currently speaks at least six languages fluently. Lhamo was introduced to kung fu soon after joining the nunnery. She had always loved martial arts (thanks to watching many Jackie Chan and Jet Li films), and so took to kung fu very readily. She caught up with all her seniors in two months and soon surpassed their skills, eventually earning herself the title of ‘kung fu master’. ‘You know, if we weren’t here, I think we’d be home washing dishes,’ Lhamo confides with a bright smile. ‘The older ones among us would probably be married with kids. This nunnery is such an opportunity for us. Before, no nun could perform religious dances or religious ceremonies, but here the Gyalwang Drukpa says there is no difference between a girl and a boy. He says what a boy can do, a girl can too. These days, the monks come to learn religious dances from us. The times have changed.’ The Gyalwang Drukpa, the leader of the Drukpa spiritual sect and founder of the Druk Amitabha Mountain, introduced kung fu to the nuns in 2010. He was inspired to introduce this skill to the nuns after he saw Vietnamese nuns trained in the art. Fittingly, a Vietnamese trains the Drukpa nuns at the nunnery in Kathmandu. As Gyalwang Drukpa said to the Financial Times at the start of 2015, ‘I believe most people think

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nuns spend their lives in learning and quiet contemplation. In the region of the Himalayas where I live, their traditional role was always subservient. For centuries, they simply cooked and cleaned for their monk colleagues. They were also barred from taking part in martial arts, but now I’ve helped change that.’ The Gyalwang Drukpa explains, ‘As a young boy growing up in India and Tibet, I observed the deplorable condition in which nuns lived. I saw my own mother – a very learned person and someone I consider a realised being, suffer when I was growing up because of unfair patriarchal laws. Only monks were privileged. I wanted to change this. I started to think, what can I do for nuns? Then I thought what I can do is to build a nunnery and then give them an opportunity to study and practise spiritually.’ The Gyalwang Drukpa initially had hardly any support when he conceived of the idea to train the Drukpa nuns in kung fu. The idea was frowned upon by his advisors and faced strong resistance from the Buddhist sangha. In 2010, the Gyalwang Drukpa was given the Millennium Development Goal Award by the United Nations for his efforts to promote gender equality, environmental education, and humanitarian works. He, however, does not like to use the word ‘empowerment’. He believes in self-empowerment. He says ‘empower’ sounds as if someone with greater power has bestowed some of it to weaker individuals to allow them to become better and stronger human beings. That, he thinks, is wrong. He says that, just as everyone has the potential to realise their Buddha nature, everyone also has the power to become the best they can be. Approximately 300 nuns from Tibet, India, and Bhutan now live and practise Buddhism at the Druk Gawa Khilwa nunnery. The youngest is nine years old and the oldest is in her sixties. All nuns train in kung fu and have daily classes at dawn. The nuns have toured several countries and perform at the Annual Drukpa Council – a yearly gathering held in India and Nepal that attracts Drukpa masters and devotees from all over the world. The kung fu performance never fails to impress.

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Such is the Drukpa nuns’ skill that they now even teach mask dances to monks. ‘Who would have thought we’d be doing such a thing, and in my lifetime?’ asks Lhamo, proudly. For people unfamiliar with Buddhism, its history and its practices around the world, the notion of nuns teaching monks may not seem extraordinary. However, it is indeed remarkable from the perspective of Buddhists and those interested in Buddhism. In many parts of the world, there are not even orders of nuns as there are orders of monks. Furthermore, nuns typically do not enjoy the privilege of becoming fully ordained. Only Sri Lanka offers full ordination to nuns. Lastly, having nuns teach and lead a nunnery is an anomaly, even in this day and age. The Druk Gawa Khilwa nunnery is a truly avant-garde break from tradition. Likewise, the Drukpa nuns are a class apart. Not only do they stand head and shoulders above others (nuns and monks alike) with their skills in kung fu; they are well versed in theatre, medicine, information technology, and business. As the community is so ethnically diverse, all nuns speak a minimum of two languages. The nuns even run a souvenir shop, a guesthouse and a charming little coffee shop at the Druk Amitabha Mountain.

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For nuns like Lhamo, life at the nunnery is an opportunity. ‘Who knows? I might have had to marry or work on the farm if I had not become a nun. I now dream of going back to Bhutan after some years and building my own nunnery. I come from a remote place in the east; other young women and my community will benefit from such a nunnery.’ The Gyalwang Drukpa continues to work quietly and steadfastly to change the roles of nuns in the Buddhist sangha. He shares the language of self-empowerment without merely indulging in the rhetoric of gender equality. Meanwhile, his Drukpa nuns no longer compare themselves to their counterparts among the monks. They are too busy realising how they can do what they want to do.

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Li Yawei

Li Yawei Poetry

translated by Denis Mair

Distant Sea on a Summer’s Day The crab crawls sideways on an empty beach, then broods beneath a palm tree He wants to hold you with many arms, make love to you in the bay’s deepest crevice Crescent moon at sky’s edge extends its loneliest silver horn toward a distant isthmus A lobster changes course on the sea bottom, makes a wide lonely turn I recall my country that once was – where I came from Do you see two brothers drinking wine beside the River of Forgetfulness?

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The Sinking City The B ill Sinking Tarrant City

Bill Tarrant

uar Batang is one of the oldest communities in Jakarta. It dates back to the seventeenth century when a settlement grew around a post levying tolls on fishing boats sailing up the Ciliwung River and into the city’s canal system. The Ciliwung, the largest of the thirteen rivers that flow through Jakarta, doesn’t make it down to Luar Batang anymore. The river starts its journey on the slopes of a volcano south of the Indonesian capital and flows through the heart of one of the world’s most densely populated cities. But it no longer spills into Jakarta Bay because, for the final mile or so of its course, the river would have to defy gravity and flow upward to discharge its waters into the sea. Jakarta is sinking. This city of almost thirty million people squats on a swampy plain that has sunk four metres over the past three decades. It has essentially turned into a bowl that deepens discernibly with each passing year and poses a threat to the city’s future existence. Today the residents of Luar Batang live well below sea level. Yasmin, a resident in her mid-twenties, led me up a three-metre ladder to the top of the village wall, against which the muddy brown waters of the Java Sea gently lap on a pleasant day. Next to the fishing village is the 800year-old Sunda Kelapa harbour, where a rank of sharp-prowed wooden pinisi sailing ships stands majestically at anchor, still the mainstay of inter-island trade in the Indonesian archipelago. This spot is ground sub-zero for the sinking city. It’s not only Luar Batang that is sinking, but also the channels of the Ciliwung and other rivers, along with the entire sprawl of Jakarta’s north coast – fishing

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ports, boatyards, markets, warehouses, fish farms, crowded slums and exclusive gated communities. And the forty-year-old seawall that is supposed to keep the Java Sea from inundating the Indonesian capital? That’s sinking, too. Unlike many of the neighbouring slums slowly subsiding along the coast, Luar Batang is a clean and relatively prosperous place, thanks to its famous mosque, established in the eighteenth century by an Arab trader, and its historical status as one of the city’s first settlements. Its future, though, is highly uncertain. Like many people who live in proximity to constant danger, Yasmin, who helps run a family food stall, shrugs off the possibility of catastrophic floods: ‘I’m not scared, because I’m used to it. The only time I worry is during the rainy season, because the drainage system doesn’t work,’ she says, looking sceptically at one of the water pumps stashed in every alleyway of the kampong, testament to the everworsening floods. She expects one day she and her neighbours in Luar Batang will have to move. Jakarta is in danger of drowning from floods and rising seas, paradoxically because water is disappearing from the ground underneath. Extraction of groundwater causes layers of rock and sediment to pancake slowly on top of each other. Most Jakarta residents and businesses suck water up through wells drilled into shallow underground aquifers, according to city data. Fook Chuan Eng, senior water and sanitation specialist with the World Bank, who oversees a US$189 million floodmitigation project for the city, compares Jakarta’s basin to a chunk of Swiss cheese. ‘Groundwater extraction is unparalleled for a city of this size,’ he said. ‘People are digging deeper and deeper, and the ground is collapsing.’ There’s that, and the sheer weight of Jakarta’s urban sprawl crushing the porous ground underneath, Fook tells me, waving from his twelfthstorey office at the thickening forest of glass and steel high-rise towers outside that has replaced Jakarta’s traditional cityscape of red-tile-roofed bungalows and double storey shop houses. Jakarta as a whole is sinking at a rate of three inches a year, far outpacing the one-third of an inch annual rise in mean sea level in the area. The northern coast, however, is sinking at double the rate of the rest of the city – by an average of six

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inches a year and, in some places, as much as ten to eleven, according to a ten-year study by a team of geodynamics experts from the Institute of Technology Bandung. Today, forty per cent of Jakarta is below sea level. Other Asia megacities are also dealing with severe subsidence: Manila is sinking at a rate of approximately three and a half inches a year. Ho Chi Minh City is subsiding three inches a year and Bangkok by approximately an inch. This has been happening even as populations around the world have tended to concentrate along low-lying coastal land. In 2010, an estimated 724 million people around the world lived in what researchers consider low-elevation coastal zones – coastal areas ten metres or less above sea level. For this sizable mass of humanity courting danger at the waters’ edge means worsening impacts from storms and floods. The frequency of these events is rising as well. Recorded floods and severe storms in Southeast Asia have increased sixfold, from fewer than twenty between 1960 and 1969 to nearly 120 between 2000 and 2008, according to an Asian Development Bank study. Little can be done to halt the slow increase in sea levels. Nor has Jakarta had much success in stemming the arrival of migrants from the provinces who squat illegally along the coast. It is possible, though, to stop subsidence. Jakarta has regulations limiting the amount of water that can be extracted daily from licensed wells. A public-awareness campaign on television urges viewers to ‘save groundwater for the sake of our nation’. But enforcement is weak, and illegal wells are rife in the city. The city has a moratorium on new mall construction, mainly to ease notorious traffic congestion, but has otherwise done little over the years to temper the building spree that weighs heavily on the ground below. A February 2007 storm was a tipping point, stirring the government to act with more urgency. A strong monsoon storm coinciding with a high tide overwhelmed ramshackle coastal defences, pushing a wall of dark and filthy water from Jakarta Bay into the capital. It was the first time a storm surge from the sea had flooded the city. Nearly half of Jakarta was covered by as much as four metres of muddy water. At least seventysix people were killed, and 590,000 were left homeless. The cost of damages reached US$544 million. As Jakarta cleaned up, then-President

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Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono formed a task force to come up with a strategy to deal with more frequent flooding. One option discussed was to move the overcrowded capital to higher elevations southeast of the city or to another island altogether. Another thought was simply to abandon the old city district of north Jakarta. Both ideas were dismissed. Jakarta is the economic hub of Indonesia, contributing twenty per cent of the nation’s gross domestic product. Allowing the sea to claim forty per cent of the capital city, home to nearly half of Jakarta’s population, was unthinkable, said Robert Sianipar, a top official from the Coordinating Ministry of Economic Affairs, which convened the task force. ‘If we abandon north Jakarta, that would cost US$220 billion in assets – not to count the number of people and productivity that would have to be replaced.’ The task force decided to focus on bolstering coastal defences and refurbishing the crumbling flood canal system. It was the former colonial power, the Netherlands, that offered technical assistance. Perhaps no other country in the world has learned how to live so effectively below sea level; the Dutch also built the canal system for the old colonial city of Batavia, before the city was renamed Jakarta after independence. As a first step, the height of the existing twenty-mile seawall was raised in 2008. But as the existing wall slips under the waves, it’s obvious that this measure offers little protection against another big storm surge, or even a moderately high spring tide. At high tide in some places, the old seawall can barely be seen poking above the water’s surface, both because the sea is rising and because the wall itself is sinking into soft alluvial sediments. The World Bank warned in a 2012 report that catastrophic floods would soon become routine in Jakarta, ‘resulting in severe socioeconomic damage’. The task force was still trying to decide on an overall strategy when the World Bank’s prediction came true in January 2013: parts of the city were submerged under two metres of water after a heavy monsoon storm. Days later, President Yudhoyono ordered the task force to take a bolder approach. A year later, the task force came up with the ‘National Capital Integrated Coastal Development Master Plan’, which was soon dubbed the

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‘Giant Sea Wall’ or the ‘Great Garuda’, for its resemblance from the air to the bird-god of Hindu mythology that is Indonesia’s national symbol. The Great Sea Wall was launched in October 2014 – two weeks before incoming president and popular former Jakarta governor Joko Widodo was sworn in. The centrepiece of the plan will be an outer seawall built on reclaimed land several miles out in Jakarta Bay. A new ‘Waterfront City’, with office towers, hotels and luxury housing, will be built atop Garuda complex, covering up to 10,000 acres – that’s nearly half the size of Manhattan. Selling real estate on the wall is expected to be the main financing vehicle for the wall itself, which would be completed by 2022. Meeting that deadline ‘will be one of the most challenging hydraulic civil works that has been carried out worldwide’, the Master Plan says. The first phase of the project is a $2 billion, twenty-mile inner seawall now being built in front of the village of Muara Baru. The inner seawall is aimed at buying time, holding off another inundation until the Great Garuda is built, providing long-term protection. The Great Garuda won’t, however, restore the natural flow of some of the sinking city’s thirteen rivers and various canals into Jakarta Bay. Some of these channels drain into floodwater retention lakes, magnets for new migrants from outlying provinces who squat illegally around their perimeters. Huge pumping stations then lift the highly polluted water from these lakes the last few hundred yards into Jakarta Bay. More and bigger such lakes will soon be needed to pump out water from the other rivers and canals that will no longer be able to discharge into the Bay in the coming years. ‘You’re talking about pumping lakes up to a hundred square kilometres,’ said Victor Coenen, a geologist by training, who was part of the Dutch water management team. ‘Where do you find room for that in a densely populated city?’ The Great Garuda would solve that problem by creating a single gigantic storage lake in Jakarta Bay, enclosed by the inner and outer seawalls and fed by giant pumping stations onshore. Planners even envision that this reservoir will one day become a sustainable source of drinking water for the city. That seems like a stunning ambition. Jakarta would first have to build massive wastewater treatment and water purification plants. Until that happens, the new pumping stations would spew an un-

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ending stream of toxic swill and rubbish from some of the world’s most polluted rivers and canals into the reservoir of the Great Garuda. This scenario fuels criticism of the project. Sceptics are afraid that it would turn into a giant septic tank behind the Giant Sea Wall. Jakarta Governor Basuki ‘Ahok’ Tjahaja Purnama, who took over from Widodo, has become one of the biggest critics. ‘I honestly have doubts about (the Giant Sea Wall),’ he told an audience of hydrologists last October. ‘Flushing the mud will be very problematic.’ It’s hardly a new problem for Indonesia’s capital. Colonial Batavia was styled ‘the Queen of the East’ for its distinctive colonial architecture and tree-lined canals. Even then, closer inspection of the coast revealed ‘a dismal succession of stinking mud-banks, filthy bogs and stagnant pools [that] announces to more senses than one the poisonous nature of this dreadful climate,’ British writer John Joseph Stockdale observed in his 1811 book, Island of Java. Then as now, ‘stagnant canals’ functioned as open sewers and exhaled ‘an intolerable stench’. In the wet season, ‘those reservoirs of corrupted water overflow their banks in the lower part of town, and fill the lower storeys of the houses where they leave behind an inconceivable quantity of slime and earth’. Today, the city has just one small wastewater treatment plant that serves the central business district. Almost everyone uses septic tanks or dumps waste into neighbourhood sewers that flow into the canal system. The slime has accumulated over the centuries in the canals, and their embankments have risen in a failing effort to contain the floodwaters. The canals that flow to the sea or into the coastal retention ponds have lost up to seventy-five per cent of their capacity. The city is near the end of a three-year project to deepen the canals and increase the height of their walls. But the homes along their banks often lie below the level of the canals now, leaving no escape in the event of a flood. A city with an extensive canal system and a tropical monsoon climate should not suffer a water shortage. Yet only about a quarter of Jakarta’s population is connected to the city’s piped water system. Half the population draws water from wells, and the other quarter buy fresh

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water from vendors. Some city residents who could have access to piped water prefer to use groundwater because connection fees – amounting to a month’s minimum wage – and additional charges on the bill make it much more expensive than sinking a backyard well. Piped water is also unpopular because it is often filthy when it comes out of the tap. There’s a good reason for that: half of Jakarta’s water supply comes from the basin of the Citarum River, the largest in West Java, which the Asia Development Bank has dubbed ‘the world’s dirtiest river’. The Citarum is so clogged with industrial and agricultural effluents and waste from the teeming settlements along its banks that in places during the dry season it almost seems like you could walk the river. Well-water is hardly better. Seventy per cent of the wells in the city are contaminated by E. coli bacteria from leaking septic tanks, according to a study conducted by the city government. The water crisis has been a boon to the increasing ranks of water vendors who drag long carts filled with five-gallon jerry cans of water around the kampongs. One jerry can costs about four US cents. Jakarta has recently tried another tack in its struggle with water: evicting settlers to create green areas along the coast. Tens of thousands of squatters occupy large swathes of the Muara Baru village, behind the seawall and around a nearby retention pond – a catchment for flood waters and also the end point for some of the rivers and channels that are backing up in the soggy, sinking bowl that Jakarta has become. They scavenge debris from the channels, collect green mussels or shrimp from the dirty water, or pick up work in the boatyards. Yet Muara Baru, home to more than 100,000 people, is now at least six feet below sea level, and residents like Rahmawati, a mother of two small children, gaze upward from their front stoops to view the sea. ‘When there’s a high tide, the ships float almost at the same height as the seawall – we can see the ships from here,’ said Rahmawati who, like many Indonesians, goes by one name. Flooding from overflowing rivers and canals in the area is an annual event that forces Rahmawati and the rest of the kampong to evacuate to public buildings nearby. High-water marks from the last big flood, in 2013, are still visible on the walls of the kampong.

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Every year the floods come, people evacuate to public buildings and the village sinks some more. Even so, says Sukiman, a father of three, ‘It’s not that bad: we can live here.’ Reuters published a different version of this story in December 2014.

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Usha Kishore

Usha Kishore Poetry

M. F. Husain’s Goddesses Your bohemian brush strokes, caustic curves of cheek breast, limb and thigh, endorsed whiplash art nouveau, created violent hate campaigns. Your libertarian carnival of iconography, voluptuous goddesses spread-eagled, ate into the core of the snarled Indian psyche. Laying your contentious canvas on floors and walls you mixed Picasso and Cézanne in Hindustani matte. Your full chroma of Kufic Khat, narrative cubism and tantric mystique portrayed a Manichaean realm, each contour, each impasto anchoring each nude goddess in political chiaroscuro, a diptych of decadence and design. Diaphanous divinities dancing in incandescent tonality, river deities flowing with fish, bare-breasted supernal women riding lions, chaste wives poised on demon thighs and a female nation in planar nude – all tumbled out of pictorial space, invading a land of volatile gods. Your abstract altarpieces drew ire,

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your signature sketches of a cryptic elephant-god tilted celestial balance, aroused antiphonies of revolt and reverence. Accused of blasphemy and betrayal, branded sinner and saint, you fled into exile. Your interpretations of eternal archetypes dancing provocatively on temple murals embalmed your eccentric genius. Your déshabillé portfolio of divine form, profane polyphony and discerning rhythm – a construct undefined, a dimension unseen, controversy conveyed in colour. Dangerous Art!

M. F. Husain (1915–2011) was the grand old man of contemporary Indian art, a painter of great eminence and controversy.

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Run Phillip Y. Kim Run

Phillip Y. Kim

‘I

s that you, Uncle Kam?’ Harold Kam, seated and bent forward in a hurdler’s stretch position with his nose touching his left kneecap, looked up at the two students approaching him through the crowd. They were wearing black T-shirts, the protesters’ standard-issue uniform. The boy’s shirt hung loosely from his skinny shoulders. The girl’s was slim-cut, the words ‘Got Organic Swag’ scribbled across the front. Harold rose onto his knees and then to his feet. Hearing his hip joints crackle, he waggled his waist from side to side to loosen them up. ‘Lei ho, Jeffrey. Lei ho, Tabby.’ ‘What are you doing, Uncle Kam?’ Jeffrey asked. ‘Going for a run?’ Harold nodded. ‘That’s the plan.’ Jeffrey peered down through white horn-rimmed glasses at the cardboard sign that Harold had propped against a backpack at his feet. Boot Camp. ‘What does that mean?’ Harold raised his eyebrows and smiled. ‘Just what it says. I’m hoping to get some of you kids to train with me.’ ‘Eh?’ Jeffrey and Tabby exclaimed simultaneously. Jeffrey leaned away from the older man. ‘Run? Now?’ They looked around at the massive crowd of students that had emblazoned the now-barricaded district of Admiralty with coloured banners and placards hung from footbridges, and with nylon tarpaulins covering aid and leaflet stands. Makeshift food stations had been set up along the pavements with shopping bags full of biscuits and instant cup 125

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Run

noodles perched on crates of distilled water. Under a Donated Supplies sign taped to a wall, medical supplies, rolls of duct tape and plastic wrap, and phone battery charging cords lay unsorted in waist-high heaps. Across the elevated roadway where Harold stood, a man he recognised as a local writer sat cross-legged on a foam mat holding his own sign – Free English Lessons. The megaphoned voice of a protest leader was strafing the humid air. ‘Down with Leung Chun-ying, Mr 689, Mr Puppet! If he won’t defend Hong Kong, if he won’t fight OUR fight, then we students will!’ Some of the students milling about whooped and clapped their approval. Others carried on high-fiving passing friends and holding up two-fingered peace signs as they snapped group selfies. Undeterred by the buzz around him, Harold stepped towards Jeffrey and Tabby, clenched his fist and curled his arm. An apple-sized bicep bulged under his green micro-mesh shirt. ‘Feel this.’ The pair glanced at each other. Tabby giggled and looked down at her hands. Jeffrey pursed his lips and crossed his thin arms against his chest. ‘Come on,’ Harold said, raising his flexed arm higher. ‘This is what exercise can do for you.’ He grasped Jeffrey’s hand and slapped it on top of the bicep. ‘Don’t be so timid. I’ve known you since, when was it? Primary school? When you called yourself “Jeff-wee” because of the gaps in your teeth?’ Jeffrey sighed, gave the mound of muscle a perfunctory squeeze, then withdrew his hand and tucked it under the opposite elbow. ‘Very impressive, Uncle Kam.’ Harold lowered his arm. ‘Look at you young people.’ Their skinny bodies were puny against the dark mass of commercial and government towers behind them. ‘So pasty and white! You’re supposed to be Hong Kong’s future. How’re you going to push the central Chinese government looking like zhu cheong fun noodle rolls? They’ll pour soy sauce on you and swallow you whole!’ Jeffrey frowned. ‘It’s not about how we look, Uncle. It’s about how many we are.’ He pointed a finger at the slate-grey sky and waved it over the crowd. ‘Thousands tonight.’

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Harold rolled his eyes. ‘You’re a herd of rabbits confronting PLA tanks!’ Tabby recoiled. ‘Tanks? Aiyaah, no way! This is not Tiananmen!’ Since Harold had last seen her, she had shortened her hair from midback to shoulder length, and swapped eye makeup for a pair of oversized Miu Miu cat glasses. Harold couldn’t imagine that she was out to impress anyone with her looks this evening. If anything, she seemed intent on proving how bookish she could be. No doubt if Lucas were still dating her, he wouldn’t be pleased. Passing her in the street now, the boy would scarcely give her a second look. Harold turned towards her. ‘I don’t think I’ve seen you since that time on our boat this summer.’ That day, he remembered, she had worn a bright yellow off-the-shoulder sundress – by LUCIEN, his brand – over a primrose push-up bikini. Despite the cheery outfit, her coquettish manner had been that of someone trying in vain to hold on to the last frayed strands of a faltering romance. And sure enough, according to Harold’s wife, Lucas had dumped Tabby the following day. He’d done it in his usual curt, offhand way, via WeChat. ‘Yes, that’s right.’ Tabby nodded slowly and blinked over at Jeffrey. Picking up on the nervous tic, Harold bent his lips into a wry smile. ‘Oh, so now you two are dating?’ ‘We’re just friends,’ Jeffrey interjected. ‘Anyway, where’s Lucas? Is he going to join us tonight?’ Harold chuckled. ‘Really, you’ve known him since middle school, right? Has he ever been anything but pro-China?’ ‘I guess. That’s why we’re so surprised to see you out here.’ Jeffrey squared his shoulders and straightened his back. ‘We came over to say that we really appreciate the support of a big fashion tycoon like you. Gam gik, Uncle Kam.’ Tabby bowed her head. ‘Gam gik. Gam gik.’ Harold’s heart suddenly dipped, his gung-ho mood deflated. Former tycoon, now that his business was bankrupt. It stung him to think how LUCIEN, once one of Hong Kong’s finest home-grown brands, had been seduced into China’s vast, untouched market, but then eaten alive by local firms. These days, when he encountered Mainlanders who swarmed across the border into Hong Kong in their pandemic numbers,

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he couldn’t help but feel sickened by their voracious appetites. Like an alien virus, or ‘locusts’ as the local media liked to call them, they seemed to consume everything – including their hosts. He forced a smile to prop up some semblance of an authority figure. ‘Well, anyway, this evening is about you young people.’ Their heads bobbed up and down. Tabby stepped towards Harold and with both hands proffered a small yellow ribbon fashioned into a loop. He picked up his black backpack and attached the ribbon to the zipper pull. He then took out several bottles of Pocari Sweat and a fistful of energy bars. ‘These are Maxpro,’ he announced, holding the bars aloft like a hunter with freshly killed game. ‘They contain long-chain carbohydrates, protein, and electrolytes. Believe me, you won’t get very far in a long fight on McDonald’s or milk bread rolls and distilled water. That crap will end up killing you. And what’s the point of demanding one-person one-vote if you’re all dead when you get it?’ He divided the snacks and handed them over. Jeffrey carefully peeled a wrapper and bit off a nibble of the bar. He wrinkled his nose at its hardness. Tabby leaned forward to study the label. ‘I’m here to make you fighting fit,’ Harold continued. ‘All you kids do is study, study, study – and play computer games.’ ‘You can’t be serious, Uncle Kam,’ Jeffrey replied. ‘In this heat?’ Harold puffed out his flat, broad chest. ‘Look at me. I’m all grey hair and wrinkles. I’m three times your age. But I came here from Toronto twenty-five years with only a few cents in my pocket and built an 800million-dollar business. I can still bench-press eighty kilos. I can run a half marathon in one hour twenty. Can you do any of that? I do it even with my asthma.’ He reached into a pocket of his backpack and pulled out an inhaler. ‘I have to carry this thing around because of the shitty air in this town.’ Jeffrey rubbed the back of his neck and wiped his sweaty hand against his khaki shorts. ‘Not everyone can be as successful as you, Uncle Kam,’ he mumbled. ‘Or be as tough as your son.’ ‘Tough?’ Harold snapped. ‘Lucas? Don’t confuse being self-centred with being strong.’

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‘Hey come on, he’s built an amazing website. It’s going to be the next Alibaba.’ Harold fanned his face, as if shooing away a gnat. ‘That’s just about making money. So what?’ Jeffrey stared at him, slack-jawed and snaggle-toothed. ‘Wah! “So what?” Are you kidding?’ ‘Life’s about more than getting rich,’ Harold said, ignoring how ironic his declaration probably sounded. ‘Isn’t that the point of tonight? To fight for other values?’ ‘Yes, but. . . .’ ‘This is about empowerment, right? Hong Kong for Hong Kongers?’ ‘Ho-ah.’ Harold pumped a fist and swung his backpack onto his shoulder. ‘Exactly. So, let’s show people what you’re all about. Come on, a quick jog around Tamar – one lap.’ ‘But Uncle Kam, we have to help stock the aid stations. And Joshua Wong is about to speak. . . .’ ‘Stop acting like sheep to your seventeen-year-old shepherd boy! Grab a few banners. We can wave them as we run.’ ‘What about the police?’ Harold rose up onto the balls of his feet to survey the scene across the crowd. Groups of riot police wearing black helmets and carrying clear polycarbonate shields had settled around the protest site like a dense bank of smog. But their movements seemed slow and aimless, lacking the sharp angularity of menace. ‘We’re fine. Like Tabby said, this isn’t Beijing. Let’s go! Towards the harbour. . . .’ He stepped forward and gripped Jeffrey and Tabby by the arms. The two students let themselves be dragged forward by his grasp and force of will. Harold wove a path through the hive of protesters. Once past the metal barricades, he looked back to check that the two students were following. They trailed a few paces behind, clutching their smartphones and looking self-conscious in the midst of thousands of their peers. The sight of them trailing behind him reminded Harold of a younger Lucas, back when father and son had first started running together and

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Lucas had struggled to keep pace. Lucas had since grown, in both height and attitude. Now, he could outsprint Harold so easily that, seemingly out of pity, the boy had stopped chiding him as a ‘slowpoke lo dou’ after their speed runs. Still, Harold took some comfort in knowing he had the better head for longer distances. Young people these days just didn’t see life as an endurance sport, and opted too often to slope off in search of shortcuts, usually online. When was the last time they had run together? Was it really before the wet and heavy months of summer? He recalled the detached look and refusal that Lucas had given him earlier this evening when Harold had announced where he was headed. He shouldn’t have expected the boy to bound up from staring at his laptop and throw on his trainers. That just wasn’t Lucas, at least not the Lucas of the past few years. Still, his son’s absence at his shoulder now suddenly felt like a hole in his shirt. Images appeared of Lucas’ candy-red headphones bouncing, and his white Cristiano Ronaldo number 7 jersey flapping against the onrushing wind. He looked up at a large billboard across the road. A reclining Gisele Bündchen, alluring in a turtleneck and over-the-knee boots, smiled back, as if to reassure him. Judging by the sounds around the house, Mah’s not doing too well this evening. Her crutches groan as she leans harder into them. The maid’s pitter-pattering is more hurried as she rushes around trying to care for her. Then a song – THAT song – dribbles out of the stereo. ‘Whenever I sang my song, on the stage, on my own. . . .’ It’s the Faye Wong tune Mah plays whenever the frustration of her MS gets the better of her. I get up from my laptop in the study and walk down the hall. She’s sinking back onto the sofa. Her crutches are splayed out at her feet. ‘You okay, Mah?’ She nods, but with a sigh. ‘Yes, now that the house is quiet again.’ ‘Sorry about earlier,’ I mutter. ‘You and your father . . . just too much alike.’ She’s wearing make-up and has carefully brushed her permed mop-top. She pulls off that style pretty well for someone her age. But it seems wasted –

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she hasn’t left the house all day and isn’t expecting guests. I guess she just wants to remind herself tonight of her glory days as Bah’s top model for LUCIEN. ‘You look good,’ I say. She straightens up against the sofa cushion and smiles. Seeing her brighten, I can see she was quite liang nu in her day, before MS robbed her of vitality. Even Vivien says Mah’s prettier than she’ll ever be. When Viv went off to university in London, she wanted most to be spared the constant pressure of living up to Bah and Mah’s standards, and not to have to endure the sap of that Eyes on Me song. Viv’s new Facebook profile picture shows her with bruise-coloured eye shadow, right ear pierced with seven hoops and a safety pin and framed in a rush of dyed blond hair. She’s obviously still intending to keep her distance. ‘Time for your Korean drama?’ I ask, walking towards the wall-mounted TV that dominates our living room. I find the remote on the marble ledge under the panel, propped up against a statuette of Guan Gong. ‘Someone’s got to keep me company,’ she says. ‘You kids are always into your own thing, and your Dad’s out, as usual. Did he say when he’d be back?’ ‘No idea. Depends on how long the protests go on tonight.’ She shakes her head. ‘What’s the point of all those people waving their fists and shouting Western slogans?’ ‘Agreed, Mah. China’s the biggest, baddest dragon around. I don’t know why Hong Kong should fight the beast when we can BE the beast. Or at least keep making some serious money from it!’ Mah rolls her eyes as she flicks on the TV. ‘Silly man. He’s probably the oldest person down there.’ I sigh. ‘I guess I’m going to catch grief from my friends at school tomorrow. But mo man tai – I’m used to it.’ ‘Right, let him hang out with kids your age. I’m fine spending my evening looking at cute Korean boys.’ Faye Wong and over-coiffed Korean actors – they’ve become Mah’s besties. I suppress my own eye roll and head back to the study and my laptop. She’s got a right to feel bitter towards Bah. He’s been totally obsessed with LUCIEN and its problems. Business has been bad for a few years, and it finally went bust this summer. What really hurt was when he found out that the copycat brand that had squeezed LUCIEN out of the Mainland

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belonged to his so-called Chinese partners, who had secretly set up shop two years ago and stolen LUCIEN’s distributors. Bah says that we now have to sell just about everything – the house here in Shouson Hill, our Sunseeker Manhattan 73, his rare watch collection. Still, no one blames him for LUCIEN’s failure. For a long time, LUCIEN was one of Hong Kong’s only hip home-grown fashion brands. People are proud of what he’s accomplished. But he’s not coping too well. He’s more fanatical about his fitness than ever, training for a marathon like he’s being chased by ghosts. Before tonight, he’d even stopped trying to make me exercise with him. That really worried me. There was a time when he’d kick my ass to get me to train. It’s funny. I don’t want to say I miss it, but maybe I do. Anyway, he should be at home looking after Mah instead of running off to join Occupy Central. Instead, he growls that her ping fu tang herbal medicine gives him a headache by stinking up the house like some primitive clinic back in Mah’s Fujian village. Doesn’t he realise that Mah’s MS is not going to disappear as easily as he can? My reflection stares back through the dark screen of my laptop. I can see Bah’s deep-set eyes, that same intensity that often comes over him. I try to picture myself with a rounder nose, droopy jowls and patches of grey hair. I bend my lips into a smile to remind myself of what he looked like in happier days. Through the open study door, I can hear Korean tempers flaring out of the TV. Mah is comforting herself with other people’s troubles. I wish she didn’t have to. Running alone let Harold duck out of his day and shut out the stream of people – and too many lawyers! – who filled it. The solitude also let him focus on his breathing and watch for signs of an asthmatic attack. But this evening, he didn’t mind chatting with the students. Their youthful energy had transformed the city, making it thump anew. Sure, the political ideals they hung on to were old and flabby, but they weren’t being championed by Harold’s grumpy middle-aged peers, all too keen to seek fatter slices of the economic mooncake for themselves. The students’ look was fresh – bookworms and baby fat.

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Harold, Jeffrey and Tabby slalomed their way through the crowd gathered in Tamar Park. They passed a student who had put on a mask of Hong Kong’s Chief Executive as a leering vampire with blood-stained fangs. He was yelling, ‘Fuck me! Fuck my government!’ as the three jogged past. They turned westward at the waterfront towards the skyscrapers of Central, backlit by an auburn sunset. They then jogged down to Pier 10 before turning back. From this distance, they could see that the Admiralty crowd was now sprawled across the entire government complex. The riot police had also grown, both in numbers and agitation. ‘So isn’t it risky to be here, Uncle Kam?’ Jeffrey panted, as he struggled after Harold along the harbour promenade. ‘I’m sure Beijing has bigger threats than a fashion executive who makes active wear that Chinese people don’t seem to want anymore,’ he replied between easy breaths. ‘No way, Uncle!’ Tabby said, ‘I have a rack full of LUCIEN clothes. You’re just being modest.’ Harold chuckled. ‘It has nothing to do with modesty, believe me! And besides, you’re biased because you dated Lucas. How long was it? A year?’ He heard Tabby swallow a sharper breath. Jeffrey broke the awkward silence. ‘So his website is doing crazy, huh? Looks like Jack Ma’s going to have to watch his back. What’s Lucas’ secret?’ ‘Who knows,’ Harold shrugged. ‘Maybe it’s all that Red Bull he drinks. My son – Il Toro Rosso!’ ‘Yeah,’ Jeffrey laughed. ‘Well, he should channel some of that energy towards other causes. Like this one.’ Jeffrey jogged up alongside Harold and spoke in a lower voice. ‘Can I tell you something, Uncle Kam? I can’t speak for Tabby, but a lot of his classmates admire him. Half of them have even given him their CV! Even though he’s so pro-China, at least he knows what he wants. The rest of us just complain about the government, the tycoons, corruption, blah, blah. But Lucas gets on with life.’

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They slowed to a walk as they merged back into the crowd. The protesters’ chanting had become more urgent. Harold turned to look more closely at Jeffrey. As the young man surveyed the sea of taut faces around him, his own grew darker. It betrayed ambivalence and a complicated mix of envy and admiration, some of it probably centred on Lucas. Harold was surprised by Jeffrey’s self-doubt. Here were the students, assembled by the thousands and raring to bust open a brightly festooned piñata – democracy! – swinging within reach above their heads. It was their moment. So what was the worry? That the damned thing wouldn’t crack open? Or that what tumbled out might be more rancid than tasty? ‘What do you kids really want?’ Harold asked. ‘Are you so eager to inherit this screwed-up world?’ Jeffrey shrugged. ‘Sure, why not? The way things are now, we feel squeezed out. Meanwhile, the tycoons just collect rent and kiss Beijing’s ass.’ ‘All we want is the chance to be ourselves rather than what the world demands of us,’ Tabby added. ‘Yeah,’ Jeffrey agreed. ‘Don’t we deserve as good a shot at life as your generation got?’ Tabby frowned. ‘We don’t all want to go begging for a job or a handout from someone like Li Ka-shing.’ ‘Oh I see,’ Harold said. ‘But asking Lucas is okay?’ He did not expect a reply. Jeffrey simply pursed his lips. Tabby’s eyes darted away. Losing a boyfriend to a business still clearly hurt. Lucas and Vivien. How different they suddenly seemed to these students. It dawned on Harold that he’d never had this kind of conversation with his own kids. In fact, they hadn’t seemed to ask for his advice or help with anything. Everyone’s children needed the occasional boost. Why not his? He felt unsettled not knowing whether the reason or blame was theirs or his. A dull thud overhead brought him back to the moment. Looking up, he saw an angry grey cloud of smoke burst from a canister. All around him men began to yell. As the smoke showered down, the crowd scrambled for cover. A fat student carrying a heavy box tripped and fell at Harold’s feet. Water bottles tumbled out of the box and scattered.

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Tabby trampled one of them as she scurried over to Jeffrey. She sheltered under his outstretched arm, her white sneakers now drenched. I’m not much in the mood tonight for Mah’s black chicken soup yet again, with those bitter lotus nuts and gummy mushrooms. I went into the kitchen, waved away the maid, and grabbed a couple of buns stuffed with tuna. Seeing Mah still hooked on her TV drama, I’ve also snuck myself two Red Bulls. I eat in front of my laptop while I check my monthly figures. It’s the end of September, and I’m stoked that the visitor traffic and gross merchandise sales numbers have grown five times since last year. But then I notice that the best performing category again is active wear. And the hot brand is JAMMAS – the LUCIEN knock-off made by Bah’s former business partners. How bittersweet. ‘Bah, you’ve got to get LUCIEN online,’ I’d insisted way back – two years ago. ‘I’ll even set up a storefront for you and put it on the landing page of my website.’ ‘No way,’ he’d groused. ‘It’ll just cannibalise our retail shops. And anyway, why the hell are you creating a sales channel for other brands to compete against ours? Is that how you treat your father?’ If he saw how well JAMMAS was doing now, he’d be crushed. I sigh and take a sip of my drink. This ‘I told you so’ moment feels pretty empty. My phone rings. The screen lights up with Tabby’s name. Woah. I haven’t heard from her in months and it’s not like her just to call me out of the blue. I somehow doubt she’s any less pissed off about the way I broke up with her. Her friends told me that no guy had ever turned his back on her like that before. So I can’t figure out why she’d call. I hit the ‘Ignore’ button and turn back to the screen. My phone pings with a new text. It’s Tabby again: Hurry call me badk – its abut your Bah. I almost choke on my tuna bun. Harold grabbed Jeffrey by his shirt collar and Tabby by the wrist. ‘Let’s go!’ He pulled them away from the rolling cloud of tear gas. Tabby stumbled over the chubby student who was still lying there,

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covering his head with his arms, but she managed to stay on her feet. The three of them juked through the mayhem, using elbows and shoulders to avoid being flattened. More canisters had burst over the crowd and a tide of umbrellas had sprouted into a feeble canopy. The nylon shells quivered as the gas swallowed them. Frantically looking around, Harold spotted a gap in the barricades. ‘Through there!’ He pushed Jeffrey and Tabby ahead of him. ‘Quickly. And then keep running.’ As they ran up to the barricade and tried to squeeze through the opening, a policeman in a riot helmet raised his baton. He swung it hard against the back of Jeffrey’s neck, sending him tumbling to the ground. Tabby screamed, covered her head and dropped to her knees. ‘What the hell!’ Harold shouted, and he lunged at the policeman. He didn’t see the other officers bearing down on him until they were at his side. ‘Ting! Stop!’ one of them barked. Harold swung around towards him. The policeman raised a black can and squeezed the trigger. Our driver brakes hard as we come to a long line of cars, stopped dead on Queen’s Road East. I wince at the sight of two taxi drivers ahead, pacing back and forth outside their red Toyotas, one driver smoking a cigarette. Their vehicles are idling mid-lane, doors ajar. Our driver – who is normally great at snaking around stopped buses, double-parked lorries with barechested men unloading God-knows-what, and crooked old ladies with shopping trollies ignoring traffic lights – doesn’t even bother punching the car horn. The jam’s obviously been caused by whatever the hell is happening in Admiralty up ahead. I rock back and forth in the back seat. My leg bounces up and down like a piston. I can’t get the sound out of my head – Tabby’s broken voice on the phone describing Bah getting hit with pepper spray, writhing on the ground in agony. I mean, what the fuck! The police did that? And Bah had fallen backwards onto his knapsack, cracking his inhaler. Tabby had called 999, but wasn’t sure whether the emergency services would help a protester, or how quickly. I had grabbed Bah’s Albuterol and dispenser, tried to tell Mah calmly that I was heading out to see him, and bolted out the door.

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I dial Tabby. ‘How is he?’ ‘Oh God, it’s awful.’ She’s trying to sound calm but I can hear the bubbling hysteria. ‘He’s . . . I’ve poured water on his face to try to clean it, but . . . the pepper’s even burning my fingers. Where are you?’ ‘I’m stuck in some shitty traffic. Goddammit!’ ‘Hurry, Lucas.’ She starts to sniffle, then cry quietly. ‘He just wanted us to be strong. . . .’ ‘Please, Tabby. Stay focused.’ I poke my head out the car window. The two taxi drivers are still pacing by their cars. Meanwhile, pedestrians amble along the sidewalk, obliviously staring through shop windows at McLarens, antique furniture and noodles. ‘Fuck it!’ I throw open the car door, making our driver jump. He twists around to see what I’m up to. ‘Tabby, put your phone against Bah’s ear,’ I say, shutting the door behind me and breaking into a run between the two lanes of cars. I hear tortured groans and burbling coming through the phone. He’s choking, his air pipes clogged up, his lungs straining for air. My father. A proud man. Someone who at times has tried to mould me after him and, at other times, to toughen me up by keeping his distance. Someone who has cared enough about me and Viv to name his business after us. ‘Bah, can you hear me? It’s Lucas. I’m on my way.’ His gasps pause for a moment as he mutters something. I can’t make it out, but I know he’s said my name. ‘Hang on, Bah. Just a bit more.’ I start to sprint. My elbow smacks against the wing mirror of a minivan, but I don’t let it slow me down. ‘Listen to my voice, and keep breathing.’ I swerve onto the sidewalk. My eyes are trained on the dark expanse of Admiralty’s towers at the end of the neon-lit shop row. My thoughts skitter about, trying to work out what lies ahead. I twist my foot a few times on the cracked and uneven pavement. My deep breaths heighten the barbed smells of the Wanchai streets – roasting meats, rust, mildew, dried herbs. I listen to Bah’s wheezing coming through the phone. As terrible as it sounds, I feel relief in the rhythm of it, the life it implies. I’m also breathing hard now, in out in out. So long as I can take in air, Bah can too. I believe it. I’m almost there.

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Zheng Danyi

Zheng Danyi Poetry

translated by Luo Hui

Peng Chau in memory of an old friend 1. Who are these old people waiting for, on the pier, sitting as if for ever? The banyan tree throws a shadow like a giant mod parasol irregularly shaped, cast over equally irregular rings, mounds, clusters. Southern accents, faces so familiar you can’t really tell who is who in the glaring sun like turtledoves finches magpies sparrows chirping overhead, flocking up flocking down, who is, who isn’t, who cares?

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Who cares – old minds harbouring vague sentiments of Hong Kong identity, dignity within, old-style elegance, who is, who isn’t, who cares? Scattered empty chairs, too many, also known as elders’ chairs, token respect for seniority, substitute for filiality, like giant parasols, irregular equation: three chairs to each sitter, proof of easy old age, but never more than a third occupied. The old people sit as if they’re on boats, buses, airplanes. Young people would rather stand, or sit on the ground, the slope, the steps – better leave the chairs empty, or give them to tourists who take them up ungratefully. Empty, the chairs are useful public art – installation, multi-colour, local flavour. On windy, rainy days, there are twice as many empty chairs. 2. Arithmetic of the heart, adding, subtracting dividing, multiplying – compassion carried too far, as if to say old age is inevitable, how can one be so blind? Outright denial, as if to question concoctions of immortality, so much hype – but who can escape it?

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As if to ask, ‘Another trip to Hong Kong?’ As if Uncle Yang, not having travelled for so long finally recognised Auntie Chen, an old flame. Sunny, cloudy, windy, windless neither black nor white, like sesame seeds separated from watermelons and potatoes, mixed with other sesame seeds, stacked, piled up, no longer distinguishable to the eye, who is, who isn’t. Who comes, who doesn’t, who leaves as if wind and rain are both good at chair arithmetic. Now hot, now cold, a greeting becomes a chorus, more empty chairs and even more with wind and rain. One dies, three chairs mourn, in Peng Chau one gone, three empty. 3. Sitting quietly on the pier sometimes grumbling in the dense shade of giant parasols, not really sitting, but lying, leaning, inclining. One moment joyous shouting, rising, pulling arms holding each other, laughing the next moment mournful, crying nameless tears.

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Zheng Danyi

Ever punctual, like human automatons disguised in old-fashioned clothes, hearts still tenderly lit like energy-efficient bulbs sitting, quietly digesting their dinners or sitting like solar water heaters bolted to rooftops, fixed on one year, one month, some body, some story until motionless wordless. Sometimes the banyan trees also keep quiet to conserve energy, but when the wind blows at high tide they shed noisy brown leaves and seeds. Life’s grand theatre some enter, some exit to look, or not to look to wake, or not to wake, or not wishing to wake. 4. Then, what of those birds? the kids are always asking. First the birds, then the adults – then like birds they flock to the water or the market, to ask the fish. The birds. Don’t they speak for these trees and elders? Especially at dawn and dusk, chirping non-stop. These giant trees, in the quiet before the first gong is heard hang above the elders, above scampering cats

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and dogs, by the pier, year after year after year. Post office and doctor’s office, one each; police station and fire station, one each. One laundry shop, called ‘Laundry Shop’ One bakery, called ‘Bakery’ One library, called ‘Library’ Tin Hau Temple, one and only Mother Dragon Temple, one Daoist, Buddhist, Catholic, Protestant – one each in peaceful co-existence. 5. Sometimes the pier also hovers over passengers embarking and disembarking. Hovering like the trees, as the drunkards see it. Hovering like the turtledoves finches magpies sparrows in the trees, over intoxicated hallucinating heads as if the pier became native fishermen peasants peddlers and their children and nuns and monks and Teochew builders and Huizhou bricklayers and Hokkien restaurant owners Thai and Vietnamese chefs and drugstore clerks ex-Canton illegal immigrants and their offspring and worshippers in Tin Hau and Mother Dragon recluses and their hermit friends and Christians Shunde carpenters boatmen and their sons-in-law and penniless tramps bankrupts and out-dated craftsmen gone crazy and descendants of former butchers and their brothers and Daoists

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and quack doctors Catholic landlords renters and their sisters and the average guy mixed with South Asian maids and their countrymen and the French bar owner Italian gallery clerk Escapist gweilo artists and tourists . . . Embarking and disembarking, like fish, as the drunkards see it. Yet the pier is just a silent empty plot that the kids skirt around while playing, fifteen metres from where the boat is moored, twenty-five metres from where the old people are moored. A chorus of cymbals gongs and pipes: who is who isn’t who cares about funeral procession, filial piety, clothes in mourning, and the wailing suona, reverberating, refusing to go. Who cares about the pier, the silent empty plot? 6. When rainstorms come, the banyan trees quickly retrieve their giant shade visibly, or invisibly like the young and old, men and women, quickly take in the drying sheets and underwear from out the window, on rooftops, in courtyards and when rainstorms come, the number of chairs magically increases in Peng Chau. In Peng Chau, rainstorms suffer from mental short-circuits, playing arithmetic games, never tiring of hot, cold, adding, subtracting.

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When rainstorms come, the elders disappear like tree shadows, fading floral tablecloths dripping sheets and blouses. Some will never come back, leaving chairs empty by the pier, tumbling in the wind. Who is, who isn’t, who cares, who holds a death exemption card? Who really, except those who find nirvana, or become gods? A chair is a chair, logically speaking but in illogical sickness, there are chairs within chairs, many of them, otherwise how do chairs multiply in a flash? There are old people hidden amongst old people, otherwise why does death never end? Similarly, there are banyan trees within banyan trees perhaps even mulberry trees, lychee and banana trees, cotton flower and logan trees. There are South China tigers within the finches and there are abacuses, skinny Chinese teachers – otherwise why was there a Nanwan Incident in Wanxing Terrace? Similarly by extension, Finger Hill is obviously lower than Nanshan Road, and therefore sometimes higher than Da Dong Mountain. Similarly, within Mandarin there are Cantonese Hokkien, Hakka and Teochew dialects And, naturally, French, English, Thai, Japanese, Italian and bird-talk, cat-talk, dog-talk and octopus-grouper-eel-talk and even ginger flower-and jackfruit-talk.

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In Peng Chau, the ocean usually lies flat nonchalantly promising giant waves, as if forgetting words. On a cloudy day, mountain means no mountain according to Zen talk or Dao talk. In the metaphysical moment when wind means no wind, rain means no rain a cloudy day can hardly become a sunny day.

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The First Noble Truth The Fir stLauer Nathan Noble Trut h

Nathan Lauer

The Realm of Gods There is no Bodhisattva practice superior to the compassionate taking of life. – Nakahara Nantembo (1839–1925 CE), Rinzai Zen Buddhist Master

‘L

isten to me, You son of a whore, You’re going to die now. There’s no point in fighting. Accept it. For the good of the people You must

die.’ His Holiness, the XIIIth incarnation of the divine Spyan Ras Gzigs, Thupten Gyatso, Dalai Lama, Theocrat of the land of Po, was pinned down on His right side with His right arm trapped beneath Him. The thief ’s hands were wrapped around His throat with crossed thumbs pressing firmly into the two arteries on either side of His neck. He kicked and bucked His body vainly while the thief straddled Him, holding fast. His left hand clawed weakly at the thief ’s face. His long delicate nails broke the thief ’s skin. Blood wept slowly from his cheek. The thief had no nails on any of his fingers and so drew no blood as he kept an even, steady pressure upon the blessed throat. It was then that the thief found himself in a most curious state of mind. It was a pleasant sensation, but one that was not immediately recognisable as such. Removing himself from the moment, from the action of murdering the spiritual and temporal leader of his people, to reflect on his state of being, it became clear exactly what this was. It was pleasure that he was feeling: pure, naked pleasure. This was entirely unexpected. 147

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He had played out this moment in his mind thousands of times. The reality was quite different from any of his imagined rehearsals. He had never expected, for example, that he would have hesitated for so long at the final moment before striking, nor that his quarry would have likewise stood dumbly staring at him for several heartbeats before turning to run. This final position of the struggle was something else he would never have imagined. Who ever heard of a man strangled lying sideways? In all his fantasies he had of course expected the icy satisfaction of vengeance, the pleasure of accomplishing a long sought goal, but these pleasures were, in his mind, always hidden behind hatred and aggression, bloodlust and sadistic glee. Revenge should be taken in anger, he had thought, and remembered with pleasure. He was not at all prepared for what he felt now, as the Divine prana weakened in its flow beneath his thumbs. Nothing but pleasure was in him until it was joined by the awareness of that pleasure, and then by curiosity about the nature of the pleasure and on to the moment he found himself in now, which was this: having attained this state he did not wish to relinquish it. It was his firm desire to spend the rest of what might be a long and prosperous natural life continuously strangling his nation’s high priest and political ruler. The young lama’s prana was clearly escaping. His left hand barely pushed against the thief ’s face. His eyes clouded over. As His body became limp and His eyes rolled back, indicating that the prana had now reversed into the nadis, the thief knew that soon it would be over. The journey of more than half of his life was now to culminate in the action that would free him from the all-consuming need to commit that action. He looked at the now peacefully slackened lips as they turned blue, and he decided that he could not give up the pleasure of the act just yet. He recognised the foolishness of what he was doing: the fact that he was only risking capture – or worse, failure – in delaying. He released his grip even as he silenced a critical thought in the back of his mind. With practised hands he trussed the lama up against the intricately carved bedpost and gagged Him with wadded strips of prayer tapestry. It struck him briefly that he had not hesitated in finding where and how to restrain his victim, as if without realising it himself he had planned this.

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With the violence over for now, the thief found himself, as he often did in such circumstances, feeling weak and faint. It was always worse when he worked alone. The presence of an accomplice forced him at least to put on a show of strength. Now, with his holy prisoner still unconscious, he was free to tremble and whimper slightly, sucking at his filthy fingertips and shifting his weight from one foot to the other. He recalled the medicinal evening snack he had seen set out for His Holiness on an octagonal table by the window. The thief sat down on a rosewood chair, set high in the style of the Middle Kingdom, with silk cushions embroidered in a lion motif; and he ravenously devoured the light meal of cool buttered tea, orange slices, and rice. He briefly stared out the window into the blue-black night sky. By the time he noticed that the Dalai Lama had awoken he had regained his composure. He put on his wrathful face and slowly crossed the opulent chamber, stepping around magnificently inlaid and painted tables and chairs and over rugs of Kashmiri wool and tiger skin. The Grand Lama was tied in the prawn position: one length of rope around His thighs and ankles holding His legs crossed in an inverted lotus position, while a second piece of rope formed a harness around His chest, securing His arms behind His back. When he was a stride away, the thief produced a large Nepalese kukri from the folds of his monk’s robe. The lama’s eyes lit up in terror and He shook His head, pleading unintelligibly into His gag. He let out muffled screams as the thief wordlessly raised the broad blade. The cry rose in pitch as the blade fell and He turned His head down and away. The Theocrat was showered in a hail of multi-coloured splinters as the heavy knife tore through the exquisitely carved figures of the Buddha, Bodhisattvas, and other divine personages adorning the bed frame. The thief left the dagger embedded in the shoulder of a fearsome, carved garuda and resumed his strangling of the young lama, who struggled uselessly, attempting to use His jaw as a lever against the older man’s grip. Once again the thief was wonderfully overwhelmed by a perfect contentment, even purer than the last, perhaps because this time he did not need to hold his victim down. He was able even to sit beside His

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Holiness and so to throttle Him quite at leisure. As before, when he saw that the prana had reversed into the nadis, he released his grip. The thief reached above the limp body and recovered his blade, which he sheathed under his robes, and took a moment to admire the bed on which they sat. The bed of the Dalai Lama was high and luxurious, like the throne of some giant God-King. Its heavy foundation was decorated with a pair of sculpted lions in relief running down the length of each side. The mattress was covered with pure white woollen blankets. The frame, beyond the damage done by the kukri, was a perfect series of sacred beings hanging among lotus flowers carved in hardwood and vibrantly painted. He reclined and sank into the bed as if drawn into it. He closed his eyes and had the sense that to sleep in it, at that moment, would be to forget all of life’s pain. It was the bed of one who had never suffered. The soft moans and weeping of the captive lama stirred the thief to rise and resume the slow murder. Escaping through his nose, the lama’s shrieks were high pitched and nearly pierced His gag. They were the sort of screams that a man unaccustomed to screaming would describe as womanly, but that one with experience in causing screams or being caused to scream would recognise as the ordinary sounds of terror from an individual helpless in the face of an impending violent death. In His tear-filled eyes the thief clearly saw suffering. It was, the thief imagined, the first time that these eyes had held this burden. This time, before the prana reversed, the thief relaxed his grip. He paused a moment to let the Grand Lama catch His wind, and then he spoke. ‘How does it feel to suffer after so many lifetimes in Nibbana? ‘I know Your secret. I know You found the double meaning behind the Noble Truths. I know that this back door to Nibbana opens the Bodhisattva Path to grant clairvoyance and self-awareness in reincarnation. I know that the Realm of Men uniquely allows for You to repeat this cycle over and over, always maintaining Your wealth and power. A lesser being would have advanced to the Realm of Gods, but a god does not have absolute power over its peers: You would have no armies to protect You against the combined force of Your kamma: this You could only have in the Realm of Men.

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‘A few simple clues left to Your courtiers and lama brethren are all they need to find You and to reinstate Your rule in Your next life. It is only through desire that You continue to exist with power and wealth and it is only through power and wealth that You exist free of suffering in the state of Nibbana, despite Your desire. You have played the laws of the Buddha like a crafty courtier and found Your own shortcut off the Middle Way. ‘But the Second Noble Truth is no less true in its inverse: all suffering is caused by desire, and all desire causes suffering. You have found a way to use desire to relieve Your own suffering. But the suffering it causes does not vanish. The suffering caused by Your desire goes out into the world around You. ‘I know because I have suffered for Your desire and Your power.’ The thief stared into the eyes of the Dalai Lama of Po, as, he believed, rarely any mortal man dares. ‘I come here to avenge myself upon You. I intend to kill You. I intend to make You suffer. I know that to be the only way You can be prevented from reincarnating again in the Realm of Men. And then You will pay at last for Your greed where You belong, among the hungry ghosts.’ The Great Lama had no idea what the thief was talking about. ‘I was born Ragyapa. Untouchable. Nobody. ‘It was me, my mother, my three older brothers, my younger brother, and my four fathers in a hut smaller than this room, made of mortared horn and bone on the east side of town. Even for Ragyapa we were poor. The only things we owned were our clothes, a cooking pot, a few meagre pieces of furniture, and our working knives. We all took what work we could as slaughterers, butchers, and undertakers. ‘As far back as I remember I helped my mother and fathers with the family trade. Every day my brothers and I would follow our fathers out of the city to the slaughter-yards where we would help them at their work. My first duty as a young boy was to scrape clean the hides that one of my fathers or brothers had stretched for me. As I grew older I took on more responsibility for the butchering and skinning: fowl at first, and

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then slicing the throats of goats and yak myself. Always we were just barely able to pay our rent, tithes, and taxes. ‘But as long as there was work we never went hungry or unclothed. As long as animals needed killing we had blood to drink and gelatine to eat, boiled down from sinews and hide scrapings. As long as bodies needed burying we had the cloth from their shrouds. ‘The path that led me here began with my mother and me in that hut. The rest of the family was away assisting a burial in the sky. I had gone with them but finished my portion of the work and had been allowed to leave early. I was sewing an extra pair of trousers from the body’s shroud while mother was stewing a pot of hide scrapings and innards. Outside, we heard the sound of weeping. Mother was inclined to ignore it but she didn’t protest when I went to investigate. A young novice was squatting against the wall of our hut. His body quaked with sobs. Held loosely in his hand was a rope, the other end of which was tied to a yak, which, in turn, was tied to three goats. It was a doubly strange sight. We very rarely saw members of the Holy Sangha of Buddhadamma in our part of town, and I could not remember ever having seen a monk leading livestock. ‘ “Can I help you, sir?” I asked. ‘ “I don’t think you can, boy.” He looked up at me and wiped the filthy tears from his face. “No one else in this place can.” His face sank back into his hands and he softly wept. I sat down beside him and put my hand on his shoulder. He told me that he had been hastily sent out by his superior after news came that a wagonload of meat bound from the slaughter-yards near Deprung monastery had been beset by vultures and run by its panicked yak down a ravine. It was the night of a great feast and now the kitchen was in chaos. “I was sent out to purchase meat. I thought . . . I thought I was being clever. I didn’t go to the market. My uncle – he’s a well-off monk – many business interests. He told me: ‘Always in business, look at the man you’re buying from and ask yourself: Where is he buying from? And if you know the answer to this ask yourself: Why am I not buying from the same place? And if you don’t know the answer to this, then go to where he buys from and see if you can’t also buy from there, because it will always cost you less.

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‘ “So that is what I did. I thought, ‘Where does the meat merchant get his meat?’ And I thought, ‘At the slaughter-yards.’ So I went to the slaughter-yards and I negotiated with a nomad for three goats and a yak, cheaper than what I would have paid at the merchant’s. But that’s when it all went wrong. He brought me these creatures and took my money. When I asked him to please bring me not living creatures but only meat, and to please have it delivered to the palace, he told me that that was between the Ragyapa and me. ‘ “The meat would no longer be blameless for me, and my kamma would suffer. This I could live with, but when I asked the slaughterers for help I found out that I had paid too high a price; and that, far from making a small profit as I had hoped, I didn’t even have enough money to pay for the butchering and a cart to transport the meat back.” He looked up to the sky. “And the heathen Ragyapa have no sense of charity and don’t care for the merit to be gained from helping a member of the Sangha.” ‘Meat bound for the Potala! I shuddered with excitement as I thought of the great lamas, perhaps Your own Holy self, in the body You then inhabited, eating meat that I had helped to prepare. I asked him how much coin he had and he showed me. It was a low price but we could always use the money, and my tailoring could wait. I was also certain that the foolish monk wouldn’t know to deduct the value of the hides, blood, and offal from his price and so we would eat very well tonight. “I can dress them for you but we have no cart.” ‘ “Well that doesn’t help me at all!” There was no way the two of us could carry all of that meat to the other side of the city. It was well past the time that he was expected back. He blubbered as he told me of the beating he could expect upon his empty-handed return. ‘I did my best to calm him. I had him dry his tears and blow his nose on my sleeve. The silly monk’s ignorance astounded me. Any Ragyapa child knows: “The freshest meat is the easiest to carry”. As I told him, “Let the stock carry itself across town and I’ll dress it when we get there.” ‘He looked up, “Can you? You can’t. . . .”

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‘ “Well of course I can,” I interrupted him. “All I need is my knives. I’ll do the goats here and the yak can carry them and its own self to the palace.” ‘The monk remained troubled, “But. . . .” he thought for a moment, then nodded, “I suppose it’s the only way. You will be careful, though. . . .” ‘Would You believe that I thought that he was concerned that I would cut myself or be gored by an unrestrained animal, that he was questioning my competence because of my age? He was the one crying like a baby because no one ever taught him how to go shopping for groceries. Do I go to the monastery and tell you how to pray? I thought to say but I brushed off his comment and drew my sticking knife and gut hook, suspecting correctly that he wouldn’t have the stomach to stay and watch. By the time I was done I had forgotten the insult. I left Mother with a pot full of blood and the offal wrapped in the hides. I took the liberty of keeping the hearts and livers as well. The monk had no idea that they were rightfully his. We set on our way. ‘We left the bleached white bone walls and filthy streets of the east side of town, skirting the edge of the Han quarter along the low wall that segregates their neighbourhood. The young monk was greatly relieved but still seemed uneasy, which I attributed to a nervous humour on his part. He passed the time by questioning me on my knowledge of the teachings of Buddhadamma. From the first he told me that I should not be ashamed if I did not know or understand: that the state of spiritual ignorance is the starting point from which all other conditions arise, even the path leading to enlightenment. ‘My understanding was largely limited to the fact that greedy boys come back as tigers or wolves, bad boys come back as women or poor men, and good boys come back as rich men or monks. He told me that what I was referring to was the law of kamma, which was a true and important thing to understand, but, that he would repay my willingness to help him by teaching me something special, not exactly a secret, but something that was usually not taught to civilians: the key to understanding everything that the Buddha had taught. The Four Noble Truths: it was the first I had heard of them. I understood very little of

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their meaning, of course, but with the monk’s help I dutifully memorised them. ‘ “Do you understand, then,” he asked, coming back to the First Truth, “that to suffer – to be sad, angry, and lonely – is a part of life? Indeed, that it could be said that ‘life is suffering’?” ‘It was a beautiful day, I remember. The end of summer, the birds busy in the fragrant green trees as we walked the great road through the orchards and fields that separate Your palace from Your city. In the distance the great Potala Palace rose up on the slope of Red Hill above the dim grey smoke of Shol Village. It was wonderful. I felt such pride. I had of course travelled the same route before, but this time it was not a mere public festival I was going to attend. I was feeding Your Holiness. My hands had touched the meat that would that day sustain the Ocean of Wisdom. ‘ “And the cause of all this suffering, the Buddha reasoned, is our desires. We want what we can’t have. We wish to avoid what we don’t like. We hate to have the things we love taken from us.” ‘ “So,” I ventured, “You were crying back at the slaughtering grounds because you wanted meat but couldn’t get it?” ‘ “Oh! Well, I suppose so. Yes, I wanted the food for the banquet and my suffering was caused by my thwarted desire. That’s very good!” ‘I spoke with the free curiosity of a child, “And your desire to avoid getting beaten. That’s another reason.” ‘ “Yes, that’s also true.” Looking back, I can see that my discussion of his weeping was bothering him, but at the time I was oblivious. ‘ “Was it also the great lamas’ desire for the meat? Was it also that they wanted meat to eat and if they didn’t get it they would suffer and then they would make you suffer as punishment? Does desire cause suffering for more than just the one person? Does their desire cause your suffering?” ‘ “No, that’s not it. The great lamas are enlightened. They have no desire but to help all men become enlightened. Enlightened means having no desire.” ‘ “So, they don’t want the meat? Why would they beat you?” ‘ “The great lamas don’t beat anyone. It was my masters and teachers who sent me for the meat. And one of them would have beaten me if I had failed.”

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‘ “Because he wants the great lamas to eat meat.” ‘ “Yes.” ‘When we approached the base of Red Hill the young monk became pensive, thinking of a place where I might slaughter and dress the yak. I had no idea why he should be so concerned but he insisted on the need for privacy. Of course this ruled out the village. He decided it would be best if we went behind the hill to the foliage surrounding the Lukang Gardens. ‘ “I think the great lamas should tell your master that they don’t want any meat. That way he’ll stop wanting to give it to them and maybe he’ll get enlightened.” ‘ “Please, it . . . it doesn’t work that way.” ‘ “But why?” ‘ “Be silent! Please. I’m sorry. We need to be very quiet. Do you understand?” ‘We took a side road into the outskirts of the garden and after the young monk had thoroughly scouted the area he led me to a secluded copse. He would go to fetch a wheelbarrow, he told me. Once again and much to my annoyance, as I drew my blade and made ready to stick the yak, he bade me be careful. This time I did turn to ask if I should go tomorrow to the monastery and advise him in his prayers but he was already gone. Never minding the foolish monk, I went about my trade. ‘The yak bellowed as I stuck its vein and it bucked against the stump to which I had tied its head. It bled out onto the rich, leafy soil. I filled my drinking bowl with blood as we often do and made a quick snack of it. In the distance I could hear someone approaching but paid no notice. ‘I was wiping the bowl clean on my sleeve when I heard a sharp call from behind me. “You there! What are you doing?” It was a monk. I recognised him as either a guard or a soldier by his staff and by the fact that he wore trousers. ‘I turned and held towards him the instruments of my trade. With pride I spoke, despite my fear of his rank, “Sir, I am slaughter-” I began, but managed only a few syllables before he swung with his staff and struck my hands, knocking my knife and chopper to the ground. In an

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instant of pain I found myself face down in a pool of yak blood with a knee on my neck, being quickly trussed up by the guard. ‘Do You understand that to a child things simply are as they are? Children are given no reasons. You are a leader of men. You create law. You have the luxury of questioning what is right and wrong and knowing why it must be so. I only knew that we always slaughtered on the eastern outskirts of town, just as we always eat sitting around a table, just as we always sleep lying on our bedding. I had no idea that it was forbidden to slaughter inside Your city.’

The Realm of Hell Beings . . . those who have a hundred dear ones have a hundred sufferings. Those who have ninety dear ones have ninety sufferings. . . . Those who have one dear one have one suffering. Those who have no dear ones have no sufferings. They are free from sorrow, free from stain, free from lamentation, I tell you. – Siddhattha Gotama (c. 563–c. 483 BCE), Supreme Buddha of the present age

‘Everything happened so quickly after that. I tried to explain to the guard as I alternately stumbled and was dragged along. “It was for the Great Lama!” I cried, “I killed the yak for the Great Lama to eat. There was a monk, a young monk sent to collect meat. He brought me here! Wait for him to come back! Please!” ‘With each excuse I gave he pulled me along more roughly. At first he ignored the specifics of my claims but after I had invoked Your Holy name several times he threw me roughly to the ground and gave me several kicks to the gut. “Blasphemer! I will have no more of it!” He dragged me to my feet. Looking into my eyes he shouted, “Save your lies for the magistrate!” And we continued. He took me to the guard’s station in Shol Village. I was tossed into a windowless cell with a floor of planks while the guard related the circumstances of my arrest and an investigation was made of the scene of the slaughter. ‘I don’t know how long I sat weeping on that floor. I think that I still believed, despite my fear, that it would all end well, that the young monk would return and, finding his meat yet undressed, would seek me

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out and correct the misunderstanding. When the heavy wooden door creaked open, I was hopeful that I would see his foolish face and all would be well. But it was not his face: it was that of the magistrate. ‘I spoke immediately, “Sir, may I go now, sir?” ‘A blinding pain sent me screaming to the floor as he swiped my face with a beaded leather lash. He waited a moment, watching me weep, and then called for a guard. I was carried to another room where the questioning began. They demanded the truth and I believed that the truth was what they wanted. For this reason I continued to tell them my story even as they beat me with their fists and canes and whips. I was eleven years old. I had no understanding of the nature of questioning. I had no other strategy to employ.’ The thief felt a shameful grip of weakness in his throat and he swallowed hard against it. He let the shame and the sadness pass into rage and he wrapped his hands again around the throat of the Dalai Lama and he squeezed. ‘There are times when nothing you do, it seems, can stop your suffering.’ He released his grip and slapped Him hard across the face. The young lama blubbered into His gag as the thief continued. ‘I don’t remember many details of the questioning, but a few strange things caught my notice: the guard scratching his crotch, the thin lines of dirt encrusted in the wrinkles beside the magistrate’s eyes, the smell of his breath. ‘They asked if I knew the penalty for treason. They threatened me with death. They told me they would take me from this place, sew me into a bag of hide, and throw me into the River Kyi to drown. I would never see the light of day, said one. I would never see my family again. It would be worse than that, said the other. They would haul my carcass out of the river, cut off my head, and seal it in a jar of Eternal Damnation. I would never be reborn; it would be a final and irrevocable death. Unless I cooperated with them, they repeated, I would be doomed, and not just in this life: even the chance of redemption in later lives would be eliminated. They had it in their power to remove me from the cycle of life, death and rebirth.

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‘I begged them not to. I just kept telling my story. What else could I do? ‘My story was clearly false, they said; no monk would have me slaughter animals within the palace grounds. Where was this young monk? What was his name? Where was he from? Witchcraft, they said. A curse on Your Holy Self, as You were then, had been my goal, they said. Three goats had been slung right to left over the back of the yak I was bleeding into Your garden’s soil, I’d been drinking the blood “like a demon”, and hidden the bowl up my sleeve: all were cited as evidence. No matter how I answered I was struck again and again. They accused me of lying about my age, because I was large and well muscled for my years. They accused me of trying to attack the guard with my knife. They accused me of being involved with the loss of the supplies on the road from Deprung: since I was lying about the young monk this was the only way I could have known about the accident. ‘It went on and on, the pain never letting up. At one point the magistrate threw up his hands in exasperation and gave a command to the guard that I did not understand. My hands were untied from behind my back and locked into manacles atop a table in front of me. The magistrate left the room and a new questioner arrived. It was not until after he had gouged the flesh under my thumbnail with the third splinter of bamboo that I realised I was required to lie to the representatives of Your Holy authority. As best as I could, I repeated as a confession the accusations I could remember. I didn’t recall them all clearly. But by the time they had ripped the nail off, they seemed to think that I had constructed it well enough for the first day.’ The thief held his disfigured hands up to the young lama’s face and wiped four lines of filth across each tear stained cheek with soft, scartipped fingers.

This is an extract from Bardo, a novel-in-progress.

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Song Lin Poetry

translated by Li Dong

Forgetting 1. The sundial heads that receded in secret. Whose metre drew out their false curves? The altar of your eyes was sunken facing an immense building of tomorrow when a comet hit muxidi.* If I were you, you could be him: a mantissa her last glance crossed the bellowing of the deer. 2. The red homonym of snow, spewing flowers, blooming painlessly a flower triggered the opening non-flower of death which was real. It climbed onto your name under shrubs in spasm – prop-like toes were painted in the black salt of fireflies and were carried away like this very much like the scenes of the recent earthquake. 160

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3. Lightning-fast flames from the machine guns kissed every tender face. The morning taps washed over and over night’s ashes. The scabs would turn into stalagmites, in the heart a missing person came by, a person missing for too long, his thin arms looking like Don Quixote’s. Countdown time was up. Please read, read like the second hand of the clock in the rattling of tracks, what has been mired in confrontation for a thousand years.

* An important access point into central Beijing from the west suburbs. On June 4, 1989 the greatest number of casualties occurred here.

Jiaocheng, 1970 The strait in anguish. Severe typhoons repeatedly made landfall. The loudspeaker replaced the moon, preaching to the sky the philosophy of war. The longan trees, like the blind, stood on the low hillocks, nothing to look forward to. The crabs blew bubbles, still living in their prehistoric recklessness. Cabins of the Fuzhou boat people leaned against dark shoals. I was eleven, my face a country moth, dirty-blond hair, matted. On a golden shell-case that I found I played the national anthem and the Red Youngsters song. I remember people streaming to watch executions in the suburb like a flood, the crowd stamped on each other, wild with joy as if running for life, more frantic than during air-defence exercises.

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I remember those summer nights, endless street wanderings. Someone accused me (of course to my parents) of sneaking into the People’s Theatre over the wall to see a model opera – without buying a ticket! Adults splashed water to cool down summer heat; children were learning how to ‘ride a plane’ in the alleyways. I had no evidence, but I knew among my parents’ comrades, there must have been an informer. He wore sneakers, like a robust athletics teacher. He stared at me, came closer. His fingernail flicked: faster than a grasshopper he flicked the melancholy pimple on my forehead.

Notes from South Xinjiang 1. The reckless god reads the braille of the desert. 2. One night in Kupa, I received a telegram from Mars: there were traces of water. 3. Dead rivers looked like twisted mummies in the gallery of the sky. 4. Language, dust of dust, flies on the long, long road. 5. An oar stands before the boat-shaped coffin. Sailors of the desert sea, tell me, what kind of sail do you dream of? 6. Business caravans head east, and west. The sun bakes eyebrows, beards and crusty pancakes. 7. Go. Once you lie down, you run the risk of being air-dried. 8. From one invisible border to another, I count those disappeared countries. 9. A silkworm once dreamed of Rome; or rather, Rome once dreamed of a silkworm. 10. Breeze in the dense forest, homonym of silk and porcelain. 11. The Han princess Liu Xijun – Sappho of Wusun country – was married to the vast and endless homesickness.

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12. Under the statue of Kumarajiva, I thought: Perhaps his intelligible translation saved Buddhism. 13. On their pilgrimage to Chang’an, the three Buddhist masters walked in the opposite direction to the three wise men. 14. If Emperor Wu of the Han dynasty knew that the Ferghana horse was a horse with a disease, would the history of Ferghana be re-written? 15. The donors depicted on the murals have thin eyebrows. 16. Stupa – navigation system of the desert. 17. What a pity! Gan Ying saw the sea but did not know which one he saw. 18. Petals of the mandala – one five-baht coin after another. 19. The auricle of the crescent rises on the ruins where Xuanzang preached. 20. In the dark labyrinth of the karez, flowing water looks for bright vineyards. 21. Migration – from Sanskrit to Charian, Uighur to Chinese; over battlefields and millennia of forgetting, Maitrisimit flies into my vision like a phoenix. 22. Another Uighur muqam: alas the musailaisi wine, the ice-cold beauty, come quickly and rub out my burning desire for you! 23. In Kashgar, Shen Wei said to me: There are people wherever poplars grow.

The Sun and Rain of West Lake The Buddhist relics in the stupa shine at night. During the day they read the saying: The ferryman is opening a gate of water! The once-forbidden inner lake now leaks spring light with the gift of a brief afternoon play of sun and rain. From the rippling middle blows the homesick song of silkworms and moths – the sun spits threads in the clouds and weaves nets on the water. I fish the red carp in your eyes – come ashore to hold fast this dazzling word.

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The lake poets sit and drink up rainbows in the glass. When wind smokes wave after wave of visitors to sleep, Su Xiaoxiao comes out of the grave and sings: where the clouds break, ecstasy after the rain, sigh for the late sun. Twilight grinds West Lake into the most dazzling word lilacs whisper in your tresses; whispering, the stream of fish in your eyes swims into my arms. I take out a letter, I rise to the solitary summit to watch you – like Zhu Yingtai, the willows by the bank put back on their maiden clothes and in a wedding dress of blue smoke, drift to night. Your lotus heart grows on the water, you reincarnate as a woman and take me through every pavilion and every secret quarter.

Su Xiaoxiao was a legendary courtesan who lived during the Southern and Northern Dynasties and was buried by the West Lake.

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or generations the Acharya family had lived in the same house. Deep and cool, it was set away from the dusty main road and the prying eyes of the street people, the multitudes who wandered on the streets of Cuttack. A hundred-year-old mango tree drooped over the veranda, masking the sun’s intensity. In the spring, it was covered in blossom. Baula: feathery white, strongly fragrant. As spring turned to summer, before the blossoms grew into mangoes, an untimely shower would cause them to float to the ground and cover it in a gentle froth. While their mother prayed that neither the rain nor pests would destroy the delicate blossoms, Nil and Chotu prayed for the mangoes to form and fall. The small, unripe green ones that dropped with a soft plop into their waiting hands – sour enough to take a layer of the tongue away – were eaten with a twist of salt and chilli. The yellow oval ones were eaten as ripe mangoes were meant to be eaten – with your hands squeezing the flesh until the sweet yellow juice flooded your mouth, sometimes dripping on your fingers. Then you ate the soft pulpy flesh until you reached the hard seed, and even that had to be sucked dry. Sometimes Nil and Chotu gave in to temptation and plucked the ones that were not fully ripe, chopped them into small pieces, stole a twist of salt and chilli powder from the kitchen, folded it carefully into some paper, then ate the chopped mango sprinkled red and white. But they had set their own strict limits: never more than four a week to be plucked before their time.

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Nil still remembered that afternoon when he was ten. Chotu and he were up on the highest branches of the tree doing a survey of the crop. He was pointing out the mangoes that were destined to fall in a couple of days and the ones that would stay on to grow and ripen. He noticed a nest set higher up, in the thickest branch. There were always birds around the mango tree, sparrows and bulbuls. Chotu immediately tried to climb higher; he wanted to see the inside of a nest, he said. But Nil said he couldn’t; they had to be careful. There might be eggs hatching, baby birds coming into the world at Tennyson’s ‘peep of day’. It was the first time the boys had seen their home from this high vantage point, and that was how, looking ahead, Nil noticed the open window of the old study. It was the small extension room that had been built on the first floor and was now rarely used. Strangely, he had never noticed before that a large bookshelf stood against the far wall. It rose all the way to the ceiling and, even from this distance, the books looked interestingly old. ‘Look!’ He nudged his brother. . . . Chotu hadn’t grasped the significance. ‘What is it?’ he asked, staring straight ahead, past the room. ‘Have you ever been in that room? Have we ever seen anyone go in there? We must explore it!’ ‘Whose is it?’ ‘Don’t you know anything?! It’s Golak Jeje’s study of course. He can’t go up the stairs any more, remember? No one goes up there. . . .’ In the long summer holidays, the two boys had to find ways to amuse themselves – playing cricket on the terrace, climbing the mango tree, watching television: until their two aunts – their father’s sisters in name, but cousins in reality – arrived with their children, and then, for about ten days, the family house trembled and shook with the noise. Nil and Chotu waited for these days when their cousins visited, and when, five children together, they’d be free to create as much havoc as the old house could take. But there was still a week of waiting left. In the meantime Nil and Chotu had to find something to do. The secret room promised the most exciting adventure they had come across for years.

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Scrambling down the rough branches through the tree’s leafiness, they went upstairs into the anteroom and then to the study. The door to the study was not bolted, so Nil and Chotu burst straight in on the momentum of running up the stairs. Khus screens were rolled over the windows but they looked as dry as bamboo. Nil could see that, unlike downstairs, no one sprayed these screens with water. In the boys’ own room, as the water evaporated, the gentle fragrance of khus settled in the air and it felt cooler; a short respite from the heat that would descend in the afternoon. Here, the air was dry; the smell of something Nil couldn’t place, of something he didn’t know. The table in the corner was bare but for an incense holder that had gathered years of dust on its slender frame. A single chair was placed in front of it. That was the only furniture in the room. Nil whispered, ‘But they sweep this room.’ ‘What do you mean?’ ‘No dust on the floor. Someone sweeps this room, but nobody really uses it.’ Nil felt proud to make such observations. Chotu, younger than him by three years, was completely oblivious. His brother would never make a good detective, Nil thought. He was now looking at the books instead, large bound volumes, rows and rows of books. ‘Look,’ Chotu said, ‘a comic!’ ‘A comic? Where?’ Chotu pulled out a few torn pages of a Phantom comic from between two dark red books. ‘It’s an old one! It could be precious!’ Nil said. ‘We can try to sell it.’ Chotu nodded in agreement, but the plan was quickly forgotten when Nil found something else – an album with a shiny green cover and thick black pages. Black and white photos were stuck down with triangular brown corner pockets. The boys pored over it, their faces touching, their fingers feeling the matte surfaces of the photos like braille. ‘That’s Bapa,’ Nil said, pointing to a boy sitting cross-legged on the veranda. Their father looked smiling into the sky, arms folded across his chest. Thin and bony knees protruded from a loose pair of shorts. ‘Bapa? How do you know?’

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‘He looks just like you! Besides, remember the family photo downstairs? The one in the silver frame? Same boy, right?’ Next to the boy in the picture, his mother stood in a shiny dark saree, smiling down at him. A large necklace covered her throat and her hair was tied up in a high bun. ‘She’s beautiful,’ Chotu said. ‘Is that really Jejema?’ The grandmother they knew stood less than five feet tall, bent double, her hair sparse, her clothes a widow’s white. The woman in the photo stood regally, and the man next to her, a head taller, even more so. Dressed in a suit, a hat and a tie, moustachioed and proud; he looked like an Englishman. ‘Ah! So this is him. . . .’ ‘Who?’ ‘Grandfather of course, Chotu! Vishnu Jeje. He’s the one that went to England.’ ‘And never came back.’ They knew the story. The story they had heard at their grandmother’s lap, when sometimes they went to her room, before bedtime. She told of how their grandfather, Vishnu Jeje, one of the first electrical engineers from Orissa, educated in Calcutta – clever, talented, polished – got a job at twenty-three and so impressed his managers that he was chosen to work in their office in England. ‘Unheard of, a brown man sent to England to work with his white colleagues for two years,’ grandmother would say proudly. Of how letters arrived with stamps bearing the Queen’s head in many different colours, evoking images of England in their humid little town. She repeated anecdotes about the London tube, the markets, the river with its boats. Sometimes parcels arrived, sent through friends of relatives or relatives of friends who were coming to Calcutta and, on one memorable occasion, even to Orissa. He himself had once come home with special gifts for everyone. How proud the entire community was, and how they all said it was only to be expected of the Acharya family! They were also told the story of their illustrious family. The story of this family house. The story they, the future generations, had to remember and honour.

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How their great-grandfather had bought the land when there were only fields around it, on the outskirts of Cuttack town. He dreamed the house and had it built, double-storied, set in the middle of the plot, high ceilinged, with massive bedrooms. When he got married, he built a balcony outside the bedroom for his wife. She grew roses in pots, a thick creeper of madhumalati with its fragrant pink flowers. They had two sons, and when it was time for their sons to marry, they brought their wives home. ‘What good times they were!’ their grandmother said. The elders, the two brothers and their families living together as one large family. As a new bride she had been honoured to be married to this reputed family. Everyone in Cuttack knew the Acharya family. But there was also the story that was never told. The story that never left the house, and the one the children knew they must never ask about. Just a year after his wedding, leaving behind his pregnant wife, Vishnu Jeje had left for London. After some years, all communication from England abruptly stopped. The family waited for news. They sent letters and telegrams but they got no response. The wife and baby forgotten, the old parents forsaken: the land of the sahibs had claimed him, dead or alive. But family tradition meant that the wife and child couldn’t be abandoned, even if the prodigal son never returned. They were moved from the larger bedroom to the smaller room at the back, but remained firmly a part of the family. Jejema lived in that room, till the time she died; the room where she told Nil and Chotu stories about Vishnu Jeje up to the day when the stories had abruptly ceased to arrive from that country far away. Nil, Chotu and their second cousins Kadambi, Jahnvi and Jyoti pieced the story of Vishnu Jeje together by lurking behind closed doors and snatching snippets of conversation, which immediately stopped whenever one of them was caught. Some of the questions, though innocently asked, remained unanswered. Bapa never spoke of his own father. It was from their mother that the boys sometimes heard a laugh, accompanied by a snort, a roll of the eyes. Sometimes, if she was in the mood for it, she would talk of the past, of

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the family she had married into not knowing the blood in its veins, the blood that flowed so thin that a man might abandon his wife and child. ‘My parents didn’t know of this. Had we known. . . .’ she would stop and the boys would wonder. What would have happened had they known? The elders did not talk about it, as if by not doing so the incident might be deemed not to have happened. As if the baby and the mother could pretend they didn’t owe their existence to a man who wasn’t here with this family. As if the mother could forget she had said goodbye to her own parents to become a new woman; and while she remained a daughter-in-law and mother, the woman in her was fated to die. As if the baby could grow up not asking for his father, surrounded as he was by grandfathers and uncles. The Secret Story of the Family had survived, alive in the corners of the house and the minds of the children. Now, in the dark unused study, with the fan whirring over their heads and a few mosquitoes swirling in the darkest corner, the brothers stared at the picture of the man who stood with their grandmother. The traitor, the explorer, the only one who had ever moved out of the family circle and gone – not only out of the state, but out of the country – to live in the ruler’s world. ‘One day I will also go there,’ Nil declared. ‘To see Grandfather? Where is he?’ ‘I don’t know, but I will find out. I will go to England.’ ‘And me? I will come with you.’ ‘Only I will go. It’s my adventure. I thought of it.’ ‘Why can’t I come too?’ ‘I am the elder son. I need to go there and look for him. Bring him back someday.’ Chotu began to cry. ‘I want to go as well. And if you don’t let me, I will tell Ma. Now. She won’t let you go. Wait, I will tell her now!’ It took Nil’s share of the orange lozenges they bought in the morning – twenty-five paise for each little candy in its orange and white striped wrapper – to calm Chotu down and get him to promise not to say a word to anyone. Even at that age he had known that they would never agree to let him go.

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Chotu forgot about it, but Nil had gone back another day to look at the album. Foraging around the study, he’d discovered a sheaf of letters from Vishnu. He read them in secret to understand the other world his grandfather knew. Nil came to understand why, after his grandfather’s disappearance, anything foreign was shunned in the Acharya household. Their grandfathers had been educated in the anglicised Stewart School run by the Christian missionary, but Nil and Chotu were enrolled in the local vernacular school. It was the fault of the English-medium schools and an overexposure to the West that compelled Vishnu to forget his roots. The same mistake would never be made again. Nil and Chotu had been brought up with the Hindu scriptures. They spoke and wrote Oriya and Hindi, whereas even Golak Jeje, who was fluent in English, struggled with his written Oriya. All his life, Nil had wished it hadn’t been so. That he too would have the English-medium education that made boys so polished, so suave, so confident of their superiority over the likes of him. But what he didn’t have, he tried to develop. The careful English, a faint clipping of the words to make it an English-medium accent; a general knowledge developed from the newspapers; an interest in the English movies and music that filtered in from the West. All his life he had been preparing to leave. All his life, since childhood, he had yearned to step out of the familiar. It was his own secret, even to himself. He spent four years studying computer science engineering, then received a job offer from Enterprising Telecom. After just one year in his new job, the resources manager had told him he would be sent to work on a project in England. Enterprising Telecom sent its people across the globe, part of the traffic originating from India; human bridges to Europe, UK, America, the Andes, Peru; anywhere you could think of and anywhere you had never even heard of. They were intelligent, hardworking Indians sent out to colonise the world. The flow continued unabated and brought the world back to India. Mexican, Korean and Italian food was now served side by side with Indian food. Pizza toppings grew chillies and sandwiches with mint chutney were sold at Costa.

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Nil was about to revel in this movement, this phenomenon: outsourcing, the delicious word of prosperity. Throughout the four years of his engineering studies, this is what he had dreamt about, aspired to become. Part of a bigger whole. And England! He could try to find where Vishnu had lived; and with whom. What kind of a man had he been, this man with the hat, who had stood with his eyes proud and head high? This man who was the only man of their family and community to have left all that he knew, and gone to another country? It was only after he received the proposed itinerary that he called his parents. He had rehearsed his story; tell it quickly, convey only a part of the truth. ‘Don’t worry Ma,’ he told his mother, embarrassed to hear her sniffle. ‘It’s only for six months. I’ll be back soon. Maybe you can come and visit me in London?’ The sniffles rose in volume at this, and the phone changed hands. ‘Talk to Bapa,’ she said hurriedly. His father’s voice was angry. ‘Babi!’ he said, using Nil’s childhood nickname. ‘You said you wouldn’t go anywhere far from home.’ Incongruous, to be a man six feet tall and still be called Babi, he thought. ‘You said you would stay in India and even try to transfer back to the office in Bhubaneswar – and now this! England!’ Nil imagined his father shaking his balding head, his shoulders sloping as they always did when he felt a blow to any of his cherished plans. ‘Don’t worry. I will be back soon. I can’t stay beyond six months anyway. I don’t have a Tier 2 visa. It’s a short project, Bapa.’ ‘So you will come back after six months for the visa, and then you will leave again? People who go once never return.’ ‘I will, Bapa! I am telling you, I will.’ ‘So said the ones who went before you.’ His father hung up abruptly. He was a man of few words, almost as if his vocabulary were limited. He instead spoke through measured actions that others knew and understood. Suddenly retreating into a silence was one way to show his anger. Nil knew he would retire to his study and immerse himself in one of his heavy books on the World War till Ma called him for his dinner. Rotis, vegetables and milk. It would be the

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same dinner he had quietly eaten every night for more than forty years. No non-vegetarian food at night, the chicken, meat or fish was only eaten at lunch time. His father was a man of few and unchanging habits. Nil couldn’t tell him he was coming home for a day before he left India. He would arrive on Friday and leave on Saturday evening for Kolkata. But would that one day make any difference to his parents? Most parents sang the same mantra. ‘Go abroad for some years, earn some money, learn what is to be learnt, see what is to be seen, and then return home to India.’ It was the way. He knew his parents worried: the eldest son of the family, submerged and astray; and by adapting to a foreign culture he would forget who he was, who they were. It had happened once before and logically it could happen again. And again. Nil assured them he wasn’t Vishnu Jeje. ‘Those who forget the past are condemned to repeat it,’ his mother said, adjusting her crumpled cotton saree as she spoke, smelling of the fried rohu fish she was cooking Upstairs, Nil packed his suitcase silently, knowing that he would do what he needed to do. The past was over and he wouldn’t get dragged into its vortex. He packed the large brown envelope containing Vishnu’s letters, the paper so fragile that he had carefully photocopied two sets. He looked out through his open window. The sun lit the mango tree. The nests were long gone. The baby birds had flown and perhaps had their own nests on other trees, in other gardens. He noticed some of the leaves drying. His mother had once wanted to get the tree cut, as it was old and the crop wasn’t as extensive it used to be, nor the mangoes as big. But Nil had protested. She conceded and the tree remained, large and shadowy, as big as the house itself. It would always be there for him, whenever he returned. He packed his new grey duffle coat, the hat, the gloves he would need. A ray of light refracted off his new shaving mirror, as he placed it in his toilet bag. Nil shielded his eyes from the bright sun and continued packing his new possessions. Once again he was ten and looking into a small, dark dusty room, to explore childhood wishes and dreams and search for new beginnings.

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Which God is Ours? Which Ang ela Sm God ithisKirkman Ours ?

Angela Smith Kirkman

he sun is setting and the stampede of cyclos pedalling by each market day has given way to the slow, sweaty sway of a tropical evening. The kids are in bed, and Jason and I are perched on the balcony of the home we’ve rented for our two-month stay here in Vietnam, trying hard to catch a breeze. Our lease works out to just under eleven dollars a day. With the money saved, we don’t feel bad about splurging on the local hooch – a bottle of rice wine from the liquor shop down the street. It’s not so bad if you drink it over ice. As Jason delves into the novel that has had him absorbed as of late, and I pull out my notebook to do some of the translation work that’s helping to fund our travels, the evening street vendors begin to replace the daytime cast of characters. The short, lanky man with silky black hair styled in a long bowl-cut who rolls the fake-document laminator up and down the street during the day seems to have been replaced by a taller, darker man with a similar taste in hair styles. His replacement is pushing a three-foot scale, which can apparently tell not only your weight but also your fortune. The old lady in silk pyjamas is back on her corner. Like every other night, she’s pulled her miniature plastic table and chairs to the edge of the street and is serving customers with her signature delicacy: par-boiled duck-embryo eggs. She might also be able to tell your fortune, if you asked. Tonight is the new moon, so the pavements are filled with candlelit altars stocked with offerings to keep the ancestors happy. Every pagoda,

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business, and family home seems to have an altar or tiny shrine to honour a loved one who has passed on. Shrines are stocked with burning incense and gifts ranging from fresh fruit and sticky rice to cigarettes and rice wine, or dolls and fake money – whatever the particular deceased ancestor had a weakness for. Altars are tended to constantly, but receive special attention on new and full moons, festivals, and the anniversary of the ancestor’s death. Cyrus and Bella are particularly attuned to religious idiosyncrasies like these. We’ve been jumping from country to country for a year and a half now, and studying the religion of each has been a big part of their home schooling. Cyrus did a report on Candomblé back in Brazil – country number two – and Bella still has vivid memories of being chased out of mosques (along with her mother) back in Tunisia – country number three. Last month in Thailand – country number ten – we awoke one morning to find Bella kneeling in prayer in front of a makeshift Hindu shrine she had erected to honour her friend, Rakshita, who we had just left behind in India. Little Cruz, whose main interest these days is in whatever his older sister happens to be doing, accompanied her on bended knee, eyes closed tight. Cruz recently turned five, and much of our home schooling has been optional for him. He’s becoming more aware of the fact that he isn’t quite as savvy as his older siblings to the differences between the countries we’ve visited. He’s not even entirely sure, to be honest, which country we’re from. The other day he wanted to know whether people back home built shrines and altars, but he couldn’t quite remember the name of home. Instead, he said, ‘You know, in that country where all my cousins are from?’ This stopped me in my tracks. I could just see my Pa waggling his finger at me in disgust. Didn’t I tell you this would happen if you followed through with this crackpot notion to schlep those kids all over hell? What if he’s right? Is this Big Field Trip expanding our children’s awareness and empathy for others and preparing them to live life more fully? Or is it merely robbing them of what might otherwise have been a normal childhood?

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No matter. I’ve learned that such thoughts, which come up more often than I’d like to admit out here on the road, must be quickly suppressed if the entire expedition is not to be undermined. There will be plenty of time for therapy when we get home. The heat engulfing our balcony from the street below is suffocating. Jason takes a deep breath and fans himself with his book, apparently between chapters. He refills my glass of hooch, though the ice has long since melted, and hands it to me, batting his eyelashes. Before I can determine whether the gesture is intended to mean I love you, sweet cakes, or just to keep the sweat from dripping into his eyes, he returns to his novel. I take a sip of the lukewarm rice wine, and my thoughts go back to little Cruz. The fact that his siblings are in the know on topics that still evade him irritates him to no end. Often, when he and I are alone, he will quiz me on particulars that he fears might come up in later conversations. The other night we were lying in bed after his bedtime song when he asked me to give him the entire, unabridged lowdown on all the gods. He started by asking me to clarify exactly who this Jesus character was and whether he had died – or whether maybe he was still alive, since he had heard both versions of the story. I tried to address his queries as sincerely as possible, though he was touching on concepts that have eluded me too. When it became apparent to him that I was even fuzzier on the details than he was, he began to gain confidence, and then eventually to wax philosophical. ‘Mom, listen. God is all these: God is the floor and God is the light and God is the bed. And, Mom, you’re sleeping on God right now!’ I could just see my Ma, Bible in hand, shaking her head in disgust. Still, I could hardly argue with him, since this seemed about as plausible as other notions I’ve heard. Staring hard at the bamboo ceiling, Cruz went on to elaborate until we both began to doze off. Just as his Papa might do. As he finally rolled over to hug his pillow and give in to sleep, he whispered, ‘Mom, God is comfy.’ One afternoon earlier this month as the five of us were pedalling home from the market on our three rented bikes, in single file like an

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awkward family of ducks, a small, well-dressed man on a blue moped flagged us down. We were drenched in sweat and happy to have an excuse to take a breather. We brought our bikes to a stop on the side of the busy road. The man wore pressed blue trousers and a crisp shirt with a buttoneddown collar, neither of which, somehow, was stained with sweat. He grinned a broad, toothy smile as he surveyed the children, then presented himself to Jason as ‘Mr Mui.’ Jason attempted to introduce himself in Vietnamese, but Mr Mui replied in English. ‘Where you from?’ Jason responded, perhaps a bit self-consciously, that we were from the USA. Mr Mui’s eyes widened and he professed a love for all things American – with the exception of the American War, of course. He quickly added, however, that the Vietnamese have long since forgiven America and that no hard feelings remain. Then he changed the subject. ‘How you like Vietnam? You want I show you my city?’ Although we weren’t entirely certain what intentions might have motivated Mr Mui’s offer, we jumped at the opportunity to explore Hué with a local. Every afternoon since then, he has taken us on a bicycle tour covering a new section of the city. Together we’ve explored ancient monasteries, shrines, and holy sites. Somehow, we have also been allowed access to places that would otherwise seem off-limits. Last week, for example, I found myself wedged between sacrificial animals in the centre of a stage full of Vietnamese dignitaries. Mr Mui had invited us to the kick-off festivities for the Hué Festival, a ceremony hosted by the city every two years to celebrate Hué’s cultural heritage. Though it was long past the kids’ bedtime, we fortified them with syrupy Vietnamese coffee after dinner, mounted our bicycles, and pedalled behind Mr Mui toward the fairgrounds. As we neared the festival, the scene became increasingly more magical and exotic. We passed groups of men in matching silk caps and gowns carrying large silk lanterns and beating great, round drums. Elevated stages had been constructed in the centre of the festival area, where ornate wooden altars were covered with offerings of whole spit-fired pigs, rams, cows, and deer, each of which was positioned prostrate, facing a central shrine. Enormous round vats of incense spilled smoke into the heavy

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night air. The children looked on gape-jawed as grand processions of Imperial-looking fellows dressed in fine silk paraded onto the centre stage. Mr Mui somehow managed to finagle me a press pass, which I had deliberately not requested, and moments later I found myself on stage, dressed in a traditional Vietnamese silk cap and gown, reluctantly photographing politicians and VIPs who were raising toasts next to roasted goats. On another afternoon, Mr Mui took us to what he referred to as the shrine of the good-hearted Buddha. ‘When you call her name,’ he explained, ‘she appear to save the many, many people, so that all the people who go to the pagoda have the name of her. When you have a problem, you call her name and she suddenly appears to you. You can see that when you go far away, you can see many, many Buddhas on top of the mountains. People believe that when she stands in a high position, she can see clearly and hear her name.’ Mr Mui is an elementary school teacher. He explained that, since his school was not in session, he had lots of free time. And spending it with us allowed him to practise his English. Mr Mui had initially told us that he was fifty years old. But afterwards, he leaned in toward Jason, ‘If you want to know the truth,’ he whispered, ‘I’m actually fifty-five.’ He went on to explain in a hushed voice that in 1969 his father had had his birth certificate altered. As a result, when the Vietnamese army came knocking to enlist him, they took him to be only ten rather than fifteen. His father’s strategy had saved him from the fate of most boys his age on the front line. ‘The downside,’ he complained, ‘is that now I won’t get to retire until I’m seventy.’ Though Mr Mui was able to avoid conscription, his family, like almost all Vietnamese families, did not escape the perils of the American War altogether. Shortly after the war, his older sister developed cancer after exposure to Agent Orange, and she died before her thirtieth birthday. Her photograph holds a permanent place on the family’s altar. A few days ago, we were invited to pray with the Mui family in front of that altar and to join in their celebration commemorating the anniversary of her death.

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Home invitations have been rare on this adventure, but they have always been cherished. This particular invitation – though no less memorable – would end up taking us a little off guard. It was a Sunday, and since there was no work or study to distract us, we had planned a long bike ride into the countryside to visit a Buddhist pagoda we’d heard about. When Mr Mui offered to accompany us, we accepted enthusiastically. He knocked on our door first thing in the morning, and after a quick breakfast of pho bò (beef noodle soup) down the street, we set off in our awkward bicycle procession. ‘Before heading to the pagoda,’ Mr Mui suggested, ‘maybe we could stop by my family home.’ His parents, he explained, were both now in their eighties, making them one of the oldest couples in Hué, and they were interested in meeting the Americans their son couldn’t stop talking about. Sure. We’re easy. Mr Mui parked his bike in front of a simple, concrete structure at the end of a dirt road, and the rest of us followed. He gestured for us to go through a cement archway to a path behind the house that led to an outdoor altar where his elderly parents were bathing in incense: eyes tightly closed, lips murmuring, hands clasped in prayer. Candlelight danced on Grandpa Mui’s face, revealing a deep and intricate pattern of wrinkles and thick, protruding lips. To conclude his prayer, Grandpa bowed deeply three times in front of the altar. Then, he opened his eyes and welcomed us with a bright smile. Mr Mui led Jason and the older kids into the house, and I stayed behind with little Cruz, who was mesmerised by Grandma Mui. She was busily gracing the family shrine with fake money and paper motorbikes. When she had finished, she retreated into the kitchen. Cruz whispered in my ear asking whether he might be allowed to play with the paper motorcycles – just for a minute – if he promised to put them right back when he was done. It pained me to tell him no, but I did my best to explain that paper toys were intended only to be played with by dead people. He cocked his head and raised an eyebrow at me, but then let it go when Grandma returned, balancing half a dozen steaming dishes of fluffy

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rice, pungent meats and aromatic vegetables, which she arranged on the altar. As the savoury aroma of fish sauce began to permeate the house, family members streamed in, dressed in their finest. Each new relative greeted us by bowing reverently before heading off to the family altar. When Mr Mui asked whether we might consider staying for the midday meal, we quickly responded as our stomachs demanded. Just as soon as we had consented, however, I grew nervous. Jason and I looked down at our dusty biking clothes and requested a moment alone with Mr Mui in the kitchen to ask whether this was such a good idea after all. ‘This is the year of the Tiger,’ Mr Mui explained. ‘Many Vietnamese believe it will bring an important opportunity to mend wounds and establish new, positive ties with America.’ His entire family, he explained, considered his encounter with us to be an auspicious sign. This was why we had been invited to join in this special day of worship, which would otherwise have been a private family affair. He insisted that we all looked fine, and then suggested to Jason in confidence that it might be appropriate for him to make some sort of an offering to the family to mark the occasion. ‘Not much,’ he insisted. ‘Just a dollar or two as a symbol of harmony between our cultures.’ Mr Mui went on to explain that Chinese philosophy teaches that there are three stages in life: childhood, adulthood, and old age. Old age, he added, is considered to be a gradual return to childhood, and Grandpa Mui was well on his way down that path. Therefore, in addition to being a gesture of goodwill, he said, an offering would be well received by Grandpa who had become increasingly partial to surprises in his old age. Mr Mui strolled off to take a shift at stocking the altar, and this gave Jason and me a moment to confer. We agreed that we hadn’t brought along anything that might be a worthy gift, and giving just a dollar or two seemed a paltry offering. Even so, in the absence of other options we decided to take Mr Mui’s advice. Jason removed two crisp 20,000 Vietnamese dong bills (equivalent to about two US dollars) from his wallet. He placed the money in the jade-coloured envelope Mr Mui had left for him on the kitchen table and tucked it into his shirt pocket.

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Mr Mui’s younger sister peeked into the kitchen with a smile and gestured for us to follow her to the living room. Twenty-seven pairs of eyes, each belonging to one of the family members who were now gathered atop a large reed mat on the wooden floor, tracked our movements as we crossed the room. Grandma and Grandpa Mui were seated cross-legged in the centre of the mat, beaming up at us. Mr Mui motioned for us to sit with him directly across from the elders. I instructed the children to sit down and cross their legs, and then tried to become invisible. The women of the family buzzed around the room, quickly filling glasses of iced beer for the men and freshly squeezed orange juice for the women and children. Then they brought out bowl after bowl of colourful and elaborate delicacies until dozens of dishes dotted the reed mat. Everyone seemed to be waiting for Grandpa (who had a distant look in his eyes) to take the first bite. He reached for a bowl of sautéed morning glory, pinched several sprigs between his chopsticks, and slowly brought the greens to his ample lips. The feasting began. The vibrant spread included purple squid with ginger peanut sauce, honey-glazed chicken, steamed pumpkin with spring onions, barbecued pork, green papaya salad with peanuts and spicy dried beef, heaped mounds of rice and noodles, and enough fish sauce to drown in. Cyrus and Cruz dug in with gusto, as did Jason. He’s an actively blogging chef, and I could tell he was making mental notes in order to recreate the feast back home. Bella sat motionless and gave me a familiar sheepish look that suggested she didn’t see anything edible in the entire spread. I shot back a menacing glance suggesting there would be no sweets for the rest of the day if she didn’t eat. She reached for a bowl of naked rice. When the moment seemed right, Mr Mui nodded at Jason, whose eyes then widened. He hastily finished chewing a bite of rubbery squid he had committed to, wiped his mouth, and pulled the jade envelope from his breast pocket. As he handed the envelope across the circle, I could see that Mr Mui had been right. Grandpa’s eyes lit up like a birthday cake. A boyish smile revealed teeth blackened by years of chewing betel.

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Silence followed. Mr Mui leaned toward Jason, whispered something in his ear, and Jason glanced nervously in my direction. I returned an apologetic smirk, ducked behind my spring roll, and felt momentarily relieved to be the woman of the family. Jason gulped and began to speak nervously in English. It was a speech to be proud of, and would have been moving if anyone had been able to understand it. Nervously but eloquently, he conveyed our wishes for a prosperous and auspicious year for the Mui family. Mr Mui turned toward his family and translated Jason’s sentiments – if not his actual words – then looked back at Jason, expectantly. Jason continued by expressing his gratitude that our paths had crossed with those of the Mui family and thanked Grandpa and Grandma for their gracious hospitality. He turned toward Mr Mui who, again, addressed his translation to the crowd. As the women began to clear away empty dishes, Grandpa’s focus began to drift. Then he remembered the jade envelope in his hands. The sparkle returned to his eyes as he looked down and carefully began to open the envelope. However, when he pulled out our offering, his smile melted into a heavy frown. An uncomfortable silence followed. Grandpa and Mr Mui launched into a lengthy conversation, during which the son, transformed into an adolescent boy, cringed and wriggled uncomfortably under his father’s gaze. Without some type of Babel fish to stick into my ear, I was only able to pick out a few choice words – namely, dollar and dong – but it was enough. Our blunder quickly dawned on me. Mr Mui confirmed my fears by translating enough of the conversation back into English. The important part of his suggested offering, it seemed, had been that it should be made in US dollars, not Vietnamese dong. It wasn’t the amount of the offering that was important, apparently. Instead, the symbolic meaning of an actual American dollar would have illustrated our commitment to forging a new bond between our families and, more importantly, between our countries. Of course. Funny how everything seems to make perfect sense – but only in retrospect.

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Jason apologised profusely for our misunderstanding and went on to explain that we hadn’t seen a US dollar for a year and a half now. But by the time Mr Mui had finished translating his plea for forgiveness, Grandpa was focusing instead on the well-timed bowls of dessert that the ladies had laid out across the reed mat: flat white beans floating in translucent syrup. After dessert, the family reconvened in a circle behind the house. Following a few words of prayer led by a gold-toothed uncle, the paper offerings that had been left for the ancestors were piled into a metal bucket and set alight. Little Cruz loves open fires as much as anyone else his age, but he was dismayed to see all the paper toys he’d been coveting going up in flames. He tugged on Mr Mui’s sleeve and asked why they were being burned. Mr Mui explained that in order to get paper offerings from the earth to the afterlife, ‘they need to burn so that the spirit of the gifts can go up to heaven for ancestors to use.’ Cruz cocked his head and raised an eyebrow at Mr Mui, but then let it go. Uncle gold-tooth began passing around shots of rice wine to the men in the circle. Later, after all the excitement had died down, Cruz poked through the smouldering ashes with a bamboo stick he had found. He seemed deep in thought, so I let him be. Eventually, he glanced toward me with squinty eyes and interrogated me in a cross voice, ‘Mom, why didn’t you tell me I could send toys to heaven in fire?’ I really didn’t have a good answer, so instead I suggested we go for a ride on our bikes, which always seems to cheer him up. Our parenting strategy, come to think of it, has always revolved around helping the kids through times of stress by means of physical exhaustion. Somehow, worries just seem to melt away when we’re on a long bike ride or hike, and today was no exception. We absolutely exhausted the children, and even now I can hear little Cruz snoring peacefully inside. I’m bushed too. Despite the late hour, the heat on the balcony has not let up and rolls in relentless waves from the street. The old lady in silk pyjamas is packing up her duck-embryos and calling it a

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night. We’ve succeeded in polishing off the rice wine, but I’ve done precious little translation work. It’s probably best to call it a night and start afresh tomorrow. Perhaps I’ll wake up with new insight on addressing Cruz’s religious questions. Or my own. Earlier tonight, we were cycling home from the Buddhist pagoda in the countryside, where monks draped in cinnamon robes were tending Japanese bonsai gardens and making furniture out of massive roots. As the sun set, we neared Hué’s city limits and I noticed that Cruz had been silent for quite some time on the seat behind me. I whispered his name to see whether he was still awake. He whispered his response: ‘Mom, which god is ours?’

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Contributors Contributor s

CHEN DONGDONG, a Shanghai native, was born in 1961 and graduated from the Shanghai Normal University. He began writing poetry in 1981 and his work is known for a highly textured quality of blending the classical tradition of lyricism with contemporary sensibilities. With a family background of music and theatre, the musicality in Chen Dongdong’s poetry is widely recognised by critics. His recent publications include Flowing Water (1998), Book of Summer • Unbanned Title (2011), and The Guide Map (2013).

CLARA CHOW is a Singaporean writer and journalist. Her short stories have appeared in CHA: An Asian Literary Review, Quarterly Literary Review Singapore (QLRS), Junoesq Literary Journal and Blunderbuss Magazine. She also contributes to The Straits Times and the South China Morning Post.

MONA DASH is of Indian origin and lives in London. She writes short stories and poetry and her work has been published internationally and anthologised widely. She has recently gained an MA in Creative Writing (with distinction) from the London Metropolitan University. Dawn-drops is her first collection of poetry (Writer’s Workshop, India). Her first book of fiction is represented by Red Ink literary agency. Her website is www.monadash.net.

MICHAEL MARTIN DAY is currently employed as an Associate Professor of literature and history at National University in San Diego, CA. A translator of Chinese poetry and fiction since 1984, he is a contributor to the Leiden-based poetry division of the Digital Archive for Chinese Studies (DACHS) website, where some of his poetry translations and related materials may be found.

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Contributors IMTIAZ DHARKER is a poet, artist and documentary filmmaker. Awarded the Queen’s Gold Medal for Poetry in 2014, her collections include Postcards from god, I speak for the devil and The terrorist at my table (published by Penguin India and Bloodaxe UK), Leaving Fingerprints and Over the Moon (Bloodaxe UK). She has been Poet in Residence at Cambridge University Library and has recently completed a series of poems based on the Archives of St Paul’s Cathedral.

JANG JIN-SUNG worked as a senior writer for the Korean Workers’ Party and earned special recognition from the North Korean dictator Kim Jong-il for his poetry. In 2004 he defected to South Korea. He has published widely in South Korea and represented North Korea at the Cultural Olympiad in London in 2012. His memoir, Dear Leader (Random House, Simon & Schuster), was published in 2014.

SUZANNE KAMATA’s most recent novel, Screaming Divas, was published in 2014. She is currently working on a mother-daughter travel memoir, for which she received a grant from the Sustainable Arts Foundation. She teaches at the University of Tokushima in Japan and is an MFA candidate at the University of British Columbia. For more, see www.suzannekamata.com.

PHILLIP Y. KIM is a Korean American banker turned writer who lives in London. His debut novel, Nothing Gained (Penguin 2013), is a financial thriller that drew on his twenty-five years of experience as an investment banker in Asia. He is currently working on his second novel and short stories. Phillip is the Business and Finance Director of the Asia Literary Review.

ANGELA SMITH KIRKMAN recently returned to Santa Fe in New Mexico from a two-year journey around the world with her husband and three young children. During the adventure, her family hiked the Inca Trail, rode camelback through the Sahara, caught swine flu in Istanbul and taught at a tribal school in Rajasthan. Stories from The Big Field Trip have been published in International Living Magazine and Eventus Magazine. Kirkman blogs at www.thebigfieldtrip.com.

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Contributors USHA KISHORE is an Indian-born British poet and translator, now resident on the Isle of Man. Her poetry is internationally published and anthologised by Macmillan, Oxford University Press (UK) and Harper Collins India. Kishore’s debut collection, On Manannan’s Isle, was published in 2014 with an Arts Council award and a Culture Vannin award. A second collection of poetry and a book of translations from the Sanskrit are forthcoming.

NATHAN LAUER is the author of the unpublished novel Bardo. He is an American writer living in Hong Kong. A selection of Lauer’s electronic music can be heard on SoundCloud at UnaUthOriZedReProductions. He is currently working on his second novel.

SHIRLEY LEE studied classics and Persian at Oxford and is currently writing a PhD on North Korea at Leiden University. Her articles, poetry and translations have been published in journals and anthologies including Wasafiri and Words Without Borders. Lee is the founding editor of New Focus International and edited and translated Jang Jin-sung’s Dear Leader (Random House, 2014).

LI DONG was born and raised in China. The Olive B. O’Connor Poet-inResidence from 2013–2014 at Colgate University, he has held residencies at Yaddo, Vermont Studio Center, Millay Colony and elsewhere. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Conjunctions, Black Warrior Review, Denver Quarterly, Poor Claudia, Cincinnati Review, Kenyon Review and manuskripte (Austria, in German translation). Li is also Editor-at-Large (China) for the international translation journal Asymptote.

LI YAWEI was born in Chongqing in 1963. He is one of China’s most influential underground poets from the 1980s and is considered an important representative of Chinese poetry’s ‘New Generation’. He was Poet of the Year at the Chinese Literature Media Festival in 2006 and has won a number of poetry prizes, including the first Lu Xun Cultural Award in 2013.

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Contributors FRANK LIGHT adapted ‘Land of Light’ from an unpublished memoir, Adjust to Dust: On the Backroads of Southern Afghanistan. Other adaptations from that memoir have been accepted for publication in literary journals and anthologies, including War, Literature and the Arts, Make Literary Magazine and the Tahoma Literary Review. He worked at the US Department of State from 1978–2006. Now retired, his experience in Asia also includes time spent in Vietnam, Iran, and Laos.

LUO HUI has pursued literary studies in China, the United States and Canada. Currently a lecturer at Victoria University of Wellington, he writes miscellaneous prose and plays music in a local band. His translations of contemporary Chinese poetry have appeared in journals and anthologies in many parts of the world.

DENIS MAIR holds an MA in Chinese from Ohio State University and has taught at the University of Pennsylvania. His translations of modern Chinese poetry include works by Jidi Majia (Oklahoma University Press), Mai Cheng (Shearsman Books), Meng Lang (Waves Culture Media) and Luo Ying (Visor Press). Denis Mair’s own book of poetry, Man Cut in Wood, was published by Valley Contemporary Poets in Los Angeles.

REID MITCHELL is from New Orleans and since Hurricane Katrina in 2005 has spent much of his time in Hong Kong and China. A historian and novelist, he has taught at universities in Wuxi, Quanzhou and Beijing. He now teaches at the Center for Creative Writing at Sun Yat Sen University in Guangzhou. Mitchell’s poetry has been published in The Pedestal Magazine, Mascara Literary Review, Poetry Macao, Softblow, the Asia Literary Review and elsewhere.

TAO NAIKAN is interested in poetry and poetics and translates Chinese poetry. He is the translator with Simon Patton of Starve the Poets! (Bloodaxe, 2008), and with Tony Prince of Eight Contemporary Poets (Wild Peony, 2006), and the author of ‘Subjectivity and Innovation in Contemporary Chinese Poetry, II’ (JOSA, 44, 2012).

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Contributors SIMON PATTON translates Chinese literature. He lives with his partner, two cats and Sealyham the Terrier near Chinaman Creek in Central Victoria, Australia. An essay on Yu Jian appears in the current issue of the Australian Poetry Journal, and a short set of poems entitled ‘King Hong Kong’ will be published in APJ later this year.

BOAZ ROTTEM was born in the United States and raised there and in the Middle East. He travelled widely as an irrigation consultant and developed an interest in photography. Rottem is now a full-time photographer and focuses his career on documenting the lives of people in Asia and Africa. His work has been published in Lonely Planet guides, Asian Geographic and elsewhere. Rottem’s photos can be seen at www.boazimages.com.

SHIN KYUNG-SOOK made her literary debut in 1985 with the novella Winter’s Fable after graduating from the Seoul Institute of the Arts. She is perhaps best known in the Western world for her award-winning novel, Please Look After Mother, published in nineteen countries. Shin is one of South Korea’s most critically acclaimed and widely read writers.

ELIZABETH SOLOMON is a writer, human rights activist and international educator, currently based in Hong Kong. Her first short story was published this year in the Hong Kong Gothic anthology (Hong Kong Writers Circle, 2014). Raised between Bombay and Jerusalem, she is fluent in three cultures and five languages. She is currently working on her first novel.

SONG LIN, born in Xiamen, holds a literature degree from East China Normal University. He has published five collections of poetry (two of which were translated into French and published in France), two books of prose, and has co-edited a contemporary poetry anthology. He is the poetry editor of the journal Jintiang. Among his honours are Rotterdam and Romanian International Poetry Fellowships and the Shanghai Literature Prize.

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Contributors JAMES TAM is the author of award winning novel Man’s Last Song. His essays and short stories, all written bilingually in English and Chinese, can be found in his blog: guo-du.blogspot.com. The Chinese version of ‘Comfort Woman Eleanor’ was published by Hong Kong Writers.

BILL TARRANT has been a correspondent and editor in Asia for more than thirty years for Reuters. He was a correspondent in Indonesia and India, bureau chief in Malaysia and Korea, and currently is Asia Enterprise Editor for Reuters. He has written a book, Reporting Indonesia, about how the media tried to evade the press censorship of the Suharto era. Bill was part of the team that started The Jakarta Post newspaper in 1983.

JEREMY TIANG’s writing has appeared in Esquire, the Guardian, Meanjin, Ambit, Litro, the Istanbul Review, QLRS and Best New Singaporean Short Stories. He has also translated six books from Chinese. His plays have been performed in London, Hong Kong and Singapore. Jeremy won the Golden Point Award in 2009, and has represented Singapore at the University of Iowa’s International Writing Programme.

YU JIAN is one of China’s major contemporary poets. He has published several collections of poetry and a five-volume collection of poetry and essays. His poems have been awarded prizes in China and abroad, and widely translated. Flash Cards (Zephyr Press, 2010) – selected poems from his collection Biantiao shi (Poem notes) – was published with an introduction by Simon Patton.

NAMGAY ZAM is a well-known Bhutanese journalist, a passionate feminist, and an LGBTQ ally. She also raises funds for an NGO called the Bhutan Youth Development Fund, and is Technical Advisor to the Bhutan Film Trust Fund.

ZHENG DANYI is one of China’s finest contemporary poets. He has won awards in the US and China, and his poems are widely anthologised and translated. Zheng has published seven poetry collections and two novellas, including the highly acclaimed bilingual collection, Wings of Summer. He is also a painter, and the Asia Literary Review’s China editor.

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Sun Yat-sen University Center for English-language Creative Writing The Sun Yat-sen University Center for English-language Creative Writing is the first and currently the only one of its kind in China for teaching and promoting creative writing in English as a second/foreign language. It combines the teaching of English with creative writing techniques to enable students to write about China from an insider’s perspective. Under the Sun Yat-sen University Creative Writing Education Program, the Center organizes readings by international writers and a book club to promote the reading and writing of world literature. From October 2015, it will start the Sun Yat-sen University International Writers’ Residency, which moves from the campuses of Sun Yat-sen University in Guangzhou and Zhuhai to Jiangmen in Guangdong Province and Yangshuo in Guangxi Autonomous Region, and gives between ten and fifteen writers the time and space to write as well as providing them with the opportunity to get to know Chinese people and culture. Contact: daifan@mail.sysu.edu.cn

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Asia Literary Review | Essential Reading Featuring: Poetry from Queen’s Medal winner Imtiaz Dharker Fiction from Shin Kyung-sook – After the Turn of Dark Jang Jin-sung in North Korea after The West Sea Battle Bill Tarrant exposes a threat to Jakarta – The Sinking City Namgay Zam and the kung fu nuns – Challenging Convention Jeremy Tiang on a macabre change of heart – Beijing Hospital Frank Light in a remote province of Afghanistan – Land of Light

‘Without the Asia Literary Review it would be impossible, unless you had a really a deep interest in a certain country, to read many of these authors. It has opened up a channel. It’s like the Panama Canal.’ Miguel Syjuco, Man Asian Literary Prize winner. asialiteraryreview.com

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