Asia Literary Review No. 24, Summer 2012

No. 24, Summer 2012

No. 24, Summer 2012 Publisher Ilyas Khan Managing Editor Duncan Jepson Editor in Chief Martin Alexander Literary Editor Kelly Falconer Features Editor Kathleen Hwang Consulting Editor Peter Koenig Office Manager Canny Au Design and Production Steffan Leyshon-Jones Proofs Shirley Lee Main Cover Image Blossom 6 by Fang Hui, courtesy of the artist and of Wellington Gallery, Hong Kong.

Back Cover Image Mirrors 9 by Tomoko Sawada, courtesy of the artist and of Connoisseur Art Gallery, Hong Kong.

The Asia Literary Review is published by Print Work Limited 2401, Winsome House, 73 Wyndham Street, Central, Hong Kong asialiteraryreview.com Subscriptions: subs@asialiteraryreview.com Submissions: subm@asialiteraryreview.com Editor: editor@asialiteraryreview.com Editorial: (852) 2167 8947 Advertising: (852) 2167 8910/8980 Extract from Running Dogs printed with kind permission from Scribe Publications.

Extract from Yu Li: Confessions of an Elevator Operator printed with kind permission from Make-Do Publishing.

‘Windows’ is extracted from the anthology Too Asian, Not Asian Enough, with kind permission from Tindal Street Press.

‘Dance of the Maiden’ was originally published in Chinese by Titan Publishing, Taiwan.

Image on page 6, Time © Dave Besseling, courtesy of the artist.

Images on pages 46, 74, 138 © Fang Hui, courtesy of the artist and of Wellington Gallery, Hong Kong.

The Asia Literary Review would like to thank the following for their time and generosity: Marysia Juszczakiewicz of the Peony Literary Agency; Gray Tan of the Grayhawk Agency; Priya Doraswamy of the Jacaranda Literary Agency; Alan Mahar and Melissa Baker of Tindal Street Press; Angilee Shah and Jeff Wasserstrom, the editors of Chinese Characters; Aviva Tuffield and Cora Kipling of Scribe; the Poetry Translation Centre, the Korea Literature Translation Institute, and Harvey Thomlinson of Make-Do Publishing.

Typeset in Adobe Garamond Pro Printed by Chan Sheung Kee Book Co., Ltd. ISBN: 978-988-16596-1-3 Individual contents © 2012 the contributors/Print Work Limited This compilation © 2012 Print Work Limited

Contents From the Editor

7

Fiction Windows

9

Madhvi Ramani

Rainbow Days

37

Wyn Lyovarin translated by Marcel Barang

Elephant

47

Kim Jae Young translated by Moon-ok Lee and Nicholas Yohan Duvernay

from Yu Li: Confessions of an Elevator Operator

75

Jimmy Qi translated by Harvey Thomlinson

Katydid

97

Dazai Osamu translated by Ralph McCarthy

Irrelevant Details

123

Avantika Mehta

Dance of the Maiden

141

Tsao Li-chuan translated by Yvette Zhu

from Running Dogs

161

Ruby J. Murray

3

Poetry The Word

34

Illegal Immigrant

35

Drawing

35

The Football

134

Reza Mohammadi translated by Nick Laird and Hamid Kabir

That Woman

64

The Immigrant’s Song

65

Tishani Doshi

To My Country

92

Apple, Flower and Doe

139

Akerke Mussabekova

Faith

114

Anushka Anastasia Solomon

Watermark

159

Butterfly, Almost

160

Minoli Salgado

Non-Fiction The Road to a Better Life

23

Ananth Krishnan

Becoming a Stinking Public Intellectual

29

Han Han translated by Michael Y. Lee

Interview: Kip Fulbeck

41

Kathleen Hwang

Voices from Tibet

67

Tsering Woeser and Wang Lixiong translated by Violet Law

4

Interview: Donald Keene

87

Clarissa Sebag-Montefiore

Japan’s ‘Don’t Miss the Bus’ Mentality

93

Uchida Tatsuru

Too Asian, Not Asian Enough

109

Kavita Bhanot

Crossing Continents

115

Anu Anand

Jaffna 2012

135

Romesh Gunesekera

Images Time

6

Dave Besseling

Teenager

46

Golden Boy 3

74

Blossom 13

138

Fang Hui

Reviews Orphan of Islam by Alexander Khan

175

Ysabelle Cheung

The Garden of Evening Mists by Tan Twan Eng

178

Kathleen Hwang

The Thief by Fuminori Nakamura

181

Kelly Falconer

Contributors

184

5

From the Editor

 W

hat does it mean to be Asian or from Asia? Is it about race or nationality? Is it about location, destination or origin; about living here, leaving here, or about having a sense of belonging? Can one be partAsian? Ex-Asian? Can identity be constructed, or is it inherited? Or both?

And does it matter?

These were some of the questions that provided a starting point for this issue, where our contributors have come together to articulate their distinctive perspectives and perceptions of identity and otherness.

The human condition is a complicated thing and we humans are forever trying to make it more understandable, in part by giving everything a name. But identity is multifaceted: complementary and contradictory, and constantly subject to change. Which of the many names that make up an identity shall we choose as a catch-all to encompass the rest? The one we choose may suit one circumstance, but it may be inadequate at a different time and in another setting. Particular aspects of our identities may also, at various times, dominate the way we perceive ourselves and influence the way others perceive us. And are these perceptions the same?

Identity is also metaphorical, and is related to our tendency to compare and to assimilate; however, this inevitably marginalizes aspects of ourselves that contradict our metaphorical homogeneity. This is fine so long as we recognize our conveniently limiting labels as fictions; but to take the further step of believing that the part becomes the whole is a fundamental error and a dangerous one. It is out of this mistaken belief that we create idols and demons; that we construct racism, chauvinism and xenophobia; and that we make it permissible to abuse, exploit, diminish and exclude the Other.

7

From the Editor

Identity is composed of what the individual projects and the Other perceives. Everyone else, then, is Other to the individual, who is by definition unique.

Many writers have explored the tensions between assimilation and individuality, self-sublimation and self-assertion. Koestler saw man as Janus, the god with two faces; Juliet asks, ‘What’s in a name?’ and Keats’s ‘negative capability’ celebrates the capacity to accommodate contradictions. In Asia – or at least in parts of it – this dynamic tension is represented by yin and yang.

In this issue of the Asia Literary Review, our contributors reflect, and reflect upon, the multiplicity and complexity of their identities. Each piece was composed in isolation, but when brought and bound together their explorations of identity complement one another in unanticipated and intriguing ways. Where they all agree is in the rejection of a single defining label. Some writers and their protagonists reach for complex definitions of themselves to encompass and assert race, sexuality, culture, language and tradition. Some are so marginalized, so displaced, that their identity is in limbo, tagged with labels that do not fit, in cultures that will not acknowledge them. They tell their stories as much to themselves as to us, and shape their identities according to the vagaries of memory and experience.

In the first of our stories, ‘Windows’, by Madhvi Ramani, we see the world through the gaze of Mrs Sharma, whose succinct way of labelling and understanding others is of course a reflection of herself. Other contributors reveal similarly startling, unfamiliar perspectives: the US-born scholar, Donald Keene, who has just turned ninety, has taken Japanese citizenship; Tsering Woeser defends her Tibetan heritage against suffocation by the Han Chinese; and Ananth Krishnan’s Uyghur student, Alim, laments the fact that ‘We only learn about how the Chinese look at us.’ Avantika Mehta’s ‘irrelevant details’ reveal far more than her narrator intends, Han Han confronts the problem of being a ‘stinking intellectual’, and Dazai Osamu delicately dissects the anatomy of an artist’s vanity.

These pieces have moved from their distant and singular origins to an intimate proximity in this journal. They invite us, as Other, to shift and broaden our perspective. We’re reminded that the simple labels of identity conceal multitudes.

Martin Alexander 8

Windows Madhvi Ramani

W

hen Mrs Sharma found herself locked out of forty-two Foley Feild – yes, that is Feild, not Field – her first instinct was to cry, which was ridiculous because Mrs Sharma rarely cried.

The last time she had cried was right after her hysterectomy, but that was on purpose. Her son, Raj, and his dumpy wife had come to visit. She knew that she looked a bit grey and frail from the operation, and so had decided it would be a good time to ask for the house. The house she had always wanted. A house to die in, she said. Add to that a few tears and, bingo, the house was hers. He had made the down payment, and she paid the mortgage with her pension and the rent from the townhouse. Well, it wasn’t a big deal – she had given birth to him, after all, and they spent more money on that damned dog of theirs than they did on her. If she hadn’t made plans for herself, they would have eventually chucked her into a nursing home, like her nephew had done for her sister, Ganga.

Ganga had lost it in there, repeating the same phrases about how she didn’t want to collect the milk, make the dough, dust the cobwebs and so on and so on: echoes from their house in Rupali Society. It was the nursing home that killed her. Mrs Sharma had told Ganga’s son as much at the funeral and, for good measure, threw in a curse that he be reborn as a rat. He looked like a rat, too, which was a sure sign that it was going to happen. Needless to say, she no longer spoke to him, or any of Ganga’s other imbecile brats.

If Ganga were still around, she would have a spare key. She was the only one of Mrs Sharma’s five siblings who Mrs Sharma had kept in touch with.

9

Windows

Raj would be at work, and he only visited at the weekends. Sometimes, when he was busy, he would skip a weekend. Today was Monday.

As Mrs Sharma stood in her garden, tears filled her eyes and turned the solid house watery. It was no good thinking like this. She blinked the tears away, and focused once more on the house. It was the best house she had ever had. A three-bedroom, semi-detached in the suburbs. Mostly white people here, away from all those spitting, gossipy Indians. Although she had been disappointed to learn that her next-door neighbours were black. Not even pretty black, that nice freshly fried puri colour, but proper black. She had feared loud music all night, but so far they had been surprisingly well-behaved. When she had lived in Kisumu with Harish, they had been surrounded by blacks. Well, anything was better than that crowded house in Rupali Society where six of them had lived with no privacy at all under the watchful eye of their mother, a woman who had something against people sitting down. That journey, by ship from Porbandar to Mombasa then by coach to Kisumu, was exhilarating. She thought she was getting out, escaping to a life of luxury. Whenever the coach slowed down, she heard the Africans shouting ‘Jambo! Jambo!’ and thought they were selling gulab jamens, her favourite sweets. It was only afterwards that she learned that ‘jambo’ means hello in Swahili, and that life in Kisumu was no luxury. Then there was the flat in the middle of that dirty Irish neighbourhood and, when the kids got older, the townhouse. That had been OK until Harish had died and a new influx of Indians had come in. Besides, all that up and down over two flights of stairs had started killing her knees. Now, however, she finally had it: a proper house of her own. Except that she was locked out of it.

She had been putting the bins out for collection. Normally, she went out the back door and dragged the bins out to the front from the back garden and through the side alley. This morning, however, she had used the front door, walked around to the back and, by the time she had dragged the bins to the front, the wind had blown the door shut. She couldn’t remember why she had done it that way round, but that’s what tended to happen nowadays: she’d be confounded by a slight change of routine, of the normal way of doing things.

The wind picked up, lifting her thin sari and making the leaves rustle.

The sky was gathering heavy clouds. Soon, it would rain. Her tulips, red 10

Madhvi Ramani

and yellow, had already closed their petals. They were lucky; they could shut themselves up in their protective little houses whenever they wanted.

Mrs Sharma tried the back door again. Undeniably locked. The sliding patio doors were sealed shut. They were double-glazed, as were all the windows, which also remained obstinately shut. She made her way to the front of the house via the alleyway, running her fingers along the rough, hard bricks as she went, admiring the impenetrable, foolproof nature of the building, but at the same time feeling trapped by it. Brick after brick packed tightly together, not a gap between them. Halfway down the alley, she remembered the window. She looked up. A little sash window with red and green stained-glass patterns, older than the other windows, was positioned halfway up the stairs, about a metre above Mrs Sharma’s head. If there were one window she might be able to get through, it’d be this one.

She went to the front of the house and wheeled the green recycling bin back down the alleyway, parking it directly below the window. She tried climbing on top of it, but the bin was very high and Mrs Sharma was not in the habit of hauling herself up on to mountainous objects. She tried again, placing both hands on the flat surface and using all her strength to pull herself up. Years of lifting babies, rolling chapattis and scrubbing surfaces finally paid off: her arms held out while her flip-flops scrabbled against the side of the bin, and she managed to plonk herself on top. She stood up and realized that the pleats of her sari had come undone. She quickly re-pleated them and tucked them in. Her head was now level with the window, and she could see inside. She tried to push the bottom of the window upwards. It rattled in its frame, but was locked. If she could just put some more strength into it . . . but it was no good. She sighed. The first drops of rain began to fall. She looked around. Propped against the wall at the garden end of the alleyway was her trowel.

She climbed slowly down from the bin, trying to ignore the pain in her knees, fetched the trowel and went through the whole palaver of getting back on the bin again. This time, she pushed the tip of the trowel in the little gap under the window and used it like a lever.

It took a bit of effort, but the locks snapped and she was able to lift the window up. She stuck her head through and breathed in the familiar smell of cloves and incense. Then she placed her hands on either side of the ledge, pushed off from the bin with her toes and started to wriggle in.

11

Windows

About halfway through, she found herself in a regrettable position.

The front of her body was suspended mid-air above the stairs, while her lower half was stuck outside. She was balancing precariously on her hips, flailing around to keep herself steady. It was like swimming in space. She hoped nobody was looking. After a few seconds of this, she decided that the best course of action would be to reach for the banister. She stretched her hands out and almost fell down head-first in the effort. She needed to get a bit closer. She continued to edge herself nearer with her swimming action, then made a desperate grab for the banister once more. She made it.

She pulled the rest of her body into the house but found herself stuck again. Her toes were on the windowsill and her hands on the banister. She had to get down, but how? Her arms ached and her legs trembled. The bottom half of her sari was clinging to her calves, wet now with rainwater.

Well, she couldn’t stay here forever; she’d just have to jump. She counted to three, but found that she was still hanging on after ‘three’. So she said three Hare Krishnas, knowing that if she didn’t do it this time it would be a bad reflection of her faith. She pushed off the windowsill and her body went flying forwards. Her feet stumbled on the stairs, but her hands steadfastly gripped the banister and she managed to steady herself. She released her grip and warm blood rushed to her arms. She sat down, and began to laugh.

She had done it!

Once she had returned to her senses, she went up to her bedroom and took up her usual place on the rocking chair by the window. The patchy grey sky was spitting rain onto the empty street below. She wanted to tell someone about her little adventure, but could think of no one to call.

Mrs Sharma put her glasses on and started to read her weekly copy of Garavi Gujarat. A car swished by, but didn’t stop. At around two o’clock a group of girls, who should have been in school, walked past, shouting and shrieking. She watched them disappear at the end of the road, taking their laughter and exaggerated gestures with them.

She went downstairs at 3.30 p.m. and made herself a cup of chai and a plate of cornflakes sprinkled with lemon juice, salt and chilli powder, and settled down for the most interesting part of the day.

It had stopped raining when Mrs Sharma moved the net curtain back and opened the window slightly, letting in the cool, pond-smelling air. Shortly 12

Madhvi Ramani

after, the red car belonging to the black woman pulled into the drive of the neighbouring house. She got out with her son, who was about eight years old. His uniform, which was neat enough in the morning – although Mrs Sharma had noticed that he’d neglected to tuck in a piece of his light blue shirt – was now completely dishevelled. The bottom of his left trouser leg was caught in his sock, and the right one was scuffed on the knee: chalky grey scratches surrounded a patch of slimey green. If Raj had come home like that, he would have got a slap. The mother, followed by the boy, went inside their house.

It was Monday evening, which meant karate. At 5.30 p.m. they would leave the house again. This time he would be dressed in a white costume, which looked like something they might make you wear in a mental institution were it not for the yellow belt tied around his waist. When Mrs Sharma first moved in he had worn a white belt, which completed the asylum look perfectly.

In about fifteen minutes, the black girl would walk home with her friend – another black, but an extremely pretty one with long limbs and a graceful manner. Presently, they rounded the corner. As they got closer, Mrs Sharma listened carefully to their conversation, but, as usual, she couldn’t comprehend what they were saying. She understood the words of course – Mrs Sharma had always prided herself on her excellent English – but these girls used them in ways that made no sense: ‘Mr Fenton is safe’, ‘that film is sick’, ‘Darren poked me on Facebook’.

Mrs Sharma didn’t know what the face book was, but everyone seemed to be reading it nowadays – she had even overheard Raj mention it once.

The girls reached the house and, as usual, the pretty one waited while her friend walked up the drive and unlocked the door. Then she raised her arm and waved elegantly, like the gesture of a Kathak dancer. Mrs Sharma waved back silently from behind her curtain.

A car growled closer; probably the newlyweds at number seven coming back from work together. They did everything together. They even wore matching colours. This morning she’d been wearing a purple dress while he’d sported a purple tie. Mrs Sharma didn’t know if they really were newlyweds, but they did act as if they were. She was waiting for the day their nonsense would come to an end, when they would finally start behaving like normal people. However, the vehicle that came around the corner was not 13

Windows

the newlyweds’ silver Golf, but the little white van belonging to the builder who lived opposite Mrs Sharma.

Mrs Sharma had a magnificent view of his house from her window, but felt this was wasted on such a boring person. The builder lived alone, hardly had any visitors, and drew his curtains as soon as it got dark. Sometimes she’d catch the flicker of the TV in the front room, but the lights were always out by ten. Mrs Sharma knew he was a builder because of the things he loaded into his van and because of the way he looked. He had a beer belly, thinning grey hair and wore dirty T-shirts coupled with cement-flecked jeans that exposed his backside when he bent down. The only element of surprise was that he’d come and go at irregular times.

The black father, ranting and raving like an idiot, came home shortly after his wife and son had left. When she’d first moved in, Mrs Sharma thought he had serious problems, until she realized that he was actually talking on the phone.

The nurses, who lived next door on the other side, would follow at around seven, because they had left at eleven that morning. Although their shifts changed regularly, they were usually on the same schedule and left and returned home together. They probably organized it that way so they’d be safe when they worked nights. Sensible girls. Today, however, by the time the nurses came walking down Foley Feild arm in arm, Mrs Sharma was fast asleep.

She awoke to the familiar whirr of machinery, punctuated by the occasional thud, clap and tinkle of breaking glass. At some point she had moved from her chair over to the bed. She lay there for a few minutes before realizing that she had forgotten the recycling bin in the alleyway. The lazy dustbin men would never collect it from there. She got up and hurried to the door, re-pleating her sari as she went. She used the back door, and dragged the recycling bin to the front, but it was too late; the truck had already passed.

Irritated, she dragged both bins into the back garden once more. As she was doing so she glimpsed, on the other side of the fence that separated her house from the black house, a little window positioned like hers in the middle of their wall. An idea flickered in her mind. She dismissed it, but as she ate breakfast, settled down in her rocking chair, watched the newlyweds leave wearing navy blue, the family with the blond boy in the wheelchair 14

Madhvi Ramani

get into their Jeep, the blacks get into their two cars and drive off, it kept coming back to her with renewed force.

When the street was quiet once more, Mrs Sharma went downstairs. She tied her house keys to a handkerchief and in turn tied the handkerchief to the end of her sari, which she tucked into her waist so that her keys dangled from her hip. She went outside, fetched her trowel and walked with it by her side towards the black house. The exterior was more or less like her own house, although the rose bushes were not as well-tended. The windows reflected images from the street, and gave no indication of what lay within.

Birds chirped, and in the distance cars breezed past on the dual carriageway.

Mrs Sharma turned sharply off the street and walked down the alleyway between the black house and the next.

Their sash window was exactly like hers. She went to the back garden to find something to climb on; she couldn’t very well drag their bins in from the front drive.

Wet tennis balls, once yellow but now mouldy green, an upturned bucket, badminton rackets and a home-made barometer lay scattered in the garden. Mrs Sharma contemplated the plastic garden furniture; the chairs would be too low and the table, although a good height, would be too wide for the alley.

Even so, she decided to take the chairs to the alleyway and stacked them one on top of the other, just below the window. Then she put the upturned bucket on the chairs and stepped on top, feeling the plastic give beneath her weight. She quickly manoeuvred the trowel into the gap between the sill and the bottom of the window and wedged it open. Then, she started to wriggle through. A strong smell of coconut . . . a tinge of something burnt . . . a whiff of aftershave. She moved more quickly this time, afraid someone would see her, and muttered ‘Hare Krishna’ as she inched her way further and further into the house.

The carpet was beige, the banister was a dark polished wood and beyond was the open door of the living room. Before she knew it, she found her feet safely on the stairs and her hands once again gripping the banister. She paused to catch her breath, and wondered what to do next.

She made her way cautiously down, the softly padded carpet compressing beneath each footfall. In the hall, a few pairs of shoes surrounded a shoe cabinet. Mrs Sharma shook her head. All they had to do was perform one 15

Windows

simple task to help keep the place tidy. Near the front door, an electricity bill lay on top of a pile of post. Two hundred and eleven pounds! They spent a lot. She took a few steps into the living room: school books, newspapers and a laptop were scattered in much the same fashion as the items in the garden.

It reminded her of those days in the townhouse, when she was continuously trying to return things to their rightful places. Kids. She was glad she was rid of hers but, despite herself, felt a pang of nostalgia.

She stepped out of the living room and continued down the hall. The dining-room door was closed. Maybe someone was in there, she thought as she crept past. Perhaps a sleeping grandfather, whom she had never laid eyes on. Or worse, a mad member of the family, or a criminal under house arrest.

Her fears faded as she passed the door and entered the kitchen, where the smell of coconut and charring were stronger.

Black specks surrounded the sink, where someone had scraped off the surface of burnt toast. She had to resist the urge to tidy up, and felt sorry for the mother. Mrs Sharma could not fathom how she had coped with working and running the house when her own children were young. Just looking around, it seemed exhausting.

She opened a cupboard at random: pepper, thyme, salt and a bottle of some dark brown powder labelled ‘jerk’. She opened the bottle and sniffed it. She could tell it was spicy, like garam masala, but different. She untied the handkerchief from the end of her sari, making sure the keys did not clink, and laid it out on the kitchen counter. Then, she tapped a bit of the jerk stuff onto the handkerchief and wrapped it up before closing and replacing the bottle.

What would Raj think, if he saw her now? He’d put her into an asylum for sure. A thought struck her: How on earth was she going to get out? She couldn’t go back through the sash window; she’d need to put something on the stairs to climb on just to reach it, which would be far too dangerous. She tried the back door that led out from the kitchen – it was locked. She tried the front door. Locked. Where did these people keep their keys?

Then, as obvious as daylight, she saw the windows. She went back to the kitchen and opened the one by the sink. She picked up her handkerchief and keys, climbed on to the counter and out the window, pushing it shut behind her. She went to the alley and moved the bucket and chairs back to their previous positions as accurately as possible, and left.

16

Madhvi Ramani

At home, she walked through the rooms of her house. It seemed as if she had not been here for years. It was like wandering through an Ikea store: unslept-in beds, empty wardrobes, perfectly positioned ornaments. When she had moved out of the townhouse she had told the kids to pick up their stuff, or else she would throw it away; she was not a storage centre.

Exhausted, Mrs Sharma lay down. A couple of hours later, she awoke with a growling tummy. That evening, instead of watching the street from her rocking chair, she made herself a chickpea curry with some chapattis, using the powder in her handkerchief instead of her usual mix of Indian spices. The curry tasted hot and peppery with a hint of cinnamon. Satiated, Mrs Sharma went to bed with the knowledge that she had discovered a taste for something new.

The next day, as she watched the residents of Foley Feild leave, she calculated which house to enter next. Her gaze rested on the newlyweds, both wearing black cardigans. Delightful thoughts of disturbing their wardrobes to prevent them from ever matching again danced in Mrs Sharma’s mind. She waited until the nurses, who lived next door to her on the other side to the blacks – and directly opposite the newlyweds – left.

Then she waited another ten minutes before prowling towards her targeted house with her trowel. Just as she was about to duck into the alley she noticed a white plastic box flashing a red warning light, fitted above the top right-hand window. A burglar alarm. Mrs Sharma’s plans were diverted, and she continued down the street past the house. Quite a few of the houses had alarms. At the end of the road she crossed over and started walking back.

The houses here were on the periphery of the view from her window, so she didn’t know much about their inhabitants. She passed an old English woman pruning the rose bushes in her front garden. Mrs Sharma knew that she lived there with her husband, and that they didn’t go out much. The woman smiled at Mrs Sharma, and Mrs Sharma smiled politely back. She imagined making friends with the woman, going over for a cup of tea poured out of a floral teapot into a dainty porcelain teacup. Isn’t that what happened in English neighbourhoods such as this? But Mrs Sharma left the old woman behind and carried on until she neared her own house.

Then she panicked.

17

Windows

What was she going to do now? Go back home? And then what?

As she approached the nurses’ house, she noticed that they did not have an alarm. Not her ideal choice of house, though. Nurses reminded her of her time in hospital. They were all sensible and overly cheerful, which irritated Mrs Sharma. She had always tried to give them a hard time when they fussed over her – not that it’d had any effect.

She turned into the alley.

The bins were at the back and Mrs Sharma, now quite the expert, wheeled them into position and soon scrambled through the window, feeling that familiar rush of excitement as she landed on the stairs inside.

She went upstairs and through the open door of the master bedroom, expecting a tightly made bed and hospital-like cleanliness. But the bed was crumpled, clothes and odd pairs of high heels were strewn on the floor, and an ashtray overflowed on to the dressing table, crowded with perfumes, cosmetics, a hairdryer and a brush tangled through with hair. Mrs Sharma wondered if she were the only one in the street who knew anything about housekeeping.

She trod carefully around the room, picking up dresses and uncomfortablelooking knickers, inspecting them before dropping them onto the floor again. The nurses wouldn’t be able to tell if anything had shifted. At the dressing table, a half-smoked cigarette that looked like a bidi lay beside the ashtray. She sniffed it: marijuana. When they were young, just before Mrs Sharma got married, she and Ganga went on a trip to Punjab, where they had some bhang. She remembered feeling elated and relaxed at the same time after drinking that sweet, milky concoction. She would have liked to try marijuana again, but she didn’t smoke. At least the nurses were having some fun.

She picked up a small pot labelled ‘anti-wrinkle cream’. She looked in the mirror and inspected the lines on her face. The deepest were two vertical furrows on her forehead, just above her nose. She opened the pot, dipped her finger into the cool, white cream and rubbed it into her skin. She looked at herself again. It made no difference to her wrinkles, but made her forehead feel silky. Mrs Sharma had always used Ponds.

The sound of an approaching car disturbed her thoughts. She put the jar of cream down and went to the window. It was the white van. The builder got out and stood at his door for a moment. He searched his pockets, then 18

Madhvi Ramani

stooped down and fiddled around with the potted plant by the doorstep.

He straightened himself up, opened the door, and disappeared inside.

Mrs Sharma went downstairs and left via the back door, the key for which was, thankfully, inserted in the keyhole. The following day, Mrs Sharma tried to gain access to the house where the blond boy in the wheelchair lived, but was confronted with a monotonous brick wall. She ventured down a few different alleys between other houses along the road and discovered they were all the same: none of the houses on that side had a sash window.

She wandered up and down Foley Feild and came to the horrible realization that all the other houses she was familiar with on her side of the road had burglar alarms. She went home and sat by her window, gazing listlessly at the street, locked out.

On Friday afternoon, Raj called.

‘Mum, I rang a couple of times this week but there was no answer. Is everything OK?’ ‘I was out.’

‘Oh, good. Keeping busy then.’

‘Are you coming round this weekend?’ she asked.

Raj hesitated. ‘Shalini and I were planning to go to Ila’s this weekend.’

‘Ila?’ repeated Mrs Sharma. The leaves on the trees seemed to beckon her. The builder came out of his house and got into his van.

‘Mum, are you all right? I know it’s not my place to say, but you two ought . . .’

Mrs Sharma’s gaze fell upon the plant by his doorstep. She stood up. ‘Yes, yes, say hello to her from me,’ she snapped.

‘Really? That’s great –’ But before Raj could finish his sentence Mrs Sharma had slammed the phone down and was hurrying outside.

She crossed the road and looked at the plant. The ends of its leaves were yellowing. It needed to be watered more frequently. She looked under the pot, then raked her fingers through the dry, crumbly soil. They touched something smooth and cold. A key! She quickly removed it from the pot, brushed it off, inserted it into the lock and turned the handle.

The house seemed strangely feminine. Photos of the builder with a wife and two children crowded the living room, and floral plates and porcelain 19

Windows

ornaments sat atop every available surface. It was cluttered. Mrs Sharma couldn’t stand clutter.

Upstairs, the box-room walls were papered with old football posters, their corners peeling away. The bookshelves were empty, apart from a couple of dusty tennis trophies. On the door of the other bedroom, a handmade sign informed visitors to ‘Keep Out’. Mrs Sharma peeked in: a bottle of crusty, glittery nail polish, a dried-out feather pen, a tall CD rack holding just one abandoned CD. Mrs Sharma closed the door and continued to the master bedroom. Before she had the chance to look around, she heard a vehicle.

She muttered ‘Hare Krishna’ as she crossed to the window. It was the white van! She hurried out of the room and started down the stairs, but could already hear the rumble of the engine in the driveway. Silence. She turned back. Maybe she could climb out of a window on the second floor. She panicked as she heard the sound of the key being inserted into the lock. The front door opened, letting in the gentle rustle of the outside world before it was shut again. Mrs Sharma looked out the window of the master bedroom.

There was no way she could escape. She frantically looked around for a place to hide, trying to ignore the movements below her. Opening the wardrobe would make too much noise. Heavy footsteps ascended the stairs. Mrs Sharma got down on the floor and slid under the bed. Sinister clouds of dust puffed up around her in the dim, close space. Two big boots entered the room and stopped in front of the bed, which creaked and compressed as the builder sat down. For a moment Mrs Sharma thought she would be crushed to death. Surely he could hear her breathing, as she could hear his.

He took off his shoes and socks, the sour smell of sweat attacking Mrs Sharma’s nostrils.

He stood up. A zip was undone. The jeans came down, with a pair of boxers inside them, and the builder stepped out of them, one foot at a time.

A T-shirt landed on top of the jeans. The wardrobe door squealed as it slid open. Some things were taken out and put on the bed. The builder lifted one foot, then another onto the bed. He was, unmistakably, putting stockings on. Then some more movement and Mrs Sharma saw him step into a pair of high heels, which walked to and fro, then left the room. He was clearly a nutcase. She had to escape. She scrambled out from under the bed and ran to the stairs. Sounds could be heard from behind the half-closed 20

Madhvi Ramani

bathroom door. When it opened, a big woman with red hair and a floral dress came out.

Mrs Sharma and the woman stared at each other for a moment before they both screamed. Mrs Sharma bolted down the stairs, with the woman stomping after her. A high-heeled shoe went flying past Mrs Sharma, but she kept going. She opened the front door and ran across the road to her house, frantically trying to fit her key into the lock, sensing him behind her. She stepped inside and closed her door, but when she peered through the peep-hole all she saw was an empty street and the closed door of the builder’s house.

She went upstairs to her chair and sat down. Her whole body was trembling. She continued to watch his house, but there was no movement.

It remained solid, still. After about an hour, when her heart-rate had slowed down, she noticed a movement behind his net curtain at the window opposite hers. His dark shadow remained there, and he appeared to be staring directly at her. Could he see her?

She thought about calling Raj, the police even. But what would she say?

How would she explain?

When the black woman and her son came home, their staring competition ended. He retreated from his window. Maybe she had imagined it?

But a minute later, he came out of his house and walked over to hers. He was dressed as the builder. The unfamiliar sound of the doorbell – an obscenely cheerful ding-dong – sang his arrival at the front door. Mrs Sharma sat perfectly still. The doorbell rang again; twice. He knew she was in. He couldn’t murder her in broad daylight, could he? She knew she could scream loud as a suburban fox in heat. She got up and went cautiously to the door. She opened it. The builder towered above her, his face red.

‘What you saw you had no business . . . ’ he growled, waving his big hands in her face.

Those hands could easily strangle her; she wouldn’t even have a chance to scream. Who would discover her body? She would rot, alone in her house for days, before anyone came. A sense of despair and loneliness came over her.

The builder paused in his tirade. Mrs Sharma looked into his eyes and realized that he was like her, all alone in a house that had once held his 21

Windows

family. A moment of recognition passed between them, and his hands dropped. He looked down, then up again.

‘If you’re, you know,’ he mumbled, ‘maybe you’d like to come over for a cuppa sometime.’ He turned abruptly, and walked back across the road.

A cuppa? thought Mrs Sharma. She’d never heard anything so ridiculous in her life! A woman like her going over to a strange man’s house for a cup of tea?

That weekend, however, as she whiled away her time, she contemplated his offer. No, it would not be right for a woman like her to go over to a man’s house to have tea. But maybe he wasn’t a real man. Maybe he was like a hijra. After all, hijras were very powerful. Shiva himself was half female, half male. Maybe he was a woman trapped inside a man’s body. Sometimes, we all get trapped in lives we don’t really choose, thought Mrs Sharma.

So, at four o’clock that Sunday afternoon, Mrs Sharma walked across the road and knocked on the builder’s door.

22

The Road to a Better Life Ananth Krishnan

W

hen Alim first attended a lecture by economist Ilham Tohti, he was stunned. Alim had spent most of his academic life cloistered in sterile classrooms where the lessons were, without exception, stale, uninteresting and infused with the unappealing rhetoric of Communist Party propaganda.

The twenty-six-year-old student never took his lessons seriously; he gave them just enough attention to ensure he could pass.

But Tohti’s lectures were different. Alim listened with rapt attention from beginning to end, absorbing every word and scribbling notes on even the smallest details. Everything about Tohti seemed new, even his manner, a striking contrast to the staid instructors Alim was used to. Tohti was young, charismatic and forceful. He spoke with emotion, and his lectures were animated: he would punch his fists into the air to make a point, and his eyes would grow wide to match the import of his words. And, most importantly to Alim, Tohti spoke the truth.

Alim had travelled more than 4,500 kilometres to listen to these lectures.

The journey had taken him away from his family and his quiet village nestled amidst the cornfields of Xinjiang, the rugged desert region of northwest China. He was one of only three dozen students from Xinjiang who were granted admission to Beijing’s Minzu University – the University of Minorities – set up by the Chinese government for students from China’s fifty-five minority ethnic groups. Alim’s companions were Uyghur, the Turkic ethnic group native to the western region. They, like Alim, had sacrificed much to get to Beijing. They arrived at the university together and stuck together.

23

The Road to a Better Life

In the Chinese capital, the Uyghur students quickly found they were strangers in an unfamiliar land, surrounded by people with whom they had little in common. Communicating in Mandarin was a strain. They also had different eating habits, with rules and restrictions their Chinese classmates found strange and amusing. Cosmopolitan Minzu University was a world away from what they knew. The university is a unique – and somewhat anomalous – bubble of diversity at the heart of China’s capital. A walk through its quiet campus presents a fascinating snapshot of China’s many peoples. Here, Uyghurs study and live together with Tibetans, Huis, Bais, Koreans and Mongolians. Separated by language, religion and culture, they are brought together by a common dream of education and advancement.

Alim (a pseudonym) was the first in his large family to leave home and the only one among his seven siblings to complete high school. Their dusty village in the southern county of Kizilsu was home to fewer than one hundred families, who survived by growing cotton and corn on small plots of land. Alim had to walk three miles every morning to elementary school while his two older brothers worked with their elderly father on a three-acre plot of land, which yielded barely enough to sustain the family. His sisters married young and moved to other towns.

Alim’s grandfather, a native of the old Silk Road city of Kashgar, had worked for the Kuomintang during the civil war in the 1940s. He switched his allegiance to the Communist Party shortly after Xinjiang fell under its control in 1949; however, during the Cultural Revolution he was made to suffer for his prior affiliation. His family lost its property and he was imprisoned for five years. In an effort to start anew, he moved with his family to Kizilsu in the early 1980s yet, like many others of his generation, he remained a staunch follower of Mao for the rest of his life. In this largely Muslim region, he raised his two sons as atheists and taught them to follow the Communist Party. He even joined the police force.

Alim’s father was not religious, but his mother was deeply so. The children were sent to the local mosque for lessons from the imam every weekend.

They never missed daily prayers. There was little Han Chinese influence in the countryside other than the Mandarin lessons some students took at school. Alim’s hometown remained largely insulated from the changes instituted under Chinese rule.

24

Ananth Krishnan

@

Xinjiang, a land of black deserts nestled between the mountain ranges of the Karakoram, sits uneasily at the confluence of different civilizations.

Before the newly established People’s Republic of China asserted control over Xinjiang in 1949, an independent republic set up with Soviet support had briefly existed in northern parts of the region. Successive Chinese kingdoms, from the Han Dynasty in the second century BCE to the later Tang and Qing rulers, sought to bring this frontier under their control with varying degrees of success.

Xinjiang has historically been China’s cultural and commercial bridge to the West, providing a link to India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Russia and Mongolia. Its history of constant onslaughts has imbued the place with a deep resilience; its syncretic engagement has allowed it to absorb elements of the many cultures that have passed through on the Silk Road. Today, Xinjiang is in the midst of yet another influx of outside influence.

Communist Party officials proudly use Xinjiang as an example of how Beijing’s rule has brought great benefits to undeveloped frontier regions.

Local party apparatchiks reel off statistics: double-digit GDP growth every year, soaring investment in fixed assets and infrastructure, more schools and more hospitals. Modern Chinese rule has brought cities with skyscrapers and shopping malls, highways and power plants. In Urumqi, Xinjiang’s capital, the Chinese elite drive flashy cars down wide boulevards lit by neon and lined by stores selling international brands. Xinjiang’s growth has been led by Chinese migrants and state-run Chinese companies, which are tapping the region’s vast energy and mineral resources. In 1949, Han Chinese made up roughly 6 per cent of the population; now it is closer to 40 per cent. For Uyghurs, the impact of this development has been profound.

Radical demographic changes are fundamentally altering older ways of life.

The changes are most evident in Xinjiang’s prosperous centres, in cities like Urumqi, where Uyghurs are no longer in the majority.

Though people in rural areas also benefit from these new riches, it often means they must forfeit their way of life. As living costs rise, families find their agricultural livelihoods untenable. Fathers and sons head to towns and cities in search of work, but there are few well-paying jobs for Uyghurs who do not read or write Chinese. Alim was one of the lucky ones. His parents 25

The Road to a Better Life

made great sacrifices to send him to university, an opportunity they were not able to give any of his siblings. Yet he was utterly unprepared to join a Chinese university. Schools in smaller counties like Kizilsu offered minimal language training. This left their graduates with little chance of finding a decent job or of securing admission to a good university, where they would be expected to attend classes taught only in Chinese.

Alim’s parents, following the advice of his high-school teachers, sent him to a preparatory course at a university in Lanzhou, the bustling, modern provincial capital of neighbouring Gansu province on the banks of the Yellow River. There he studied Chinese alongside other minority students for two years. For the Uyghur students, moving away from home was a wrenching process. It was their first, crucial step of assimilation into Chinese culture. In Xinjiang’s small-town schools, religious studies were central to the curriculum. But in Lanzhou, the students were shocked to find their classes did not stop for daily prayers and that the university did not even have a mosque. The Uyghur students led isolated lives: they were housed in the same dormitory as Tibetans and Huis from neighbouring Ningxia, who were also wrestling with the challenges of integration. Their poor Chinese was an impediment to making friends among the Chinese students. The Uyghurs also preferred to eat in halal restaurants and refrained from drinking alcohol.

Leaving home meant leaving behind the support structure of religion: in small towns and villages Islam is at the centre of everyday life and the local imam is a respected local figure. He provides moral advice, educates young children, and arbitrates disputes. The practice of Islam has been a persistent source of tension under the officially atheist Communist Party, which increasingly seeks to regulate the appointments of the influential imams and to shape the messages they deliver.

After Lanzhou, Alim had to take a university entrance examination that focused on the oft-repeated narrative of the region’s long history of assimilation. In his answer to one question he described how Han Dynasty rulers married their daughters into rebellious frontier tribes in an effort to bring ‘harmony’. Another question probed his sense of patriotism to the Chinese motherland. In response, he wrote that the Chinese Communist Party had brought development and prosperity to his previously backward 26

Ananth Krishnan

homeland. In another answer, he described the cordial relations that Han Chinese enjoyed with their Uyghur brothers and other ethnic minorities.

Alim passed the three-hour test. He was delighted – even though he didn’t believe a word of what he had written.

Given the Chinese government’s sensitivity to minority issues, the academic programmes – and the staff – at Minzu University are carefully and strictly monitored. This is hardly different to what happens at any other Chinese university, but Minzu is viewed by Party officials as being especially sensitive, considering the particular importance of Tibet and Xinjiang to national stability. It is therefore surprising that Minzu University professors dare to risk their careers by pushing the boundaries and encouraging fierce debate within their lecture halls.

Few are more daring than the charismatic Uyghur scholar Ilham Tohti.

An economist by training, he has emerged as an influential critic of the development model in Xinjiang; he has become a source of inspiration for the university’s approximately 300 Uyghur students.

Empty seats are hard to find in his lectures, which routinely venture into areas ignored by the students’ dry textbooks. Tohti has called for the reform of bilingual education in Xinjiang, and has questioned the government’s emphasis on promoting Mandarin over the Uyghur language. Such sentiments resonate with students like Alim, who even now speaks only slowly in Chinese, despite years of effort to master the language. ‘Language,’ said Alim, ‘is at the heart of all our problems. My language is a part of my identity. But for me, it will always be a disadvantage, a handicap. In university, I have to work so much harder just to keep up. If I want to work for a Chinese company, I will need to speak their language. If I work for the government, I will have to learn their language. They will never learn mine.’

Tohti’s criticisms focus also on the Chinese government’s energyfocused, heavy-industry-led development model, arguing that it has led to widening disparities between Han Chinese and Uyghurs and has allowed big industry to strip the land of its resources. Tohti speaks passionately, delivering his lectures in Chinese, often at high volume. His audience is by no means limited to Uyghur students. He is routinely called in for ‘cups of tea’ with the university’s resident Communist Party representatives and with officials from the Public Security Bureau, who warn him to stop deviating from the official line.

27

The Road to a Better Life

Just before the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize was awarded, in absentia, to jailed Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo, Tohti was sent on a forced ‘weekend vacation’ with his wife and young son to the popular holiday destination of Hainan Island. He is surprised he hasn’t met with the same fate as Liu, that he is still teaching after a decade of testing the limits of government patience. He expects a knock on the door any day. Perhaps his popularity has provided some protection: a Uyghur friend of his, with a lower profile, has been less fortunate. Gheyret Niyaz was jailed in 2011 for running Uyghur Online, a popular website where social and economic issues were discussed and which often featured articles written by Tohti. Before it was shut down by the authorities, the site was popular among Minzu students and even had a following in Xinjiang, where its message had particular resonance.

Its message resonated. Tohti’s reputation underscores the serious lack of credibility ascribed to the Chinese government by the Uyghurs; one line from him can undo reams of Party propaganda.

For Alim, Tohti’s lectures were a revelation. He was intoxicated by the freshness and ferocity of the ideas, which chimed with his own experiences: ‘In Xinjiang, none of us believe what we read in our textbooks,’ Alim told me after one of Tohti’s lectures. ‘We go through school learning nothing about our own culture. We only learn about how the Chinese look at us.’

A longer version of this article appears in Chinese Characters: Profiles of FastChanging Lives in a Fast-Changing Land due to be published by University of California Press in September 2012.

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Becoming a Stinking Public Intellectual Han Han translated by Michael Y. Lee

A

growing stench has been gathering around the words ‘public intellectual’ – and by association, the label ‘intellectual’. This sullying of public intellectuals seems to have occurred in the last two years. I remember when many magazines would crown an annual ‘public intellectual’ – I’ve received the honour myself – but then, at some point, the term began to be used as an insult. Even in a debate where everyone’s obviously a public intellectual, one side only has to accuse the other of being public intellectuals and the latter must concede the battle and admit defeat.

Then, suddenly, people wised up and everyone on the scene began to call themselves ‘grassroots’. But soon enough, this grassroots community started fighting among themselves, acting no better than the ‘shitzen’ masses. They tore each other apart, to the indifference of outside spectators.

Another label quickly emerged: yi jian lian xiu, or ‘opinion leader’.

Before long, the Internet was flooded with these so-called opinion leaders.

But who wants to watch all these yi jian lian xiu queue up to comment whenever something newsworthy happens? I’d rather watch Yi Jianlian , the basketball star, make a lay-up.

Finally the big guns came out: ‘citizen’ took the stage – a grand and sincere term indeed, one that suggested the evolution of the term ‘public intellectual’, into something more of the people, a safe and unassailable role with high-sounding aims. But recently someone said: citizens? What citizens? These are just fame mongers, wolves in sheep’s clothing. So now many people don’t know what to call this community.

29

Becoming a Stinking Public Intellectual

Of course, part of the stink surrounding ‘public intellectual’ emanates from the public intellectuals themselves. This group really has a shitload of personal shortcomings. Some are pedantic, some are slick, some are lewd, some are clueless, some are opportunists, some are prattlers, some are crude, some are pretentious, some exhibit fake profundity, some grovel to the crowd, some play to their cliques, some grandstand, some are morally perverse, some are hypocritical, some are alarmist, some are factional. On top of this, they keep issuing statements left and right, magnifying their own shortcomings in the process, until everyone starts to get sick of them.

But when I reflected a bit more, I realized that these types turn up in every profession, and at every level of society. People always say celebrities have messy love lives but if you look around your office you’ll probably find the same kind of drama going on.

This is how the story always plays out: a public intellectual or opinion leader roars onto the scene. People embrace him – he’s saying what they only dare think. But after a while, people start to think he’s spinning his wheels; he’s saying the same thing over and over again. It’s not entirely his fault. The main problem is that the government is making the same mistake over and over again. But suddenly someone points at this public intellectual and shouts: What’s so special about you? All you did was exploit our feelings about politics to make your own fame and fortune. Stinking public intellectual.

I have a friend who hates to read social criticism from public intellectuals with a background among the lierati. He thinks they’re mostly doing it for show, that they’re stuck on repeat and they’re everywhere, so you can’t turn them off. On the other hand, he loves to listen to successful business people talk. He follows Lee Kai-fu, Wang Ran, Pan Shiyi, et al. and forwards their latest insights every day. He thinks their writing is no less literary and that they have a better grasp of what’s realistically possible in today’s society. Most importantly, they’ve already made their money, so they don’t need to do anything for show. But another friend at the dining table says conspiratorially: that’s not necessarily true. Once people get money, they want recognition.

I don’t think they’re speaking out of the purity of their hearts. They’re speaking out in order to get something in return. They’re just another kind of stinking public intellectual. My friend voiced a few words of opposition but he remained mostly quiet on his microblog the next day, forwarding only a of jokes. It took him a few days to get back to his normal self.

30

Han Han

I have another friend who says it’s rare to find a celebrity who cares about the real world. She admires the actress Yao Chen, who often speaks out for the cause of justice. But another friend of mine doesn’t care for Yao Chen at all and says it’s just a career move for her, a way to distinguish herself from her celebrity peers. It’s just a means to an end. She’s another kind of stinking public intellectual.

I have another friend who admires XXX, who thinks XXX is very courageous. But then I find another friend who retorts: XXX is just posturing, too. The more he’s persecuted, the more his status and his bank account grow. This is being a stinking public intellectual at a higher level, but he’s also exploiting politics for his own ends. He’s a stinking public intellectual 2.0.

Of course, I can’t exclude myself. When I wrote essays as a teenager, I loved to criticise this and that, not out of any underlying belief I held at the time, but solely because I had grown up reading the writers from the Republic of China era. Under their influence, I subconsciously equated writing with criticism: to write about something was to criticise it. I had a classmate who was also fiercely passionate about writing, but our influences and temperaments were totally different. Thus, I am particularly sensitive to the reasons why some people can get along even though one may care only about reality, and the other only about horoscopes. And although my first book became a bestseller, the truth is that I have made my name with the essays I’ve written in the last few years. The fact that I can continue to write essays and live in relative comfort has made me a suspected ‘50 Cent Party’ online propagandist, a hook for the audience. In other words, a stinking public intellectual 3.0.

Reaching this final stage, I found a new mindset. Unless you’re among the most downtrodden or the most privileged, your motives will be questioned and criticised in all kinds of ways. Someone who’s slightly liberal is posturing; someone who’s slightly conservative is part of the 50 Cent Party; either way, they’re exploiting politics or public affairs for gain. On top of this, when public intellectuals are divided on an issue, both sides will start digging up each other’s past or family background, which leaves spectators to curse the whole lot of them. Given also that the masses are starting to produce better and better writing on their own, it’s no surprise that to be considered a ‘public intellectual’ has become controversial rather than complimentary.

31

Becoming a Stinking Public Intellectual

I’ve finally come to realize that it doesn’t matter if I embrace the term, reject it or even try to replace it with a unique label for myself: I really am a stinking public intellectual. Some say it doesn’t matter what people call the group. Whether the group is called ‘public intellectuals’, ‘scholars’, ‘opinion leaders’ or ‘citizens’, as long as you speak for yourself, you own your reputation. Who cares if the label smells foul or fragrant?

But on reflection, I disagree. Let’s say you’re a crane in the wild, free to fly about as you please. Even so, you don’t want to be flying carefree and then, all of a sudden, have someone insult your whole species by pointing at you and saying: ‘Look, there goes a wild duck.’ Admittedly, this reclassification is due in no small part to the fact that cranes call each other ‘ducks’ when they’re fighting one another, a spectacle enjoyed by the wild pheasants and meddlesome pigs that gather to watch. I think ‘intellectuals’ and ‘public intellectuals’ should be positive labels in any generation, cherished by all, so that even the three words ‘stinking public intellectual’ in this article’s title would be considered an offence. In contrast, ‘opinion leader’ is an undesirable label. ‘Leader’ suggests a community where dissidents may be removed or purged; whereas the term fen zi, or ‘member’, of zhi shi fen zi, the Chinese phrase for ‘intellectual’ (literally ‘members of knowledge’), signifies only a basic unit or building block for a community.

Yes, I am a public intellectual. I am exploiting politics. I am exploiting current events. I am exploiting controversy. I am exploiting the vested interests of public authorities. Everyone is also free to exploit me: no tip necessary. Won’t it be great when everyone can exploit politics and public authority with impunity? Everyone will be engaged with the world, criticising societal injustice, denouncing pharmaceutical companies when they try to peddle chromium as medicine, celebrating when corrupt officials are locked up. Even if you have to posture along the way, even if you have to trick your fans, girls and admirers – who will care? When it comes to the government, the public and politics, if you don’t exploit them, they may very well run you over.

Finally, when you’re faced with injustice, don’t expect anyone to fight for you. You have to wade in yourself if you want anything to happen. After the Internet came along and started getting everyone involved, it was inevitable that the celebrated public intellectuals who once spoke for the people would be discarded along the way. Losing a few famous figures isn’t necessarily 32

Han Han

a bad thing. A few days ago, a friend of mine wrote a microblog post on food safety that was a model of intellectual writing. It was forwarded over a thousand times. My friend was very pleased and thought there was nothing special about public intellectuals, nothing they could do that he couldn’t.

This is part of the process of societal change. Not that the process will involve inciting people to spurn a public intellectual; certainly not. Rather, it will involve encouraging everyone to become a public intellectual.

A selection of other essays and blogs by Han Han can be found in This Generation, due to be published by Simon and Schuster in October 2012.

33

Reza Mohammadi translated by Nick Laird and Hamid Kabir

The Word I was a word abandoned in an old battered book, a word forgotten by politics, by love and the speaking world.

The poets fled from me. All of my letters deserted me, deserted me for other words without once looking back.

Just like that, I was alone; a ghost-word that lacked its letters, lonely and with only the terrible sound of the frenzied centuries for company, only the sound of the slaves, of the dead, of the arrows of time flying and flying and flying.

You (O my true love) came with your fierce mouth and hands of ten desolate fingers and found me, and the whole world did shout me.

34

Reza Mohammadi

Illegal Immigrant it is possible the sun has risen and over the mountains the clouds are there still – that winds are driving and families arriving and there is the sound of a party sound of dancing, chanting, and glasses smashing, the laughter exploding in every minute and people and happiness and also me, with my big heart, in a ship or strapped under the truck, I am crossing the border and moment by moment am entering with glory England

Drawing There was a voice and it coursed from a pair of parched lips, drawing me out of my body.

The voice was despotic, uncurbed as a horse dragging my soul across rocks and up scree.

I don’t know why the voice, the maker, drew me as unroofed, as a vagrant, a fool, 35

Poetry

or why it split me in two and then drew me from you, sliding the earth in between us.

It sketched a door of death then and depicted me nailed to the door – but that wasn’t enough so it rubbed us out and started from the beginning, drawing us in the likeness of doves, separately caged.

It wasn’t enough so it drew me with neither wings nor feathers but it wasn’t enough so it dashed us to pieces and drew me as your son, you as my father, and a moment later I was a stone and you were a star shining down on me, making me into the most precious thing . . .

It wasn’t enough.

It drew you as a desert and me as a breeze on the long wander through you.

It wasn’t enough. It erased us and sketched me as a cup of tea, full of good and full of evil, and made you the sugar that sank in me and was dissolved and finally we were lifted up to a pair of parched lips and drained.

36

Rainbow Days Win Lyovarin translated by Marcel Barang

H

e had come from Burma eight years earlier. He had worked in a restaurant around Rangsit for three years, so spoke Thai better than his friends, who had come over to ‘strike gold’ in Thailand. But the owner had sold the business, and the new owner had kicked him out, saying he didn’t like Burmese. There was news at the time of a Burmese maid killing the family she worked for, and plundering their house. After that he followed a Burmese friend to work on a farm in Nakhon Nayok for quite some time; next he worked at Don Mueang airport, and then he found love.

She came from the same town as he did, had a pretty face and a well-rounded body. He followed her to sell clothes in Pakkret. But after only half a year, she’d fled with a better-looking young man with better prospects, leaving him with a big pile of clothes and a big pile of debts. He finally repaid the money he owed by selling the clothes, and then by his own labour.

The moneylender, seeing how determined he was, sold him a cart he had confiscated from some other debtor. It was old, and rusty all over. The lender sold it to him for only two hundred baht. He spent three days scrubbing off the rust, then took the cart here and there to peddle things until he settled on a condominium construction site. His customers were the construction workers. He experimented with selling all sorts of things, from personal wares to sweets, grilled squid and barbequed fish balls. That’s where he made a new friend, Samran, a young lad from Korat. Samran was selling drinks, and before long the two of them were sharing the rent of a room to lower their expenses. He had followed Samran to sell here.

37

Rainbow Days

Here there were more people assembled than anywhere they’d been before. There were vendors, male and female, from everywhere, but there were customers in huge numbers as well. He didn’t know what these people had come here for, day after day, night after night. Most of them wore expensive clothes; some even wore ties.

Vendors sold foodstuffs as well as other useful items. Some drove delivery vans stocked with goods from soap, toothpaste, toothbrushes, mosquito repellent and cigarettes to plastic hand clappers.

He sold sodas, bottled water, green tea, instant coffee, tissues, mats, sun hats, mosquito repellent. Before long wholesalers were offering him goods for resale, yellow T-shirts and stickers with political slogans, yellow flags and Thai national flags. He made five to six hundred baht in profit every day, some days up to one thousand.

He loved this country!

The people on stage proclaimed that the country must not repeat the history of 1767, when traitors to the nation opened the way for the Burmese army to destroy the kingdom of Ayudhya. He had learned history in elementary school, but had left school after that, so he knew nothing of that period. He didn’t know that his ancestors had invaded this land. Luckily nobody here knew he was Burmese.

Several of his vendor friends liked to talk politics and discuss the reasons why so many people were gathered here. He would only smile and nod at regular intervals out of politeness. He agreed with one vendor who said, ‘There’s no money in joining the crowd. Selling’s better. Let’s turn the crisis into an opportunity, I say.’ If this place made him almost a thousand baht a day, never mind who gathered here or for what reason: the longer the better. He might make enough money to send some to his mother. He wore a yellow shirt every day.

Most of the people he met wearing yellow shirts were well behaved, bought without bargaining and often didn’t wait for change. They liked to eat snacks all the time and he ran out of sweets every day.

One day, one of the demonstrators remarked to his friend, ‘It’d be good if we had real coffee. I’m fed up with this bland instant stuff.’

To which the other answered, ‘You’re right. Too bad there’s nobody selling any.’

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Win Lyovarin

It took him several days to understand the difference between fresh and instant coffee and the difference in price as well. He didn’t have enough money to buy coffee-making equipment, but eventually managed to borrow money to purchase a small, second-hand coffee-making machine. His daily profit more than doubled, but good things don’t last: he’d been selling fresh coffee for just over a week when the meeting was called off.

Once the yellow shirts had stopped gathering, his income plunged. He spent all his savings to repay the loan for the coffee-making machine, but it wasn’t long before Samran told him about another meeting. The two of them went to sell things as before. This time, the crowd of people were wearing red shirts. He soon realized this was a different group altogether.

These people bought less than the people in the yellow shirts did. Food vendors grumbled about poor sales, because most of the red shirts brought their own food and of course none of them failed to wait for their change.

The items the new group preferred were prepaid phone cards, mosquito repellent and plastic foot clappers.

He was left with dozens of yellow flags. He bought red dye. Luckily, red could trump yellow. He sold all of his red flags within days.

He didn’t know what these people were there for, day after day, night after night, but he knew that most of them came from up-country, some from as far away as Chiang Mai. Several of them told him they liked the thirtybaht health scheme. Others came from Yasothon, Nakhon Ratchasima, Ubon Ratchathani . . .

The people on stage also talked about Burma attacking Siam in 1767.

This time they said it was because of the social division between rulers and commoners, and that there was only one person who could solve that problem. As before, he didn’t understand their high language. He felt envious that the villagers of this country were so learned, because however difficult the words used by the people on stage, the congregation clapped their hands or their plastic feet all the time.

He received T-shirts to sell as before. This time they were all red, and printed with various motifs and slogans. He didn’t understand the meaning of the words, but that wasn’t important. He knew he was indebted to those who had made the shirts. He wore a red shirt every day. He simply hoped that the people who gathered wouldn’t change the colour of their shirts too often, so he could sell out his stock; yet he also thought to 39

Rainbow Days

himself that even if they went through all the colours of the rainbow it wouldn’t matter. =He walked into the old shop at the end of the lane. The Chinese man in the shop asked him, ‘How much this time?’

He handed a wad of banknotes to the man, who counted the money deftly.

‘Five thousand! Hmm, that’s quite a lot .’

The Chinese man gave him a receipt. That amount of money would travel straight to Chiang Mai via the telephone system. Within minutes it would cross over into Burma without having to go through any customs or border post. Less than twenty-four hours later his mother would receive that amount of money as if by magic.

He loved this country!

40

© Troy Small

Interview: Kip Fulbeck Kathleen Hwang

K

ip Fulbeck is the creator of The Hapa Project and other artistic ventures that celebrate multiracial identity. ‘Hapa’ is a Hawaiian term that refers to a person of part Asian and/or Pacific Islander ancestry. Fulbeck photographed more than 1,200 self-identified Hapas and asked them to answer the question: ‘What are you?’ He then put the photographs and descriptions in a travelling exhibition, published them in books, and started an online multiracial community.

Fulbeck is a professor of art at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

He is the author of Mixed: Portraits of Multiracial Kids; Part Asian, 100% Hapa; and Permanence: Tattoo Portraits. He is also a filmmaker, performer, artist, surfer, guitar player, lifeguard and swimming champion. He describes himself as ‘a complete overachiever despite being only half Chinese’; his other half is a mix of English, Irish and Welsh.

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Interview: Kip Fulbeck

The idea for The Hapa Project originated from Fulbeck’s childhood desire to know other people like himself. ‘It was a ton of work,’ he has said, ‘but definitely a work of love.’

ALR: You seem completely at ease with your own mixed background. Do you think many people (young or otherwise) of mixed parentage struggle with questions of identity?

KF: Identity is a conscious and ongoing process, so certainly there were times when I felt more or less comfortable than others. Everyone struggles with identity to some degree, especially growing up. And if you have no role models visible in popular culture, that struggle can be amplified. We still live with the idea that race exists in some sort of biological form even though this has been proven to be false. And we still cling to the idea that someone can be racially ‘pure’ – which suggests that someone identifying as multiracial or multi-ethnic is somehow ‘impure’. It’s ridiculous really.

ALR: Do you think there is still prejudice in the United States against mixedrace people? Is it the same for Asian Americans and African Americans?

KF: Of course there is still prejudice. When we fill out forms we are asked to identify our race with the instruction to ‘check one box only’. That’s ludicrous. It’s also important to recognize that prejudice doesn’t just come from mainstream society; it also comes from ‘minority’ culture/s, and can be more intense and palpable.

It’s not the same for Asian Americans as it is for African Americans for many reasons . . . our country’s legacy of slavery being the most obvious.

Also, Asian/Pacific Islanders, apart from native Hawaiians, have typically emigrated to the US much later. And then there is the fact that nearly all US-born African Americans are multi-ethnic, yet usually identified as Black.

ALR: In Asia, the situation may be different to what it is in the US or UK. There are some places, like Singapore, where racial mixes are fairly common.

But in mainland China, for example, as well as in Korea and Japan, this is less common. What attitudes have you encountered among your Chinese relatives or from other Chinese?

KF: My mother, half siblings and cousins were all born in China – so I grew up in a very ethnically Chinese household. For many decades I 42

Kathleen Hwang

was the only Hapa in my extended family. Certainly younger generations of Chinese Americans are more open and accepting of multiracial people than older ones, simply because it’s much more common. In my experience, Chinese people (even my own relatives) have told me that I’m not Chinese.

This used to be quite painful. It occasionally still is.

I haven’t been to China since 1999. But when I was there, I was definitely seen as a foreigner, as an anomaly, which I think surprises many Americans.

ALR: Do you think prejudices can be overcome in nations like these that have long been homogeneous? Have you heard the story of Lou Jing, the Chinese girl with an African American father? She was a finalist in televised singing competition in Shanghai, and her appearance generated huge controversy.

KF: I hope prejudices can be overcome. But it won’t occur without people speaking freely about it, and without them being able to speak freely about it. For change to occur, we must insist on challenging others’ definitions and misrepresentations of us. Yes, standing up alone for who you are can be very hard, but it’s also very necessary if we are to grow as a society.

The blatant and overt racism demonstrated towards Lou Jing was so sad, but I view this more as a demonstration of how close-minded, uneducated and intolerant many people are than as any slight on her as a person. In other words, all the haters just showed their true colours. And they weren’t pretty.

ALR: There have been a number of part-Asian singers, actors and actresses that have captured the imagination of fans around the world. Why are they so popular? Do you think some people aspire to interracial marriages because of such stars?

KF: Historically, these Hapas have been part Caucasian rather than part Latino, African, et cetera, which is not coincidental and ties into many threads of ingrained racism. Then there’s the fact that these pop-culture figures are always physically beautiful. This ties into the stereotype that all Hapas are beautiful – which is as ridiculous as saying all Germans, Mexicans or Koreans are beautiful – you’re distilling an entire population into an easy-to-comprehend box that’s completely inaccurate. This type of thinking (if we can even call it that) is lazy, simplistic and reductive. Look, 43

Interview: Kip Fulbeck

part of succeeding in pop culture depends on being desirable; everyone in pop culture, including the Hapas, is beautiful.

So if you understand a group only via pop culture, you develop a distorted perspective.

I guess what it comes down to is this: if you’re picking your partner based on some media fetish, you’ve got problems.

ALR: What about interracial, intercultural marriage? Did your parents experience any difficulties in their relationship because of the differences in their backgrounds?

KF: The first problem is legality. My parents’ marriage initially was illegal in many states. They never told me of any problems socially.

ALR: Barack Obama is currently the most prominent mixed-race success story. Yet he is referred to as ‘the first Black president’ and his marriage to Michelle seems to strengthen his identification with the African-American community. Has he chosen to identify with one race rather than the other, and if so, why? Would you say it is common for mixed-race people to choose one racial identity over the other?

KF: Let’s make one thing very clear: President Obama identifies as a Black man and that is his right. If I or anyone else want him to do otherwise is not our business, just as we wouldn’t want someone else telling us how to identify ourselves.

Secondly, he cannot ‘pass’ for Caucasian any more than I can. In other words, even if he wanted to identify differently, there is a certain segment of the world that wouldn’t accept his decision.

ALR: How important is racial identity in defining an individual’s sense of self and self-confidence?

KF: That depends on the individual, but I would say typically it’s enormously important in developing one’s sense of self. I’ve observed a phenomenon typical of Hapa university students: many suddenly become super Asian – really embracing this part of their culture up to the point of changing their behaviour, dress, even their name sometimes. These same individuals often move out of this phase within a few years . . . it’s all part of the identity process.

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Kathleen Hwang

I think of it as a pendulum. The longer something has been repressed or suppressed – be it ethnicity, sexuality, religion, whatever – the more strongly this emerges when the pendulum eventually swings the other way.

And it always swings the other way. Eventually, I hope we find some happy medium. That’s my experience anyway . . . I spent the first eighteen years of my life telling myself I just didn’t find Asian women attractive, which was obviously a manifestation of my own self-hatred and bad experiences of being picked on. When I ‘came out’, I went through that phase of being super Asian, which partly presented itself in my being attracted only to Asian women, which when you think about it is equally problematic.

Eventually, like I said, you hope to find a place to settle, where you can just love who you love.

ALR: You are a filmmaker and an author, a professor of art, a competitive swimmer, a karate expert, and a few other things as well. How do you manage all this?

KF: My father was a proponent of being a Renaissance man. And he instilled in me this idea, this question: Why settle for just one interest, one focus, one skill, when so much of the world is out there waiting for you? I’m very fortunate to be surrounded by brilliant students, colleagues and audiences.

I learn from everyone around me. I’m constantly inspired. I just wish I had more time!

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Teenager by Fang Hui

46

Elephant Kim Jae Young translated by Moon-ok Lee and Nicholas Yohan Duvernay

W

hen October came, Father covered the window that opened onto the main road with his old pacheura, a rectangular Nepalese shawl. It was the morning after the damp chill of night had begun to seep through the warped window frame and Father had started coughing hard. Earlier that summer, the mould that had grown beneath the floorboards had found its way into the furniture and the clothes hanging from pegs on the walls, and finally reached Father’s lungs and my lower legs. Father suffered from a wracking cough and I scratched my legs furiously all day as we endured the tedium of the summer. Month after month we listened to the rain pounding on the slate roof and stared into our glossy calendar with its clear, bright sunshine, a lush teak forest, snow-covered Annapurna, the calmly rippling waters of Pewa Lake and laughing children sucking on sugar cane.

Ten years ago this long, low building was used as a pigsty. It has five rough plank doors all in a row, lacks a porch and the eaves are short as a sparrow’s tail, which means I leave for school in the morning wearing shoes drenched with dew. A few days ago, the landlady stuck a scrap of yellow paper on the door of room number three. ‘Room Available’ it said. I peered through a crack in the door to look inside. The walls were mouldy like ours, stained and and scribbled on, and the peeling, tan-coloured linoleum was coated with dust like a thin layer of snow. I could just see a little pitch-black hole in the wall behind an old cupboard that leaned to one side. The hole was big enough for mice to scurry through. Flaking bits of cement and clods of dirt had been plastered around the hole, making it look like a fresh scab.

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Elephant

My chest contracted in fear and I felt myself jerk back from the door. You’d think I’d seen a heart exploded by a bullet blast.

Ali, the Pakistani boy who had been living in number three, had robbed his roommate and run off. He had taken advantage of the darkness and commotion of a stormy night to grab the money Vijay had hidden. Apparently, Vijay had dug a hole in the wall and saved his money there between remittances.

Why hadn’t anyone, especially Vijay, heard Ali rustling about in his efforts to get at the money? Well, because Vijay had pulled two all nighters in a row, plus overtime. The colicky baby of the Bangladeshi lady in room two had been bawling all night and the Burmese guys were rattling on in front of the television and after that were drunk and singing. Marina, the Russian girl, wouldn’t have been home because she worked at night. Only Father and I, in room number four, went to bed early and lay awake in the darkness. But neither one of us could have heard the rustle of a thief over the din of our own thoughts, troubled as they were after Mother ran away.

The night Ali stole that money he might as well have taken the life of Vijay’s youngest son, who needed heart surgery. Vijay had come over here to work and to save up for the medical bills. Hard luck tales are so common in this neighbourhood that we’re practically tripping over them; nobody pays much attention to the latest goings-on. But I’ll bet Vijay’s scream, which could be heard ringing out at dawn so full of outrage and despair, won’t be forgotten anytime soon. These days he sits under the old persimmon tree in the yard and stares at the distant mountains. When clouds gather on the mountain peak, he sometimes mutters nonsense. It sounds as if he’s saying, ‘There goes a water buffalo.’ It seems the man will have to spend a long time with tears and sighs, as surely as winter will be over only when the red guts of unharvested persimmons drop – plop, plop – from the topmost branches.

My twelve-year-old brain is grooved deeply like the Himalayas from seeing too many people with too many troubles. Compared to the rest of the world map, the Himalayas aren’t much bigger than a joint of my finger, but Father says the mountains can’t be contained in a map. He says the deeply furrowed valleys and the tall, snow-capped peaks of his childhood stretch farther than any trip around the world. I didn’t understand what Father meant until they showed us a model of the human brain in the school science lab. They said that when you are exposed to a wide variety 48

Kim Jae Young

of experiences at an early age your brain grows wrinkles and ridges very quickly. I guess that means I’m growing old faster, too.

Once the landlady finds a new tenant for room three, Vijay will live with us to save on rent. It seems Father has decided to give up on Mother.

Of course, as an ethnic Korean from China she could get by anywhere in this country. At least she’d have a quick comeback in Korean if anyone tried to shame or mistreat her. She knows many complex phrases beyond the basic ‘Stop hitting me’, ‘Don’t swear at me’, and ‘Pay me’. Mother can say ‘favourable consideration’, ‘disregard’, ‘emergency room’, ‘damage compensation’, plus other expressions like ‘You double-crosser!’ or ‘Work till you drop.’

I awake to the floury smell of bread being made. My father sits facing the door and his back and shoulders rise and fall in a billowing movement as he rolls out the dough. The kettle he placed on the gas burner near my feet makes wheezing noises as it heats chia in butter: our morning tea.

It dawns on me that this is Father’s fortieth birthday. I hadn’t realized it until now, but a quick look at the calendar confirms that today is definitely the circled day. Every autumn without fail Father has told me the story of how he left his hometown on the morning of his birthday at the end of Tihar, the festival of light that falls fifteen days after the nearly ten-day Nepalese thanksgiving called Dashain.

‘In Nepal,’ Father always said, ‘the summer sunshine streams in through the pores on top of the head. Autumn sunshine touches the soul. The day I left was in autumn. The weak sunshine slanted in and pierced my heart.

I was twenty-six at the time, and my heart beat like a wild beast . . .’

I don’t know why Father has drawn such a large circle around the date.

I won’t be able to give him a gift or anything. He doesn’t make enough money to give me, his child, an allowance.

The large circle Father has drawn in coal-black pencil looks like a spiral, what the men from Myanmar in room number one call pwe. They say that each of the foreign labourers who comes to Korea is caught in a pwe. My pwe is kid-sized because I was born in Korea out of Father’s whirlwind of a life and Mother’s Korean Chinese womb, so I guess you could say I am only half pwe. Of course, I am not a complete fool. At school and around our neighbourhood I am treated no better than a pwe. I touch my swollen left cheekbone as I lie on the floor. It fills my palm.

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Elephant

‘Hey, scumbag! You sit next to So-yeong, right?’

That was yesterday. I was on my way home after school when So-yeong’s older brother, a sixth-grader, grabbed me by the collar and wanted to know why I’d touched his sister with this shit-wiping hand of mine. I told him I would never have done that. I explained in humiliating detail how I had accidentally brushed the back of her hand in the process of reaching for my pencil as it was rolling away from me.

‘Don’t lie to me, idiot,’ her brother said as he punched me. I jabbed him once in the ribs in retaliation and he fell down. Blood flowed from his nose, leaving blotches all over his clothes.

‘Eat with your hand,’ Father is saying, ‘that way, you will not eat too much too fast.’

I pretend not to hear him and tear into the bread with my chopsticks.

I nearly lash out at him saying there’s never enough food to overeat, but I control myself.

‘You people eat and wipe your shit with your hands, don’t you? Blech, that’s so gross!’

I can almost hear my classmates taunting me. But it’s not true. Nepalese eat with the right hand, not the left, which is reserved for wiping. Father keeps his right hand very clean and treats it with special care. The only problem is that he has no fingerprints. The little ridges wore off long ago, so when he presses his fingertips to a document, he leaves behind a splotch that looks like a squashed flower. People here must think you have no soul if you don’t have fingerprints; otherwise, why would they treat people like Father no better than a bunch of flatfish strung together? Another foreign worker, another fish for the string.

His name is either ‘Hey, you’, or ‘Son of a bitch’. Not a human being by the name of Arjun, who loves flowering malingo bamboo, sweetly sings the folk song ‘Resham Firiri’ and who holds memories of Annapurna in his head.

‘Your face!’ Father says. ‘What happened?’

I pull the bread apart with my right hand and pop some in my mouth as I tell him the truth.

‘What happened to you doesn’t matter. No one will believe us anyway.’

Father, who stutters when he speaks his garbled Korean, reminds me of a clown. Everyone sounds like an idiot when their words are unclear.

‘It would’ve been better if you just let yourself get hit . . . Be careful – he won’t leave it like this.’

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Kim Jae Young

‘I can defend myself.’

‘Don’t be stupid. Next time he tries to hit you, just let him.’

Father suddenly reverts to Nepalese. He looks me straight in the eye and then, clenching his jaw, blurts out a Nepalese proverb that makes absolutely no sense: ‘If a man throws a stone, return the favour with a flower.’

‘I don’t wanna. I’d rather beat the crap out of them. When I’m grown up and my arm muscles are good and strong, I’ll never slave away in a factory like you. I’ll punch out anyone who looks down on us or bothers us, and kick them, and –’ ‘So you’re saying you’ll just charge straight at them like a yak, without stopping to think of the consequences?’

‘What difference does it make how a yak runs? If you’re gonna talk about the Himalayas again, I don’t want to hear it.’ I surprise myself as the words I’ve kept inside for so long escape; and now that I’m talking, the words continue to spill out. ‘All I know is Siksa-dong and the industrial zone. The gloomy sky, piles of broken bricks and the stinking wind – that’s all I’ve ever had. Oh, and a mother who ran off, with some guy for all I know –’ ‘Shut up, now!’

My cheek is stinging. Father’s hands are balled into fists and he lets out a rough, ragged breath as he shakes all over. I run out, my hands pressed to my cheek. Someone says Namaste, but I ignore the greeting. I slide my feet into my dew-drenched shoes and cut across the yard. A persimmon that has fallen near the communal water tap squashes beneath my foot.

My empty stomach growls as I walk down an alleyway lined by factories.

I feel dizzy in the emptiness of the cracked concrete path. The factory workers, dressed alike in drab uniforms, are taking a break in the foggy sunshine and sit above me on the factory rooftops. The few loading trucks I pass growl like savage beasts. Saturdays are always like this, when there’s no free school lunch to look forward to. It’s hard to keep your wits about you through the afternoon when all you’ve had for breakfast is a cup of chia.

The din of the furniture factories and the smell of paint and lacquer turn my stomach. I hold my nose and pass the grimy factory walls and telephone poles plastered with want ads, loan offers from private lenders and fliers for the Victoria Tourist Hotel’s nightclub. The hot water that the dyeing factory dumps into the gutters stains them blood-red and the steam that rises makes me think of the blood that pours out of a freshly slaughtered 51

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pig. I feel like throwing up. The sour taste of bile rises in my mouth. When I’m dead, my nose will probably be the first thing to rot. I’ve been living in stench since the day I was born. The toxic chemical fumes travel through my veins and one of these days will kill my brain.

What difference does it make? The more you think the harder life gets.

Father once said, ‘Too much thinking got me into this hellhole. If only I’d been content to raise goats on the mountainside, or farm a few fields like the other boys . . . if only I’d known how to thank the gods for the river to bathe in, for the welcoming aroma of dal and bhat back home . . . ’ An ad for the orange-coloured soda, Qoo, on the door to the Future Supermarket, catches my eye. My mouth waters and the nausea subsides.

I shake my pocket and listen for coins. I stick my hand in and bring out a few scraps of paper, a marble, a bottle cap, a rusted nail, and lint.

Further down the road, coming from the direction of the aluminium factory, I can just make out Koon walking my way. He is twenty-five and came to Korea about four years ago. The day we met Koon he was carrying his black backpack and looking for a room to rent. When he heard Nepalese flowing from Father’s mouth like pebbles rolling along a mountain stream tears suddenly poured from his eyes. Father immediately recognized that Koon had been living a miserable life. The hardships he had experienced as a trainee in the industrial programme here showed clearly on his face.

He had been trapped in a basement working sixteen-hour shifts without a single day off since he’d arrived. He’d escaped through a window in the middle of the night – his body was mottled with blue-black bruises and scars, and hot as an oven. Father made a Nepalese folk medicine of rice whisky. He oiled a hot pan and fried raw rice, then covered the rice with soju and left it to cook with the lid on. A little later he filled a shot glass with the broth. He instructed Koon to drink three glasses in a row, and Koon, who had been restless with fever, immediately fell asleep. The next morning he had recovered immensely. His eyes, accentuated by pronounced double eyelids, held none of the terror and despair of the night before. Instead, they revealed a naive hick who thought he’d make a lot of money, then return home; that he’d earn half a million won a month and be able to save half of it; and that it would take only three years of hard work and homesickness.

Now Koon wears Levis and a Nike jacket. They’re counterfeits he picked up cheap at the East Gate market, but they look as if they could be 52

Kim Jae Young

the real thing. Koon is an Indo-Aryan Nepali and he really stands out here with his fair skin and bleach-blond hair. At first glance he could be an American. I’m sure that’s why he changed the colour of his hair. A while back, after he’d been to Myeongdong, one of the most fashionable streets in Seoul, he pursed his lips and said, ‘So you think Koreans are all one ethnic group? That they don’t like foreigners? You say that’s why they’re unkind to migrant workers? What a bunch of rubbish. You haven’t seen the way they act in front of Americans. They’re practically falling all over themselves to be nice. You could look like an American, too, if your face were a little whiter . . .’

That’s when I started to dissolve a whitening tablet in water and wash my face with it before bed each night. Early each morning I’d run to the mirror to see how much paler my skin had become. Each time I looked at my patchy face with its white, peeling skin, my heart would flutter. I wasn’t trying to become white as an American: I only wanted to be white – or as yellow – as a Korean.

Like a snake in a summer forest, or a moth tucked under an autumn leaf, I needed camouflage to live quietly beneath the notice of others. I was sick of being target number one for the boys who are given airguns for their birthdays, for the kids who need someone to bully. I was sick of being the dark whipping boy that other kids can’t help but shove from behind when running laps. I used the skin bleach faithfully, never missing a single day until one night, when I was washing my face at the communal tap. My washbasin was kicked roughly, and the water spilled on the floor. I looked up into Father’s face. He dumped the contents of my plastic bag full of whitening tablets down the drain, grabbed me by the nape of my neck and dragged me into our room. He whipped my calves until they were striped red and swollen, and then he left.

He didn’t return until midnight and smelled faintly of alcohol. I sat still as he reached for some Nuk baby lotion, which he then rubbed all over my face. My skin was peeling so badly that there were red blood vessels on the surface. He stroked my cheek with his rough palms, and it hurt.

Afterwards, Father pulled a blanket over his head and sobbed beneath the covers until he fell asleep, wearily muttering from time to time in his unintelligible Nepalese.

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Elephant

After school, I wrench my key in the padlock, twist and release it to expose the disaster of the room beyond the door. Bloated bits of yesterday’s leftover ramen noodles float like grubs in the cooking pot. Chia, now thick like drying snot, spills from the teacup I must have kicked over in my hurry to leave.

Our laundry is strewn over the blankets that have been rolled up and piled beneath the window, out of the way. I toss my bag to one corner and fall on to the pile of clothes and blankets and say, ‘Hi! ’ to the silvery elephant on the pacheura, but it just stares blankly back – towards some faraway place. The elephant’s head has seven trunks ornately embroidered with silver threads.

Father told me that in the beginning, before it had a body, the elephant was a cloud that carried Indra, who was once chief of all the gods.

‘And?’ I’d urged him on in my excitement to hear the ending. It was the day I’d helped him hang the pacheura.

‘Then one day Brahma, the creator, broke open the cosmic egg, and the elephant lost his status and became a pillar to support the universe.’ My father was looking out of the corner of one eye to see my reaction. ‘It’s just a Hindu myth,’ he’d said. ‘There’s no such thing as an egg broken by a god.’

At that very moment, the hammer slipped off the head of the nail and smashed his fingernail. He sucked the tip of his finger to block the pain and reached down with his other arm to feel around on the floor for the fallen nail. And that’s when I began to see him as a creature like an elephant: born in the Himalayas, high above the clouds, and now living down here, in the dark recesses of an industrial zone . . .

Someone is singing. A thin, quavering voice I recognize as Toya’s mother’s, in room number two. ‘Morenie jeollo seidese, morenie jeollo seidese, take me to that place, take me to that place . . .’ Toya’s father, who got busted after spraining his ankle on a hill as he tried to outrun the police last spring, was deported to Sri Lanka and hasn’t been able to get back here yet. Toya’s mother, left on her own, barely manages to support the family with the little money she can make at home putting machine parts together.

‘Huldullia puja tore geno pellerako hellageori, tal mornet age shudu barek pireashok, why were the prayer flowers snapped and tossed away, please return before your beloved dies . . .’

I can’t help but think of Mother. I remember the way our room used to smell of pungent kimchi, and seaweed soup, of faintly rose-scented lotion, 54

Kim Jae Young

and even of the mysterious fragrance of skin that made me feel sleepy. The scents Mother left behind last spring lingered for a long time, and I think I can still smell them from time to time. But those scents have nearly all been replaced by the smell typical of men-only households; that and the stink of mould.

I pull back the pacheura to let in some air. Golden sunlight dances about and strikes the calendar’s photo of the Himalayas: the clear, bright sunshine, the green teak forest, snow-capped Annapurna, calmly rippling Pewa Lake, the children sucking sugar cane, the laughter . . . Every single year my father buys that same calendar. Can he really believe those pictures will bring me happiness as they do for him? The afternoon sun glinting on snowy Himalayas reminds me of a molar crowned with gold. Or a vanilla ice-cream cone about to melt in the heat.

And that thick, black circle continues to swirl around Father’s birthday.

It bothers me.

The sunlight touching the photo shivers with surprise whenever the pacheura sways in the breeze. I wish I too could escape into dreams of going home. Father dreams of wearing his old familiar chumba, of returning to Nepal in springtime – where shining, ice-capped mountains tower over hills of golden flowering rapeseed, and welcoming villagers live in cosy clay houses. Father tells me that night after night he dreams that his family and friends surround him and walk with him as he enters his garden filled with slender tunge and red bijeo flowers in full bloom. His family and friends join him in a hearty meal of dal-bhat, tarkari and choila, his favourite roasted water-buffalo meat served in a tomato sauce. He says that in the dream he is always getting ready to hop on the plane back to Korea the next day, but someone blocks his way and roughly pushes him aside. He says: ‘I have to go back, my family’s waiting for me. Please, let me go. I left my job, my neighbours and my young son there. Please!’

He tells me he wakes with a start from these dreams, and sits bolt upright.

That he looks around to confirm that it was just a dream, and then gets up to remove his sweat-drenched shorts. That he sends a long, slow sigh of relief into the darkness.

Still, his nightmares are probably better than what I’m living with. I may have a place of birth but I have no homeland. Father couldn’t file a marriage declaration because there wasn’t a Nepalese embassy in Korea. That means 55

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I have neither a birth certificate nor a nationality. Even at school I can’t register officially. What good is a child who is alive and kicking but cannot prove he exists?

When I open my eyes the room is pitch-black. I must have dozed off.

I rub my eyes and head out into the yard. Vijay is back in his usual spot under the persimmon tree, staring at the distant mountains. His face is red, though I know he doesn’t drink. The other tenants are crowding around the water tap in the centre of the yard. Milky rice-soaking water slops over the feet of Tura from Myanmar as he squats and peels potatoes, while onions, bell peppers and courgettes are being chopped up noisily on wooden boards.

Skewered mutton gives off its strong smell as it sputters in a frying pan. The yard, with its blend of languages and aromas, is fragrant and boisterous as a meadow of wild flowers busy with bees and butterflies.

Father is nowhere to be seen. It looks as if he’ll be working late even on his birthday so I decide to prepare some food – something to help him remember his homeland. That’s bound to smooth things over between us.

I rummage through the cupboard, gathering onions, potatoes and a handful of lentils. The lentils soak in water while I peel and dice the potatoes and onions. I put the ingredients in a hot pot with the ghee and gently fry it all together. I think about what comes next, then reach for a little brown paper bag of garam masala. The bag is crumpled and nearly empty. I turn it upside down and give it a shake, but there’s only a little puff of spice left.

Without that blend of ground cumin, clove, nutmeg, black peppercorns and coriander, there’s no way I can make a proper Tarkari. I turn off the gas and plunge the spoon into the pot.

As usual, the TV is blaring in the Future Supermarket. For the past few days, the news channel has been broadcasting programmes about what they call ‘the plight of foreign labourers’. First, they show a video highlighting some special regional products from all over Korea followed by a government statement about deporting illegal immigrants. Then, after some canned laughter from a sitcom, the reporter talks about a labourer from Bangladesh who threw himself in front of a speeding train and later, around midnight, once the evening soap operas and talk shows are over, they run footage of an airport teeming with foreign labourers on their way out of the country.

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Hearing the same thing over and over again gets pretty boring, and makes it seem as if it’s happening someplace else.

Men eat and drink at a makeshift table in a corner of the market. When a breeze blows and touches my forehead, I can hear the racket they make.

They speak a mixture of Korean, Russian, English – even Nepalese – and I convert it all into Korean the instant their words reach my eardrums and slip inside my head. I see Koon sitting among them tonight. He waves me over and cuts off a cuttlefish tentacle for me to chew on while they talk.

‘This business is Russian roulette. This time Phat loses his hand, next time it’ll be Suen’s arm.’ Sergeny, the burly Uzbek man with a face as colourless as a corpse, makes a gun of his hand then aims it at Shan, the Iranian boy sitting opposite him.

Koon, whose gaze has fallen to the floor, suddenly speaks. ‘I haven’t even come close to paying back the money I borrowed to come here, and now look at me. When I go home, I’ll be a laughing stock . . .’

Koon’s eyes are watering and that sets Shan off. He starts blubbering like a baby. ‘I’ve done so many bad things here . . . I can’t go back. I ate a lot of pork in the factory cafeteria – even the sausages made with pig’s blood. They don’t care about these things here, but it’s a different story in my village. I’d have to atone for my sins . . . Honestly, I’m scared. It doesn’t matter here. No one can see me, but . . .’

I walk past the toothbrushes, toothpaste, plasters and cotton gloves on my way to the cigarette cartons near the cashier. I quietly slip the last pack of Surya, the Nepalese brand, from the rack and stick it under a pile of cotton gloves. Then I shout to the owner lady.

‘Don’t you have any Surya?’

She yawns as she comes out of her little room wearing the apron she always wears over her fat stomach. I heard she’s paid 300,000 won a month by the foreigner she agreed to marry. Since her phony marriage, she’s become even fatter.

‘You want the Nepalese cigarettes?’

Her voice sounds sleepy and she’s wiping the corner of her mouth with the back of her hand. I give her a confident yes. While she’s off on a goose chase, I tuck a bag of garam masala under my belt and then, since I still have time, I sneak a bottle of Qoo into my armpit under my jacket. At first, I can’t breathe, but then slowly I begin to relax.

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‘What about a different brand?’ she asks.

‘My father’s pretty homesick.’ I blabber on, heaping one lie on top of another. ‘He says the only thing that makes him feel better is the taste of Nepalese cigarettes. When he’s smoking he feels like he’s back there with his family.’

Just as I’m running out of things to say, the store door opens and Nadim Molla walks in. He works at Jinseong Painting. He’s this short Indian guy who looks like a Neanderthal. He’s got these huge bones that stick out above his eyebrows. They call him Cheapskate. The other workers gave him that nickname after Kubil got burned all over his body and died last year. Nadim didn’t contribute any condolence money, which is bad enough, but he didn’t even show up at the funeral. To add insult to injury, that Sunday, when Kubil was cremated Cheapskate was working overtime. Father and a few of his friends had carried the carton containing Kubil’s ashes in a slow procession through the darkening alleys around the factories. They walked solemnly, with their heads bowed, until they reached the factory where the accident happened. The men kicked the plywood planks that blocked the entrance, until they managed to break in. It started raining and the mourners began to sing, at first in whispered syllables, which rose to a murmur, and finally loud as great howls from a pack of wolves. Still the sound of pouring rain was stronger, and their singing emptied into the gutters with the rainwater.

Cheapskate has his hands full with bundles of presents. He’s practically foaming at the mouth with excitement as he announces that he’s leaving tomorrow. If that’s true, he will be the first person I know who has actually earned enough money to go home. Cheapskate grabs a bottle of Coke and two bottles of soju and makes his way over to the makeshift table where the men eat and drink. With a great show of generosity, he sets the bottles down with a thud.

‘For us?’ one of the guys yells. ‘No, thank you, humanoid!’ With that they all rise from their seats and head out the door. Even Pil-yong, who has never walked away from free booze, walks unsteadily behind them.

Cheapskate yells at their backs, ‘You sons-of-bitches, you’re the ones who aren’t human any more, not me – you belong in this pigsty. When I get back home, I’m gonna build a new house and sleep under new blankets.

I’m gonna open a store bigger than this dump, you got that? Bunch of filthy pigs, that’s what you are. Kudal bachcha, Bastards! Shoour renacha, Pigs!’

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Before you know it Sergeny has turned around and is pounding his fists into Cheapskate until Cheapskate trips over the table and the bottles come crashing down in a foaming puddle of broken glass, whisky and Coke on the supermarket floor. The owner lady whisks her way over with a broom and starts batting at the drunkards’ legs, chasing them out of her store. She grumbles to herself as she sweeps up the mess. ‘I’m sick of you people – I’m getting out of this stinking hole.’

Cheapskate slowly gets up off the floor, wipes the blood from the corner of his mouth and fixes his hair. Then, as if none of this has happened, he picks up his shopping bags full of gifts for his family and holds his head high. He’s almost out of the door when he stops, picks up a chocolate bar, and offers it to me. I shake my head, but he presses it on me, waving it under my chin to tempt me. My mouth is watering, but I keep it closed tight and shake my head with even more resolve. Cheapskate’s eyes redden and the tears are coming. They well up thick as pus. My hand starts to reach out in pity and the bottle of Qoo slips out from under my armpit, dropping to the floor. My spine shivers and I break out in a cold sweat. I run from the store and hear a voice shrill as a cat behind me. ‘Hey, you little rat, where do you think you’re going? I’m reporting your father to immigration, you got that?’

Once I’ve caught my breath I walk aimlessly, with my back to the faint moon that has risen above the factory rooftops. An oak leaf flutters to the ground, tracing a zigzag as it falls. This means clouds are gathering. Father taught me how falling leaves predict the weather. He studied astronomy in Nepal and he can figure out where he is without a compass. He just looks at the stars or the moon. Like leaves, the shape, colour and thickness of clouds can also be used to forecast the weather.

When he arrived in Korea, Father stopped studying stars and made light bulbs by the hundreds. Day after day, from morning ’till night, he blew into a long tube. Every day, new bulbs to light the world were born from my father’s lips. He seemed like a magician to me back then. It was truly an amazing thing to watch him turn perfect little circles into light bulbs, each one exactly the same size. He created little bulbs to decorate Christmas trees and bulbs the size of unripe apricots that would be used to frame a billboard. Back then, when I was much younger than I am now, I was very proud of Father. When I was lucky enough to have a coin or two, I’d spend it on bubblegum and I’d blow perfect little bubbles to imitate him. But that 59

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was a long time ago. The bulbs, born from the breath of my father’s lungs and lips, went on to shine at night as if shouting for joy on the fronts of dazzlingly bright department stores, in the marketplaces and on the billboards decorating the streets. And all the while, my father sat at home bent with exhaustion beneath the lifeless glow of a fluorescent lamp. He would come home from work smelling like an animal – that dreadful hot smell a body gives off when it has been marinating in sweat, chemicals and bitter abuse all day – and stroke his aching chest.

Mother complained about it out loud in Korean, in a voice that screeched like fingernails on a blackboard. Father would clasp his chest and mumble and gasp for breath, which only made Mother raise her voice so high that phlegm seemed on the verge of spewing out. It was hard for her to endure life with my father, a man who never earned enough and couldn’t even afford medical insurance. She was always moaning about her lot in life, going on about girls she knew who’d married Korean men and lived happily ever after. Nothing could win her sympathy. If I caught a cold, my mother would lash my back saying, ‘See, I told you not to kick the blankets off at night. We lose tens of thousands of won every time we take you to the hospital. Your dad’s salary’s been delayed for three months in a row.

I’m so sick of this I could scream!’ Then she’d slap a cold, wet towel across my forehead.

I can’t believe that Mother is the same person who, ten years before, had soothed Father’s feverish body with her soft hands. I can’t believe there was a time when she was lovely as a pale purple malingo flower. I just can’t believe Father’s version of her.

When his coughing didn’t stop, Father had no choice but to find a different job. Now he makes boxes, and carries heavy cardboard on his shoulders day and night. He feeds the cardboard into the machine that cuts it, and then it moves by conveyor belt on the way to becoming juice boxes, gift boxes of different sizes, and boxes for top-quality dress shirts. They say that department stores arrange goods inside the boxes before putting them on display, but I wouldn’t know. I’ve never actually been inside a department store. Once last winter, Father and I planned to visit one the day before Mother’s birthday. A man in a suit was standing in front of the entrance and he blocked our path. Father pulled his money from his wallet and said, ‘Look, I have money. I’m gonna buy something.’ But the man wouldn’t 60

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listen to him. We never managed to buy the expensive blouse Mother had been coveting. Maybe that’s why she left.

Mother has long, straight hair that she’d loosely gather with a rubber band when she was fitting screws all day long with Toya’s mother from next door. Around the time of her last birthday, she got a job at a restaurant in downtown Wondang and it wasn’t long before she started bringing home pretty boxes that held beaded pins or silk scarves. She’d hold one finger to her lips and give me a conspirator’s wink. To be honest, I didn’t care who’d given her those presents, as long as they made her happier, so I didn’t mention them to Father. But the gift boxes started to pile up and Mother’s temper grew worse. She’d practically beat her face with her powder puff in the morning.

The day she left for good, Mother had boiled some seaweed soup with little-neck clams for breakfast. When I emptied a bowl and asked for more Mother told me I could have all I wanted at dinnertime, then hurried me towards the door. I said, ‘Are you going somewhere today?’ I don’t know why I asked her that – it just popped up out of my mouth.

When I came home from school that afternoon, Mother was gone. So I ate the soup she had left and went to sleep with a full stomach. I didn’t wait up for Mother. I don’t know why. I guess it just seemed there was no point in waiting.

Eventually, I wandered to the grounds of the furniture district. All kinds of light bulbs and neon signs are on tonight. I pass stores called Borneo, Livart, Daejin Beds, and Italian Furniture. On the shop windows, posters fluttering in the damp breeze shout ‘Special Sale on Imported Brand-Name Furniture!’ and ‘Discount on High-End Antique Furniture!’ Magnificently big beds, consoles and sofas are carefully arranged behind plate glass.

Middle-aged women dressed in expensive outfits walk slowly around the furniture while young men in suits point or write on pads of paper. I think of Vijay working back at the furniture factory, the shabby old cabinet in room number three, the wall pocked with holes like bullet spray, and the flattened back of the elephant who supports the weight of the world. These are ridiculous thoughts. I can’t believe I’m standing here comparing my life to what’s going on behind those glass doors.

I shake my head and turn away. I touch the waistband of my trousers and feel the packet of garam masala and I’m suddenly happy. It would be 61

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even better if I could wrap a pair of socks as a gift for my father, but to do so I would have to steal again and I don’t want to push my luck.

I leave the main road and turn into an alley. This way I can get back home without having to pass by the Future Supermarket. I know this alley because I’ve been here before with friends. Although I’m stepping carefully, my foot slips in a puddle and I nearly lose my balance. But I prefer this unbroken darkness to the dizzying neon lights – just like I prefer having the courage to steal rather than waiting in vain for kindness. Father doesn’t like the way the endless neon lights leave no room for shadows. He prefers the pale light of the moon. The blue moonlight of the Himalayas, which is said to spread the shadow of rhododendrons on the land and give the world a moment of rest . . . Tonight, I’d like to see that kind of light.

I keep walking until I reach an empty lot where tall grass sways in the breeze. The air smells of drying grass and garbage. Pumpkin vines have grown over the abandoned refrigerators, broken chairs and bits of plastic strewn about the lot. I pass an alley bordered by a row of shabby-looking houses and see a familiar form singing and walking towards me. I can’t quite make out who it is in the dark but I’m guessing it’s Cheapskate, because he’s short and carrying shopping bags in both hands.

There’s a drumming in my chest. I double-back quickly to take the long way home on the hill path beyond the empty lot. I’m nearly there when something catches my foot. A pumpkin vine grown thick and strong. The vine, which is still alive in late fall and tough as cable, has coiled itself around my ankle and won’t let go. I plop on the ground and scrabble to free myself.

The singing comes closer and closer, then begins to fade as it moves off in the direction of the empty lot.

In a flash, a black figure leaps up from behind the wrecked refrigerator.

The black figure rises like bread. Cheapskate’s song skips along with a faster beat. The black figure follows him silently and, with a thwacking sound, the singing is cut off. The black figure pulls something from Cheapskate’s chest as if ripping out his heart. The hazy moonlight exposes a broad smile and Cheapskate’s wallet in the darkness. I recognize Vijay.

I close my eyes tightly and see a silver elephant on the back of my eyelids.

The elephant, its feet sunk deep in a pit, flaps its ears in a struggle to break free but the more it struggles, the deeper its hind legs sink. The pit starts to spin and I see a swirling black swamp ready to swallow anything that sets 62

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foot in it. Ah, it’s pwe. I see it now. The dizzying and swiftly swirling pwe . . .

The feeble elephant is sucked into the whirlpool. Its eyes are glaring fiercely like a scream, and then there is only the black of the night.

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That Woman That woman is here again.

She’s found her way out from under the stairs.

For centuries she’s been weeping a song about lost men, the disappearance of beauty, disgrace.

Now she’s back in the world, down by the traffic lights, in the shade of trees, hurrying to the parlour to fix the crack in her face.

Don’t become that woman, my mother said.

By which she meant, don’t become that woman who doesn’t marry or bear children.

That woman who spreads her legs, who is beaten, who cannot hold her grief or her drink.

Don’t become that woman.

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But that woman and I have been moving together for years, like a pair of birds skimming the surface of water, always close to the soft madness of coming undone; the dark undersides of our bodies indistinguishable from our reflections.

The Immigrant’s Song Let us not speak of those days when coffee beans filled the morning with hope, when our mothers’ headscarves hung like white flags on washing lines.

Let us not speak of the long arms of sky that used to cradle us at dusk.

And the baobabs – let us not trace the shape of their leaves in our dreams, or yearn for the noise of those nameless birds that sang and died in the church’s eaves.

Let us not speak of men, stolen from their beds at night.

Let us not say the word disappeared.

Let us not remember the first smell of rain: It will only make us nostalgic for childhood.

Instead, let us speak of our lives now – the gates and bridges and stores.

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let us not burden them with stories of war or abandonment.

Let us not name our old friends who are unravelling like fairytales in the forests of the dead.

Naming them will not bring them back.

Let us stay here, and wait for the future to arrive, for grandchildren to speak in forked tongues about the country we once came from.

Tell us about it, they might ask.

And you might consider telling them of the sky and the coffee beans, the small white houses and dusty streets.

You might set your memory afloat like a paper boat down a river.

You might pray that the paper whispers your stories to the water, that the water sings it to the trees, that the trees howl and howl it to the leaves. If you keep still and do not speak, you might hear your whole life fill the world until the wind is the only word.

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Voices from Tibet Tsering Woeser and Wang Lixiong translated by Violet Law

Ringing in the Tibetan New Year Not too long ago I received a text message so significant that it’s worth devoting some ink to it. It said, ‘Let us act: throw out Lunar New Year and bring back Tibetan New Year. Our one small step will speak volumes to our offspring in the Tibetan snow country.’

The message reminded me of my many New Years spent in Kham, where Tibetans all seemed to take it for granted that for two weeks after Lunar New Year they would follow the Chinese traditions of setting off firecrackers, having meals with their extended families, collecting red packets, visiting each other and arranging banquets. But that is not how Tibetan New Year is celebrated.

The message also reminded me of when I had suggested on my blog – before it was shut down by the authorities – that we had been ringing in the New Year at the wrong time, because in Kham and other Tibetan regions we’d been keeping to the lunar calendar. The forces of Sinicisation are stubborn, and force of habit takes time to overcome, so many Tibetans still celebrate the Chinese Spring Festival instead of the Tibetan New Year.

The text message served as an important reminder, though some might dismiss it, that this is not just about righting an out-of-sync festival, but also about affirming a people’s identity.

In our modern world, traditional festive celebrations generally serve more symbolic than practical purposes. But for the colonised – those who have suffered exploitation, conversion and homogenisation – the devil is 67

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in the detail. And although we live in the age of globalisation, we Tibetans should not turn ourselves into Han Chinese, or anything else. To claim our place we must fight for our rights, and for the ability to express ourselves.

We must prevent our cultural traditions from being engulfed by those of others. This is something every Tibetan can do, even if we remain shackled

by Chinese rule, or in exile.

A Tibetan friend in Washington told me that every New Year she and neighbouring Tibetans would have a gathering of several families, enjoying delicacies from the Ü-Tsang, Amdo and Kham Tibetan regions, belting out local tunes and chatting in local dialects. They’d celebrate by planting barley shoots, making barley liquor, deep-frying khapsay (a kind of biscuit) and samkham papleg (a dough kneaded with yak butter), and preparing offerings for the shrine such as droso chemar (a mixture of barley flour, sugar and butter) and luggo (a sheep’s head made of coloured butter). This is how they’d spend losar (New Year): à la Tibetan.

All Must Celebrate Chinese Festivals!

In late 2007 China’s premier announced that three long-banned traditional Han Chinese festivals would be made official and compulsory national holidays: Tomb Sweeping Day, Dragon Boat Festival and Mid-Autumn Festival. In a country that boasts a population of 1.3 billion and fifty-six different ethnic groups, only Han Chinese festivals were to be celebrated.

An article in the People’s Daily, the government’s mouthpiece, called the reinstatement of these traditional festivals a celebration of Chinese culture and an expression of national pride.

It is all well and good for Han Chinese to celebrate their festivals. But the Mid-Autumn Festival dates back to the waning years of the Yuan Dynasty, when Han Chinese were plotting to overthrow their Mongol rulers. Legend has it that Han rebels communicated with each other by slipping messages into their festive mooncakes, urging the slaughter of the Mongols by midautumn. Making this festival a national holiday clearly shows Beijing’s Hancentric mentality.

Few Tibetans know the history of these festivals, and making them national holidays is an act of subtle coercion, forcing the homogenisation of Tibetans into Han Chinese culture. The People’s Daily article makes it 68

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explicit: ‘After a number of years, our children will get used to hiking to their ancestors’ tomb sites on Tomb Sweeping Day and to admiring the full moon during Mid-Autumn Festival. Who can say this is not thanks to the influence of these festivals, which allow them to understand the culture of China?’

I am reminded of my school years, when I could recite Tang and Sung Dynasty poetry but remained totally ignorant of the work of Jetsun Milarepa, one of Tibet’s most famous poets. I could go on and on about the construction of the Great Wall under the reign of the first emperor, but I couldn’t begin to explain how the Potala Palace in Lhasa was built. My knowledge of Lu Xun, the renowned Chinese novelist, exceeded what I knew of the sixth Dalai Lama, Tsangyang Gyatso.

Over the decades my identity has evolved. I have taught myself about my own Tibetan people, and I do not acknowledge the Han Chinese festivals that by official edict aim to supplant or eliminate my own.

Herders Become Strangers to Their Own Land The government recently set up the Sanjiangyuan National Ecological Conservation Zone on the Tibetan Plateau, at the source of the Yangtze, Yellow and Mekong rivers. As a result, Tibetan herders from the area were relocated to the town of Golmud. In the beginning the herders were ecstatic, since they had long aspired to urban life. The government’s offer of housing and compensation seemed like manna from heaven. The herders readily pulled up stakes on the grassland. But what they didn’t realize until after moving into their newly built houses was that they would need to furnish them and find a new way to earn a living.

The herders were like kids in a candy store: they wanted anything and everything. They bought cars and TVs, learned to use mobile phones and make-up, to eat out and go clubbing. They quickly used up their stipends.

They had learned to spend money like city folks but could not make a living.

They came to live by the rules of the market but were unable to get ahead by those same rules. Without a livelihood, they ended up loitering on the streets, window shopping and watching others spend money. They felt the pinch, but didn’t know how to acquire new skills and earn an income.

On the Qinghai-Tibet highway between Golmud and Lhasa a new kind of crime has appeared: the lassoing of passing motorcycles. After yanking 69

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a rider off his machine, the thief hops on and rides away. Judging from the modus operandi, one can guess that only herders possess the skill unique to such a crime.

The impact of relocation is not confined to the herders who have moved to the town; the repercussions also affect their homeland, their villages and their tribes. Once the euphoria of moving cools, reality sets in: the herders begin to understand that they have left behind not only the grassland but also their livelihood. They slip to the bottom rung of society, and can only find unskilled work, such as digging ditches. The awkward way they handle their unwieldy spades is reminiscent of the way older Tibetans toiled half a century ago in the Chinese labour camps.

It may seem that the herders left the grasslands of their own volition, but in this day and age, ‘volition’ is at best a kind of delusion.

Must Tibetans Trade Their Roots for Books?

One of my Chinese friends, who is passionate about Tibetan culture, went to Kham to start a school. After persevering for half a year, she found it hard to keep it going under the trying circumstances. She decided to take a different approach: my friend handpicked a dozen children, took them to the Karze region in eastern Tibet and sent them to the school there, partly at her own expense and partly by using donations she had raised.

While I respect her, I question her method. I wonder what she aims to accomplish. If she hopes to educate the children so they may serve their people and their land, then sending them off to Karze will not help. Once educated in the city, the children will be likely to stay there, and to turn their backs on their villages. The baptism of education in the city would mean that the children would be plucked up by their roots.

Many herders and farmers are unwilling to send their children to city schools, but this cannot be attributed merely to ignorance and backwardness.

If, after graduation, their children could find work in the city and integrate into city life, most parents would be willing to let them go. But often the children return to their village knowing nothing about farming or herding: ‘They don’t even know to look underneath to find the udders,’ to cite a common country saying.

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I told my philanthropic friend that she should not assume the Chinese are the gatekeepers of civilisation. She should not go to Tibet to tame the natives and change their way of living. Their civilization differs from the Chinese in trajectory but not in quality. To force upon them what she considers to be best may result in the opposite of what she intends.

Police Uniforms Versus Monks’ Robes The riots that broke out on Lhasa’s streets in March of 2008 were to a large extent a reaction against the beating of peacefully protesting monks by the military police. It was so nearly a repeat of the Lhasa incident of 1987 that it makes you wonder why the authorities have not learned their lesson.

Of course, in the eyes of the officials, the monks are parasites that live off society. They buttress the Dalai Lama’s support in Tibet, and fuel Tibetans’ desire for independence. They are seen as troublemakers and agitators who pose a threat to the regime. When the Chinese are challenged by the monks they almost instinctively react with violence.

However, in Tibetan Buddhism there are three treasures: the Buddha, the scriptures and the monks. The monks command an exalted position as part of the intellingentsia and are revered as spiritual guides and guardian angels. That is why no Tibetan will stand by and watch the monks being humiliated and tortured. This should be obvious, and only those blinded by the hubris of absolute power would fail to predict such consequences.

Not only did the authorities fail to understand this, they also failed to moderate their conduct, which exacerbated the situation. After the riots, the military police targeted the monks and subjected many monasteries to searches. In addition to rounding up the monks who had participated in the protests, the authorities placed countless others under house arrest. Some monasteries were shuttered, and monks who had come to the capital from other provinces were banished from Lhasa. All monasteries were ordered to initiate a campaign of ‘patriotic education’, and to openly renounce the Dalai Lama. Many monks decided to avoid this by fleeing, rendering many monasteries but hollow shells.

Before the riots, most monks were preoccupied only with Buddhism; afterwards, they were forced to reflect more deeply upon Tibet’s political future, and more of them came to support independence.

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There is a Tibetan folk song that describes monks as free from the tethers of worldly goods: ‘Whether I stand up or stumble, I live by a stick of incense.

Nothing covers my forehead but a clutch of hair; nothing covers my back but a piece of rag.’ The monks have nothing to lose, which is why they have often taken the lead in Tibetan uprisings. They are influential, and they are fearless in their resistance and defiance.

How Fur Became a Tibetan Fashion Not too long ago, at a Kalachakra initiation ceremony in Guntur, India, the Dalai Lama criticised China’s Tibetans for the growing trend of wearing fur. The fact is that in the past, except for the eastern Tibetan Khampa elite who adorned their collars and cuffs with a strip of fur, few Tibetans wore anything other than cloth, traditional woollen fabrics or lambskins from their own herds.

Yet today, when respect for animal rights is considered the badge of a civilized culture, Tibetans are increasingly adorning themselves with the skins of rare animals such as foxes, sea otters, leopards and tigers.

When Sonam Wangmo, the Tibetan pop sensation who won the gold medal in a nationwide young singers’ contest, performed on TV recently, she was wearing mostly fur and very little fabric. Fur serves vanity and little else. It is not the most pragmatic apparel. When Tibetans, decked out in their minks at New Year, break into a sweat under the hot Lhasa sun, you can see how ridiculous they look.

The Dalai Lama’s censure aside, why do Tibetans pursue such a trend?

I believe it may have something to do with the ‘culture-based’ economic development campaign launched by Chinese officials in the Tibetan region. In order to promote tourism and attract investment, these officials have spearheaded a slew of ‘cultural festivals’ in which the signature event is a traditional-costume show, where economic aesthetics rule the day.

Models with the priciest costumes often get the nod. This naturally encourages everyone else to don the rarest pelts in the largest pieces possible.

Sometimes the officials even drape expensive jewellery over the models, turning them into human showcases, gaudy to an extreme. The officials also have to employ bodyguards to make sure the jewellery, which is on loan, will not be stolen.

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Tsering Woeser and Wang Lixiong

Such shows invariably attract media coverage. As images of these extravagantly dressed models become more prevalent, more Tibetans try to emulate them. A pop star like Wangmo is not only an idol among Tibetan youth but also an icon for those outside the region. And those who learn about Tibetan culture solely through the media would think all Tibetans wear the furs of endangered species, and that they must have been slaughtering animals for this purpose since time immemorial.

There is a lesson to be learned from such distortion: exploiting tradition for economic gain creates an ugly and decadent culture.

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Golden Boy 3 by Fang Hui

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Extract from

Yu Li: Confessions of an Elevator Operator Jimmy Qi translated by Harvey Thomlinson

Y

u Li was from a small town in the Hengshui area of Hebei province, a place with no tall buildings. He’d been working for over ten years as a quality controller in a renowned state-owned fake Hengshui wine distillery.

Yu Li was fired when the distillery realized their production of fake wine dropped 10 per cent during his shifts. It was discovered that, during the course of his inspections, Yu Li drank vast quantities of the wine. When the factory was set a target of increasing its output by 10 per cent within the year, Yu Li was axed.

During his first nine years of working at the distillery, Yu Li had been a teetotaller. He had inherited an allergy to alcohol – even the tiniest drop caused his whole body to break out in red spots – and it was for precisely this reason that the distillery had hired him as a quality-control inspector.

When Yu Li started drinking at work, it wasn’t because he wanted to; drinking made him feel terrible. On one occasion, his body swelled by 10 per cent and he became covered with monstrous purple blisters. It made him think of death. But he had to drink because, the way he saw it, alcohol was the one thing his job enabled him to get for free.

Yu Li was no idiot. He couldn’t turn down his one perk.

After Yu Li had wasted another year in that small town with no tall buildings, he was presented with an opportunity to work as an elevator operator in the city.

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One day Wang the Third, who had left for the city a year earlier, returned to their town. He asked stay-at-home Yu Li if he wanted to leave and go to work in the capital, adding that by great good fortune he knew of an elevator-operating team that might just be short of one operator.

‘What’s an elevator?’ Yu Li asked.

Wang the Third explained that elevators were related to the trend of building automation. He then asked if Yu Li could speak any English or use a computer, because in Beijing the required cultural level of a would-be elevator operator was extremely high.

In response, Yu Li asked: ‘What is English? What do you mean, “use a computer”?

Yu Li’s parents were anxious because their son was unemployed and might never bring them a daughter-in-law. Realizing that Wang the Third hoped for a gift, they went to their cellar and dug up two bottles of 100 per cent genuine fake Hengshui wine for him to take back to Beijing.

A fortnight later, Wang the Third returned to the small town with no tall buildings and told Yu Li that even though ten people had applied for the elevator-operator position – including one with a master’s degree – because Wang the Third knew the team leader, the team leader had chosen Yu Li. This was how Yu Li became an elevator operator.

In addition to fake wine, Hebei province had also produced the famous fictional character Rickshaw Boy, who, just like Yu Li, had entered the capital full of youthful swagger. But unlike Yu Li, Rickshaw Boy had merely operated rickshaws. Yu Li was going to operate . . . an elevator.

The small town without any tall buildings celebrated madly on the evening Yu Li left for the city. Everyone said that Yu Li finally had prospects because he was going to operate an elevator.

Even the boss of the fake-wine distillery showed up, having heard that Yu Li was going to the city. Because he sometimes went into the city himself, and had used an elevator on occasion, he thought he could steal a bit of Yu Li’s glory.

‘What? Operate an elevator?’ he said. ‘Do they need people to work them?’

‘Even airplanes need people to work them,’ Wang the Third answered for Yu Li. 76

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Later, Wang the Third secretly disclosed to Yu Li his future monthly salary: 88 yuan.

Building B was located in the capital’s most prosperous district: District C. In this luxury residential development, every square metre cost 10,000 yuan. The building had an amazing total of eighteen floors. Basically, those who lived in Building B, Gate A belonged to the capital’s middle classes. Eighty per cent were bureau-level cadres or the equivalent, 15 per cent were department level or equivalent, with 50 per cent of them middleaged and 30 per cent single. The building also boasted one department head, two deputy department heads, one A-list male celebrity, and one C-list female celebrity – both celebrities had appeared in films and on TV. Because it was home to a government department chief and national celebrities, Building B was politically sensitive. For this reason, it was impossible for the building to use an imported elevator, one that had been manufactured in Japan or the US. If the Japanese or Americans had known there was a China government department head living there, they might have installed a bug in the elevator, which was why it had to be a domestic product.

The vast majority of Chinese elevators required people to operate them because, without people, they simply wouldn’t have gone anywhere. They were manually operated just like the vast majority of domestically produced cars; automatic gears hadn’t yet appeared in China. This meant there was still a need, however small, for people like Yu Li. Each of the building’s elevators required five people to keep it going.

And this was why Yu Li was able to endure the hardships of a long journey from the small town without any tall buildings in Hengshui district to take up his position as an elevator operator.

Yu Li received three months’ training before he began working as an elevator operator. The training’s core content comprised: H the constitution of the People’s Republic of China H the Beijing citizens’ charter There was also: H patriotic training 77

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H H H H H H H H H H

citizenship education anti-imperialism, anti-feudalism education basic human rights education basic principles of electrical engineering the ‘early stages of socialism’ theory basic computing basic English conversation basic combat methods basic survival methods basic Mandarin Chinese

The team leader invited the head engineer at the San Tong elevator factory to drop by and give everyone an introduction to the basic operating procedures for the San Tong elevators. Topics covered by the speaker included: H twenty or thirty ways to respond to a critical situation H what to do if you’re trapped in the elevator without any light H what to do if you suddenly start to plummet to the ground from the nineteenth floor or above.

‘Doesn’t this building only have eighteen floors?’ one of the students asked.

‘Which is why you’d regard it as a critical situation,’ the head engineer replied, rather impatiently.

After that, he made everyone watch clips of the American shuttle Challenger soaring towards space and then exploding spectacularly.

By the time Yu Li had finished watching the clips, he was trembling.

During the training, the team leader took Yu Li aside for a quiet word. He said they had made an exception when they’d chosen Yu Li for training because not only did he not have a Beijing work permit, he also didn’t have any education. The way the team leader explained it, Beijing and Hengshui were completely different places. Beijing was full of talented people; there were upwards of a hundred thousand people employed in the capital’s elevator-operation industry, and the average education level was a three-year diploma.

The team leader then revealed the real reason why Yu Li had been 78

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selected, which had nothing to do with his friend Wang the Third. The real reason Yu Li had been selected to operate the San Tong elevator ahead of so many better qualified applicants was because he was single. As a carefree singleton, a man without a family, he could put his heart and soul into his work.

On hearing this, Yu Li was very moved.

When the three months’ training was nearly finished, the team leader finally addressed the most important topic of the entire training programme: political matters.

The team leader explained that Gate A wasn’t at all the same as Gate D, the biggest difference being that Gate D, just like Gate C, didn’t have a department chief. But Gate A did.

‘Who is more important – the team leader or the department chief ?’ Yu Li asked.

The team leader didn’t answer Yu Li’s question directly, but said that protecting the department chief well was equivalent to protecting your country well, because the country couldn’t do without the department chief. Without a department chief, there wouldn’t be a country.

‘This is a political assignment,’ the team leader explained solemnly.

As for the A-list male celebrity and C-list female celebrity, the team leader said they should make protecting the female celebrity their priority because, given current social trends, Chinese female celebrities would soon surely be hotter than male celebrities. For example, even though today the female celebrity was only C-list, her boyfriend was A-list.

When it came to how exactly to guarantee the personal safety of the senior official and the two celebrities, the team leader didn’t give direct instructions. Instead, he arranged a screening of a film about the 1960s model worker Lei Feng.

After the film, the team leader wanted to add a few words to summarize the lessons they had learned, but everyone begged him not to say any more.

The team leader invited a comrade from the District C police precinct to talk about ten widely reported recent Beijing murder cases, and to give some guidance about dealing with criminal elements in elevators.

‘You must retain command of the elevator-control mechanism, and keep the criminal elements away from the department chief,’ the police officer said.

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At this point, the trainees asked which among the few hundred flats in the building was the one belonging to the department chief. And what did the department chief and the celebrities actually look like?

‘That is a national secret. Do you think we can tell you?’ the team leader said condescendingly. In fact, he didn’t know either.

Yu Li wept with pride on the day he received his basic training graduation certificate, together with his operation certificate for the Building B, Gate A elevator.

Three female trainees also received graduation diplomas, but didn’t get operating certificates for the Building B, Gate A elevator, even though they were university graduates. The team leader said it wasn’t very practical for women to operate elevators, because at moments of crisis in an elevator, women were always the first to scream.

One of the women protested that a female operator could distract a gangster’s attention, thus protecting the safety of the department chief.

However, the team leader said it was useless to debate the matter any further because five people to operate one San Tong elevator was already enough. He advised the three women to look for positions in lesser buildings that used domestically manufactured elevators.

Yu Li was finally ready to start his job.

In his first three months, Yu Li almost got fired three times.

The first time was because of nerves.

Yu Li had never set foot in an elevator before he’d started operating one.

He completed the delivery of his first passengers under the supervision of the team leader, who then left him to get on with it on his own. The moment the team leader stepped from the elevator, the lights went out.

Yu Li screamed loudly.

His scream alarmed the passengers, especially the women, who also screamed. This alarmed Yu Li even more and, in his fear, he started flailing about and touched several women’s breasts.

The women stopped screaming and began to shout, ‘Gangster! ’ ‘What? Gangsters? So soon! ’ Yu Li almost lost his mind with panic, but then he recalled Lei Feng’s heroic example and he valiantly pounced on the gangster in the dark elevator.

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His pounce triggered yet more shrieking.

The lights came back on, the door opened and outside Yu Li saw the team leader, with two cops in dark green uniforms standing behind him.

The elevator hadn’t even left the ground.

‘Where is the gangster?’ one of the cops asked impatiently, flexing his baton.

As one, the women pointed at Yu Li. The second time Yu Li almost got fired was also related to the fact that he’d never ridden in an elevator before he became an elevator operator.

Whenever Yu Li entered the elevator, he would feel dizzy and his head would swim. Feeling dizzy and nervous made him want to pee. Every time the elevator stopped, he was the first to dash out.

On Yu Li’s second day on the job, the San Tong elevator became stuck for a long time between the seventeenth and eighteenth floors. When Yu Li eventually managed to force open the door, he dashed out only to find a wall in front of him. Overcome with nerves and a desperate need to pee, Yu Li kicked at the wall with all his strength but despite this furious assault it was still there. In despair, he decided to relieve himself where he was. He returned to the elevator and, turning into a corner, pissed right there.

One of his female passengers saw what he was doing and screamed, ‘Pervert!’

‘Where?!’ Paranoid, Yu Li swung round and threw himself once more into the crowd, provoking more screams.

After this incident, he was summoned by the team leader, who wanted to fire him.

‘At that critical moment, why didn’t you think about Lei Feng?’ asked the team leader earnestly.

The third time Yu Li almost got fired was because of his professional skills – he completely lacked any that related to elevator operation.

For example, Yu Li had a low level of mathematics. He found that even after three months’ training with a calculator to simulate the elevator control panel, he still made mistakes when pressing the buttons. His most frequent mistake was mixing up six and nine.

‘Which floor are you going to?’ he would ask.

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‘The ninth floor.’

Yu Li always pressed six.

The problem wasn’t so much that he pressed six instead of nine, but rather that his passengers didn’t think to check which button he’d pressed after they’d told him they wanted to go to the ninth floor. They’d disembark on the sixth floor and march confidently in the direction of their assumed flat without so much as glancing at the door numbers.

Whenever Yu Li was on duty, residents of the sixth floor would insert their keys into the locks of flats on the ninth floor; and men who lived on the ninth floor embraced the wives of men on the sixth floor after stepping assuredly into their ‘own’ home.

The police notified the team leader that the number of criminal cases in the building had suddenly increased. The team leader couldn’t figure out why.

When the elevator was going up, Yu Li always asked what floor people wanted, which was the right thing to do. He also always asked what floor people wanted when the elevator was going down, which was completely the wrong thing to do, particularly in the mornings when everyone was on their way to work, and uptight and irritable as hell.

When someone entered his elevator on the tenth floor and wanted to go down, Yu Li would ask, ‘Which floor?’

He would be greeted with a look of disbelief. ‘The ground floor!’

On the ninth floor, someone else would step into the elevator and Yu Li, with flawless professionalism, would ask, ‘Which floor?’

The same look, then: ‘The ground floor!’

If ten people got into his elevator, Yu Li would ask this question ten times. Fortunately, Building B, Gate A had only eighteen floors.

‘Why did you get an idiot to operate the elevator?’ was the question more than one person from Building B, Gate A asked the team leader more than once.

‘Are you so sure that he’s stupid?’ the team leader would ask in reply. ‘Lei Feng said people should be the idiots of the revolution.’

Privately, however, he wanted to fire Yu Li. When Yu Li realized the team leader’s intention, he pleaded his case.

‘Didn’t you tell us in training that we should only restart the elevator after asking the passengers which floor they’re going to?’ he reminded him.

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@

Yu Li was desperate to uncover the identities of the department chief, the male celebrity and the female celebrity who were all residents of Building B, Gate A. In fact, he made it his mission.

The team leader had told him there were more and more gangsters in China these days, and fewer department chiefs. Yu Li was made to understand that protecting Building B, Gate A’s department chief was an important part of his professional duties, and that he would be judged by his success.

The male and female celebrities were very important, too. Although there were more celebrities than gangsters in China, celebrities were good people while gangsters were bad. The team leader explained that, in the interests of social harmony, good people should always be more numerous than bad.

Yu Li wondered constantly about how he would protect the department chief should a gangster attack him with a knife, a gun or an assault weapon.

Should he step fearlessly forward and press his chest against the muzzle of the gun? Alternatively, should he force the department chief to the ground and shield him with his body? When protecting the department chief from possible assault, should Yu Li shield him with his side, his front, or perhaps his arse? Yu Li played through the different scenarios repeatedly.

First I need to try to find out who the chief is, he thought.

Yu Li started scrutinising the hundreds of passengers who rode up and down in his elevator every day. The passengers found it disconcerting. To be more exact, the men found it disconcerting, for Yu Li focused his attention purely on them. This was because the team leader had told him a secret that wasn’t supposed to be shared with anyone else: the department chief was a man.

Because of this, every man came under Yu Li’s scrutiny. First he checked out fat men. Then he switched the focus of his investigation to men who walked with a goosestep. Next he ran an appraising eye over any man who talked in an officious manner. He even went through a phase of paying particular attention to men who never said a word.

Finally, he candidly asked the same question of ten men who were fat, walked in a goosestep, talked in an officious manner in the morning, but kept silent at night: ‘Are you the department chief ?’

‘Not yet,’ each one replied.

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Yu Li had heard that the department chief drove an Audi, so he started hanging around the gate to Building B to try to spot the department chief in his car. But there were tens of men living in Building B who drove an Audi every day, because the residents of Building B were rich beyond Yu Li’s wildest dreams, which was why they lived in Building B. Yu Li quickly gave up any hope of identifying the department chief by his Audi.

Not long after, Yu Li heard reports of several shocking murder cases in the city. The gangsters were closing in. He shifted his focus from looking for the department chief to looking for gangsters.

Now those ten men who were fat, walked in a goosestep, talked in an officious manner in the morning but kept silent at night, and those tens of men who drove an Audi, appeared to Yu Li in a whole new light. He viewed each of them with deep distrust and scepticism, wondering if they could be gangsters rather than department chiefs, because he remembered the team leader telling him that gangsters didn’t look any different from department chiefs. According to the team leader, gangsters sometimes pretended to be department chiefs, while department chiefs sometimes looked like gangsters.

On days when Yu Li was tired by his ongoing investigation, the hundreds of men who lived in the building all seemed like gangsters; but at other times, every one of the hundreds of men living in the building looked to him like a possible department chief.

As for the male celebrity, Yu Li was confused about him, too. Sometimes he thought every man in the building looked as if he could be the celebrity, but then they’d all revert to looking like potential gangsters again.

The women of Building B, Gate A began to complain bitterly that one of the elevator operators was a gangster. They meant Yu Li. The women considered Yu Li a gangster because, in his quest to discover the identity of the female celebrity in Building B, he had shifted his focus from the male to the female passengers. Now Yu Li, without fear or favour, stared at every woman who stepped into his elevator. He was prepared to stare as insolently at old women as he would at young girls.

At first, Yu Li mistook all the women in the building for celebrities because, for a man from a tiny town without any tall buildings in Hengshui district, the artfully made-up women of the capital all had star quality.

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Besides, Yu Li was shy and had never before dared to look so closely at the opposite sex. At first he only looked at the women to achieve his goal of uncovering the female celebrity. However, once he’d started gazing at these stars, they filled his eyes and he just couldn’t seem to get them out.

Thirty years old and spotty-faced, Yu Li only came into close contact with women in his elevator; as a result, he was unable to suppress the excitement that stimulated the baton in his trousers. This made him stare even more lustfully at the women, who became even more desperate to escape but were unable to do so because they were stuck in Yu Li’s elevator.

‘He is a gangster,’ the women complained bitterly to the team leader.

‘You must be mistaken,’ the team leader said slowly.

Now that the women in Building B considered Yu Li a gangster, they all started to give him evil and menacing stares. This made them seem like gangsters in Yu Li’s eyes and he found this increasingly disturbing. He wondered how he would protect the department chief if a large gang of female gangsters attacked him. And if the safety of the department chief couldn’t be protected, then how could the safety of the country and the people be protected?

Yu Li suddenly realized that his current situation was worse than Lei Feng’s. At least when Lei Feng sacrificed himself, he did so knowing he had the undying support of his comrades-in-arms, not to mention the masses. However, those who surrounded Yu Li might all be gangsters or, at the very least, on their way to becoming gangsters. They might secretly harbour a murderous desire to assault the department chief. Although Yu Li desperately wanted to protect the department chief, he knew he would find it hard to do so because he had not the slightest idea what the department chief looked like.

If I gave my life to protect the department chief, would the department chief mourn? Yu Li wondered. Would he openly grieve? Would he burst into tears? Maybe every single one of these women was a department chief, Yu Li reflected.

No one had said that all department chiefs had to be male. Since any one of them might very well be a department chief, and since department chiefs were by definition wise and would understand that at such a critical moment as the sudden loss of light in the elevator Yu Li had jumped on 85

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them just to protect them, why did they all continue to stare at him as if he were some kind of evil bastard?

Yu Li couldn’t work it out. His over-stimulated and confused mind just didn’t get it.

Yu Li: Confessions of an Elevator Operator is a title in Make-Do Publishing’s Modern Chinese Masters imprint. For details please visit: makedopublishing.com.

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Interview: Donald Keene Clarissa Sebag-Montefiore

I

n the autumn of last year, Donald Keene, a pre-eminent expert on Japanese literature, said a final goodbye to the United States. Keene packed up his belongings at Columbia University, where he had studied and taught for more than six decades, gave up his subscription to his beloved Metropolitan Opera, and moved to Japan. At eighty-nine years old, he intends to live out his last days in Tokyo.

The timing of his move – not long after the earthquake and tsunami that devastated north-eastern Japan in March 2011 and triggered several nuclear disasters – earned him even greater respect than he already enjoyed as a scholar. Other foreigners were leaving, but Keene was arriving to stay, confirming his faith in the country’s ability to recover and rebuild. He was awarded Japanese citizenship in March this year, and took the Japanese name Kiin Donarudo, combining two kanji characters derived from locations 87

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in Japan: the Kinugawa River and Naruto City. Local reporters captured this historic moment for the Westerner who has become a national hero in Japan.

We meet at the Park Hyatt Tokyo. The lounge on the forty-first floor enjoys views over the capital, stretching to the sea. The location is fitting: the Park Hyatt bar is famous for its role in the hit film Lost in Translation, where Bill Murray nurses a martini and looks glumly out over the soaring skyline.

It is a film centered on confusion, about a man who is swamped in the city, a metaphor for his muddled identity. Keene, by contrast, has no doubts. He has dedicated many decades to demystifying this complex, foreign country and is delighted by the opening of this new chapter so late in his life.

The man who shuffles from the lift wears a smart blazer and is small and stooped. He is assisted by a middle-aged Japanese friend, who sits discreetly beside him as we chat. Keene is polite and courteous, and has a mischievous, generous laugh.

I begin by asking how it felt to say goodbye.

‘It was not emotional to say goodbye to America,’ Keene says, his Brooklyn accent still apparent through a gravelly, hoarse voice. ‘It was emotional saying goodbye to people thinking I’d probably never see them again – I’m eighty-nine now and some of my friends are in their nineties . . .’ He drifts off in thought, then adds brightly: ‘I’m also sorry I won’t be able to go to the Metropolitan Opera. But it will probably come to Japan.’

Keene first announced his decision to move in an interview with a newsman. ‘I said that I intended to spend the rest of my life in Japan. And I added a postscript that I would take citizenship,’ he explains. Then Japan’s triple disaster hit. Countless foreigners, directed by their embassies, fled to the airports and Tokyo’s neon lights went dark. Keene’s arrival at this apocalyptic moment took on a new meaning. He received many letters that expressed appreciation. ‘[They say] without exception: you have given us courage.’

He says the move was long considered, and seemed fitting: ‘I have spent part of every year since 1953 in Japan, in some cases the whole year. I still have friends, but no family, in America . . . I am far better known in Japan.’

Keene does not covet fame (he is too old-fashioned, and too selfdeprecating); but he is thankful for the acceptance and recognition that come with it. ‘People stop me in the street. The people in my neighbourhood 88

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in Tokyo, who in the past would have seen me and greeted me with a friendly nod but wouldn’t have said anything, now greet me with “Good morning!”

I’m one of them. It’s a wonderful feeling,’ he says. ‘I realize that my face will keep me from becoming indistinguishable from other Japanese, but every Japanese who has communicated with me on the subject has expressed joy that I have taken Japanese citizenship.’

Keene grew up in a middle-class suburb of Brooklyn, New York, in the days when the morning milk was still delivered by horse and cart. His knowledge of the outside world was minimal: the only word he knew in Japanese was kimono. He found his vocation by accident. At eighteen, Keene came across an Arthur Waley translation of the eleventh-century The Tale of Genji, for 59 cents. ‘I bought it not because I wanted to read the book – I’d never heard of it before – but because it was so cheap,’ he remembers with a chuckle. ‘It was two volumes at a very minimal price and I thought it was a bargain.’

The Tale of Genji depicts the hidden realm of Japanese courtiers. Written by the noblewoman Murasaki Shikibu, Keene considers it the world’s first novel. As a slight teenager with a love of literature and hatred of sports, he was entranced by the thoughts expressed by the characters. ‘People were completely human,’ he says. ‘It shows emotions haven’t changed. People – they love, they hate, they’re jealous, they’re vicious – all these things are in this book. It’s incredible, and the translation is absolutely beautiful.’

The Tale of Genji is imbued with sorrow at the brevity of life (a continual theme in classical Japanese literature, where cherry blossoms and falling autumn leaves symbolize the perpetual passage of time). This seemed to make sense in 1940 and in the midst of the Second World War. Keene remembers the build-up to the war with solemnity. ‘That was a terrible, terrible year. The German armies seemed to be unstoppable. Then the Battle of Britain began, and I thought: we will be next.’ The war presented a challenge to Keene’s pacifist ideals. ‘I thought: how can we stop this if we don’t use weapons?’

Keene joined the US Navy, and was enrolled at its Japanese/Oriental Language School. He had been studying Chinese but, along with a select few other students from top universities, he was assigned to study Japanese. After completing an eleven-month intensive course, Keene was given the task of reading captured documents, interrogating prisoners of war and delivering broadcasts to the Japanese.

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Through a Chinese friend in America he had learned of the Chinese people’s suffering due to the atrocities inflicted on their homeland by the Japanese. Nonetheless, he became enthralled by the tragic, often lyrical, diaries found among the effects of dead Japanese soldiers.

Keene was shocked by the destruction he saw in Japan at the end of the war. ‘We felt there was no future,’ he recalls. ‘Tokyo was devastated; you wouldn’t believe what it was like. There was nothing but smokestacks . . . and the people were sure it would take at least fifty years to return to its pre-war status.’ Keene visited eight years later to find the country was already advancing. And after another ten years, he says, he was astonished to witness ‘the beginning of what you see out of these windows.’ He gestures outside, where glass-fronted skyscrapers glisten like millions of tiny fish scales in the sunlight.

‘The militarists were loathsome people. But once the war ended the Japanese were determined to build a better country. And they have,’ says Keene. He looks out of the floor-to-ceiling windows again. ‘It has been shown more recently, and most dramatically, by the Japanese earthquake.

[After the Second World War] they picked themselves up and built Japan better than it was before. So, the disaster is a shock now. The shock goes on.

But the Japanese will recover.’

The decision to change his nationality came after a crisis and recovery of his own. Keene was bedridden in hospital; doctors thought he might be crippled, or die. It was then that he made the decision that if he survived he would move to Japan – not as a foreigner but as a citizen. ‘I thought of my enormous gratitude to the Japanese,’ he says. ‘I am completely at home in Japan and have far many more friends than in America.’ The US government permits him to keep his American passport, but he says he will normally use his Japanese one.

Friends in the US consider Keene a hero; after all, he emigrated to a country beset by natural and nuclear disasters. ‘I’m not doing something heroic,’ he insists. ‘I’m doing something I want to do.’ He lets out a vigorous, good-natured laugh. ‘Doing something heroic is doing something you don’t want to do.’

Keene is highly esteemed by Japan’s literary community. In 2002 he was one of a handful of outsiders to be recognized as a Person of Cultural 90

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Merit (Bunka Kora-sha); in 2008, he became the first foreign national to be awarded the Order of Culture (Bunka Kunsho). This year, he is looking forward to the publication of a fifteen-volume collection of his works in Japan. ‘That’s an awful lot of books,’ he observes, shaking his head in amazement. ‘This at a time when complete works don’t sell!’ A museum to celebrate his achievements is also under construction.

The Japanese embrace of Keene is extraordinary given their historical isolationism. For 250 years Japan employed its closed-door policy (sakoku).

Foreigners entered the country on pain of death and Japanese who were caught learning about or travelling to the West were ordered to commit suicide. Some of these attitudes have seeped into modern life, says Keene.

‘The Japanese couldn’t help thinking that foreigners were a different breed of animal. This survives still among certain groups.’ Still, he sees the granting of his citizenship as a sign of change.

Keene has counted among his friends some of Japan’s most notable writers, among them the late Kawabata Yasunari (winner of the 1968 Nobel Prize for Literature) and Mishima Yukio. Both were troubled geniuses.

Keene remembers a visit with Mishima at the seaside resort of Shimoda in the summer of 1970. Mishima treated him to a sushi lunch, and ordered only the most expensive fish. Keene wrote in his autobiography that he guessed only later that his friend ‘had no time to waste on lesser fish.’ By November, Mishima had committed the ritual suicide once reserved for the samurai class following his role in a failed coup to restore the powers of the emperor.

Despite troubled memories – the deaths of friends, the loss of young lives in a brutal war, the recent triple tragedies – Keene sees beauty as Japan’s essence. We end our conversation where it all began, with The Tale of Genji.

‘Every concern is with beauty: the houses they live in, the clothes they wear, the gardens they have.’ He sighs in awe and in gratitude. ‘It is a creation of beauty in a world where there is death, there is illness, all kinds of things you can’t think of in terms of beauty in themselves, but which must be made a part of this life.’

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Akerke Mussabekova translated from the Kazakh by the author

To My Country If you are a river, my land I’m your flowing part – You pass through my heart and fill all emptiness.

I miss the bright mornings, yesterday’s evenings, and all your memorable news.

The feather of homesickness holds my hope makes me want to hug your ground smell your soil feel your wind touch your grass and fly like a bird in your sky.

My soul is a nest and the way is long between us.

Longer than a river it sets my love aflame speeds time and keeps me your child.

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Japan’s ‘Don’t Miss the Bus’ Mentality Uchida Tatsuru

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oreigners often seem to find the mindset and behaviour of the Japanese people incomprehensible. Some say that Japan’s geography has influenced the formation of an ‘island mentality’, suggesting that isolation has caused us to develop chauvinistic and ethnocentric tendencies. But this does not account for the singularity of our people; every country is, to a greater or lesser extent, chauvinistic and ethnocentric. My hypothesis is that because we inhabit a place perceived (by ourselves and by others) to be marginal, we Japanese have developed a ‘peripheral-state mentality’.

This mentality is not the result of geography, but of geopolitics. It stems from centuries of internalising a Sino-centric point of view. For as long as anyone can remember, East Asia has been dominated by the idea that the throne of the Chinese emperor was the centre of the world. An imperial, benevolent light streamed forth from this centre in all directions, to the farthest corners of the world.

Each Chinese dynasty had a powerful, single-syllable name (⛙ – Qin, ₎ – Han, 㝳 – Sui, ၈ – Tang, Ᏽ – Han, Ύ – Qing), while the surrounding, less important, ‘semi-civilised’ states had two-syllable names: (῾ᾏ– Balhae, ⓒ῭ – Baekje, ᪂⨶ – Silla, ᪥ᮏ – Japan). All of East Asia accepted this Sino-centric order. Even today, this concept has a powerful effect, consciously or subconsciously, on Asian nations. This is, however, a separate issue from the current rise of China. It is true that the Japanese people are frightened by the current military rise of China, but being frightened is not the same as being enchanted. The Japanese people’s Sino-centrism is woven out of timehonoured illusions, not immediate realities.

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The Record of Japan in the History of Wei is the oldest document attesting to Sino-Japan relations, and dates to the end of the third century.

This Chinese record describes Japan as a small vassal state in an eastern archipelago ruled by Himiko, a sorceress queen ‘with a close connection to Wei’, indicating her friendship with the Wei Dynasty. She and subsequent monarchs sent tribute to the Chinese emperors until the Meiji Restoration in 1868; until then the ruler of the Japanese islands called himself ‘king’ rather than ‘emperor’.

The celestial mandate of the Chinese empire could not be challenged, but the occupier of the throne could, and was: the ‘barbaric’ Mongols took the throne to establish the Yuan Dynasty in the thirteenth century, as did the Manchus of the Jin and Qing dynasties in the twelfth and seventeenth centuries.

Thus, it is not surprising that the Japanese would make a bid for the throne. The sixteenth-century general Toyotomi Hideyoshi, after unifying the Japanese archipelago, was not content merely to be the governor of an outlying province. He set out with a massive army for the Korean peninsula, where he fought against the allied Joseon (Korean) and Ming (Chinese) armies. He succeeded in taking Pyongyang and invading Manchuria before the war reached a deadlock and ended with a ceasefire. Hideyoshi’s objective – to conquer the Ming dynasty and place the king of Japan on the throne of China – may have been excessively ambitious, but it was not beyond imagination. Like the Mongols and Manchus, he dreamed of moving to the centre from the periphery.

Today, we Japanese remain subconsciously Sino-centrist; we still see ourselves as a peripheral state. This makes us passive rather than assertive; we tend to believe that everything valuable comes from outside and we need only to receive and adapt to it. It is our habit to identify the most powerful, the wealthiest and most civilized country and then find a way to bathe in its glory. The collective purpose of Japan is to catch up with the ‘world standard’ established beyond our borders.

The most effective way to motivate a Japanese person is to say: ‘Don’t miss the bus!’ We Japanese have a weakness for this phrase; it compels us to do our best. We demonstrate exceptionally high performance when we fear we are falling behind in any kind of competition. The surprisingly rapid pace of Japan’s modernization during the nineteenth century attests to this.

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When the people of our peaceful agricultural country suddenly realized they were on the verge of becoming a colony of England, Russia or the United States, they sprang into action. In no time they had revved up the machinery of industrialization.

The Japanese at that time decided, without hesitation, to imitate the behaviour of those who threatened them: they became strong enough to be colonisers rather than subjects. But when they made this collective decision no one thought to criticise colonialism itself. Japan set its sights on joining the dominant colonialist states rather than becoming a leader in creating a world without colonialism.

It is not that the Meiji-era leaders made the wrong decision; they turned Japan into a modern country. But the idea of setting a new world standard never occurred to them.ࠉ To avoid missing the bus seems to be our highest aspiration. In other words, we Japanese do not see it as our role to set the route. The Japanese media is full of statements such as: ‘We must do this and that, because all other countries do this and that.’ We rarely see a Japanese person setting the rules of the game and persuading people of other countries to play our game instead of theirs.

In its determination not to miss the bus, Japan has achieved certain results. We are now the world’s third-largest economic power and have the sixth-largest military budget. Even so, these successes do not generate respect. For example, overseas media pay little attention to proclamations made by our prime minister. The media know – and expect – these statements to be empty, offering no solution to any real problem. We can name many leaders of other small countries – Mahathir Mohamad of Malaysia, Lee Kwan Yew of Singapore and Lee Teng-hui of Taiwan, for example – whose ideas and behaviour have attracted the attention of overseas media. The importance of a statesman is not measured by the military and economic power of his country, but by his deep insights and high-minded views; Japan has not yet seen such a leader. Overseas media understand that we think only about getting on the bus, not where it may be going, or where it should go. This is what I call the peripheral-state mentality, and it is the reason we are not regarded with respect.

Can we ever escape from the spell of the peripheral-state mentality?

Can we be the ones to institute a new world standard?

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Can we tell a story romantic and heroic enough to enchant the people of the world?

Since the turbulent effects of the earthquake and tsunami of March 2011, I have been looking for answers to these questions and for signs of radical change. But to my regret I have found no evidence that such change is even beginning to take place. If neither an earthquake nor a tsunami can shake Japan’s perception of itself, perhaps nothing will.

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Katydid Dazai Osamu translated by Ralph McCarthy

I

’m leaving you. You’ve done nothing but lie to me. Maybe I’m partly to blame, but I don’t see what I’ve done wrong. Besides, I’m twenty-four now. Even if someone were to tell me what I’m doing wrong, I still wouldn’t be able to change. To do so I’d have to die and be resurrected, like Christ.

But to die at one’s own hand seems to me the greatest of sins, so I’ve decided to leave you instead, and begin to live the sort of life I feel is right. You scare me, and I simply can’t go on like this, even though I’m sure the rest of the world doesn’t think anything is wrong with the way you’ve chosen to live your life.

We met each other only five years ago – in the spring of my nineteenth year – and when we married not very long after that I brought virtually nothing but the clothes on my back. I don’t mind telling you now that both my father and mother were very much opposed to our marriage. Even my little brother, who’d just entered university at the time, seemed upset about it. ‘Are you sure you know what you’re doing, Sis?’ he’d said, sounding very grown up and concerned.

And – I never told you this because I thought it might be unpleasant for you – I had two other prospective suitors at the time. I don’t remember much about them, but I do remember being told that one of them had just graduated with a degree in law from the Imperial University. My big sister in Ikebukuro was the one who’d recommended him. He was from a good family and was studying to become a diplomat. I saw a photograph of him – he had this beaming, optimistic sort of face.

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The other man, who was nearly thirty, was an engineer in my father’s company. Again, this was five years ago, so I don’t remember all the details, but I seem to recall that he was the eldest son of a wealthy family and a man of very solid character. My father liked him, apparently, and he and Mother really pressured me to meet him. I refused, and don’t think I even saw his photograph.

None of this really matters, of course. I’m only telling you what I remember about these men so that you won’t just laugh this off the way you usually do. And please don’t think I’m saying these things to spite you.

Please believe me when I say that. Not for a moment would I be so wanton and frivolous to wish I’d married someone else. I can’t imagine being with anyone but you.

You mustn’t laugh. I’m saying these things in complete seriousness.

Please hear me out to the end.

Back then I had no desire to be with anyone else but you and this much, at least, hasn’t changed. Make no mistake about that. Ever since I was a child, the one thing I could not abide in people was indecisiveness. My father, my mother, and my sister in Ikebukuro were eager for me to find a husband and kept urging me to at least just meet this or that man. But to me a formal introduction seemed practically the same as an engagement ceremony, so I was not about to ‘just meet’ anyone. I had absolutely no intention of marrying either of those men. If they were perfect as everyone said they were, then surely they’d have women queuing up . . . I had this vague idea that I wanted to marry someone for whom – I know you’re going to laugh when I say this – someone for whom, of all the girls in the world, no one would do but me.

It was just as all this was going on that your name came up. It seemed an outrageous proposition, and Mother and Father were put off from the start. I mean, imagine: Mr Tajima comes to Father’s office to show him some paintings, and after rambling on and on the way he does, he says: ‘This painter is going to make a name for himself soon. Perhaps your daughter,’ et cetera, et cetera. My father just wrote it off as some sort of bad joke, although he did buy the painting to hang on the wall of his reception room.

But what did Mr Tajima do but come back two or three days later and ask my father, in all seriousness, if he could arrange for you to meet me. It was scandalous. Mother and Father were shocked, not only at Mr Tajima’s 98

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brazenness – acting as the go-between for a proposal like that – but at the man who’d presumably put him up to it. Afterwards, of course, when I asked you, I found out you’d known nothing about it, that it was all Mr Tajima’s idea, something he’d done simply because he was so devoted to you. Mr Tajima has helped us in so many ways. You owe so much of your success to him. He even neglected his own business for your sake. That’s because he believed in you, right? You mustn’t ever forget what he’s done for you.

I was a bit startled when I heard about his crazy suggestion, but the next thing I knew I found myself wanting to meet you. For some reason I felt really happy about it, and one day I went to Father’s office to steal a look at your painting. Did I ever tell you about that? I pretended I had some business with Father and went into the reception room. It was really cold that day but I stood there shivering and alone in one corner of that big, unheated room, just to look at your painting – of a little garden next to a sunlit veranda. There’s no one sitting on the veranda, just a single white cushion. It’s all in blues and yellows and white. As I gazed at it, I began to shiver and tremble even more, so much that I feared I was going to faint. It seemed as if I were the only one in the world who could truly understand that painting.

I’m saying all this in earnest. You mustn’t laugh. For two or three days after that, day and night, I couldn’t stop trembling. I had to become your wife, no matter what. That’s how I felt. When I asked Mother to arrange a meeting, I burned with shame, knowing how wanton it would sound to her.

She didn’t answer, but scowled at me terribly. I’d expected as much, however, and wasn’t about to give up. I decided to contact Mr Tajima directly. He shouted, ‘Bravo!’ and jumped up but tripped over his chair and fell flat on his backside. It sounds comical now, but neither of us laughed at the time.

Of course my family’s opinion of you just grew worse with each passing day, as you know. Mother and Father kept coming to me with unpleasant facts they’d uncovered about you – God only knows how they went about investigating it all – that you’d left your parents’ home by the Inland Sea and had come to Tokyo without their consent, that you’d alienated not only your parents but all your relatives, that you were a drinker, that you’d never had one of your works in an exhibition, that you were apparently a leftist of some sort, that it was questionable whether you’d actually graduated from the art academy, and on and on.

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But thanks to Mr Tajima, who patiently kept pressing the issue, we somehow finally managed to arrange a meeting – upstairs at that restaurant, the Senbiki-ya. Mother went with me. You were exactly as I’d imagined you.

I remember being impressed by how clean your shirt cuffs were. I could have died when I lifted my cup of tea: my hands were shaking so that the spoon started clattering on the saucer. When we returned home, Mother made it clear that she disapproved of you more than ever. What seemed to upset her most was that you’d just sat there smoking cigarettes without even trying to carry on a decent conversation with her. She kept saying you had an evil face. And she said you had no future. But I had made up my mind to marry you. I sulked for a month, and finally my parents gave in. We talked it over with Mr Tajima, and then I came to you, like I said, with virtually nothing but the clothes on my back.

The two years we lived in the apartment in Yodobashi – that was the happiest time of my life. Every morning I woke up full of joy just to think about the day ahead. You painted only what you wanted to paint, without concerning yourself in the least with exhibitions and the big names in the art world and so on. The poorer we became, oddly enough, the happier I was. Even carrying things to the pawn shop and the usedbook store gave me a warm kind of feeling. It was as if I’d finally found a home in this world. And whenever we ran entirely out of money, it seemed to be a chance for me to test my own resources, and I felt a tremendous sense of purpose in life. After all, food is never as tasty, or as much fun to eat, as it is when you have barely any money. I devised one delicious meal after another, didn’t I? But now I can’t do anything. There’s no need to use my imagination when I can just buy whatever I want. I go to the market feeling perfectly empty, and all I do is buy what all the other housewives are buying. Since you suddenly became such a big deal and we moved to this house in Mitaka, there hasn’t been any joy in my life. I no longer have a chance to show what I can do, and to be creative myself.

And you? You suddenly became such a smooth talker, and even though you acted even more thoughtful and caring towards me than before, it only made me feel like a pet cat or something. I’d never dreamed you were someone who’d get ahead in the world. I thought you’d live in poverty till the day you died, that you’d go on painting your wilful, self-indulgent 100

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paintings and being the object of everyone’s scorn but never letting that bother you and never bowing down to anyone. That you’d drink when you pleased and go through life without ever being muddied by the ways of the world. I believed – and I still believe – that there must be at least one such noble person alive. No one else would be able to see the crown of laurel on his head, he’d be treated as a fool, and I’d be the only one who would want to marry him and take care of him. That’s just what I’d do, I thought, I’d spend my life serving him. I thought you were that person, that angel. And I thought I was the only one who could understand you.

But what happened? Suddenly you became this big, important man. I don’t know how it happened, but – oh, the shame.

It’s not that I begrudge you your success. In the beginning, as more and more people came to love those wondrously sad paintings of yours, I gave thanks to God every night. I felt so happy that at times it brought tears to my eyes. During our two years in Yodobashi you painted whatever you felt like painting – the back garden you loved so much, the streets of Shinjuku late at night – and when we ran completely out of money Mr Tajima would show up and leave a fairly large sum of cash in exchange for two or three of your works. In those days you seemed indifferent to money, and you always looked so lonely whenever he left with your paintings. Mr Tajima would call me out into the hall, where he’d bow and thank me, very formally, and then he’d slip a white envelope into my sash. You always acted completely unconcerned about how much he’d left, and I was never so vulgar as to rip open the envelope as soon as he’d gone. It was my intention to carry on whether we had money or not. I never even told you how much he gave us. I didn’t want to soil you with such things. Not once did I ever urge you to make more money or try to become famous. Forgive me, but I was convinced that an inarticulate, coarse-mannered person like you couldn’t possibly become rich or renowned. But that attitude of yours was all just an act, wasn’t it? Why? Why? What a dandy you became after Mr Tajima told you about his plan for the one-man exhibition! First you began going to the dentist. Your teeth were so decayed that you looked like an old man whenever you smiled, but that had never bothered you before. When I used to suggest you go to a dentist you only made jokes, saying you’d get a set of false teeth once your real ones fell out, or that there was no use flashing gold caps and 101

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attracting all the girls. But then, suddenly, you started going to the dentist between paintings and coming back each time with one or two shiny new gold teeth. I’d say, ‘Let’s have a look. Smile.’ Your cheeks would turn red behind your beard and you’d make excuses in a timid tone of voice I’d never heard you use before, saying, ‘That damn Tajima keeps nagging me to get them fixed.’

I was thrilled about your one-man show in the autumn of our second year in Yodobashi. Why shouldn’t I be happy if even one more person came to love your work? But when the newspapers praised you so lavishly, and all the paintings in the exhibition sold, and when you started to get letters from famous painters, it was all just a little too good, and it scared me. You and Mr Tajima both kept urging me to go to the gallery for a look, but all I could do was sit in my room, knitting. Knitting and trembling from head to foot. Just to imagine it – a room with twenty or thirty of your paintings lining the walls, and a big crowd of people ogling them – was enough to make me feel like bursting into tears. It even seemed to me that so much good fortune coming so soon could only mean something terrible was bound to happen. Every night I asked God for forgiveness. ‘We have more than enough happiness for now,’ I’d pray. ‘Please watch over him, so that nothing bad happens to him.’

You started going out every night with Mr Tajima to be introduced to other famous painters. It never really bothered me, even when you didn’t return until the following morning. Whenever that happened you’d make a point of telling me all about the previous night, saying So-and-So Sensei was this or that, or what a moron Mr Something-or-Other was, and chattering on about the most trivial things, nothing like your normal, quiet self. Until then, during the two years we’d been living together, I’d never heard you talk behind anyone’s back that way. You, with your lofty independence, were supposed to be above caring what So-and-So Sensei was like, weren’t you? Worse, though, was that by chattering away about the previous night, you seemed to be trying to convince me that you’d done nothing wrong. I wasn’t born yesterday. If you had just told me the truth instead of making those feeble, roundabout excuses, it might be painful for me for a day or so, but in the long run it would be easier on my feelings. After all, I am your wife. And, anyway, I never had much faith in men when it came to things of that nature, but then I’ve never been overly suspicious either. I don’t worry 102

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about that sort of thing. It’s something I could grin and bear. At this point though, it’s the least of my worries.

Suddenly we were wealthy, and you were terribly busy. The Nika School welcomed you as a new comrade, and you began to feel embarrassed that we were living in such a small flat. Mr Tajima kept urging you to move, saying that people would wonder how much confidence they could put in you if you remained in such a place and that, as a result, the prices of your paintings would never go up. He said you should rent a large house as an investment. You became enthusiastic about this disgusting little scheme, saying, ‘Yeah, you’re right – the bastards just think you’re a fool if you live in a place like this,’ and other vulgar things that gave me chills and made me feel horribly alone. Mr Tajima rode his bicycle all over town looking for a house for us, and finally discovered this place in Mitaka. We had few belongings when we moved at the end of the year. Then, without even asking me, you went around buying all sorts of lavish furnishings, and when they started delivering these things, one after the other, I felt so sad I could have cried. Before I knew it, I had become what I’d always despised: the ‘lady of the house’. You even suggested we hire a maid, but that was where I drew the line. I’m not a person who is capable of ordering others around.

Shortly after we moved, you had three hundred New Year’s cards printed, each one doubling as a notice of our new address. Three hundred. At what point had you acquired so many acquaintances? It seemed to me you were in terrible danger, like a man walking a tightrope, and I was so afraid for you. I was sure something disastrous would happen at any moment. You weren’t the sort of man who could survive in a world of such commonplace socialising. That’s what I thought, and I spent each day ridden with anxiety.

But not only did you avoid a fall, good things kept happening to you. Is it me who’s got everything backwards?

My mother started coming to visit every few days, and each time she’d bring clothes I’d left behind, or my passbook or whatever, and she was always in the best of spirits. As for Father, though he’d grown to dislike the painting in the reception room so much that he’d ended up putting it in storage, now he had it set in a splendid new frame and hung in his study. And my sister began writing letters, saying ‘keep up the wonderful work’ and so on. We suddenly had lots of other visitors crowding into the sitting room, and I’d stand in the kitchen and hear you laughing merrily away. You really became 103

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quite the talker, didn’t you? You used to be such a quiet person. I always thought it was because you understood so much about the world and saw how vain and silly everything is, but that’s not the way it was at all, was it?

The things you say in front of your guests now! Solemnly repeating, word for word, some theory of painting you heard from someone who’d visited just a few days before, as if it were your own well-considered opinion or, for example, when I mentioned my impression of a story I’d read, and the next day you calmly repeated my silly ideas in front of guests, saying: ‘After all, Maupassant had a horror of religious belief, didn’t he?’ I was serving the tea to the visitors when I heard you say that, and I was so mortified I stopped dead in my tracks. You simply didn’t have any ideas in your head before, did you? Forgive me. I hardly know anything either, but at least I’m capable of speaking for myself, whereas you’re either completely silent or mouthing someone else’s words. And yet you’ve achieved all this unaccountable success. Your painting in the Nika exhibition that year was awarded first prize, and the newspaper went so overboard praising your work it was embarrassing: ‘noble solitude’, ‘ascetic purity’, ‘deeply contemplative’, ‘melancholia’, ‘prayer-like’, ‘Chavannesque’ – using words like that. Later you were talking with a guest about that article and you said it ‘seemed fairly accurate’. What a thing to say! We are not living a life anyone could call ‘ascetic’. Shall I show you our bank statement?

You seemed to change completely when we moved here. You began to talk about financial matters all the time, and whenever a guest asks you to paint something for him now, the first thing you do is name a price. You tell him that by deciding on this beforehand, both of you can avoid any unpleasant misunderstandings afterwards. I must say I don’t enjoy hearing you discuss such things. Why do you have to be so concerned with money?

It’s my belief that if you simply paint good pictures, the bread-and-butter part will take care of itself. What could be more satisfying than doing good work and remaining unknown, living in honest poverty? I want to live a quiet life, with a lofty but inconspicuous sort of inner pride.

You’ve even got to the point where you check to see how much I have in my own pockets. When a sum of money comes in, you split it up and put some in that big wallet of yours and some in my little purse. You put, say, five large bills in your wallet and one large one, folded twice, in my purse, and the rest you deposit at the bank. And I just sit there, watching.

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Remember how upset you were that time I left the cash drawer on the bookshelf unlocked? I was flabbergasted by your reaction. Now, when you go to collect money from a gallery, you end up not coming home for about three days. And as soon as you return – drunk in the middle of the night, rattling the front door – you say the most pathetic things: ‘Hey, look, I’ve still got three hundred yen left over. Go on, count it.’

But it’s your money, isn’t it? Why shouldn’t you spend as much as you like? I’m sure there are times when you feel like squandering money, as a sort of release. Are you afraid I’ll begrudge you that? I understand the value of money. But I don’t go through life thinking about nothing else. When I see you looking pleased with yourself because you’ve still got three hundred yen left, I feel so alone I can scarcely bear it.

I don’t have the slightest desire for money. There’s nothing I want to buy, nothing I want to eat, nothing I want to see. I can make do with old, worn-out furniture and cooking utensils, and I don’t need any new kimonos because I can always mend or re-dye the ones I have. I’ve always known I’d get by somehow. I don’t even like buying a new dish towel. It’s wasteful.

You’ve taken me into the city to eat at expensive restaurants from time to time, but the meals in those places have never seemed the least bit delicious.

I don’t feel comfortable, I just sit there with my heart in my mouth, and it all seems such a waste. Rather than bringing home three hundred yen, or taking me to a fancy restaurant, how much happier I’d be if you’d make a cucumber trellis in the garden. As strong as the afternoon sun is on the veranda, I’m sure cucumbers would do well out there. But when I begged you to build one, you just told me to call in a gardener. I was not about to call in some gardener, the way rich people do. I wanted you to make the trellis. But you just kept saying, ‘All right, all right, next year for sure,’ and now, after all this time, you still haven’t done it.

You waste so much money on yourself, but when someone else is in need, you act as if there’s nothing you can do. When was it that your friend Mr Amamiya came to ask your advice because his wife was ill and he was hard up? You called me into the sitting room and asked me, with a perfectly serious face, if we had any money in the house. It was so bizarre, so absurd, that I didn’t know what to do. I stood there turning red and fidgeting, and you said, ‘Don’t hold back on us, now – if you dig around, you’re bound to come up with twenty yen or so.’ I was appalled. Twenty measly yen. I looked 105

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at you, and you waved your arm as if to sweep my gaze away and said, ‘Never mind, just get it, don’t be so stingy,’ and then you smiled at Mr Amamiya and said, ‘It’s at times like this that we both feel the sting of poverty.’ I was dumbfounded. ‘Ascetic purity’? Ha! ‘Melancholia’ – is there even a trace of anything so noble in you, the way you are now? You’re just the opposite: a happy-go-lucky egotist. When you’re bellowing that silly song in the washroom every morning: ‘Say you believe me, baby!’ I feel so ashamed, wondering what the neighbours must think. ‘Prayer-like’, ‘Chavannesque’ – words like that are wasted on you.

‘Noble solitude? ’ Doesn’t it ever occur to you that you’re spending your life surrounded by sycophants? The visitors call you ‘Sensei’, and you sit there and disparage everyone else’s paintings, one after the other, as if no one else were walking the same path as you. But if you really feel that way, it seems to me there’s no need to criticise others so indiscriminately, much less intimidate others into agreeing with you. Where’s the ‘noble solitude’ in that? Why must you try to impress everyone who comes by?

You’re a liar. That’s right: a despicable liar.

It was such a wretched time for me last year when you broke away from the Nika school and started your own group, the ‘New Romantics’ or whatever you call it. And who did you form the group with but the very people you’d been making fun of – the ones you’d been laughing at behind their backs?

You don’t have any fixed opinions of your own, do you? None whatsoever.

Could it really be that your way of life is what the world considers correct? When Mr Kasai comes to visit, the two of you heap scorn on Mr Amamiya, but when Mr Amamiya comes by you’re terribly kind to him and tell him that when all is said and done, he’s your only true friend. You say such things with such emotion that it all rings true, and then you start criticizing Mr Kasai. Do all successful people in this world act this way?

How do they keep from stumbling? It’s horrifying, and incredible, to me.

Something bad will certainly happen. And you know what? I almost hope it does. For your sake, and as proof that God really does exist, I’ve got to the point where, somewhere in my heart, I pray that something awful will happen. But nothing does. Only good things, one after another.

The first exhibition of works by your group seems to have been praised to the heavens. As for your Chrysanthemums, I heard some of our guests 106

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talking about how your spirit had reached new levels of purity, and how the work gave off a fragrance of lofty, noble-minded love. What’s going on here? I just can’t comprehend it.

During New Year, you took me along for the first time to pay your respects to the famous Okui Sensei, who’s always been the most ardent supporter of your work. A renowned master like that, and he lives in a house that is, if anything, smaller than ours. He is what I call the real thing.

The way he plopped his portly body down, sitting cross-legged, looking as if he wouldn’t budge an inch, and peering at me through his spectacles with those big eyes of his – those were the eyes of a man who knows the meaning of ‘noble solitude’. I began to tremble all over, just as I had when I first saw that painting of yours in my father’s freezing reception room.

Okui Sensei spoke about nothing but the simplest, most everyday topics, in a completely unaffected way. And what did you say when he looked me over and made a joke about what a fine catch you’d made, saying I looked like samurai stock? In a proud and perfectly serious tone of voice, you said, ‘Yes, her mother descends from samurai.’ I broke out in a cold sweat. Both my father and mother are commoners to the bone!

I wouldn’t be surprised if before long you start telling people my mother’s from the aristocracy. It’s frightening, and it’s a mystery to me why a man like Okui Sensei can’t see through all your phoniness. Or is that just normal behaviour for people in this world?

Sensei kept consoling you, saying how hard it must be to get your work done these days, but when I thought about the way you sing that silly song every morning, I just couldn’t help wondering what was what. It struck me as so preposterous I nearly burst out laughing. And then, after we left Sensei’s house, before we’d walked even a block, you kicked at the gravel on the road and said, ‘What a sentimental old git. Getting all weak-kneed over a woman.’ I was shocked by your cowardice: one minute you’re grovelling in front of that splendid old gentleman, and the next you’re stabbing him in the back. You must be insane.

It was at that moment that I decided to leave you. I couldn’t endure it any longer.

You even seem to have forgotten how much you’re indebted to Mr Tajima. ‘That idiot Tajima came by again the other day’ – you’ve said things like that to your so-called friends and at some point it seems Mr Tajima 107

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got wind of it. Now, when he comes over he enters through the back door, smiles and says, ‘The idiot Tajima is here again!’ I just don’t understand you people at all. What in the world has happened to your pride?

Sometimes I even wonder if you and your friends aren’t tormenting me intentionally. The other day you were on the radio, talking about ‘The Significance of the New Romantic Movement for Our Times’, or something similarly self-congratulatory. I was in the living room, reading the newspaper, when out of the blue I heard your name being announced, and then heard your voice, which sounded like the voice of a complete stranger. So thick and garbled and nasty-sounding. What a disgusting person, I thought. I was able to see you clearly, to put you in perspective at that very moment: you’re just an ordinary man, but I’m sure you’ll continue to get ahead in the world.

It’s all so ridiculous! I heard you say, ‘I am what I am today because . . .’ And that’s when I switched off the radio. Who in the world do you think you are? Do you have any shame? ‘I am what I am today’ – don’t ever utter such horrifying and moronic words again! Ah, I hope you trip up, and soon.

That night I went to bed early. When I turned off the lights and lay down on my back, I heard a cricket singing its heart out. I guess it had crawled in under the veranda, and it was now directly beneath me. It seemed as if that katydid were singing out from deep inside my spine. I resolved to remember that faint little voice for the rest of my life, to keep it there, locked up inside, as I made my way in the world. It’s a world where, I suppose, you are the correct one and I’m the one who’s mistaken, but I just can’t see it – I just don’t see where my mistake is, or what’s so wrong with my way of thinking.

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Too Asian, Not Asian Enough Kavita Bhanot

O

ver the last two decades, in part due to the success of a small number of novels, plays, films, music albums and television shows, the term ‘British Asian’ has emerged as an identity marker associated with the cultural practices of second-generation South Asian immigrants, born and/ or brought up in Britain. There is one overwhelming narrative associated with this label: the tale of the second generation’s efforts to assimilate into mainstream British society, and the clash with their ‘traditional’ or ‘backward’ parents, who hinder this process. According to this reading, these parents make life difficult for their children, who simply want to be ‘normal’ – to go out with friends, to have boyfriends or girlfriends, to drink, to wear Western clothes, to cut their hair in a Western style. The parents are seen to continue to hold on to traditions and customs that should be irrelevant to them now that they are living in a land of freedom, pleasure and plenty.

But are these the only stories we British Asians have to tell? Is this the only subject we want to write about? To challenge the dominance of this narrative, and to initiate a discussion on the pressures upon British Asian writers to perpetuate this narrative, I was recently involved in putting together Too Asian, Not Asian Enough, a collection of short stories by British Asian writers who were free to focus on anything they liked.

Each time the media highlights a protest – when a caste or a religious minority speaks out against a play, or asks for a book to be banned, or objects to a cartoon or prevents a writer from coming to a festival – liberals roll their eyes in exasperation. They use terms such as ‘freedom of expression’, 109

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‘savage’, ‘uncivilised’ and ‘ignorant’. And in sometimes condescending tones they respond by saying, ‘Don’t these people understand that it’s fiction?’, ‘Why don’t they write books of their own instead of creating a spectacle?’, ‘Have they even read (the book/play)? ’ But by doing so these people are only reaffirming their preconceptions of religion, religious groups and, in particular, of Muslims.

Such skirmishes threaten the freedom of expression of British Asian writers, who are also hindered by the pressures of writing for a predominantly white, middle-class audience. It is primarily white, middle-class publishers, agents and readers who select, shape and absorb literature from outside the canon, and this in turn often influences what an author might dare to write. British Asian writers generally refrain from speaking out against these constraints for fear of being ostracized. Feeling powerless, they accept this as just the way things are.

The contributors to Too Asian, Not Asian Enough leaped at the opportunity to showcase their talent and to write about a diverse range of topics and settings, from ancient Rome to a US university campus; from absurd, experimental tales to ones that were funny, modern and fresh.

If these are the stories we British Asians are writing, why do our published works tend to rehash the same handful of themes and, in particular, the theme of intergenerational conflict set against the backdrop of culture clash? The answer is, in part, connected to the commodification of literature, whereby the writing of an ethnic group becomes a genre (like chick-lit, detective fiction, thriller), and its writers find themselves constrained within the bounds of a brand – a formulaic and ultimately oppressive expectation.

British Asian writers deserve the latitude to write about other subjects, places and people, and to experiment with other forms. However, because a writer’s name, ethnicity and religion are weighted with a familiar and specific marketing spin, publishers are not always receptive to something beyond this narrow remit. This in turn breeds the idea that we British Asians need to ‘use’ our identity label while it is in demand, and that we should exhibit loyalty to the brand. To give one example of this, a story from the anthology was recently selected for a radio dramatisation. A week before the recording, the producers asked that the setting be changed from Europe to India, a place the writer knew nothing about. When he refused they called him ‘difficult’ and his story was dropped.

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In any event, the label ‘British Asian’ is misleading. The narrative commonly ascribed to it is a generalisation and a distortion of the experiences of immigrants who originate from villages and towns in just a few areas of the subcontinent – Punjab, Gujarat, Mirpur and Sylhet – and primarily from lower middle-class families. This group moved to Britain mainly for economic reasons, and were not usually highly educated; thus, it seems almost inevitable that there would be a clash or misunderstanding between this first generation and the subsequent one, born and brought up in strikingly different circumstances. This second generation has been part of Britain’s working class, a factor that became integral to the label ‘British Asian’.

But what about the British Asian writers who come from other regions and classes, who in many cases have been well educated, and who have been brought up in more cosmopolitan and urban environments? These writers struggle to relate to a narrative that doesn’t correspond to their own experience. Unfortunately, the British Asian label, shaped by economic circumstances and an Orientalist gaze, doesn’t consider the layers of complexity within an ethnic group. These other writers are perceived to be inauthentic, not gritty enough, and from families who are not sufficiently alien. They don’t necessarily belong to a world of bhangra, arranged marriages, Bollywood, saris, bindis or the hijab. The mainstream, unable to engage with the specificity and diversity of the ‘other’, seeks to manage diversity by homogenising it.

The expectation that they will adhere to the given narrative also inhibits writers whose family and community life do happen to reflect aspects of the perceived immigrant experience; who do have arranged or forced marriages, who do watch Bollywood films, wear bindis and saris – or hijabs – and who do identify to some extent with this cultural context and want to write about it. There seems to be little space for anything beyond a tokenistic, superficial and unthreatening version of ‘British Asian’.

Since the anthology was published I have been asked repeatedly if the stories are ‘universal’. Or, as if it were a compliment, I have been told that they are universal.

The mainstream is obsessed with the universal as a key marker of good literature. However, like ‘globalisation’ and ‘cosmopolitan’, ‘universal’ has become a front for something specific – a dominant way of seeing the world.

Literature is seen as ‘universal’ when it doesn’t disrupt our sense of ourselves 111

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on a deeper ideological level, when it affirms that the Other is really ‘just like us’ and when it elicits sympathy on these grounds. In this way, ‘universal’ literature can silence other voices.

British Asian stories that we see again and again, and that are absorbed into the mainstream, do not disturb established ideologies and world views. Instead they affirm the dominant values of modernity and capitalism, secularism, liberalism and individualism – values at the heart of British mainstream culture. They tend to centre on the obstacles faced by a character on the path to assimilation, and are almost always told from the perspective of the second generation. They are antagonistic towards the first generation’s attachment to religion, culture, place of origin and language; and this attachment is generally presented as stereotypically ridiculous, comical and obstructive. We are often guilty of perpetuating this narrative, and some of us have become mouthpieces for a certain kind of racism – making fun of first-generation migrants who can’t speak English well, who are not Westernised or completely assimilated.

Recently, I was at an event where a prominent ‘British Asian’ poet was performing a poem about a Sikh shopkeeper. He used an exaggerated, comical Indian accent. As the compère pointed out, the poem would have had a very different reception if a non-Asian member of the audience had delivered the piece with a similar accent.

A majority of second-generation British Asians have a strong attachment to the cultures, languages and religious practices of their families and communities. It is not easy to reject all such connections out of hand: the truth is, most of us don’t wish to. They are part of who we are – not the cause of a simple, binary ‘culture clash’ from which we suffer, but more like threads woven into the broader pattern that makes up our identity.

No matter how much we claim to be writing for ourselves, the truth is that we also write for an audience, and it is through the eyes of this audience that we observe the world we write about. Since we are writing for predominantly white middle-class publishers, agents and readers, it is difficult to avoid looking through their eyes at our own families and communities. From this perspective, first-generation immigrants may appear strange, ridiculous, comical, even sinister. This perspective also allows us to be lazy: we are not required to have a deep understanding of the history, religion, politics, art, written and oral literature and culture of this first generation, and therefore 112

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of ourselves. It is of course acceptable and healthy to criticise ourselves, but we must consider whether we are being constructive and compassionate or merely saying what others want to hear.

Today we must grapple with a new form of Orientalism where, by virtue of our brown skin and foreign-sounding names, we are given licence to write about people and communities we know or care little about. We should not write with the same ignorance, generalisation and exoticism that Westerners have employed. To avoid this, we must catch ourselves before we fall into the trap of simplifying our identities or performing them. Instead, we must strive to understand and reveal our own complexity.

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Anushka Anastasia Solomon

Faith Ariyathavaletchumee and Aruntha Devi may never change their difficult-to-pronounce names to suit Simple Simon; they may never leave their husband, their children, their country or their gold-plated gods; they may never sever that umbilical cord – the silk sari tie to the old country, all and sundry.

They may never leave their homeland behind like Abraham who followed the Lord but they will stay, and raise the children who do.

These will go to the foreign land These will suffer like the Man of Sorrows These will discover all of America’s gold-plated gods These will hear the Pieman scream: Show me first your penny!

These will incur wrath and scorn These will be pierced by thorns but they will know, and grasp the Mother’s heart.

Ariyathavaletchumee and Aruntha Devi may never unravel the inexplicable mystery of the sari tugged by the imperial hands of violent men.

Ariyathavaletchumee and Aruntha Devi may never travel the whole six or nine yards of faith they may never cut that umbilical cord – but they will pray, and bring their children to God. 114

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I

was six months pregnant when I finally made it to India’s holy city of Haridwar. It was a long, terrifying journey from Delhi: despite India’s decade of economic growth, many roads remain medieval. I held my belly protectively as the car swerved around pylons and bounced over ditches and potholes.

I found relief at dusk, when we arrived to see the hazy Himalayan summits and the white marble temples on the green hillsides surrounding the city. Thousands of Hindu pilgrims had gathered for evening prayers by the glass-green Ganges.

Most people go to Haridwar to wash away their sins in the cold, holy waters; others arrive with the ashes of loved ones to conduct last rites.

The reasons for my own journey were different, and had begun three decades earlier in the American South: I’d travelled to Haridwar in search of my roots. I had been confused about my origins since the second grade, when a teacher asked us to write about one of our grandparents, and to make a presentation. My classmates brought in Bibles with family trees sketched in them; some clutched medals earned by valiant grandfathers during the Second World War; others shared black-and-white wedding photos from the 1930s.

I had nothing to show. My own grandparents still lived in India; I had rarely seen them and barely knew them. We emigrated to the United States when I was eighteen months old. My parents brought no family records and not one of us – not even I – possessed a birth certificate. Beyond my mother’s colourful memories of growing up in the northern Indian town 115

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of Jammu, amidst aunts, uncles and cousins – and the occasional bandit monkey stealing food – I knew little of our history.

In 1984, when I was on the edge of puberty, two events added to my confusion. First, my father quit his engineering job and moved my mother, brother, sister and me from urban Pennsylvania to rural Tennessee. He’d bought a sprawling, run-down motel, complete with a diner furnished with laminated tables, red vinyl-covered chairs and a jukebox. Then, his entire Indian family – parents, brother, sisters, their spouses and their children – arrived to live with us.

My immediate family took the upstairs rooms 12, 14 and 15; unlucky 13 didn’t exist. Our three interconnected rooms were in one corner of the horseshoe-shaped, two-storey Lakeview Motel in Jackson, ‘The Power-Tool Capital of the South’.

My uncle, aunt and two cousins took the adjoining rooms; my grandparents lived downstairs, at the horseshoe’s halfway point. In a separate building near the entrance, my two aunts lived with their own families next to the large office with its drive-through check-in window and vending machines.

My father, a hard worker himself, immediately gave me the task of cleaning the musty, cigarette-smoky rooms. I hoovered the lurid red carpeting, gathered dirty linen, threw away the crushed and scattered beer cans and polished the furniture with lemony-scented Pledge. I didn’t understand much of the queer drawl spoken by our customers and new neighbours in this southern part of the States, but I was able to catch the lyrics that blared from the jukebox: ‘The Greeks don’t want no Freaks! The Greeks don’t want no Freaks!’ Understanding this new language was only part of the transition.

My aunts, for example, in their modest but colourful salwar kameez, would look askance at the tattooed, halter-topped women in their denim shorts, big hair and cowboy boots; and at their boyfriends’ John Deere baseball caps, Lee jeans and belts with big brass buckles.

And if the move to the rural South weren’t jarring enough, my father decided that enrolling me in a Catholic school was the only way to protect my budding chastity. I suddenly found myself surrounded by pale, pious nuns enrobed in black, and other children wearing the standard uniforms: tartan pinafores and white, Peter Pan collared shirts for us girls; blue trousers and white Oxford shirts for the boys. I was always late for morning Mass and would try to sneak in unseen for this unfamiliar ritual, mouthing 116

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hymns I didn’t know and grimacing at those who ate and drank ‘the body and blood of Christ’.

Years later, it became clear to me that my father was modelling his life on what he’d seen in India, where the best education is provided by convent schools and where the extended family helps run the business. But his experiment with a family-run business was a disaster when transplanted to Tennessee. Faced with the relentless grind of motel management, and of cleaning up day and night after promiscuous, itinerant guests, most of our family left as soon as they could. They didn’t intend to waste more time in what they thought was a seedy backwater. Unlike India, the US offered them great opportunities, and they intended to take them.

Living in the motel also ignited an insatiable travel lust in me. I wanted to move on, like the people who passed through those rooms I cleaned.

I wanted to see the world, to escape from this town where I’d never fit in even if I’d wanted to.

In 1996, after graduating with a degree in journalism from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, I packed my bags. Having convinced myself that no American news broadcaster was going to hire a reporter called ‘Anu Anand’ (or ‘a-NOO Car’ as my schoolmates had often put it), I grabbed my Indian passport – everyone else in my family had traded theirs for an American one – and bought a plane ticket to Delhi. I’d been offered a job earning one rupee – one US cent – per word at United Press International’s Delhi office. Naively, I’d taken it.

It was August and the middle of the monsoon season when I arrived, wearing baggy jeans, bright white sneakers and carrying an odd assortment of things I thought I’d need in India: American toothpaste, shampoo and laundry detergent.

I spent my first evening on the balcony of UPI’s sweltering guest room and watched the rain come down in sheets. Soaked cyclists in the lane below tinkled their bells and swerved gracefully around pedestrians and puddles.

At that moment, truly alone, I felt more lost in India than I ever had in the US. Yet every moment in India was exhilarating. Here, finally, I was able to explore my own culture without a nervous adult hovering around, bent on circumscribing my views or protecting my chastity.

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I wandered around Old Delhi marvelling at the press of rickshaws, people, dogs, cows, crows and motorcycles. I travelled by coach to Rajasthan, realising too late that I’d taken the long, slow route through villages where even the women stared at my bare arms and sunglasses. I ate my fill of sour, spicy street food, often paying for it with horrific gastroenteritis, thinking that perhaps I wasn’t ‘Indian’ enough for this nostalgic pastime. And I reconnected with cousins I’d horsed around with in marble courtyards during my childhood visits.

My mother’s extended family were so overwhelmingly welcoming that it was not uncommon to receive several phone calls each day from concerned aunts and uncles.

‘Hello, beta, how are you?’ they’d ask warmly.

‘Hello! Yes, fine. Hey, guess what? I went to a slum today – you wouldn’t believe it!! And next week I get to interview a real maharaja!’

‘Are you eating OK? How do you manage, beta, without a maid?’

‘Fine, fine. Hey – what’s with these guys who dress up like women – I think they’re called hijras. I’ve been meaning to ask you.’

‘Unh, yes. OK, beta, are you safe living by yourself ? When are you coming to visit? It’s Diwali soon! I know how much you loved Diwali firecrackers when you visited that time from America . . . you remember?’

I love my extended family. They took me in unquestioningly and came running when I needed them. But they also loved to sit around drinking endless cups of tea while expressing tedious opinions on everyone, usually all at once so that it was impossible to distinguish one voice from another in the cacophony.

At work, despite my efforts to be prolific and keep the rupees rolling in, I barely managed to make enough money to get by. With my uncle’s help, I’d managed to rent a small, clean and completely empty apartment.

But it was a spare existence, living there without even the basics: a bed, air conditioning, a refrigerator, a telephone.

I spent those first sweltering months tossing and turning at night on a folding lawn chair someone had lent me, aware that even the backs of my knees were sweating. Without a fridge, I quenched my thirst with tepid water and often threw out food, knowing it would rot overnight. Phone calls home were made from a public booth down the road where, desperately homesick, I sometimes struggled not to break down in tears.

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One day, out of pity for my plight, the local Voice of America correspondent took me for a meal at the American Club, a secure compound with an outdoor swimming pool in the heart of New Delhi’s leafy diplomatic enclave. After we’d passed through the club’s security system, he showed me the bowling alley, complete with Brunswick lanes and automatic scoring screens. Don Henley blared from a speaker somewhere as we passed the Baskin-Robbins ice-cream stand.

The place was packed with squarely built, close-shaven young men, many of them wearing fatigues. We ate buffalo steaks served with French fries and little yellow packets of mustard. Dessert was Mississippi Mud Pie. It was America at its pre-packaged, can-do best and, suddenly, I felt completely at home.

I tried speaking a little louder than normal at dinner in an effort to let the white Americans around me know that despite being a brown-skinned Indian . . . in India . . . I was ‘one of them’.

In America, I had rarely felt such a sense of belonging.

Yet in India, over time, I realized clearly and without question that I was more American than anything else. For a start, I actually preferred doing my own cooking and cleaning. I had no clue what caste I was, much less what gotra or biradari meant. I didn’t practise Hinduism. I didn’t understand or respect India’s hierarchical society, and would regularly argue with my ‘elders’ or offer soft drinks and ice lollies to servants.

I discovered that Indian weddings, despite my melodramatic Bollywood visions of jasmine, gold jewellery and romantic ritual, were nothing like those in real life; that the search for a partner involved mundane criteria like height, complexion and caste as well as unseemly bartering over dowries.

On the big day, hundreds of Punjabi relatives would arrive, unceremoniously eat their fill, throw their plates on the floor, congratulate the newlyweds and leave. The bride often looked cowed and miserable.

But just as I was getting to grips with my Indian-American-ness, life threw me the most unexpected curve ball.

It was January 1997 and I was riding in the back of an auto rickshaw. The air whipping across my face was uncharacteristically cold, and I shivered in my woollen shawl. I was on my way to an interview at the Associated Press Television News’ Delhi bureau, where I’d heard they were looking for a producer. If I got the job, I’d probably be able to buy a fridge.

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I did get the job, but much more, too.

The Englishman who met me was tall, handsome and kind. He mumbled a lot and avoided eye contact. It was my first introduction to British understate-ment. Not only did I get the job (he swears it was on merit), and a boxy Motorola mobile phone . . . I also bagged the Englishman. We were married in Delhi a year later. A glowering Indian magistrate signed our marriage certificate after I had sworn I was a ‘virgin’ and he had confirmed that he was a ‘bachelor’.

My new husband left for London the next day, expecting me to follow and promising me a life of bucolic duck ponds, quaint riverside pubs and long summer afternoons eating strawberries and cream.

I was reluctant to abandon India so soon, but I followed my heart.

Fourteen years on, my head is still trying to catch up.

As an American, I imagined that Britain would be the easiest place to emigrate to: after all, it’s an English-speaking country, and home to Shakespeare and the Beatles.

How wrong I was.

In London I found myself navigating a myriad invisible social and cultural obstacles, quite apart from wondering how I would survive in a country with no summer . . . winter . . . spring . . . or fall . . . or mountains . . . or warm and sunny beaches . . . thunderstorms . . . crickets chirping at night . . . mixer taps . . . edible, recognisable food . . . or proper showers with working thermostats and water pressure.

I learned to understand Scots, West Country, Liverpudlian and Birmingham accents, and to tell the difference between them (most of the time).

I learned the subtleties of what it meant to have attended a public school, a grammar school or a comprehensive. Eventually, I read Kate Fox’s book, Watching the English, and realized belatedly just how far I’d leapt without bothering to look.

I realized that many Brits did not like America at all, and that we Americans knew nothing about Britain, despite our love of Elton John, Princess Diana and John Cleese.

In Britain, my previous identities impressed no one. The British have seen and heard everything in the course of more than 400 years of Empire.

The twenty-first-century streets of London are home not only to Indians, Pakistanis, Bangladeshis and every African, European and Arab nationality; 120

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they also showcase mixed races of the most exotic varieties: Finnish Japanese, Ghanaian Swedish, Iraqi Russian.

For the third time in my life I found myself failing to understand a complex foreign culture, and struggling to find my place in it.

My journey through these three cultures culminated in my visit to Haridwar. As I watched thousands of Hindu pilgrims chant evening prayers at twilight, I wondered which of my various identities was paramount. And what would I bequeath to my own children?

If I were to make sense of my identity I needed to understand it in the context of its historical arc. Where had I come from? Unlike my Western classmates, I couldn’t look up my family’s history online or through a public records office. As a descendent of Hindus, the only way I could trace my roots was by making the trip to Haridwar, where my ancestors had made pilgrimage for generations.

As evening prayers ended, I set off into the old city’s warren of alleyways.

‘I’m looking for the Anands, originally from Rawalpindi,’ I told the men loitering against carved wooden doorways leading to ancient havelis, mansions built around open courtyards.

For hundreds of years, hereditary priests in Haridwar have kept genealogical records on long paper scrolls. Whenever a pilgrim arrived for a redemptive dip or a death ceremony, he would track down his family’s priest and update the ancestral history. The tradition goes back an estimated twenty generations, though the oldest records kept on palm leaf have disintegrated with age. Today, more than 300 priests remain, and the duty of maintaining these scrolls is handed down from father to son.

One priest invited me inside. As he leafed through a scroll, its pages scrawled with names and dates, the script alternating between Hindi, Urdu and Punjabi – the three main languages of north India – I felt my heart begin to race with anticipation.

I wasn’t expecting to discover any kings, luminaries or spies, just a confirmation that I belonged somewhere – anywhere. But it was not to be.

I pressed on for two more days, growing ever more desperate – afraid of failing my unborn child.

Luckily, a local man overheard my entreaties and tapped me on the shoulder.

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‘I know your priest,’ he said, leading the way.

A few minutes later we opened the heavy double doors to a courtyard dominated by the densest banyan tree I’ve ever seen. Hundreds of tangled roots reached for the ground, obscuring a doorway.

Inside, I found Mahendra Kumar. He was a round, jovial man, and laughed appreciatively as I recounted the tale of my journey. Moments later, as my eyes watered with delight and my hands shook with anticipation, he unravelled two scrolls, each going back to the early 1800s. They contained entries written in the hands of my father, grandfather, great-grandfather, and ancestors going back a staggering ten generations. One entry from 1881 was written by my great-great-great-grandfather, Amirchand, telling how the family had made the journey to the Ganges for a ritual immersion.

My father’s family had come from a village called Mianiwale, outside Rawalpindi. They had been traders and businessmen, selling wholesale grain and dried fruit across northern India, before the British divided the subcontinent in 1947.

Disappointingly few of my female ancestors are listed. But the thrill of seeing a physical link to my own past, one that I’d be able to pass on to my own children, was overwhelming.

At the end of our meeting, Mr Kumar invited me to make my own entry.

Under the date, I put my name and that of my husband, Tarquin Hall.

Without thinking, I included my email address, and then saw that it looked utterly out of place. Still, the act of adding my name to that scroll somehow made my own life’s journey seem valid, and palpably real.

In the months after Haridwar, when my son was born and later, my daughter, I was able to sift through my accumulated notions of ‘identity’. Now I can give my children a printed family tree, inscribed in neat calligraphy with their ancestors’ names. I can also convey to them what it means to feel at ease just about anywhere in the world: in Britain, in India, or in Jackson, Tennessee.

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Irrelevant Details Avantika Mehta

‘W

hat was it like to grow up with Ahmed Iqbal? ’ That’s the first question the reporter asks me. It was a long time ago and my memory isn’t what it used to be, so I shrug. We sit there for a while, me stirring sugar into my chai, him looking around and very occasionally writing something in his little notebook. They have to record everything, don’t they? Whatever they notice – details may be important. I wonder who gets to decide.

He must be writing something about me, too. But what? Man seems nervous. Sounded taller on the phone. Was confident when he called, in person he’s portly and displays a reluctance to talk.

Unsure of what to do, I signal to a waiter and when he comes over I ask for some sunflower seeds. The reporter doesn’t want anything but his story.

We sit there in silence as I try to think about Ahmed Iqbal – ‘the terrorist’ – as the child I once knew.

‘It’s difficult to imagine them as the same person,’ I start talking and his pen is immediately poised. I stop to gather my thoughts and sense his impatience.

Perhaps he has better things to do . . . but, even so, it was a long time ago. The gap between who we are at birth and who we become is filled by millions of incidences and coincidences. A lot of things have made up who I am. For instance, I am someone who loves chewing sunflower seeds. My father also loved chewing them. It’s just a little thing, and you could even say that I developed a taste for sunflower seeds because they were always readily available in my house. You’d be right, but then, that doesn’t mean 123

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it’s insignificant. A man ignores nothing when it comes to his father, so that’s where I decide to begin the story.

‘My father used to buy sunflower seeds from the local shop down the road from our house.’ His pen begins to spread its joy across his notebook.

‘The whole place can’t have been more than two hundred square feet but it held everything any nice Gujarati house would need, from packaged basundi to gunda berries and, of course, my father’s beloved sunflower seeds.

It was owned by the only Muslim family in our area – Ahmed’s family.’

I can see he is interested now.

‘Every day, battered and bruised from wrestling with customers at the bank where he was a security guard, my father would have his final fight of the day with Ahmed’s father, Iqbalbhai: “Too bloody expensive – you’re robbing us blind,” my father would grumble at the till. “You’re just cheap,” Ahmed’s father would respond. And they would say no more than that.’

The reporter laughs at my impression of both men.

‘They were a bit overpriced,’ I confess to him, ‘because they weren’t a regular habit in our neighbourhood. I’m sure Iqbalbhai knew both these things, and he also knew that he ran the only store within miles that sold sunflower seeds and . . . yes, you guessed it. My father loved his sunflower seeds – they went well with the sly shots of whiskey he would drink at home.

Sometimes he’d let me join him. Our little secret.’

I remember these nights vividly. I knew my mother did not like my father drinking. He worked a night job and a day job and was home no more than six hours, so I kept his secret in exchange for his time.

A quiet comes over me for a minute as my memories catch up.

‘Whenever he did allow me in, we would just sit – me with a glass of Pepsi, him with his, you know – and he would bellow on about the bloody Muslims taking over his lovely motherland. “They haven’t taken over Gujarat yet, Mata be praised. But they want to,” he’d say.’

The scene flashes before my eyes: his quick, surreptitious sips and how his fists would shake at a vividly imagined, wild Muslim army of the future.

‘I remember him saying things like: “They only know two things, my son. Do you know what they are?” I did know, of course, because he was always telling me, and would tell me again: “Money and death, that’s all they know.” He was my father. I loved him and I believed him – of course I did – unquestioningly.’

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My words surprise me. It sounds like I’m apologising.

‘I told my friends what my father said. They laughed but agreed; none of their fathers were Muslim.’

I can sense the reporter’s impatience again, so I get to the point.

‘We didn’t play much with Iqbalbhai’s sons, Ahmed and Khalil. They went to another school. Sometimes, my friends and I, we’d see them coming back in their white kurtas and topis and we’d circle them. They were younger than us and comparatively smaller. Iqbalbhai was a scary man but he had coddled his sons and they weren’t used to fighting. We were. And so we did.’

I don’t know if seven boys beating two other boys until they cry is a fight exactly. I don’t share this stray thought with the reporter. I remember the nights when Iqbalbhai came calling about the state of his sons’ faces. ‘ “Bastards,” my father would say later when we were alone. “Can dish it, can’t take it. They deserve a beating. All of them.” ’ My father said it. I believed him. And Iqbalbhai’s sons continued to sport black-and-blue evidence of this particular butterfly effect. I don’t share this with the reporter either but I feel he can read it clearly, as if it were inked on me.

‘The thing about children is that they don’t know any better,’ I say after a moment of silence. ‘It’s difficult to raise them properly, knowing what to pass on to them . . . which is why I have none.’

He makes a noise that suggests agreement and it makes me feel a bit more comfortable.

I’m suddenly overwhelmed with the need to justify why I allowed my father’s prejudices to fill my heart until it burst with a petty hatred. It’s easy to assume that it was rooted more in a need for my father’s approval than anything else. ‘My dad hardly ever spoke to me, you see, so whenever he did I’d listen carefully, and believed what he’d say.’

He nods in a vaguely reassuring manner.

‘I would have gone on believing him, but then the day came when I turned twelve. Two things happened. Ahmed Iqbal – he was the older of the two midgets – rode into his pubescent years on a sizeable growth spurt; and so did Iqbalbhai’s eldest child, his daughter, Sabiya.’

The reporter smiles. ‘I’ve met Sabiya,’ he says, and for some reason I find that I’m breathless and want to ask him to tell me more. But this is my time to answer questions, not ask them.

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I think that perhaps I’m happy with how I remember Sabiya. To me she is the moon-faced midgets’ sister and the sunflower-seed-seller’s daughter. I remember how I’d repeat that in my head over and over again, faster and faster.

‘She was only a scrawny runt, and then suddenly she wasn’t. You know how girls are.’ I look at him and see that he does.

‘Tell me more about her.’

I don’t have to think long before I blurt out: ‘She was the most beautiful girl in town and the least seen around.’ I think I may be blushing at my ardour but the reporter doesn’t blink an eyelid, so I continue.

‘Her head was always covered in the hijab but I used to imagine she had long, straight black hair. She was sweet, and often she’d help me with my English homework. Iqbalben, her mother, was a home tutor to all of us and around that time I needed a lot of tutoring. We’d sit there, her and me. You know how it is. Her eyes on the textbook, my eyes on her. And Ahmed and Khalil would also be there, their eyes on me.’

I pause for a breath and the reporter uses the time to order himself a chai.

‘Doesn’t your brain hurt, writing all this down?’ I ask him, wanting to move off topic for a while.

He smiles. ‘I’m used to it,’ he says, and indicates that I should go on talking, so I do.

‘One day Khalil wasn’t home and Ahmed had left Sabiya and me alone for some reason. I think he’d gone to get a glass of water. Anyway, I couldn’t bear it anymore. I was only twelve you know. There’s no propriety at that age.’

He laughs and says, ‘At any age.’

I smile but do not join him in his laughter. ‘I wanted to see if her gorgeous mane was only a figment of my fevered imagination. Anyway, I pulled the hijab away, and let her hair free.’

‘What happened then?’ he asks. I can see that he is now enthralled.

‘Well, it must have been a minute before Ahmed jumped me. I remember that she didn’t move, she just sat there and smiled at me. The next thing I remember is a flood of punches thrashing my face, my chest, my hands, my arms. Sabiya screamed, which brought Iqbalben bounding into the room.’

I fail to mention that I might also have screamed. A good offence can never switch to defence – a polite way of saying most bullies cannot fight.

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I was sorry. She didn’t believe it was an accident. I wasn’t allowed back for any English tuition – I ended up failing the subject.’

I remember those days clearly, mostly because they made my father, old and constantly exhausted as he was, angrier. I was never sure, though, if he was angry at the Iqbals or at me. He spared neither of us lashings. For them, these were confined to those of the tongue; I was treated to the belt.

‘Did you speak to Ahmed after the incident?’

I nod. ‘He came by our house after a few evenings had passed. He asked my mother to call me to the door, and then he apologised for beating me.’

‘What did he say?’

‘Something along the lines of being protective of his sister. He said that, as a man, I should understand. I have a younger sister, too, so I suppose I did. I don’t recall his exact words, but his demeanor was quietly sincere.

Had my father not told him to get lost and reminded me that “they are all liars” I think I would have accepted Ahmed’s apology.’

‘And did you come across him after that?’

‘Not too often. By the time I was in my teens I had taken to playing hooky regularly. I went to the local whorehouse with other boys whose parents also thought they were at school. Those were fun times.’

‘What were these other boys like?’ the reporter asks, and I’m surprised at his sudden digression from the subject at hand.

‘Well, none of their fathers were Muslims, either, I’ll tell you that. And for want of better things to do, all of them were restless and angry.’

‘What made you want to spend time with them?’

‘They just always had my back. No questions asked, no reason required.

With them by my side I felt strong.’ A Rottweiler will always make a man feel more secure than a Great Dane.

‘So you didn’t see Ahmed after that incident?’ He comes back to the point.

‘No. Well, a few times, here and there. It’s a small place where I lived and I didn’t go far in my younger years so, of course, I’d sometimes run into Ahmed and Khalil.’

‘And Sabiya?’ He’s quick to prod.

‘I’d heard that Ahmed had told his parents that she’d encouraged me, and that they’d sent her to live with an aunt. It’s funny. I was so young when I loved her but it never stopped hurting when I saw Ahmed. He had her 127

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almond eyes. I never forgave him, and liked to make trouble for him when I did see him. Most nights he saw me coming and would cross over to the other side of the street, or call over his Muslim friends.’

‘Were there a lot of Muslims living in your area?’ the reporter asks.

‘They were starting to come in back then. Not in the area where I lived though. They had their own spaces.

‘This hasn’t changed,’ I add, ‘So he had a few friends from around town, none from this neighborhood.’

‘I’ve heard from a few people that Ahmed was a well-liked young Muslim,’ the reporter says. ‘I was told he’d been approached several times – to fight for their cause. Did you ever hear anything like that? Or see something?’

I had and so I nod and say, ‘No one is ever supposed to witness these approaches but one night my friends and I, we saw Ahmed talking to an older Muslim man.’ I have all the reporter’s interest now, and find that I enjoy the attention. ‘We peered around the corner, just out of sight. Also, they were engrossed in conversation. The older man was bigger than me and even from a distance I knew I wouldn’t want to fight him. He was saying something like, “Think about it, young man. We need pure-hearted people like you.” Ahmed was smiling. “One perishes in his rage, my brother,” he said.’

The reporter starts, ‘That’s exactly what you heard him say?’

Not quite comprehending, I nod. ‘Yes, I remember because it made me think that my father was right: that there is only money and death in their hearts.’

‘Then what happened?’

‘We waited until the older man left.’

Rottweilers by my side, I remember thinking I was invincible. Ahmed was alone. High on a combination of illicit whiskey and a sense of power, I remember how my friends and I crossed the street with a swagger. Ahmed was smiling and walking quietly. He wasn’t looking for trouble, but we’d decided to make some for him. ‘We grabbed him, and pinned him down,’ I say. ‘I remember him struggling but there were five of us and the odds were on our side.’

I notice that the reporter is looking at me funny and I find myself saying: ‘I don’t know what we were thinking, back then it seemed correct.

‘My father’s voice was ringing in my head. Sabiya’s screams in my ears. Or were they Ahmed’s? I remembered the pain from when he had hit me and 128

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I kicked at his ribs harder. “Just like old times, eh?” I remember saying that because it made all my friends laugh. Some of them remembered.’

‘Then?’ the reporter asks.

‘Someone suggested it and it seemed like a good idea at that time so we poured the leftover whiskey down his throat. The more he resisted, the more we laughed, excited by our own cruelty. Finally we left him drunk, bleeding, broken-boned and naked, tied to the gate of the local whorehouse.

‘I think I remember more now than I did the next morning. I acquired more details over the course of the next day. Everyone was talking about it.

Ahmed said he hadn’t seen who jumped him. He had seen us though! He never told anyone, but then, after that previous incident there weren’t so many people who wanted to listen.’

‘How did his family deal with that?’

‘His mother wouldn’t speak to him. She didn’t believe his pleas of innocence. She remained convinced for months that Ahmed frequented the whorehouse. She prayed for his soul daily but ignored his bodily presence.

Iqbalbhai was unable to change his wife’s heart. Even Khalil couldn’t get her to budge and eventually he too was sent away – for his own good, Iqbalben would always say. He hid it well but I suppose he was also distraught. It didn’t help that every wife on the street was playing Windowsill Wimbledon.’

The reporter looks at me and I explain: ‘Who serves the better story?’

He laughs, which makes me comfortable.

‘What kind of things did they say?’

‘To be honest, I followed the whole thing as little as I could. Iqbalben used to say things like, “They all think he spends time with prostitutes and drinking whiskey. Yesterday a lady told me she couldn’t send her daughter here for lessons anymore.” It was true of course; I’d heard some of these things said in my own house. Ahmed’s presence was becoming a liability to his family.’

I think on it now and realize Iqbalben’s pain must have been relentless. First her daughter, and then her sons. She blamed the neighbourhood that wagged its forked tongue at her family, and she blamed Ahmed. ‘I think she blamed her son most of all though. “There is no smoke without fire,” she used to say.’

I can see that he’s surprised at my intimate knowledge of the Iqbals, so I explain. ‘I know this because she was one of those people who are unaware of the difference between “private” and “public”. Many family discussions took place in the back of Iqbalbhai’s shop, where I had begun to buy 129

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sunflower seeds regularly. She never acknowledged me but I could always hear her. Frankly, I thought more was made of the incident than required.

A lot worse has happened to the Muslims in Gujarat since then.

‘Anyway,’ I continue, ‘Ahmed had a beautiful girlfriend back then. Her name was Pooja. She was a Hindu and my best friend was in love with her. After what happened her parents told her they did not mind the fact that she was seeing a Muslim boy. What they did mind was that he was a womanizing drunk. Pooja knew the truth, but she dumped him anyway. No sister, no mother, no lover. Ahmed was left with no one, and so he left town.

Eventually the Iqbals moved to a neighbourhood with more “sympathy” towards them. I felt a bit guilty. It got easier to bear as time went on. It always does when it’s out of sight, you know?’

He does.

‘That’s it, really,’ I tell him. ‘Not much has happened since. Ten years have passed. I went back to school. I have an electronics shop now, though no wife.’

‘What happened to Pooja?’ he asks, forcing my hand a little.

‘Pooja is my best friend’s wife,’ I tell him and then, for reasons I don’t understand, I continue, ‘He’s a chronic alcoholic.’

‘What’s she like?’

‘She has long hair, too,’ I say. ‘Sometimes I run my fingers through it, and pull it until she cries. She tells me she loves it.’ I smile at him – the smile that men exchange when they know they could be judged, but won’t be. ‘My best friend, he cheats on her with their housekeeper.’

I don’t tell him that we all live in the houses we grew up in, surrounded still by our parents’ shadows and prejudices. Or about my father’s picture, and the strings of fresh marigold I drape around the frame every few weeks.

It hangs just above the television, near where I sit sometimes, munching on sunflower seeds.

‘Where were you when you first heard about Ahmed?’

‘We were all there together when we saw Ahmed again. It was on TV, of course. You saw it, yes? The footage of him at the hotel – taking an assembly of Hindu devotees into a conference room. They didn’t show him shooting them, did they? Or the fact that he blew himself up.’

The reporter nods. ‘Yeah. I think it was front-page news all over the world. Nearly twenty people killed.’

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I wonder how that last and nearly twentieth person died, to be counted like that. Out loud I say: ‘None of the news reports – not on TV or the papers – mentioned this town.’

‘The evidence at that time led the investigation somewhere else; to where the Iqbals had moved,’ he explains. ‘They lived there till the end, apparently quietly, not leaving much information about themselves. No one’s heard from Ahmed’s brother in years. Have you had any contact with any of them?’

I shake my head. ‘I’ve only seen Sabiya once – on television. She looked sad. She wasn’t wearing a hijab and her hair was cut short, just touching her shoulders.

‘They had the same eyes, beautiful, almond-shaped; did I tell you that before?’

He nods.

‘She is still beautiful,’ I say, ‘but she isn’t from my world anymore.’

‘The aunt they sent her to lives in Delhi. It seems she raised Sabiya differently than they’d expected,’ he says. ‘I met her, but wasn’t able to speak to her directly. Another reporter who was there asked her: “If you could say something to your brother now, what would it be?” ‘ “I wouldn’t know what to say,” she replied. “My brother hasn’t spoken to me since I was thirteen.”

‘I was quite surprised, at the time.’

Thirteen, I think . . . I can see that he is watching for a reaction.

‘Well,’ I respond, ‘the news being the news, it was a big thing for a while and then something else took its place. Sabiya’s face sometimes haunts my nights. Thirteen? Really?’

‘Yes,’ he says, and then asks, ‘When was the last time you saw Pooja?’

He’s good, I think to myself. ‘My best friend was away on a buying trip last weekend, so I went to their house.’

‘What happened?’

‘I didn’t pull her hair this time,’ I tell him. ‘She was disappointed; I could tell she’d wanted to be hurt – there was a sort of desperate roughness in her lovemaking. I stayed over. I prefer it when we have the night together, not least because rushing out afterwards makes me feel guilty. She talks a lot after sex. Sometimes it’s rubbish.’ I pause for a second.

I regret this because it gives him just enough time to ask: ‘What was she talking about?’

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He really is good, I think.

‘She said that she’d loved him.’ I tell him this reluctantly, knowing full well I should stop. ‘So I said to her, “I know, you still do.” I thought we were having the same conversation we’d had before. But we weren’t. “I’m talking about Ahmed!” she screamed at me.’

‘What happened then?’

‘Well, I was furious! “Don’t even say that,” I said to her. “Haven’t you seen what he’s done?” Of course she had, everyone had. She just went on: “He wanted to marry me, he’d asked me a few nights before that thing happened to him. He was so young but so sure of himself. I loved him for it.” So I said to her, “Thank your stars then, Pooja.” And do you know what she did?’

The reporter shakes his head.

‘She laughed!’

‘This made you angry?’

‘Damn right, it did! And she kept going on and on about it. She actually said to me, “You know he came to see me before he left town? He told me he’d pray for me. I asked him to marry me then, parents be damned! But it was too late. I’d let him go, and he’d fallen out of love. Men are so cruel like that.’’

‘So what did you say then?’

‘What anyone would have said!’ I exclaim. ‘I told her, “It’s a good thing you didn’t marry him, otherwise you’d be in smithereens right now.” But then she looked at me and her brown eyes filled with tears. I hadn’t meant to make her cry. “I know what you did,” she said. “He told me it was you,” she kept repeating these words over and over again till before I knew it I’d slapped her . . .

‘I didn’t mean to slap her,’ I start to explain. ‘It’s just that what she said had been a secret so long buried and she just . . . she just . . . I was just startled that she brought it up . . .’

‘Like a jack-in-the-box Chucky doll hiding in the folds of your bride’s sari,’ the reporter says drily.

I don’t understand the reference or the tone, so I just continue.

‘After that, we had sex once more. This time I did pull her long hair. She screamed in pain, but afterwards told me she loved it. The slap left a bruise on her left cheek and the sex was so rough she was bruised elsewhere, too. She went to the shop down the road to buy Epsom salts – she said she was going to soak for a while in the bath. It was the same shop that Iqbalbhai used to 132

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own. When my best friend came home she told me he didn’t look beyond the first coat of any part of her; such were the housemaid’s charms. She’s had her hair cut, but it’s still long enough to get in a good pull or two. I still love sunflower seeds. And I never saw Sabiya again.’

It’s done. And now that everything is out in the open I feel like a child who’s walked into school without his clothes on. ‘I don’t know why I’m telling you all this,’ I say as I look up from my chai at the reporter who is so intently recording my shame.

‘After all, they were only in this neighbourhood until the children were young teenagers; we’re all well over thirty now.’

‘Ahmed Iqbal would have turned thirty next month,’ the reporter corrects me.

‘Ah, yes, that’s right.’ It isn’t a secret but I say it in a whisper: ‘He was younger than me.’

‘The parts about my father, about Pooja and me, about Sabiya. You won’t print that will you?’ Unsure why or how I had let it happen, I am angry with myself for revealing so much. ‘Keep our names out of the story won’t you?’

The reporter smiles a smile that says he has heard worse. He shakes his head and moves his fingers across his mouth as if he were doing up a zipper.

‘Don’t worry,’ he assures me. ‘It’s off the record and, anyway, not really relevant to the story.’

133

Reza Mohammadi translated by Nick Laird and Hamid Kabir

The Football Politics is a river that divides the villages.

Hey soldiers!

Put down your guns and still your radios.

There is no need for handcuffs, for warnings, for an ambush.

We are not one of you.

We are not one of them.

We just want to get across and get back our ball.

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Jaffna 2012 Romesh Gunesekera

A

t the dawn of the new millennium I started to imagine a story set in a Jaffna of the future. A Jaffna that by 2040 had become the most prosperous and economically efficient part of Sri Lanka: a destination for hedonistic tourists rather than for warplanes and bombs. I constructed a cocktail of Copacabana, Phuket and Singapore and made it a resort where warmongers go to recuperate. But then I drew back. Although I had a personal link – my mother had spent the happiest days of her childhood in Jaffna – I had never been there. I felt I could not imagine the future of the place without having seen anything of its past. My whole book shifted ground, and its location swerved to an entirely fictional island: I wrote Heaven’s Edge and waited for an opportunity to go north one day and start something else.

My chance arrived a year after the war ended, in 2009. I went to Jaffna to find the house my mother had lived in; what I found instead was the rubble of a battlefield and a past being made over. I remembered Orwell’s words: ‘Who controls the past controls the future; who controls the present controls the past.’

I returned to Jaffna a year later, for a literary event: an afternoon of readings. It had been a very long time since works of fiction had been the focus there. In the short gap since my previous visit – and despite daily power cuts and the omnipresent military – boutique guesthouses and new commercial banks had opened, and fibre-optic broadband was on its way. It seemed as if the Jaffna I had begun to imagine might soon appear in reality.

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The venue for the event was the iconic Jaffna public library. It had been completed in the year I was born – 1954 – and served as a haven for scholars, students and readers until 1981, when it was set alight in an act of criminal barbarity that left only the shell of the structure remaining. In the grim years that followed, the ruin served as a stark reminder of how deep a gulf had opened in the country. Twenty years later the government restored the library to its impressive former glory, but Jaffna today is no longer a place where memory is easily preserved; the last thirty years are being rapidly erased. Someone has read Orwell very closely.

The event was sponsored by the British Council and featured three writers: Roshi Fernando from the United Kingdom, Ayathurai Santhan from Jaffna, and me. We visitors flew in on a commercial flight operated by the air force, which like the army and the navy, is keen to venture into tourism. From the air, Jaffna looked green and fertile.

Santhan, who had done most of the organising, was anxious, and wondered if anyone would turn up. A banner was unrolled, the mikes tested.

We waited for the last of the chairs to be arranged. I browsed through the shelves, and came across an old gazette with my grandfather’s name in it.

Later, perhaps, our books would be joined together on the shelf and we would finally meet, page to page.

Then, through a window, I saw a column of young women approaching.

All wore mauve saris, and they turned out to be students from a local teacher-training college. A group of young men, also students, drifted in from the other side. Our audience had arrived.

The hall filled with over a hundred people, all demure. I decided to read ‘Batik’, a story that was exactly twenty years old. It was from my first book, Monkfish Moon, and I had wanted to do this ever since I’d written it. The story is about a couple in London – a Sinhalese woman and a Tamil man – whose relationship and identities fracture when Sri Lanka explodes in the 1980s. I wondered whether it might seem too much in a place where everything is aimed at forgetting the past. But I felt more strongly that the audience would want a story that connects the imagined to the real. They listened. They applauded. But it was hard to tell what they really thought.

Santhan’s story, like mine, dealt with the war: writers cannot avoid the past. Roshi read a story that was also about fluctuating identities.

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The question-and-answer session was serious but we received questions similar to those I’d be asked in Galle, or Edinburgh, or Jaipur: How do you write? How do you treat political realities? Why English? Who do you write for? Are you Sri Lankan or British?

After the formal session, the students wanted photographs. And autographs. Suddenly, when the stage was no longer a barrier, everyone wanted to ask questions about themselves: Are we what we write? How can we write better?

The excitement was terrific. One man cried out: ‘This day has changed everything. Now, I want to be a writer.’ The others cheered. ‘That’s who I am,’ he said, ‘a writer in the making.’

It was good to hear. Good that in Jaffna today, in the library, people are saying they want to be writers. And that they feel writing matters.

137

Blossom 13 by Fang Hui

138

Akerke Mussabekova

Apple, Flower and Doe In the morning, at noon or in the evening, even at night your eyes can catch her, map her out from her head to her toes.

You strain your mind, imagine she is an apple fresh and ripe, smooth peel ready for your fingers – and how you will taste the apple!

Here, moving ahead, say: She is a flower.

Its smell intoxicates you makes your head spin.

You poke your nose in its petals to soak it up.

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Poetry

Take a deep breath, look: she is a wild doe and for a moment you think you are an eagle digging your sharp claws into her shoulders greedily contented with your prey.

How you enrich your dreams of her captive in your glances and desire, how you crush your humanity.

While you have the apple, the flower and the doe you have nothing to say or feel.

She is a woman free, neither yours nor his, weak but growing strong and strong enough to face the storm.

140

Dance of the Maiden Tsao Li-chuan translated by Yvette Zhu When I was sixteen I danced before an audience without music. At the end someone suddenly cried from the audience: ‘It is Death and the Maiden’ and the dance was always afterwards called ‘Death and the Maiden’.

Isadora Duncan

I

’ve always wanted to give Chung Yuan a rose. A pale lavender rose, half open and wet with dew.

If you’ve ever tried to dye fabric, you’ll know pale lavender is a difficult colour to work with: it either comes out too red or too blue, too bright or too dark. It’s hard to control the mixture of the dye and the dyeing process.

If by luck the colour comes out right once, there’s no saying it will come out right the next time. And even if you’ve got the colour right, you’d never be able to find a fabric with the texture of rose petals.

The first time I saw a rose of that lavender colour, I wanted to buy one for Chung Yuan. I have bought them, and have paid anything from thirteen to sixteen dollars per stem, but I’ve never given one to her. Because – yes, that’s right – because Chung Yuan has never cared for flowers.

We were sixteen and living in the hottest city in southern Taiwan. That September, the sky was shockingly hollow, as if it could swallow everything below in one swoop. The tarred road was like a black river sweating and steaming in the heat. It was during this scalding month that Chung Yuan and I found out we’d been accepted into the best secondary school in the city.

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Dance of the Maiden

We met on the bus. I was sitting in the front; the morning sun spilled through the trees to make a dappled pattern on the pavement. The bus was just about to pull away when a girl ran towards us and waved at the driver.

I leaned over to look at her – not because she wore the same school uniform and not because she hadn’t tucked her white shirt into her black skirt like all the other students – but because of how she ran: her white socks and shoes like little hooves galloping across a wild valley.

From then on we rode the bus to school together every morning, and it was lucky that we were in the same class. It’s hardly surprising that we became best friends. There is no reason to question why two sixteen-yearold girls should develop such intimacy so quickly.

Each morning Chung Yuan would give me a flower. Sometimes it was jasmine, sometimes it was gardenia, later on an osmanthus flower. When the bell rang at the end of every class, Chung Yuan would grab my arm and drag me out to explore the school grounds until the bell rang again. We’d then rush back across the playground.

I always made it to my seat first, and would turn to watch Chung Yuan return to the classroom in her distinctive way: she used the window, never the front or back door. With one hand on the sill, she would swing both legs up, over and gently in.

I later learned that she had always done it this way, from the time she’d been in nursery school. She was a tomboy, and the dull lessons and repetitive nature of school bored her silly. She was always finding ways to amuse herself. Before middle school, she had played with boys. And at middle school – she’d attended a private, all-girls school – she took up sports with enormous energy.

Chung Yuan said that when she first saw my bright eyes she’d thought I must have come from another world. We didn’t know which of us fell in love first but it wasn’t important: we didn’t need to prove anything to each other. It was like the creation of the world in Chinese mythology – there was no rational explanation. But knowing her jolted my sixteen-year-old heart out of innocence, and I became curious about sex.

One day I was waiting by the pool for Chung Yuan, who was training with the swimming team. It was dusk, and the water was dark. I looked for her. Suddenly, one by one, the lights came on in the pool and I saw her swimming towards me – two glistening arms creating such a splash as 142

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they stroked madly through the water. When she reached the poolside she jumped out, soft and smooth, like a dolphin. Water trickled down her face, her neck . . . all the way down, forming a puddle around her feet. She was much taller than I was and I lifted my head to look at the black hair pasted to her head and framing her bright, fresh face. I was motionless, enraptured by the droplets of water dripping from her chin, and by her mouth, nose, eyes, lashes — even the blood vessels on her neck. Chung Yuan stood like a translucent sculpture in front of me: a shimmering light glowed within her body. It was something the sixteen-year-old me had never seen before. My hand reached out and with it, my soul. I touched her.

When the tips of my fingers felt her cool and supple skin, I jolted awake, surprised. All at once I was curious, excited and nervous. I looked down.

Chung Yuan stepped forward and lifted up my face. I could feel her breath and, helplessly, I closed my eyes. Her lips touched the spot between my eyebrows, lightly . . . After that, every time we’d meet or say goodbye to each other, no matter where we were, she’d place a kiss on that same spot. Part of me wanted this to last forever, but I was also aware of the strange looks people gave us.

Can one girl like another girl this much? I asked myself.

One day, after watching Romeo and Juliet – starring Olivia Hussey as Juliet – Chung Yuan looked at me for a long time, and then said, ‘Do you know you look like her?’

‘No way. I don’t want to die!’

‘Hey, it was Juliet who died, not her.’

‘It doesn’t matter who it was – I just don’t think I look like her.’ I stared at this girl, whose hand I was holding, and felt somehow wronged and uneasy.

I felt like an idiot, and thought I must have been an idiot from the start.

I wasn’t tall, my hair was short, my skirt too long, I couldn’t swim or play volleyball or any other sport she liked. We were from different worlds. I let go of her hand. ‘I don’t want to be together anymore,’ I said. ‘It’s awkward.

I’m not like you.’

Chung Yuan looked away, but stood there, trembling, for a long time.

Finally she said‚ ‘Suit yourself.’

From then until the next summer I’d leave home early and return late to avoid seeing her on the bus. I didn’t speak to her again at school. @ 143

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The following term, before the final exams, I was studying in the library when all of a sudden my head starting buzzing. I couldn’t sit still, so I gathered up my things and left. I wandered to the schoolyard and sat down cross-legged under the old banyan tree where Chung Yuan and I used to meet. I opened a book, and tears splattered onto the pages. I realized I could no longer deny my longing for her.

The next moment, I saw her.

She was as surprised as I was. ‘Ah! Hi!’ she said, then stopped, propped her foot on the tree trunk and bent down to retie her shoelaces. I wiped away my tears. Her face was half hidden. There were tiny beads of sweat on her nose. She was tying her laces very carefully. Finally she stood up, dusted the dirt from her hands and brushed her hair back over her shoulders.

The light was behind her, and though it was difficult to see her face, she seemed to be grinning from ear to ear . . . I felt the weight of her dense, cool shadow. I grabbed my books and began to walk away. I could barely breathe.

‘I’m going swimming,’ she called after me. ‘Want to go?’

I turned around. ‘You know I can’t swim.’

‘C’mon, I’ll teach you.’

‘Now? I don’t have a swimsuit.’

She paused. ‘You can borrow mine.’

‘No,’ I shook my head vehemently. ‘I’m too short –’ Chung Yuan didn’t wait for me to finish. She walked over, grasped my hand and hurried us out through the side gate.

She let go of my hand when we reached the bus stop. The road smoked under our feet. My back was soaked with sweat. She bit her nails while we waited, and didn’t look at me.

We got off the bus at Bade Shin Tsuen. Chung Yuan’s father was in the air force and their house was the biggest in the village. It had a wide courtyard bordered by beds of camellia, rhododendron, jasmine, chrysanthemum and others plants whose names I didn’t know. A giant golden trumpet tree spilled over the wall. An orange bicycle leaned against an osmanthus. The flowers she used to give me each morning must have come from here.

And sure enough, she picked a jasmine for me and said: ‘I don’t like flowers.’

There was no one in the house, but a light was on. It seemed unnecessary on such a bright day.

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‘She always forgets to turn the light off when she goes out.’ Chung Yuan switched it off, and turned to explain before going into her room: ‘I mean my mum.’

I saw a large, wooden-framed family portrait in the living room. Her father was standing very straight and her mother was snuggled up to him.

She only reached his chin, but her youthfulness and smile seemed charming, and rare for a middle-aged woman. I could see that Chung Yuan had inherited her mother’s almond-shaped eyes, up-turned mouth and pointed chin, and her father’s straight nose and height.

I could hear the sound of drawers opening and closing. ‘Come in here, Tung Su-shin,’ she called out. She was sitting on the bed, facing a wardrobe with its contents spilling out. In her hand was a red swimsuit. ‘Here, try this one. It’s from the summer I was in year nine. I only wore it a couple of times.

I’m sure it’ll fit you.’

The suit did fit, but I couldn’t swim because I had my period. We left Bade Shin Tsuen on the orange bicycle. She pedalled and I perched behind her, my arms around her waist.

‘That’s one reason I hate being a girl,’ Chung Yuan said. She suggested that we go fishing instead, or ice-skating, or to the cinema, but I turned them all down.

‘Don’t you think just riding around like this is boring?’ I asked. Maybe it was because of the heat, or the pressure of the exams, or PMT. I was feeling miserable.

Chung Yuan glared at me.

The breeze blew into her white shirt, filling it up like a balloon. I could see the faint outline of her bra: three ivory-coloured straps, one horizontal across her back and two reaching over her shoulders. She didn’t wear a camisole, as I did. Something I hadn’t thought of before hit me: we were both girls. And although we might menstruate at different times, or wear different clothes, we were both one hundred per cent female.

When we reached my street, I jumped off.

‘I may not pass this year,’ she yelled to me as she cycled off. ‘If I don’t, I’ll move to another school.’

As I watched her speed away, I felt a sharp pain in my chest.

Sure enough, she failed. A few days before the next term started, I received a note from her: ‘I’ve transferred. Bye.’ 145

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There was no ‘to’ or ‘dear’, no signature, but some pressed osmanthus flowers were folded into the note.

I didn’t see her again until two years later, the day after my exams.

I was lying on the tatami, the electric fan was on and I was watching Death in Venice. With the heat of the afternoon sun and Aschenbach’s fretting, I drifted into sleep. Dreaming, I heard a familiar voice calling my name: ‘Tung Su-shin . . . Tung Su-shin . . .’ I turned over, still half asleep.

‘Sis, someone is here to see you.’ My little sister was poking me.

I was groggy when I pushed open the screen door. I saw a fire burning in front of me.

Chung Yuan!

She was on her bicycle with one foot on the pedal and one foot on the low wall in front of our house. She wore a scarlet, sleeveless T-shirt and red shorts that barely hid her rounder, more mature body. Her tanned arms and legs glistened in the sunlight. Her hair was cut very short and layered thin.

She was brushing it aside as if out of habit.

When I realized she was also looking me up and down, I impulsively ran a hand through my messy hair, which needed cutting. Then I realized I was wearing pink pyjamas with cartoon figures and lotus-shaped frills. I smiled self-consciously. She grinned.

‘How about a swim?’

The beach was crowded with people escaping the city. They flooded to the edge of the island seeking the relief and shelter of the cool ocean.

We sat under an umbrella that shaded us but barely protected us from the heat.

‘You’ve hardly grown. This suit still fits,’ Chung Yuan said, looking at the red swimsuit she’d given me two years ago. ‘And look at your hair!’ She touched the back of my head. ‘All sticking up. Let’s go get you a haircut tonight. We can have it thinned out to stop it going frizzy.’

‘My face is too round for a short cut. Besides, my hair is thin enough.’

She held my face in her hands, turning it this way and that, examining me closely. ‘Yes,’ she nodded. ‘Let it grow. You’ll look good with long hair.’

From her backpack she took out a bottle of olive oil and poured some into her hands. She moved so that she was behind me, and began rubbing it on my back.

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I remember how my body tensed up; she must have felt me tremble.

I couldn’t help but squirm – this was the first time someone other than my mother or sister had touched my naked skin. And this someone was Chung Yuan.

‘You are so ticklish!’

She held my shoulders and began to give me a soft massage. I was transported to a different world, away from the noise, the sun and the gritty sand. Chung Yuan’s hand slithered across my back, left, right, up, down, kneading, pinching, gliding. My body slid deeper and deeper; my heart beat urgently . . .

Chung Yuan handed me the bottle. ‘Put some on your hands and face.

Otherwise you’ll burn and peel. Very painful.’

‘How about you?’

‘I put some on before coming out. Anyway, I’m already tanned. Look how dark I am!’

I gave the bottle back to her.

‘Did you miss me?’

‘What?’

‘Oh . . . never mind.’

Actually, I had understood, but didn’t know how to answer.

‘And you?’ I asked.

She smirked. ‘Same as you.’

At dusk, when the people began to leave, Chung Yuan and I plunged into the ocean. Since I’d last seen her, I had learned to swim at school, but was only used to a pool. I could barely manage more than ten feet in the rough, open water. But Chung Yuan was like a fish. She dived in and out around me, pushing me under one moment and tugging at my feet the next. I was completely exhausted when I came out but she stayed in for a little longer.

On the beach I lay listening to the sound of waves and tasting the salt as it dried on my lips. With Chung Yuan close by, and with the vast open sea before me, my anxieties felt far away. I was carefree and happy.

Chung Yuan finally joined me. I lay motionless as she put her hand on my chest, stroked my eyelids, touched my nose.

I kept still.

‘Hey!’ she cried. ‘Tung Su-shin!’ she called again.

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I remained silent.

‘Are you dead, Tung Su-shin?’ she screamed, pinching my waist. ‘Tung . . . Su . . . Shin!’

I shrieked and jumped up. She clapped and laughed.

We kept getting off the bike to play hide-and-seek on the way home, and couldn’t stop tickling one another. Chung Yuan began humming as we neared my house. ‘Tung . . . Su . . . Shin . . . ’ ‘What?’

‘Nothing. You’re home.’

I hopped off, but before my feet had touched the ground she had turned the bike around and was gone. I stared blankly into the darkness.

Then, from the distance came an earth-shatteringly loud cry: ‘Tung Sushin!’ she was yelling at the top of her lungs. ‘Tung Su-shin! I! Love! You!’ I was stunned. I opened my mouth and wanted to scream back but nothing came out.

I next saw her on the third day of the New Year. We arranged to meet by the river. She had started smoking Yushan cigarettes – the ones in a green packet. Her upturned mouth, as if smiling, puffed on her cigarette from time to time. She exhaled white smoke through her mouth and nostrils. She said smoking warmed her body.

For me, it was cold. She told me she was pregnant.

The man – she called him Shr Ge – was now in jail. He was seven years older than she was, and came from the same village. She had grown up with his younger brother, Shr Wei, but he had gone to military school to try to make it as a pilot. Shr Ge had been a merchant seaman for a few years and had only recently returned. Chung Yuan was with him for only two short months, but during that time he introduced her to rallies, massage parlours, gangs, weed . . . and, of course, sex.

She told me all this calmly, as if she were telling someone else’s story.

‘Did it hurt?’ I couldn’t believe it was the first thing I asked.

‘You mean the first time?’ She thought about it seriously. ‘Not too much.

It was OK. Strange. I didn’t bleed.’

‘I read in the newspaper . . . cycling . . . ’ ‘Yeah, maybe.’

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‘Why . . . why didn’t you take precautions?’ I stared at the ash on the tip of her cigarette.

‘Well, we only did it twice, kind of spontaneous.’

‘Couldn’t you refuse?’

She looked at me and thought for a bit, then shrugged her shoulders.

‘I didn’t want to refuse. I guess I was curious. I didn’t know the difference between men and women. Making love is pretty simple. I just think . . . there must be something else.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Such as . . . ’ She threw the cigarette butt away then sat next to me. ‘Well, I was thinking . . . ’ She took my hand in hers and played with my fingers one at a time. ‘Can two women make love? If you were a man, I would definitely have sex with you.’ She let go of my hand and ran to her bike.

‘Hey!’ she said, as if an idea had struck her all of a sudden. She came back with her rucksack. ‘Let’s fire some rockets!’

She had come prepared, with two Coke bottles already weighted down with stones, and a packet of rockets. We positioned the bottles by the riverbank and stuck the rockets inside. Just before she lit the first taper, she looked at me and asked, ‘What should we celebrate with this first one?’

‘How about the New Year?’

‘OK, let’s celebrate the New Year. We are a year older.’ She pressed the lighter. The flame lit up her large, bright eyes. Her smile was so sweet. ‘And this one will celebrate our meeting.’

Two rockets shot up, forming two arches of light before fading away.

The day after, we went to the hospital for her appointment. The doctor was a friend of Shr Ge, so Chung Yuan didn’t have to worry about insurance or fees. Sitting outside the theatre, I imagined her lying on the operating table: she was asleep, and peaceful, perhaps even dreaming under the anaesthetic. Her legs were spread out, and those feet that once kicked so madly in the water and galloped so wildly along were bound in metal stirrups. I cried.

That night I stayed at her house. In the middle of the night, I woke and found her sitting in bed next to me.

‘Does it still hurt?’ I asked.

She shook her head. ‘It’s just like having your period. It was like a dream. I only remember lying down, being given a shot, and then I was 149

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awake . . . I didn’t feel anything, didn’t see anything.’ She paused. ‘Tung, do you know how big a two-month-old foetus is?’

I didn’t answer.

‘This big.’ She used her thumb and forefinger to show me. ‘The doctor said five centimetres.’ She smiled fleetingly. ‘This tiny. Isn’t it strange to think we all grew from that?’

I moved closer to her and clasped her hands in mine. A bottomless hole opened in my heart. It hurt. It hurt.

That summer, she finally passed the college exam.

At university, far from home in northern Taiwan, we continued to live out the rest of our youth, moving closer towards adulthood.

After leaving southern Taiwan, the events of secondary school seemed to lose their familiar shapes. Nothing seemed right, and our relationship changed in the new environent.

I grew my hair long like Olivia Hussey and out of curiosity and other reasons, I began seeing Yao Chi-ping, who was in the year above me.

Chung Yuan had never been truly interested in going to university, although once she was there she kept up her swimming. Apart from that, she spent most of her time clubbing, watching films and experimental theatre, and having relationships with both men and women. She always seemed to be with someone different, but it rarely lasted more than half a term. She began to get a reputation.

We saw more of each other but were hardly ever alone. Whenever she had a new lover, she’d introduce us immediately. I became friends with all of them, and Yao Chi-ping also enjoyed her company.

At the time, it was difficult to find imported cosmetics but if she got hold of any she’d give them to me – Mary Quant lipsticks or Coty face creams. I would give her pirated books by mainland authors such as Shen Congwen, Lu Xun or Lao She. Exchanging these forbidden items became symbolic of our unspoken connection.

I knew how Chung Yuan felt about Yao Chi-ping; my relationship with her lovers was usually no different. But the first time I met Shiau Mi, I was shocked. She had the same hairstyle as me: long, with a straight middle parting. And though she was shorter, her forehead was higher and her eyes rounder. She was warm, gentle and openly passionate but only with Chung 150

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Yuan. No matter what Chung Yuan was doing – talking, walking, sitting or sleeping – Shiau Mi never left her side. She’d snuggle next to Chung Yuan and simply ignore everyone else. The relationship lasted an entire term but they still broke up in the end. I couldn’t deny that I wasn’t secretly happy about it but, oh, Chung Yuan, why was I delighted?

Shiau Mi came to see me alone. She was distraught. At one point, she held out a tiny bottle of cyanide that she’d hidden in her handbag (she was studying chemistry). I looked at the white powder, then at her face, contorted by despair.

‘Don’t you know what Chung Yuan is like?’ I cried out. ‘If you want to be with her, you have to behave like her. Let’s say you lived with her for the rest of your life, then what? Have you thought it through? Do you want to be a lesbian for the rest of your life? What a terrible, painful, exhausting life.

Don’t be an idiot! Do you think she cares for you more than she’d care for a man?’

I stamped furiously. Who was I saying this to? Where was all this coming from? Why did I feel so wronged? My spine tingled. I held the vial of cyanide tightly in my fist.

Shiau Mi gaped at me. She wiped away her tears and said: ‘My God, Tung Su-shin, you’re more miserable than I am! ’ I never told Chung Yuan about this. Perhaps Shiau Mi never said anything either. And still, Chung Yuan kept bringing each new lover to meet me.

Chung Yuan’s father died during the winter holidays. All of her lovers attended the funeral: enough men and women to make up a band for the procession. Chung Yuan knelt at one side of the altar, greeting the mourners.

Her mother sat with the female relatives. I was amazed at how stunning her mother looked in her grief, with her white mourning clothes and a white flower stuck in her chignon.

I went with Chi-ping, but he and I had hiked home on the cross-island highway and were tired from the journey. Chi-ping was also in a hurry to go home and pack for military service. We left after burning incense. At the door, over the heads of the mourners, I glanced back at Chung Yuan; she was still kneeling by the altar among the yellow and white chrysanthemums.

She looked at me from across the room. When our eyes met I remembered going with her to the hospital for her abortion. Then I turned away.

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Ever since I was sixteen I had secretly wished we could be together for the rest of our lives. I wanted to watch her run and watch her swim; I wanted to be there when she was happy and when she was sad. But could our love be constant as the sun, the moon and the universe? Could we dress, eat and sleep together? Grow old together? We were both women, both from the same world – perhaps this was what I could not come to terms with. The older I got the weaker my hope became and now I couldn’t bear to think about such a thing. My innocent dream!

But one evening, just before spring break, Chung Yuan asked, ‘Will you come home with me?’

Helplessly, I agreed, and we took an overnight bus.

When we arrived at her house in the morning, the osmanthus tree welcomed us into the courtyard. A few of the rhododendrons were in flower and the border shrubs had grown taller. By the front door there was a pair of patent leather high heels, one lying on its side and glistening in the morning sun. There was also a pair of men’s shoes. Chung Yuan saw them and her mouth tightened.

She pushed open the screen door and a middle-aged man emerged from the bathroom. He was holding a newspaper.

‘So you’re back! ’ He looked surprised.

‘Oh! Good morning, Mr Luo. I was p-passing, with . . . with a friend.

Stopping by. L-leaving now,’ Chung Yuan stuttered.

Her mother came out of the kitchen carrying a dish. She gasped and put it on the table, wiping her hands on her apron.

‘Mum,’ Chung Yuan said in a low voice. ‘I . . . we were passing by. But we’re leaving now.’

‘Yuan-yuan, you . . .’ her mother said. ‘Have you had breakfast yet?’

‘We ate already.’ Chung Yuan brushed passed her and went into her room. She picked up a couple of books and we left.

Soon after, Chung Yuan’s mother married Mr Luo, who had been a classmate of Chung Yuan’s father. Just before the wedding Chung Yuan came to see me.

‘It’s too soon,’ she said. ‘But I understand. She needs someone to look after her. It’s not that bad.’

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that I realized something was wrong. She hadn’t cried at her father’s funeral.

And now her mother was getting married again so soon after her father‘s death; yet still she didn’t react. Perhaps she was putting on a brave face, but this was certainly not the Chung Yuan I knew – she would have been saying to me: ‘Do you know what death means?’ or ‘I wonder if my mum will take my dad’s photographs with her to the new house?’

I wondered how much I really knew about her. What she might be thinking.

I ran over to her room the minute I’d handed in my last essay but it was too late. There was no note. She hadn’t even bothered to tell the university she was going.

Now, all this time later, I still can’t bear to look back on that year when I heard nothing from her. I nearly broke down. Every time I read about a suicide or an unclaimed woman’s body I’d think the worst. I’d sit in a daze, crying and murmuring to myself. I was so exhausted by worry that I was unable even to search for her.

Surprisingly, it was Chi-ping who helped me through.

He put aside his dissertation to look everywhere for Chung Yuan.

‘I understand your relationship,’ he said.

I didn’t know how much he really understood, and this made me feel guilty – even more than I had felt before. Nevertheless, I was moved.

It was after I’d lost the fifth job in a row and my weight dropped below forty kilos that Chi-ping finally said: ‘Who are you doing this for? Your parents? Chung Yuan? Me? Do you think it’s fun looking for her? You’re not the only person in the world with feelings.’

After that outburst he took me to a French restaurant for my twenty-fifth birthday. It cost him a month’s salary. Sitting in the elegant dining room, listening to the pianist playing Debussy, looking at the reproduction Monets and watching the other diners – their discreet smiles and easy ways together – I realized it had been a long time since I had lived for myself. I realized there was more than one way to love a person, just as there was more than one way to eat a meal.

When I got home that night, I found a bouquet of flowers tied to the door handle.

My neighbour said a girl had left it there. She said the girl was like a model, straight from the pages of Vogue. I didn’t hear what she said next.

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My hands shook as I reached for the bouquet of twenty-five pale-lavender roses. A card nestled inside: ‘Happy Birthday’ it read. There was no ‘to’, no ‘dear’, no signature.

Chung Yuan!

I took the flowers into my room, and cried.

It turned out that Chung Yuan had been with someone that whole year.

They’d met in a bar the night before her mother’s wedding, later on the night she’d come to see me when I was revising. Her new lover’s name was Jing Shie, and she owned a shop selling European fashions. For that year Chung Yuan had mostly stayed home watching films and playing video games, or hanging out in bars, clubs and ice rinks. She occasionally helped Jing Shie in the shop and had begun to wear some of the clothes herself. No wonder my neighbour thought she was a model.

Apart from the clothes, Chung Yuan hadn’t changed much. What surprised me was Jing Shie, whom I first saw through her shop window. There were no customers and she was lying on a sofa with a cup of coffee. With that posture, the contours of her body, her skin, her face and make-up, and in that dress, she looked invincible. I was speechless, but Chung Yuan dragged me in.

Jing Shie didn’t wait for Chung Yuan to introduce me. ‘Tung Su-shin?’ she asked with a knowing smile.

Chung Yuan said, ‘Jing Shie, don’t scare her.’

Jing Shie shot Chung Yuan a look. Without waiting for me to answer, Jing Shie put her hand on my arm and walked me to the clothing rail, ‘Choose whatever you’d like. It’s a gift.’

Her fingers were ice cold.

Chung Yuan took to picking me up after my classes in Jing Shie’s white Austin Healy. We’d go for dinner. ‘Yao Chi-ping asked me to look after you,’ she’d say. ‘Look, you’re as skinny as a rake.’ She’d bring me flowers every time. Sometimes it would be a bunch of fragrant magnolias and other times just one lily or a stem of tuberose. Usually, though, it would be roses – in every colour. The flowers were no longer from her mother’s house; these were all from a shop.

We didn’t talk much about the past, and there was no future to plan.

Chi-ping and I had become engaged before he left for military service.

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One weekend after seeing a film we went to a busy night market in Gongguan. She took my hand so that she wouldn’t lose me. We saw a stall selling a pair of white cotton T-shirts for 500 dollars. Chung Yuan, looked at me and said: ‘Let’s get them.’

I nodded, smiling.

We then bought some jeans and changed into our matching outfits.

‘Wow, we look like lovers!’ Chung Yuan cried out.

That night, when we skipped into the shop with our ice creams Jing Shie’s face changed. She had always welcomed us with a smile and a hug; sometimes she would ruffle Chung Yuan’s hair and say, ‘You should go and get a haircut tomorrow at A-Shie’s.’ Or she’d smooth Chung Yuan’s collar and say, ‘Don’t you know how to iron?’ She’d ask me where Chung Yuan had taken me for dinner: ‘Somewhere good? We need to fatten you up, otherwise Chi-ping will come back and blame us for letting you waste away.’

But that evening, when we ran to fling our arms around her she pointed to our ice creams and screeched, ‘My clothes!’

Chung Yuan shrugged her shoulders and slumped on the sofa. I slipped away to wash my hands, then came back to help tidy up the shop. I was hoovering when Jing Shie interrupted me. ‘Tung Su-shin, do you love Chi-ping?’

She’d caught me by surprise. I pretended to pick something up from the carpet, but nodded at the same time.

‘Are you older or younger than Chung Yuan?’ she continued.

‘Younger. By three months.’

‘I see.’ My hair was so long it almost touched the floor and Jing Shie brushed it back. She continued, ‘Sometimes I feel so old.’

‘Why?’ I looked up at her. ‘You’re not that much older than we are. And you look so young.’

‘Nonsense. And, anyway, I think you and Chung Yuan are a goodlooking couple.’

I was dumbstruck.

‘Never mind, I don’t want to scare you.’ Then Jing Shie said slowly, ‘I don’t want to scare myself.’

On our way home, Jing Shie would usually tell us about her day – the funny stories about customers, new styles that were becoming popular, what she’d sold, and what she planned to buy for next season – but that night 155

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in the car she was very quiet. We were all quiet, except for one moment, when a car in front of us turned right without indicating.

Jing Shie swore: ‘Fuck!’

And when I got out, they said in unison: ‘See you.’

Two nights later, Jing Shie called to tell me Chung Yuan had left.

‘I’d been thinking of buying her a few new things. Really hoped to see her off to the US. What was the hurry? And can you believe it! She left me money! She said that’s what she owed me. The heartless bitch.’

‘Jing Shie –’ ‘We were together for almost two years. I never knew what she was thinking.’

‘Jing Shie –’ ‘I never expected that we’d be together for the rest of our lives. Everyone knows commitment is a joke. Do you know, she leaves whenever she wants to. When ever she wants to.’

‘Jing Shie –’ ‘Please tell her’ – she was crying now – ‘tell her that for a woman in her thirties, there isn’t much time left to truly love another person . . . ’ I couldn’t say to her what I’d said to Shiau Mi years before.

When Chung Yuan left for the US, we were twenty-eight.

It was a late summer night and there was a hint of autumn in the air.

I was on my bike, slowly making my way to Bade Shin Tsuen to deliver the wedding invitation. Mr Luo’s house was just a block away from where Chung Yuan had lived before. There were flowers in his courtyard, too.

I could see, on the road in front of me, two sixteen-year-old girls in white shirts and black skirts, running and laughing, their laughter echoing in my ears. Love and youth, heat and light, burned like stars in the night sky.

Near Bade Shin Tsuen, a taxi came out of an alley and stopped by a streetlamp. The door opened. I saw a leg appear. Then another leg, and a woman slipped gracefully out of the cab. She seemed very much alone, and stood on the pavement for a moment as the taxi drove off. She rested one hand on the lamp post, lifted her foot and bent over to tighten the buckle of her shoe. It was a black sandal with narrow straps that snaked around her ankle. She wore a short, reddish pink skirt and a black sleeveless shirt dotted with silver spots. At that moment I knew it was her.

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‘Chung Yuan!’

We went into the courtyard. Chung Yuan picked a flower and stuck it above my ear. She looked at me.

‘What?’ I asked.

‘A flower,’ she said.

We went inside. Chung Yuan’s mother and Mr Luo were asleep. There was a mattress and two small bamboo stools in what was now Chung Yuan’s room. The wardrobe was open. There were a few clothes hanging inside and two suitcases open on the floor.

I gave her the invitation.

‘When?’ she asked. Her fingertips traced the golden ‘double happiness’ embossed on the card. She caressed it lightly. ‘I can’t make it. The plane tickets have been booked.’

I took the invitation and put it on the suitcase, then held her hand tightly.

‘Chung Yuan . . . ’ ‘What?’

‘I need to tell you something.’

‘I know.’

‘I’ve never said.’

‘I know, I really do know.’

‘Then can you tell me . . . ’ ‘What?’

‘Can two women really be lovers?’

Chung Yuan lowered her head but did not answer. Her shoulders trembled and she clenched her fists, which began to shake. When she lifted her head, she stared at me through tear-clouded eyes. She shook her head.

‘No. They. Can’t.’

I held her face in my hands, and kissed the spot between her eyebrows.

Tears rolled from my eyes and onto her cheeks. Chung Yuan wrapped her arms around me and buried her face in my shoulder. She sobbed like a child.

1990. A summer afternoon. I stepped out of the hospital and looked at my reflection in the dark glass door. My tummy was still flat and I couldn’t feel anything. The doctor said it had been two months. Do you know how big a two-month-old foetus is? Chung Yuan smiled at me from the window. This big. She used her thumb and forefinger to show me – five centimetres.

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When I got home I phoned Chi-ping. Then I wrote to Chung Yuan: Days are upside down.

And the nights?

The weather report says New York twenty-six degrees, overcast, rain.

In the Taipei afternoon, I walk: Burning sun, smoky road.

Dear lavender rose only you know my true temperature.

What can I accomplish in ten months my lavender rose?

In my womb there lies a life.

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Minoli Salgado

Watermark There has been a change in the mode of assessment a collapse of colour and living tissue of skin, hair, the quality of blood to registers of gesture look for the gathering of rice with the fingertips the audible sniff of a stillborn kiss the fold of limbs on the temple floor silpa sastras the ancient code of artists and those who have no obvious grace or form who trace contours like an unforgiving lover condemned to live in the light behind words

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Poetry

Butterfly, Almost for Roshan A pair of wings prised apart a grin sealed into thinness by glass and board ‘Look children, a Royal Assyrian butterfly.

It is from Malaysia.

See how blue it is.’

The panel tilts light catches and a glance of gems released to brightness clamours for colour Here, the midnight depths of Batman’s stern command and Simba’s chequered roar splinter jagged blues of Thomas as his pistons turn a sleek arc and a cascade of silver notes tumble from the Piper’s flute as I march past the nursery door before someone swipes the magic from my lips and I breath fire – Godzilla It is Patrick (alias Robin) whose eyes now seem opaque ‘Why are you brown?’ he asks Silence of the slammed door The colours of my voice sealed in parentheses of glass a butterfly, almost

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Extract from

Running Dogs Ruby J. Murray

S

et in Jakarta in 1997 and in the present, Running Dogs tells the story of a city on the verge of a revolution, and a family on the edge of chaos. Three siblings, two of them half Indonesian and half American, close ranks to protect themselves against their father’s unpredictable ire and their mother’s glassy-eyed neglect. The eldest, Petra, takes responsibility for their protection, believing herself able to invoke the favour of the gods by practising ancient rites and rituals. Ultimately, though, she and her brothers begin to understand that such favours may come at too high a price.

Years later, in the present-day narrative, we meet Petra and her brothers again, this time through the eyes of Diana, a friend she had made in Sydney but whom she’d abandoned suddenly and without warning, cutting off contact. When Diana, an Australian development worker, takes a job in Jakarta she and Petra rekindle their friendship. Petra and her brothers live in a world of privilege and considerable wealth, and show Diana another side of life in the city. But the siblings are still close, secretive and protective of one another. They let Diana in, only to shut the door against her once more – this time for good, and for the most horrific reason.

Running Dogs is a remarkable, fast-paced and atmospheric debut, full of tension and detail. It is at once a story of conflicted identity and a vivid, multi-dimensional account of the bustling city of Jakarta.

The following extract is taken from the part of the narrative set in 1997.

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?

When the doctor goes, Mbak Nana makes Isaak and Paul stand guard in the hallway while she does kerokan for Petra, drawing the bad spirits out of her by scraping coins up and down her back.

On Friday, their mother comes into her room and feels the back of her head and makes a rolling noise with her tongue behind softly pinked lips and calls for Mbak Nana, who feels the back of her head, too, while Petra tries to look as feeble as she can.

Any day but Friday.

Their mother stands in the hall, talking to Mbak Nana. If they decide she’s well enough to go to school, she’ll have to deal not only with Bill Desta, but with the golf driving range as well, because Friday lunchtimes belong to their father. She can’t do it. Not both of them. Not Bill Desta and her father all in the same day.

Friday lunchtimes at the driving range need all her concentration. She has to be alert the whole time, so that she can try to help the boys when they don’t know the answers to their father’s questions, whispering out of the side of her mouth. The boys know how to listen to her without turning their heads, without moving, so that she doesn’t get in trouble.

Petra can never predict what will make their father angry, and what will amuse him. It’s not his fault he’s like that; it’s because her mother died when she was so young, and he was left all alone with two tiny children.

There are so many things she doesn’t know about him.

Mostly, though, she doesn’t know what sort of man he is. She does know that he isn’t like other people. That he’s American but not properly, that he doesn’t belong to America like real Americans do, like the Americans at school and their parents. Even his voice is wrong for an American. And she knows that his work is different, more important somehow than other people’s work.

Her father does amazing things. He came from nowhere, from a place in America that doesn’t even really exist it’s so far from anywhere, a vague poverty, but now he’s powerful and important. Everything that he has, he’s built with his own hands. He looks after whole forests, and makes trees grow.

With Uncle Edward, his boss, he’s helping to build a bridge to Malaysia, to connect Indonesia to everywhere. Her father knows everyone. Probably everyone in Indonesia.

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And then there’s his face, the way he can wear it different ways, can pick and choose it. Once in a while she’ll catch him between faces, and a curtain will pull back over the brick red of his skin, and in the distance she’ll glimpse a shadow, scuttling out of sight. A new face will slide into place, and the emptiness and the shadows will be covered by happiness, or disappointment, or earnestness, or sincerity.

Friday afternoons are the only time they are ever alone with him. Petra loves her father. But she hates Friday afternoons.

Their mother comes back in with Mbak Nana, and Petra closes her eyes, tries to look sick instead of worried. She’s told to get up.

No, please.

Is this about Bill Desta? her mother asks.

No. I don’t know.

It was an accident, Petra. Linda and I talked, she spoke to Bill, and he’s sorry, very sorry, he’s shaken up. It’s going to be fine. Bill’s a nice boy. He’s just having a hard time right now.

No, please. I don’t feel well, still.

It’s endless, says their mother to Mbak Nana. I just can’t keep all three of them well at once. What’s wrong with them?

It’s just children, says Mbak Nana.

I don’t want to go.

You’re being ridiculous, Petra. Get up. Now. I don’t have time for this.

I can’t.

OK, that’s enough. Nana, get her up. She’s going to school, now. She won’t make the others late. Also, let Seti know that Richard doesn’t want them today after all.

Petra feels a rush of relief. No golf. At least no golf. But Bill Desta . . .

In the car, watching the streets go past, she sits with her legs clamped together, as if she can keep the day trapped between her thighs if she needs to.

Outside, the city is strangely calm. They move north, traffic surging and stopping. Mas Seti has the radio on. Talking radio, not music, the presenters’ voices breathless with hysteria.

Where’s all the cars? asks Isaak, sucking juice.

Mas Seti shrugs. It’s OK, things normal again soon.

When?

Soon, Mister Isaak.

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When?

Soon. Next week, week of calm.

Isaak sticks the straw of his juice box in the pocket at the back of Mas Seti’s seat and upends the box in his mouth, squeezing out the last red drops.

In the front seat, Mas Seti shakes his head.

Next week some people not go to work, maybe. People pulang kampung to vote, lots of buses out. Wait and see. Later today, traffic very bad again.

Eight-thirty maybe, maybe later, traffic very bad again.

Petra presses her face against the window. When she moves it away, the sunscreen Mbak Nana makes her put on in the mornings leaves an oily pattern on the glass, a substratum of interconnected worlds, behind which the Jakarta traffic swells and booms and takes them up Rasuna Said, towards the Indonesia International School.

Nestled deep in northern Menteng, the dead-end street that leads up to the school has white barriers that descend smartly across the road. They’re running late, and Mas Seti hustles them out of the car and through the school gate, under the watchful eyes of Ibu Melanie, who peers out over the passage of two hundred heads every day – Korean and Indian and Sri Lankan and Australian and American and English and Chinese – a shiny, brushed parade into the schoolyard, weighed down with sports uniforms and Pokemon and packed lunches and the heavy faces of early morning.

Paul and Isaak stand with Petra in the empty playground.

You OK? asks Isaak.

Yes. Of course I am.

OK, then.

Paul touches her arm. She shrugs him off.

Isaak re-jigs his backpack and runs across the assembly area, skirting the massive tree in its concrete base and taking the stairs to the second level two at a time, Paul huffing and waddling in his wake. Petra waits, watching the empty space. No teachers go in or out of their classrooms. She edges in front of a pillar, so that from Ibu Melanie’s line of sight the playground will appear deserted. There’s a faint burr of noise coming from behind all the closed doors. The windows are blocked up with paintings and projects, the cut-out shapes of nations and states.

She can’t be at school. She takes a breath, turns left towards the car park, walks slowly, casually. But in her brain she holds a shield behind her.

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As soon as she’s surrounded by cars, she ducks down next to a BMW. Kneels there, waiting. Inside her head, she rounds up teachers and teachers’ aides and groundsmen and the office ladies and the security guards and the school nurse, wraps them all in cold layers of thought, and pushes them out and away, like she does when she’s practising the power with her brothers in the study room at home.

After a few minutes, when no one comes, she shuffles down the asphalt corridor that runs between two rows of parked cars, makes her way along it until she reaches the high wall of the school’s compound. The trees on the inside of the school mesh with the branches of the trees outside, in another Jakarta, their canopies kissing over the broken glass that tops the walls.

From her hiding place opposite the guard’s box she can see Mas Netro reading a newspaper, his big black boots crossed at the ankle. Between Petra and the box is the hot, wide, open space with its metal gate. On the street side, security guards sit on a wooden bench, smoking cigarettes and talking.

A small transistor radio set up at their feet barks at them in excitement.

She sits back on her haunches, and waits. Sweat runs down her back.

After a long, long time, when she’s becoming desperate because it must nearly be morning break, it happens. A van. It comes in through the gates, which close behind it. There’s clunking, moving, the heavy slam of doors, and then it drives back, and the gates swing open again, out onto the street, only this time, the driver leans out of his window to talk to the security guards. Petra is poised and ready, the adrenaline in her legs wound up tight, and as the van idles she’s off in an awkward, bent run along its flank. Then she’s out, sprinting northwards up the road with the nose of the van acting as a shield between her and the men who would keep her at school.

It isn’t until she’s turned into the next road, and has run out of pavement at the edge of an open drain, that she stops, sucking air into her lungs.

The road she’s on is deserted. Residential. She can hear the distant roar of traffic. In her bag she’s got her lunch, a purse with some crumpled rupiah notes, and that seems enough to her. She has no exact plan but she’s not worried. Maybe she’ll go have a milkshake at Plaza Indonesia. She just has to be back at school in time to be picked up after the last bell, all innocence, from the front gate.

Meanwhile, there’s a day to fill, stretching luxuriously out in front of her.

All hers. Every second. Friday has gone from being horrible to magical.

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from Running Dogs

A rat, sleek and fat, bounds up from the drain. It pauses on the crumbling kerb, tilts its head to take her in. They look at each other. The rat’s eyes are sure and knowing. The fleshy nub of its snout pulses, and then it’s rushing across the empty road and down into the drain on the far side, tail whipping behind it. She begins to walk towards the sound of the traffic, the chorus of horns.

That morning, as if for Petra alone, the backstreets of Menteng have emptied themselves of people. No kaki lima men with their rattling food carts, no gardeners lounging on walls, no idling boys, no cars. A couple of security guards peer out from their huts at her as she passes, but she keeps her eyes straight, her feet purposeful, as if she belongs, and none of them call out to her.

Then she turns a corner, and sees a human tide moving at the end of the road. Noise. The street’s security gate is down, and a fleet of police cars are parked on the other side. Swarms of red, forests of arms.

She squats under a scarlet bougainvillea that grows full and fast against one of the house’s walls, looks up and down the street, breathes in. Slowly.

Closes her eyes. Her hearing sharpens. The noise at the end of the street bursts into a thousand voices all yelling over each other. The mournful cry of bus horns, the percussive heartbeat of the drums.

She runs down the road and hides behind an overturned barricade to watch as the people flow down the centre of Jalan Thamrin. They’re wearing red T-shirts stamped with a woman’s smiling face. Most of them are young men, but there are others, too, older people with suits on, young women in batik and jeans with their hair shiny in the morning light. Motorbikes push their way along with the crowd, the drivers shuttling feet over the pavements. All down Jalan Thamrin, Petra can see policemen and army men: the policemen resting against walls and the army men all straightbacked and serious.

There’s an electricity in the air that makes her nervous and happy at the same time. A parade. The people have placards and banners and flags that they wave in the air, high over Petra’s head. A boy with no shoes walks past her, a cracked ukulele clutched to his chest, his fingers mashing the strings in a drumming rhythm, blackened jeans rolled up to protuberant knees. She stands and follows him slowly along the river of people, keeping the orange barricades between them. The river moves much faster than the ukulele boy.

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For a while he stops, his back to Petra, and watches it pass, his head nodding in time to his song.

Aku ingin beli TV color, rumah mewah, istri cantik Sendyakalaning Indonesia Romo, romo, romo, romo ono maling, tapi pake dasi Maling . . . Maling . . . Bapak maling, anak maling Semua maling . . . Sendyakalaning Indonesia.

After he’s moved on, she hums the song to herself. It’s as if on the outside of school the city is different: as if, during all those days that she spends inside the school walls, Jakarta is out here, doing wonderful and unexpected things. There’s a Jakarta that’s full of parades like this, and it’s only once the school day ends, once Mas Seti arrives to suck them up into the car, that the city snaps back into place, hiding itself from their view.

I want to buy a colour TV, live in a luxurious house, have a beautiful wife, The sunset of Indonesia, My betters, my betters, my betters, my betters are thieves, but wear ties, thieves, thieves, the father is a thief, his sons and daughters are thieves, everybody is a thief . . .

The sunset of Indonesia.

Petra finds her own way to keep up with the parade, weaving through backstreets and ducking behind barricades, making herself invisible. The shops are closed, Plaza Indonesia’s lights dark, the McDonald’s and the Sarinah department store emptied, escalators stilled, doors bolted. There’s nowhere else to go, and so she keeps apace with all the people, following the drums through the city.

It’s not until the end of Jalan Thamrin that things begin to go wrong. She’s moving too fast, keeping up with a busload of red ants whose drumming is frantic and exciting, matching her own pace to the beat of their sticks on the metal roof. Then suddenly she finds herself on the wrong side of a shifted barricade, and the river of people swells in seconds, and she panics, and they’re behind her, and in front of her, and all around her, and she’s been seen.

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from Running Dogs

A voice calls out. Another. Hands touch her, an adult face bends down towards hers. She’s scared, and she doesn’t speak to it in Indonesian.

Stop it, she says, in English. Then quickly, Berhenti. Silakan.

What are you doing here, kid? You’re a bule kid!

She tries to smile, to explain – she’s Indonesian, really, her mother was Indonesian and her father is an American who loves Indonesia – but there are too many people, laughing, too many hands, some pulling and protesting, trying to steer her away, others roaring, and she’s being hoisted on to shoulders, above the crowd, she’s being passed across the river, pushed against the bus, and hands take her up, up.

The thunder of the people drumming is deafening. She is pushed up to the roof of the bus, and on either side of her disembodied hands and sticks hammer and boom.

The drumming becomes ragged, the beat is lost. People yell in Javanese; Petra can’t understand what they’re saying. Far ahead there’s a pop, pop.

Panting, she manages to get herself turned around, her sandalled feet scrabbling for footholds in the bus’s open windows. Someone on the roof kicks out, pain blooms in her head, and she’s going down. There are yells as she lands on the crowd, then everything is muffled by bodies, a mash of legs and moving feet, and the wheels of the bus are going past. She can feel herself screaming but she can’t hear the noise, so no one, no one will know she’s there, those legs trampling and pushing around her.

Arms pull her up, something goes over her face, a batik, she starts to hear her own voice again, her throat ripping, as she cries through the fabric. Hot in her ear, she hears: Petra, Petra, hold still, quiet, Petra.

She’s surrounded by the smell of the batik, the smell of sweat, of skin.

One person’s skin: Mbak Nana’s skin. She’s lifted up, wraps her scraped knees around Mbak Nana’s back, feeling their chests gasp in unison as they’re crushed through the currents. Then there’s air on her stinging knees, and space. Mbak Nana is running, Petra jolting against her, almost too big for Mbak Nana to carry. In a backstreet behind Jalan Thamrin Mbak Nana finally staggers and puts her down, and they both drop to the concrete, panting together. The light through the batik swirls blue.

Mbak Nana pulls her up, unwinding the batik where it’s become tangled around her neck. As soon as Petra’s out in the open, something 168

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crashes into her face. It takes her a moment to realize that Mbak Nana has slapped her.

Mbak Nana stands over her. The road is empty, quiet. She can still hear the parade in the distance.

Mbak . . .

Petra, I am very, very angry.

I’m sorry.

Why aren’t you at school?

I didn’t want to.

She’s never seen Mbak Nana like this, but she knows what fear looks like. The face completely drained of colour. The dilated pupils. Mbak Nana is taking off her cardigan and wrapping Petra in it, forcing her arms into its long sleeves. Then she winds the batik back around Petra’s head, making it come nearly all the way down over her face.

You are a very, very stupid child. I am very ashamed.

Alone inside the batik Petra feels a wail coming, but Mbak Nana shakes her hard, shakes the wail out of her, drags her to her feet, takes her by the hand, and they begin to walk.

After a lifetime of ground has slipped under her sandals, they’re stopping, and Mbak Nana is squatting down in front of her, coming into the limited field of her vision, tilting Petra’s chin up.

Petra, Mbak Nana says, and her voice is soft, and Petra feels liquid with relief and the hope that she might be forgiven.

Mbak Nana reaches down into her bag and takes out her water bottle.

She tips water onto the hem of the cardigan then pulls it up and starts to scrub Petra’s face, just like she does at home before dinner.

It was very stupid to run away from school today, Petra. There are big demonstrasi.

Why were you there? Why aren’t you at home, Mbak?

Shhhh.

I didn’t want to go to school.

You are scared of this boy?

No. It’s OK to be scared, Petra.

No. Petra . . .

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I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I’m bleeding?

Only a little scratch.

It hurts. I wanna go home.

You have to go back to school.

I wanna go home.

You have to go back to school, Petra.

Mbak Nana talks low and fast, and tells her what will happen: at the end of the street, Mbak Nana will take her cardigan from Petra, and she’ll put her hand very, very softly on the cheek that she slapped. She’ll put her face in close to Petra’s, and they’ll rub their noses together, lightly, which is Mbak Nana’s special kiss and means you have to keep a secret. And then Mbak Nana will put Petra’s arms back into the straps of her battered backpack, and she’ll find a soto ayam man. And she’ll talk to the soto ayam man, and then he’ll wheel his cart to the end of the street with the security barrier that leads to the Indonesia International School. Mbak Nana will give the soto ayam man a crumpled handful of rupiah notes, and Petra will take the soto ayam man’s hand, and together they’ll walk down the street to where the security guards are still lounging on their wooden planks in front of the school. Petra will look back once to see Mbak Nana, who will be leaning on the peeling paint of the soto ayam man’s cart.

The soto ayam man will talk to the security guards, and he’ll tell them he just caught her coming out of the school road, just that second, and then he’ll leave, and walk back to his cart, and the security guards will shoo her into the school grounds. The principal will come out and yell about disappointment, and there will be phone calls, and Mas Seti and their mother will arrive and pick her up. Petra will tell them that she was hiding in the car park all day, that the soto ayam man caught her when she tried to get out. And their mother will scream and yell, and Petra will be sent straight to her room, and there will be punishment, but it won’t be too serious, their father won’t need to know, so it will be OK. She won’t say that she found the demonstrasi, or that she saw the river of people, or that she was on the bus when the river changed, or that Mbak Nana slapped her, wrapped her in batik, tried to carry her, paid the soto ayam man to lie, or that Mbak Nana waved to her with her careworn hands as she stood next to the soto man’s cart, watching Petra walk away, back towards the Indonesia International School.

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>

For the first time in weeks, their father is home for one of their special family dinners. As they sit down to eat, he has the neutral face and shuttered eyes that usually signal safety. There is nothing, no sign, to let Isaak know what is about to happen.

Their father says he’s tired, so tired. The bridge he’s building to Malaysia with Uncle Edward is taking up all his time. To connect Indonesia to the world.

Lamb roast and vegetables, the potatoes turned like smooth white bugs, struggling across seas of sticky gravy. Isaak eats and thinks of bitter kangkung and silky rice, and the gravy sits horribly on his tongue. Water. He’s careful not to leave a mark on the glass as he sets it back down on its coaster.

Their mother eats slowly, her eyes settled in the middle distance, moving between the children and their father, but never hitting their faces.

Shoulders and walls, thinks Isaak. She only looks at shoulders and walls.

Paul’s been annoying, and he and Petra have been ignoring him all day, and Isaak’s scared that he’ll make a fuss about something at dinner, that he’ll get upset and not be able to stop himself. They shouldn’t have ignored him, but it’s not their fault. They didn’t know their father would be home for dinner.

Paul is holding a potato to the roof of his mouth. Isaak can tell by the way his lips are pursed. Paul meets his eyes, begins to chew, swallows.

Their father puts down his fork, shuffling his faces.

Petra.

She looks up from her plate.

How’s school this week? How’s it going?

Good, good, Sir. Your teachers?

Good.

What are they teaching you?

Maths, and science, and history, and French, and English, and phys-ed, and geography.

And Bahasa Indonesia?

And Bahasa Indonesia.

You forgot to say that.

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Who’s your Indonesian teacher now?

Ibu Wayan.

From Bali. She teach you some Balinese, too?

No, only Bahasa Indonesia.

Only language? She teaching you about Indonesian culture, too?

Teaching us culture, Sir? I think we should get the children a tutor, their father says, turning to their mother.

I’m sorry?

A tutor, for the children.

I think . . . You know, Richard, I’ve been thinking maybe it might be a good idea. To get someone new. Actually, I was thinking maybe someone international. Someone English or American or Australian. Caroline Lim knows some people in Edward’s congregation.

Their mother’s eyes focus. She smiles. Paul puts another potato in his mouth. Isaak watches him hold it there for a moment, then Paul puts gravy on the end of his fork and puts that into his mouth, too.

No. Not one of those church people.

But they’d be perfect. Edward would like it.

Not for now. I’ll think about it. Now, an Indonesian, at least for Petra and Isaak. They need to be more Indonesian, or people will always see them as bule. I need them to be more Indonesian. She teaching you manners, Petra, this Ibu Wayan from Bali, and history, and religion, and real things, so you know what to do, so you don’t offend people? You have to learn not to offend people, how to be charming. How to fit in everywhere.

I guess. Sir. Petra looks back and forth between their parents. Isaak knows she’s trying to gauge the right answer.

They’ve got plenty of Indonesians in their lives, Richard.

Their father shakes his head. Points his fork at the children.

Not someone like they’ve got, not like the current staff – that’s not what I’m saying. They’re getting too old for this nanny business. It made sense when they were younger, but now . . . They’re going to pick up kampung manners.

Oh, I don’t think – Maybe even an Indonesian high school. For Isaak and Petra.

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No, Richard . . . Please, no. You promised. You promised you’d keep them all together, at IIS. Their father shrugs. Their mother is becoming eager, ingratiating.

A tutor . . . of course a tutor would be good. They could stay at IIS with a tutor, an Indonesian tutor. Is that what you’re saying, Richard?

Fine. Maybe. But we need to shake things up. Get rid of the old. Bring in the new. Get some real qualified people on the staff.

Isaak feels the stillness of his siblings, the white room suddenly full of the crackling pause of prey, frozen for the second it takes to make a decision.

Their father looks up at the ceiling, chewing, thinking. Isaak is helpless.

Petra tenses beside him.

She says: But Mbak Nana teaches us stuff.

She does? What sort of stuff does she teach you then? Does she teach you how to eat properly, how to address people properly? Is she teaching you about the way you talk to a Batak as opposed to the way you handle a Betawi? Is she doing that? You have to work at being Indonesian, Petra. At getting their trust.

She does teach us stuff.

What sort of stuff does she teach you, Petra?

Petra glances at Isaak, shutting Paul out of their decision-making. He feels Petra’s mind flicking through millions of collected moments, looking for the perfect one, looking for the words that their father will understand, that can stop this before it begins.

He sees the hitch in their father’s fork, the millisecond it stalls in the air, gravy at its prongs, its peak before it begins to descend, and he knows that if Petra doesn’t act before the fork hits the plate then everything will be lost.

In that twitching space, she begins to talk.

She tells a story. Then another one. She tells story after story, at first slowly, then with more speed, pieces of Indonesia flowing out of her mouth, Sunda words, Bahasa words, all mixed up together, everything that Mbak Nana tells them, all those long, moth-strewn evenings.

As their father stares at the ceiling, chews rhythmically, Petra goes faster and faster: Pandji Kelaras is walking through the woods to meet the king with his fighting cock under his arm, Lord Guru is planting the body of his daughter-love Dewi Sri under the coconut tree and rice is springing from her grave, Anantaboga is curling, Nyai Roro is walking into the deep Java 173

from Running Dogs

Sea with her scarred face. Mbak Nana’s stories spill out of Petra, like pearls filling up the space and protecting them all, binding Mbak Nana to them with words.

Yes, thinks Isaak. Yes. At last, Petra comes to Jayabaya.

One day shall come a cart without a horse, An iron necklace will circle Java’s shores, Then shall a boat fly in the sky, Then shall the rivers cease to flow: And these shall be the signs that the time of Jayabaya is at hand.

She pauses.

Their father isn’t chewing anymore. Isaak doesn’t know when he stopped, but he has.

Continue, Petra.

But Petra falters.

I forget, Sir. Did she teach you all that? In Sunda?

Something has gone wrong. They’re in danger. It’s happened so fast.

Their father’s face has the mirror on, the one that means he isn’t in a role, that anything can happen.

Running Dogs is published by Scribe, Australia.

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Ysabelle Cheung uck seldom rears its head in Alexander Khan’s memoir, Orphan of Islam. Khan was raised to be ashamed of his mixed-race heritage, was wilfully deprived of his mother’s love and cruelly abused in an effort to make him into a good Muslim. Born to an English mother and a Pakistani father, he was left stranded without a mother (who was cast out by his father’s family), a father (who died) or a true homeland. Early in the narrative, he recalls questioning his circumstances: ‘Why have I been singled out for such harsh punishment so far from home? What have I done to deserve this?’

Home for Khan was divided between the cement-coloured skies of England’s northern suburbs and the arid desert of Pakistan; neither provided him with security or comfort. As he was shuttled back and forth between these places he would long for the relative safety of the other.

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Khan was born and partly raised in Lancashire with his younger sister, Jasmine. At the age of three he was taken from his mother and sent with his sister to live with relatives in Pakistan. Their mother was told the children were killed in an accident; the children were told their mother had abandoned the family. This was only the first act of treachery and betrayal that shaped Khan’s life.

At the age of six, after three years in Pakistan, Khan was sent back to England to live with his father and stepmother – the other wife that Khan, his sister and mother had never known about. His father’s sudden death left Khan, at the age of nine, to deal with his stepmother’s cruel brother Rafiq, who shouldered his way into the family residence and terrorized the young boy, at times physically abusing him. Khan was removed from school, forbidden to wear Western clothes and forced to attend mosque five times a day.

As he grew older, Khan’s life centred around the mosque and his Muslim friends. Yet at the same time he was a teenager, struggling with the question of who he was. This led him to neglect attendance at mosque and join two friends in illicit meetings with non-Muslim girls, where he was introduced to cigarettes and pop music. Though fascinated by these things, Khan’s real interest was hearing about their lives; he would imagine that his own life might have been like theirs if his mother had not left.

When Rafiq found out about these meetings his reaction was extreme: Khan was sent back to Pakistan, where he was kept against his will and enrolled in a radical madrassa for rehabilitation. His punishment was more about who he was – the son of a kuffar, an unbeliever – than what he had done.

Khan’s dedication at the front of the book is: ‘To Abad. Without his help I would not be here.’ Abad was a fellow student at the madrassa and helped Khan plan an escape from the institution, where the students were systematically whipped and humiliated in an effort to mould them into devout Muslims. With Abad’s help, the thirteen-year-old Khan managed to slip over the wall, evade the armed guards who surrounded the area, and find his way back to his father’s village.

Protected by his grandmother, he was finally safe. But even though he was no longer a prisoner of the madrassa, he was still trapped in a small Pakistani village with his father’s relatives. He felt he belonged back in 176

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England. In the end, it was another act of violent tribal justice that sent him home.

Orphan of Islam is wrought with justifiable anger and distress, but Khan does not dwell on the variety of ugly injustices and breaches of human rights inflicted upon him. The story ends when he is sixteen and living with his Pakistani family in England, but determined to explore the other side of his heritage: ‘In my head . . . I already had one foot out of those streets and into a world full of possibilities.’ Orphan of Islam is published by HarperCollins.

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n the aftermath of the Second World War and the end of Japan’s occupation of Malaysia, Teoh Yun Ling is desperately seeking her own peace. She harbours a deep anger towards the Japanese, who interned her for three years in a labour camp where she lost her youth, her innocence, her sister – and two fingers. She is angry also with herself, for having survived when her sister did not. Her maimed hand is a reminder of deeper scars.

The Teoh sisters were among thousands of civilians, many of them ethnic Chinese, rounded up on suspicion of resisting the Japanese occupation. At the war’s end Yun Ling, mysteriously, is the only survivor of her camp.

She narrates her own story; when we meet her she is an elderly woman recording her memories for fear of losing them. The tale begins when she is in her late twenties, after she has given up her job as a prosecutor, a role she 178

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performed for only a few years following the war. Even seeing war criminals sentenced to death and hanged did not relieve her torment.

Her sister, ironically, had dreamed of having a Japanese garden, and Yun Ling decides to create one in her memory. Despite her hatred for the Japanese, she decides to approach Nakamura Aritomo, a former gardener to the Japanese emperor, known to her because his estate adjoins a tea plantation owned by a family friend. Aritomo refuses to build her garden, but offers to take her on as an apprentice; the offer – from a Japanese Imperial gardener to a Chinese woman – is unprecedented.

Yun Ling accepts the proposal after visiting Aritomo’s garden: ‘The silence here had a different quality; I felt I had been plumbed with weighted fishing line into a deeper, denser level of the ocean. I stood there, allowing the stillness to seep into me.’ She senses that this unusual arrangement may allow her to find the serenity she craves.

While this unlikely pair work together in Aritomo’s garden, often in silence, other wars rage around them: communist insurgents hide in the surrounding hills and target local planters and their families; Malayan nationalists continue to fight the British, who still rule the country; murders, suspicions and investigations intrude on the garden’s tranquillity. Yun Ling tries to ignore the danger, but she is a likely target of the communists; as a prosecutor she earned their hostility by handling a high-profile case against one of them. There are hints that perhaps the tea planter – or Aritomo – is protecting her by paying off the guerrillas.

Throughout, the narrative is adorned with evocative description. Tan Twan Eng guides the reader through the elegant Japanese garden, the nearby tea plantations and the lush green jungle with the mindfulness of a Zen walking meditation. He invites the reader to pause, to picture the striking effects of ‘borrowed scenery’ Aritomo has created, such as using a cut-out hedge to frame a distant hilltop; to imagine the sounds of the waterwheel, the fragrance of flowers and the textures of stones. Each feature is chosen and placed with precision and care.

Just as he unveils these lovely scenes, so Tan reveals his characters – slowly, and layer by layer. Both Yun Ling and Aritomo are solitary, secretive figures.

As the story unfolds, we begin to wonder about Yun Ling. In her memoir, she hesitates to explain much of what happened in the internment camp, or to say why she was the sole survivor. We wonder also about Aritomo.

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Review: The Garden of Evening Mists

Apparently he left Japan after disobeying the emperor. But had he really remained alienated from his compatriots and detached from the war?

Similarities soon appear between these two aloof and reticent people, and we begin to understand their unexpected, reluctant attraction to one another: both have had to struggle to maintain their identity and integrity – the youthful Yun Ling in the face of coercion and cruelty in a labour camp; the older Aritomo amidst the rigid traditions and expectations imposed on him by Imperial Japan. Both, it becomes clear, live with the demons of betrayal and shame.

Other themes are woven delicately into the tale like emblems in an Oriental tapestry: the utter finality of loss; the counterpoint between memory and forgetting; the revelation of beauty through pain. But this is not a tale about repentance or closure. Aritomo never apologizes for what the Japanese did to Yun Ling, or for his own actions. Yun Ling remains stubbornly unforgiving of those who harmed her and her family. Some enigmas remain for the reader to ponder; however, in unexpected and curious ways, both discover something they never thought they would find in the Garden of Evening Mists.

Tan Twan Eng was born in Penang and grew up in various places in Malaysia.

He read law at the University of London and was employed by one of Kuala Lumpur’s most distinguished law firms. He has a first dan ( first degree black belt) ranking in aikido, and champions the conservation of heritage buildings.

His first novel The Gift of Rain, published by Myrmidon in 2007, was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize. He currently lives in Cape Town. The Garden of Evening Mists, released in 2012, is also published by Myrmidon.

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T

he hero of this story is the eponymous thief, who recounts his life as a pickpocket in Tokyo, and how he moved from petty crime to involvement in a murder. He never tells us his name, and it is pronounced to him only once – much to his surprise because he thought no one knew it. His identity remains in the shadowland of description, just as he remains in the shadows of his victims’ consciousness and at the outer edge of society. Well versed in the legends of famous pickpockets, he has something of the Robin Hood about him. When he steals a wallet he removes only the cash, wipes the leather of fingerprints and then deposits it in a post box so that it might find its way back to its owner, regardless of what may be left inside: calling cards from male or female prostitutes, artfully stamped pills or incriminating photographs.

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He had always been adept at pinching things but he really found his way when he began to work with another thief, because ‘actually picking pockets isn’t a one-man job. You need partners. Three people is standard.

One person to jostle the mark, one person to block other people’s view, one person to lift.’ He and the older, more experienced Ishikawa are famous in their own circles, and it is this fame that leads them to trouble. Ishikawa finds a job working for Kizaki, a local kingpin with dreams of reordering society through plots and subplots: murders and a trail of dead bodies are no hindrance to the ultimate goal. Kizaki also operates in the shadows of society, but believes he has mastery over his own fate, and the fates of those around him. Fate is a recurring theme – is someone manipulating the thief ’s fate, or is it his fate to be manipulated? And what is the difference?

The thief is someone who seems to have no control over his own life, regardless of whether it is fated or not. He is aware of his shortcomings and weaknesses, and understands that his passivity defines his identity.

The narrative switches between the present and the thief ’s past with Ishikawa, who disappeared after a robbery they were only peripherally involved in – but which left a murdered man behind. No matter that they were in a van disrobing after the burglary and that their nameless accomplices had wielded the fatal sword.

Ishikawa is a spectral figure – because of an earlier involvement in a fraudulent investment group, he had fled the country to avoid arrest. When he returned, ‘he’d acquired a dead person’s identity. He had a new driver’s license and passport and certificate of residence – on the face of it he was a free man. “The official story is that I died in Pakistan, so now my name’s Niimi. That means I was already Niimi when I met you. It’s complicated . . .”’

Indeed it is, because the person who arranged for him to change his name is Kizaki, who demands one last favour in return for granting Ishikawa’s wish to be let out of the game.

Later, Kizaki tracks down the thief, who understands that by renewing his involvement with the kingpin he has put himself on the endangered species list. With this in mind, he makes sure he remains detached, not only from his own emotions but also from those around him, including his neighbour’s young and neglected little boy who, like a lost dog, begins to follow the thief around. He’d met the boy and his mother at a supermarket, where he noticed the boy shoplifting groceries to order from his mum’s 182

Kelly Falconer

shopping list. He tells them they’ve been spotted by security and the ne’erdo-well mother begrudgingly heeds his warning. When he later spots the boy stealing again, he begins to teach him some tricks of the trade, while at the same time counselling against a life of crime. ‘You can still start over,’ he tells him. ‘You can do whatever you want. Forget about stealing and shoplifting.’

‘Why?’ asks the boy, gazing up at him.

‘You’ll never find a place in society.’

Fuminori Nakamura, born in 1977, has been a prizewinning author since his debut in 2002 with Ju (A Gun). He won Japan’s prestigious Oe Kenzaburo Prize for Suri (The Thief ), and was awarded the prize by the Nobel Laureate himself. Satoko Izumo and Stephen Coates have conveyed the dark nuances of this tale with a tight translation glinting with sharp, spare and at the same time moody prose, and have introduced to an English-language audience an author with a backlist waiting to be enjoyed.

The Thief is published by Soho Crime in the US and by Constable and Robinson in the UK.

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Contributors MARCEL BARANG, a French national, has spent more than half his life in Thailand. He is a former journalist who converted in 1993 to full-time literary translation from the Thai, mainly into English and occasionally into French. His work is available as ebooks at Thai Fiction in Translation and he regularly posts some of the best Thai short stories on his Thai-to-English fiction bilingual blog: marcelbarang.wordpress.com

KAVITA BHANOT grew up in London and lived in Birmingham before moving to Delhi, where she directed an Indian-British literary festival and worked as an editor for India’s first literary agency. She has had several stories published in anthologies and magazines, and is the editor of Too Asian, Not Asian Enough, published by Tindal Street Press in 2012.

DAVE BESSELING lives in Delhi. He was born and raised in Canada, but since skipping his university graduation ceremony for his first flight overseas, he has visited over thirty-five countries. He has worked as an English teacher, graphic designer, tattoo designer, visual artist, travel writer and journalist. His first book, The Liquid Refuses to Ignite, was published in July 2012 by Hachette, India.

YSABELLE CHEUNG has juggled many professions. As a features journalist, she has interviewed literary figures such as Yan Lianke and Yan Geling. As a fiction writer, she has been published online and in anthologies. She is a reader for Peony Literary Agency and has read for Blake Friedmann Literary Agency and Granta magazine. For now, she is happily working as assistant editor at Tatler Hong Kong.

DAZAI OSAMU is best known outside Japan for his novels The Setting Sun and No Longer Human. He earned a reputation for melancholia, but many of his short stories are full of sweetness and light, and some are very funny. Dazai wrote entertaining stories throughout the Second World War, and in the years immediately following the war he became highly popular. He committed suicide in 1948, at the age of thirty-nine.

TISHANI DOSHI is an award-winning poet and dancer of Welsh-Gujarati descent. She has worked and performed with the choreographer Chandralekha.

Doshi won an Eric Gregory Award in 2001; in 2006 she won the All-India Poetry Competition; and Countries of the Body won the Forward Prize for Best First Collection. Her first novel, The Pleasure Seekers, was longlisted for the Orange Prize and shortlisted for the Hindu Fiction Award. Her second poetry collection, Everything Begins Elsewhere, was published by Bloodaxe in 2012.

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Contributors

NICHOLAS YOHAN DUVERNAY teaches English at the Catholic University of Korea in Bucheon. He is an archer and plays bass in a rock band, Vanilla Unity.

Duvernay grew up in the US and Korea and graduated from a Korean university at sixteen, with a BA in English language and literature. In 2007, he received an MA in linguistics and is now pursuing a PhD.

FANG HUI is a pioneer of China’s contemporary art movement; his paintings have been in numerous exhibitions in Beijing and Hong Kong. He focuses on the ability of different colours to arouse specific emotions, and uses various hues to express calm and melancholy, depth and purity. His portrait series, Youth, draws on memories from his childhood during the Cultural Revolution.

ROMESH GUNESEKERA was born in Sri Lanka and lives in London. His first novel Reef was shortlisted for the 1994 Booker Prize. He is also the author of The Sandglass (BBC Asia Award) and Heaven’s Edge, which like Monkfish Moon, was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. His novel The Match was described by the Irish Times as a book that ‘shows why fiction is written – and read’. The Prisoner of Paradise, his new novel, is set in Mauritius in 1825.

ANU ANAND HALL is a former BBC World Service radio presenter now based in Delhi, where she lives with her husband, the author Tarquin Hall, and their two children. In addition to reporting and broadcasting from India, Anu is developing a series of bilingual Hindi-English ebooks for children.

HAN HAN was born in 1982 to middle-class parents. After dropping out of high school due to low grades, he wrote a novel, Triple Door, which became a runaway bestseller with more than twenty million copies sold. He has since become a star of the rally racing circuit and an international celebrity. He lives in Shanghai.

HAMID KABIR was born in Kabul and studied medicine at Moscow Medical Academy. In 1997 he settled in the UK for further study and was chairman of the Afghan Association of London in 2010-11. Hamid has commented on Afghan affairs for various TV and radio programmes. He is also the editor in chief of Simorg, the only Afghan newspaper published in London.

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KIM JAE YOUNG made her debut when she received South Korea’s Pioneering Writers’ Newcomers’ Award in 2000. She is known for evocative explorations of the difficult lives of those living in the underbelly of society, and tells the stories of foreign labourers and the unemployed who search for love and justice.

ANANTH KRISHNAN is the China correspondent for The Hindu, India’s second-largest English daily. He has reported from Beijing for the newspaper since June 2009, covering politics, the economy, religion and Sino-Indian relations. Ananth previously worked for The Hindu in Chennai and Mumbai.

He holds an MA from the University of Chicago.

NICK LAIRD is the recipient of many prizes for his poetry and fiction, including the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature, the Ireland Chair of Poetry Award, the Betty Trask Prize, a Somerset Maugham award and the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize. Laird has published two novels, Utterly Monkey and Glover’s Mistake, and two prizewinning books of poems, To a Fault and On Purpose. Go Giants will be published by Faber in 2012.

VIOLET LAW is a Hong Kong-born-and-bred Chicagoan who rediscovered her bilingualism in 2008, when she parachuted herself into foreign reporting in China. Her English translation of Feng Bangyan and Nyaw Mee Kau’s Enriching Lives was published by Hong Kong University Press in 2010. Law graduated from the University of Chicago and from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.

MICHAEL Y. LEE was born in Taiwan and grew up in the US. He recently graduated from the MFA Writing Program at Columbia University, where he studied fiction and literary translation. He has worked for various non-profit organizations in New York and was also a corporate attorney for ten months. He lives with his wife in Queens, New York.

MOON-OK LEE teaches English at Munmyeong High School in Gyeongsan, South Korea. She completed her doctoral coursework in Korean studies at Yeungnam University. She has translated several works from Korean to English for the Korea Literature Translation Institute, and continues to be one of their regular contributors.

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Contributors

WIN LYOVARIN, the son of a Chinese immigrant father and a Thai mother, twice received the prestigious SEA Write Award in the 1990s for his collection of short stories and for his novel, translated into English as Democracy Shaken and Stirred. His large and versatile body of work can be found at winbookclub.com and some of his short stories in English on thaifiction.com.

RALPH MCCARTHY is a translator and writer living in southern California.

He has published English translations of two collections of short stories by Dazai Osamu, Self Portraits and Blue Bamboo and, more recently, Otogizóshi: The Fairy Tale Book of Dazai Osamu. His other translations include In the Miso Soup and Popular Hits of the Showa Era, both by Murakami Ryu, and Infinity Net: The Autobiography of Yayoi Kusama.

AVANTIKA MEHTA was born in 1982 in Delhi. Her family had moved to India from Multan (now in Pakistan) in 1947. Avantika studied law in England and specialized in intellectual property law litigation for several years. She moved back to India in 2007 and worked with various prestigious law firms before taking a sabbatical to pursue literature in 2010. She is currently enrolled in the Iowa Writers’ Workshop.

REZA MOHAMMADI was born in Kandahar in 1979 and is regarded as one of the most exciting young poets writing in Persian today. He studied Islamic law and philosophy in Iran before obtaining an MA in globalisation from London Metropolitan University. Along with writing award-winning poetry, he is a prolific journalist, with articles published in Afghanistan, Iran and the UK.

RUBY J. MURRAY was born in Melbourne. She was educated at Princes Hill Secondary College, the University of Melbourne, La Sorbonne, the Australian National University and in Jakarta’s 40,000 taxis. She has a background in environmental politics and writes regularly for Australian magazines, newspapers, journals and anthologies. Running Dogs is her first novel.

AKERKE MUSSABEKOVA was born in 1987 in Kyzylorda, a small city on the banks of the Syr Darya River in Kazakhstan. She studied at the Kazakh National University where she specialized in translation and English interpretation. She visited Canada as part of the Poet in the City exchange project, and is a technical translator at the International Road Project Western Europe-Western China.

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JIMMY QI is a prolific writer of novels, essays, philosophical discourses and biographies. He began to write during ten years of ‘exile’ as a businessman in Canada; later he returned to China to take up a teaching post at Beijing Language and Culture University. Yu Li: Confessions of an Elevator Operator is a translation of the first part of a trilogy about migrant workers. A translation of his comic novel about China’s missteps on the capitalist road, President Q, will be published in 2013 by Make-Do Publishing.

MADHVI RAMANI was born in London, where she studied English and then creative writing at university. Her short stories have appeared in Stand, Underground Voices and in Too Asian, Not Asian Enough. Her first series of children’s books, Nina and the Travelling Spice Shed, are due to be published in 2012 and 2013. She lives in Berlin with her husband and imaginary cat.

MINOLI SALGADO was born in Malaysia and grew up in Sri Lanka, South East Asia and British boarding schools. Her fiction and poetry have been published in the UK and the US, and recently appeared in Bridges: A Global Anthology of Short Stories and The World Record. She is a senior lecturer in English at the University of Sussex, England, and the author of Writing Sri Lanka. She was selected to represent Sri Lanka at Poetry Parnassus, part of the Cultural Olympiad and London 2012.

TOMOKO SAWADA is a recipient of numerous photography awards. Her work appears in more than ten museums, including the Museum of Modern Art and the Austrian Museum of Applied Arts/Contemporary Art. By photographing herself in an array of traditional female roles, Sawada seeks to describe and question Japanese societal norms and culture in a thought-provoking yet light-hearted way.

CLARISSA SEBAG-MONTEFIORE, from London, is a contributing editor and books editor for Time Out in Beijing. She has lived in China since 2009; her numerous interviewees have included literary figures from Amitav Ghosh to Yan Lianke. She has written for publications including the Los Angeles Times, the Guardian, the Observer, the New Statesman, Prospect and the South China Morning Post.

ANUSHKA ANASTASIA SOLOMON is a Malaysian Catholic poet in exile in the United States. Author of two poetry chapbooks, Please, God, Don’t Let Me Write Like a Woman and The Hindu and the Punk, she was one of twelve authors featured by Amnesty International in its 2008 Heroes and Heroines exhibition at the Edinburgh International Book Festival. The Buying, Babe, Is Good Only in America was published in 2012 by Finishing Line Press.

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Contributors

HARVEY THOMLINSON is the founder of Hong Kong-based press MakeDo Publishing, which has published fiction by several previously untranslated contemporary Chinese writers, as well as Asia-themed non-fiction. His translation of Murong Xuecun’s novel Leave Me Alone: A Novel of Chengdu, was nominated for the 2009 Man Asian Literary Prize. Harvey’s novel, The Strike, was shortlisted for the 2011 Patchen Award.

TSAO LI-CHUAN is a writer, poet and lyricist from Changhua, Taiwan. She graduated from Tamkang University, where she studied Chinese. She won the United Daily News Literary Award for her first story ‘Beauty’ in 1982, for ‘Dance of the Maiden’ in 1991 and in 1996, the 10th Unitas New Writers Award for Recommended Novella with White Hair. Her first short-story collection, Dance of the Maiden, was published in 1999 and recently republished to great success.

Her blog can be found at: blog.roodo.com/bluecheese.

UCHIDA TATSURU is a professor emeritus at Kobe College University. He has won Japanese literary awards for his bestselling book, Japan as a Peripheral State and the earlier A Private Study of Jewish Culture. His other works include Ethics of Hesitation, Attention to Murakami Haruki and Fourteen Lectures on Creative Writing. He is a seventh grade aikido master, and runs a school for aikido and philosophy in Kobe, Japan.

WANG LIXIONG is well-known as a vigilant and vocal observer of China-Tibet relations and ethnic-minority issues in China. His works are considered to be among the most authoritative and balanced on Tibetan issues by a native Chinese writer. Wang was recognized in 2002 with the Freedom of Expression Award from the Independent Chinese PEN Association.

TSERING WOESER is a Lhasa-born poet and journalist who was raised and educated entirely in Chinese during the Cultural Revolution. As an adult, Woeser rediscovered her Tibetan heritage and rose to become one of the most respected writers on Tibet. She maintains a widely read blog aptly called Invisible Tibet.

YVETTE ZHU was born in Beijing. She now lives in San Francisco and was runner-up in the 2011 Willesden Herald International Short Story Competition.

She divides her time between consulting and writing and has completed a collection of short stories. She is currently working on a novel set in Beijing in 1976.

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