The Glass Bottle Factory Mystery and other stories

Plumbing

2012-02-12T14:07:00.000-08:00

I cleaned the dirt trap
Under the bathroom sink
And found a matted wad of hair
Her long and black strands
Were woven tight
And had stopped up the drain
Unblocked
My tears began to flow
The certainty began to grow
Her long black hair
Was gone with her
And would never block my drain again

Refuge - Pyrenees - Chapter 1 - White on White

2012-02-11T00:18:00.000-08:00

White.
Everything was white.
And cold.
And damp.
Ghostly tendrils of fog writhed and swirled around me, entangling me in their moist embrace. Steamed breath streamed from my nostrils making the fog thicker still. The mountain air was thin.The only sounds the rhythmic rasp of my breath and the muffled creaking of my steps as my boots sank knee-deep in the snow.
White on white.
I could see only a few metres around me. I couldn’t distinguish between up and down. I gauged the gradient through the pressure on my knees. Mostly it was uphill. I was high above the tree line, but the surrounding summits I knew were there had all ceased to exist.
Condensation clouded the sunglasses I wore to protect myself from the glare. I took them off and narrowed my eyes. Water droplets gathered on my eyelashes and on my eyebrows. Then they rolled down my cheeks like tears, following a well-worn trail.
I floundered on through drifts. At times the icy fog so thick the extended tip of my hiking pole was half-erased. My shoulders were cut by the heavy straps of my pack. My feet were wet and frozen. I sweated despite the cold and the snow.
Footprints emerged step by step out of the mist. I followed as my invisible guide led the way.
I trudged onwards through the eerie windless stillness. Through the fog and through the snow.
There was nothing but blankness in front of me.
Cold vast emptiness behind.
The perfect analogy for my life at the time.

Continued...

The Next-Door-Murders

2012-01-27T06:24:00.000-08:00

Perhaps I heardher scream. I really don’t know for sure. People in the apartment block werealways shouting and arguing. It became a background noise, like the distanttraffic, or the crows. A few months earlier I might have noticed, but I hadbecome used to neighbours screaming at each other, hot and bothered in thistropical climate. What was one more voice? I was absorbed in my writing. I hadsat down around noon and I was on a roll. I kept going through the evening andbarely registered the call for prayer at sunset from the neighbouring mosque. Ihad gotten used to that too.

If I heard the littleboy cry out I really don’t remember. All the neighbour’s kids seemed unhappyand cried all the time. I couldn’t blame them. They were mostly from ethnic Chinesefamilies and their parents never let them play outside. Instead they watchedtelevision or computer screens or tormented their Indonesian maids, who werepaid to put up with the tantrums of their employer’s children. And sometimestheir employer's tantrums too. These maids were an immigrant underclass who had become the souffre-douleurof the nouveaux riche. As if their employer's grandparents had more than two pennies torub together when they came over on the slow boat from China.

I couldn’tunderstand why they cut off his ear. It didn’t make sense. It seemed pointless.When I heard the husband roaring and howling I just thought he was drunk. Therewas a loud hum of chattering conversation. The words were indistinct. Theneighbours having a party I guessed.

I had beenwriting for hours without a break and suddenly realized that I was starving. Infact I had been hungry for quite some time, but I had just pushed it to theback of my mind and kept writing. The hunger pangs grew more insistent and werenot so easily ignored, so I went to the kitchen to fix myself something to eat.There was no glass in the window, just the steel bars that covered every doorand window.

Sometimes I feltlike I was living in a cage. Every apartment in the block had the same bars.Each one in his own cage. I never talked with the neighbours and they neverbothered me. That suited me fine. I guessed that they talked about me. Iunderstood enough to recognize the words for ‘white man’ that were mutteredwhen I passed on my way to the elevator to the car park.

The hum ofconversation was louder now. I heard the crackle of a walkie-talkie. I realizedsomething was wrong when I looked out the kitchen window. Five or six policemenwere on the landing in front of the elevator. There were a few other seriouslooking men coming and going. They talked in hushed tones among themselves in amixture of Malay and Cantonese. The unseen man was still howling. I could hearhim more clearly from the kitchen. His roars were inconsolable.

I still didn’tknow what was going on. I was curious, but I didn’t want to talk to the police.I didn’t want them asking awkward questions about who I was or what I was doinghere. Technically I was still a tourist, but I had been in this sweaty city formore than nine months. In any case they didn’t notice me looking out thewindow. Or if they did, they just ignored me.

Afterwards thatsurprised me. They hadn’t even knocked on my door. I thought that it wasstandard crime scene investigation procedure to ask the neighbours if they hadseen anything. Maybe that was just in the movies. It didn’t really matter. Icouldn’t have told them anything useful. I finished stir frying my improviseddish of oyster mushrooms, tofu and fresh baby sweet-corn and went out to thebalcony to eat in the cool night air. Cool being a relative term. I was stillshirtless, but at least I wasn’t bathed in sweat. The chatter was louder. Ileaned over the railings and saw a crowd of people gathered below.

The fascinationof death had drawn them. They waited eagerly to see the bodies being broughtout. The news of the gruesome double murder had travelled fast. The woman wasthirty-seven, the boy only four years old. The boy had lost an ear. Hismother’s face had been lacerated. They had both been stabbed. Repeatedly. Inside my nest-door-neighbour's apartment therewas blood everywhere. The killer had taken the time to shower, and presumablychange clothes. At first they couldn’t find the murder weapon. The handle ofthe knife was all they found. The autopsy showed that the entire length of the blade was buried deepinside the woman’s ribcage. Apart from that, and a few bloody footprints, therewere no leads, no witnesses, no clues, no fingerprints. She must have known her killer. The door grill had been unlocked.

It was thehusband who had found them lying there when he came back home from work. His wife and childdead. That explained the howling. His desolate cries continued until late inthe night.

PROTECTION - Mad Dog Barks Again

2012-01-26T07:26:00.000-08:00

“What’s dish a day?” asks Niall.

“Chicken curry with basmati rice,” I answer. “Ye want some?”

“Yeah. Give us a big plate, I’m feckin starvin.’”

“There ye go. Get that inta ye.”

“Thanks. Smells great.... I saw ye chattin’ with Mad Dog Raythe other night.”

“Yeah. Some stories. Do ye think they’re true?”

“I know whatcha mean. Mad Dog’s tall tales. All sound a bitfar-fetched. I din’t really believe him at furst. But then the boss tole me astory about Ray that he swears is true.”

“The boss? What did he say?”

“Lemme eat summa dis furst an’ den I’ll tell ya,” he saysthrough a mouthful of chicken and rice. “It’s not as spicy as last time ye madeit. Thank fuck. Nearly burned the mouth and the arse off me, so it did.”

“Spare me the details.”

“I’m just sayin’ like. Anyway it’s better like this, atleast ye can taste what you’re eatin’.”

“Jaysus, slow down will ye. You’re supposed to chew it.That’s some feckin’ appetite ye have on yerself. Did ye not eat today or what?”

“Nah. Slept all day. It was a late one last night. Or anearly one, I suppose ye could say. Didn’t get to bed until ten this morning.”

“Ye were goin’ to tell us a story?”

“Oh yeah, ‘bout Ray. Mad fucker. Here make us a cuppa teafirst will ye?”

“There ye go – last of the Barrys. Hope someone is comingover soon. Else its gonna be feckin’ Lipton Yella.”

“Fuck dat. Who’d drink dat shite?”

“More like piss. The French’d drink it.”

“Zackly – what do de French know about a decent cuppa tea?”

“Not much. Anyway cheers.”

“Yeah, cheers."

"Ye know those windows in the front of thebar?”

“Yeah. Is this the story already?”

“Yeah, it is. Anyway, one afternoon the boss is there in thebar on his own. This fella comes in the door. He’s one of them Moroccan fellas.Lives up in them high-rises at the end of town. Has a scar down the side of hisface. Says to the boss, they’relovely windows ye have there. Be a shame if anything happened to them.

The boss knows full well what he’s talkin’ about, but says whatd’ye mean? and the Moroccan fella says, well, some young fella’s might come‘round and throw stones through the windows.

The boss strings him along, playin’ naive. But why wouldthey do that?

Who knows? says yer man. Lotta angry young immigrant men outthere.

So the boss goes, yeah? well I’m an immigrant too and I workhard for me money. Any young fellas get stupid ideas like that I’m goin’ tocall the cops.’

The cops? says yer man ...sure they’re scared shitless ofus, so they are.

“You sure this is a Moroccan? Sound more like he’s from Dublin.Maybe Tallaght.”

“Ah Fuck off. Ye want me to tell the story in French is it?”

“Nah, go on.”

“So yer man says, I’ll be around with the lads on Tuesday tocollect. Hopefully you’ll have changed your mind by then, or somethin’ mighthappen to them windows.”

“Protection racket then?”

“Yeah, ‘course. So the boss calls the cops and tells themthe story. Describes yer man. Skinny fella. Scar down one cheek. The cops say, fuck,that’s Rachid. Don’t mess with him. Just pay him what he wants. Better foreveryone that way.”

“Better for the cops, ye mean. Lazy gits.”

“Nah. They’re afraid of him, so they are. Ye know how it is.Small town. He finds out where they live. Tyres slashed, or maybe the dog goesmissing. Small stuff, but enough to frighten them. And he does it clever. Nevergets caught. It’s never him anyway. Just young fellas tryin’ to build a reputation.Tryin’ to impress him.

So anyway, the boss calls up Mad Dog Ray, ‘cos he knows Rayis the kinda man ye want to have around whenever there’s a bitta agro in theair. So Mad Dog just sits there readin’ the newspaper for a week. When Rachid’syoung fellas come in the bar the boss gives Ray the secret nod.”

“So what did he do? Beat the shite outta them?”

“Not at all. The boss picks up the phone and calls the cops.Says a fight has broken out in the bar. On a Tuesday afternoon? Right. So heasks the lads straight out if they are Rachid’s boys. Course they say they are.He asks them what they want to drink. They ask for beers, but the boss justgives them lemonade. Says that good young Muslim lads shouldn’t be drinkingalcohol. The boys don’t know whether to agree or disagree, but they drink theirlemonades anyway. Then the boss tells them to look outside. The cops have justpulled up. So lads, do we have a problem, or are yis just finishin’ yer drinksbefore yis go?

The lads aren’t too happy ‘bout the cops comin’ in the door.One of them mutters something about not wantin’ any trouble. The boss tells thecops that the fighters are gone and sorry for the inconvenience like. But the cops are eyein’ up the lads. One ofthem says something smart about a bunch of Moroccan teenagers in an Irish pub.

One of the lads gets lippy. Says he’s French, born in Franceand has the papers to prove it. The cop says been born here and havin’ papersdoesn’t mean a thing and that yer man is still a dirty foreign beggar whateverhis ID card says.

Well ye know the boss. Peace and love for all beings. Hedoesn’t take kindly to that kinda shite, but isn’t goin’ to get in an argumentwith cops. Specially not in front of the lads who were goin’ to break hiswindows. So he asks the cops what they’re drinkin’. The cops are on duty, inuniform so they can’t take anything. They take the hint though and fuck off.

A few minutes later the young fellas leave too. They eventhank the boss for the way he handled the cops, but they still want to saysomething about why they came. But they can’t ‘cos they sorta like the boss now.He’s after givin’ them free drinks, he’s respected their religion, he’s got thecops off their backs - even though it was him who called them in the firstplace. So they just go.

Mad Dog Ray is sittin’ there playin’ the invisible man allalong. With his newspaper and his pot of tea. He gets up and follows the lads.Tails them in the car.

They go to this kebab shop and meet up with scarface Rachid. He’s shoutin’ at the young fellas a’cos they didn’t do what he asked. Ray is watchin’from his car. Does a bit of a stakeout. Knows there’s no point in askin’ aroundabout Rachid. So he just waits. When Rachid finally leaves Ray follows him. Findsout where he lives.”

“So he didn’t say anything to Rachid?”

“Not straight away, no. Mad Dog is a smart fecker. Hedecides to go psycho- logical on Rachid.”

“Ye mean psychological?”

“No. I mean he goes fuckin’ psycho, but in a logical sortaway.”

“What did he do? Blow up Rachid’s house?”

“Nah, scarier than that. He says if yer goin’ after a fellaon his own territory he’ll fight harder to defend it. Plus his mates will beclose by. So if ye want to attack him on his own turf ye have to do it clever.

So Ray finds out where Rachid lives. The door locks that cankeep Mad Dog out haven’t been invented yet, but the door to Rachid’s place isreinforced steel. So Ray waits until the middle of the night when all thelights are out and goes in through the window. Ray has these feckin’ gogglescan see in the dark. Says he kept them as a souvenir from the legion. Ask me,he kept a lotta souvenirs.

He gets into yer man’s bedroom. Yer man is out like a light.There’s the end of a big fat joint sittin’ in an ashtray beside the bed. Mad Doggets a chair. Puts it down beside the bed and sits there facing Rachid. He leans over him and Rachid wakes up with thetouch of a ring of cold steel against the centre of his forehead.”

“A gun?”

“Fucken right. Mad Dog says to Rachid that he’s messin’ withthe wrong people, and to leave the Irish pub alone. Keeps the gun on him all thetime. Asks Rachid if he understands. Rachid just nods. He’s fucken wide awakenow. Then he tells Rachid that he has to pay him 50% of everything he makes on his rackets. Then Ray does theunexpected. He pulls the fucken trigger.

Click. Empty chamber.
Rachid shits himself. Literally. Imean he empties his bowels right there and then in the bed. Ray shows Rachidthe missing bullet. Makes sure he sees him put it in the gun. It’s fully loadednow. He puts the gun back on his forehead and stands up. Says to Rachid, fuckthis, I don’t need you. I’ll take 100%. Rachid is bawlin’ like a baby now.”

“He didn’t kill him, did he?”

“Course not. Justputs the gun back in his pocket and walks out, leaving yer man lying thereblubbering in his bed in a pile of his own shite.”

“So Mad Dog is a ganglord now?”

“Nah, but next day Rachid is gone. Packed up and left. Noone has seen him since. The cops might be pussies, but they’re not completelystupid. They knew well enough that the young fellas in the bar were Rachid’sboys. Put two and two together. So theword on the street now is - don’t fuck with the Irish pub.”

“Some fella that Ray.”

“Fucken right. I’m tellin’ ye, yer better off stayin’ on hisgood side. Not the kinda fella ye want to piss off. Any more tea in that pot?”

Mad Dog Ray

2012-01-22T01:26:00.000-08:00

“So why do they call you Mad Dog then Ray?” I asked as I set the pint of Guinness down on the beer mat in front of him.

“Who calls me Mad Dog? Where’d ye hear dat?”
“Well, ye know – the lads...”
“Well the lads better not fucken call me dat to me face or dey’ll find out quick enough why I’m called Mad Dog.”

Despite his nickname Ray looked neither doglike nor mad. In fact he was almost exaggeratedly ordinary looking. The type of person whose face you can never quite remember. He had no distinguishing features, no obvious tattoos, or piercings, or scars. He was neither small nor tall. He was stocky, but not fat and the strong hands that grasped his pint looked like they knew hard work. His brown hair was always neatly cut, neither short nor long and anytime I ever saw him come into the bar he was always neatly shaved and well behaved.

Ray kept to himself. He enjoyed a quiet pint. The only thing that made him stand out in this Irish pub was the fact that he was usually the only customer who was really Irish. All the other Paddy’s were behind the bar, except for me.

I ran the kitchen, which closed at eleven. It was generally around midnight by the time I finished cleaning up. Then I’d come into a bar to rehydrate. Since I was staff it was okay for me to nip behind the bar and help myself. I’d sometimes help out a bit if it was a busy night. I grabbed a stool at the end of the bar and sat down beside Ray.

“Will ye not have a real feckin’ drink?” asked Ray.
The running joke was that I was the only Irishman who came to a pub to drink water.
“Water’s real. As real as ye can get.”
“Fuck off, ye know what I mean.”
“Tell ye what. I’ll join you for a pint if you tell me why they call you Mad Dog.”
Ray gave me an unsmiling, but non-aggressive stare, as if sizing me up.
“Persistent little fecker aren’t ye? Alright then, I’ll tell ye if you’re buying the next round.”
“The boss is buying the next round, does that count?”
“Feeling generous tonight is he?”
“Staff privileges.”
“He’s not around tonight?”
“Nah, it’s his night off.”
“Well in that case he can stand me another pint with a Jameson chaser on the side.”

I slipped off the stool and poured the drinks, then sat back down beside him. We knocked our heavy glasses together.

“Well”, he says with a sigh, settling down as if to tell a long story. “When I was growin’ up in Ballygobackways dere wasn’t a lot to do for entertainment. I had five older brudders, so I had ta learn how ta fight. Dey’d take turns to beat me up. It was all a sort of game.

Me da knew it was goin’ on, so one day he takes me on his knee and says ‘Son, dere’s two ways to fight. Fight dirty, or fight clean. Dere’s honour and pride in fighting clean. It’s de gentlemanly way. Then dere’s fightin’ dirty. Dere lies de path to victory, it’s de better way ta win.’

It was an important lesson, one I always remembered. I was only a little fella’ and I was fed up gettin’ seven different kinds of shite beaten outta me. I tried ta tink how dirty I could fight. De da mighta’ pointed me in de right direction, but I had ta find de way meself.

Next time one a me brudders started wallopin’ me I grabbed him by the balls. Wit me teeth. Dat stopped him right away I can tell ye. One by one me brudders learned dat tryin’ ta fight me was the way to a wurld of pain. Dat’s when dey started callin’ me Mad Dog. The name always stuck.”

He took a deep draught from his pint, then wiped the creamy foam moustache from his upper lip.

“Well remind me never to get in a fight with you,” I laughed.
“Oh, I don’t do dat anymore. I learned more effective ways to fight. I could kill ye now with just me finger tips. But don’t worry, I won’t.”

Something about the way he said it made me believe that it might actually be true.

“Where’d ye learn a skill like that?” I asked.
“Oh Jaysus. De foreign legion, would ye believe?”
“You’re a legionnaire? Hope you don’t have that disease.”
“Nah, I’m not in de legion anymore. I did me time and I won’t be goin’ back, dat’s for sure.”
“Seriously? I thought you were only messin’.”
“If your boss is still feelin’ generous I’ll tell ye about it.”
While the cloudy Guinness settled I poured another generous Jameson.
“There y’are sir. Here’s to your health.” Again our glasses clunked (pints of Guinness never ‘clink’).
“My health, yes. Most important ting ye can ever have. Pick a tropical disease – Malaria, Typhoid, yella Fever, Dengue – I’ve had ‘em all. You learn to appreciate your health when you come out d’other side of dat..”
“Was that when you were in the legion?”
“Yeah, the French Fucken’ Legion.”
“How’d ye ever end up in that?”
“Well I told ye about the brudders and de fightin’ and how dere was feck all else ta do in de backend of de bog where we lived. So when I was old enough I joined the FCA – ye’ve heard of dem?”
“We used to call it the Free Clothes Association, because they gave out free uniforms to the fellas who volunteered.”

“Yeah, we thought it was great at de time, playin’ soldiers. I liked the rifle work de best. I was a fucken good shot too. Still am.” He gave an almost imperceptible shudder as he knocked back the rest of the glass of whiskey.

“Some people tink you join de legion ta forget. I joined just ta prove I was hard. Ta prove it to meself mostly. Fucksake. Anyway I knew I was a good shot, so I thought about being a marksman – ye know – a sniper like. But durin’ de basic trainin’ I learned dat snipers have a short shelf life. Dey’re de furst ones dat get picked off. So I chose explosives instead. With explosives ye get in and ye get out. If ye do your job right you’re long gone before the action starts. If ye do it wrong then ye don’t live long enough to know a ting about it.”

“So you blew stuff up?”
“Fuck yeah. Roads, bridges, airports, cars, boats, presidential palaces... you name it, I’ve blown ‘em all up. Sometimes even been well outta de country before de fireworks started.”
“So you were good at what you did?”
“De best. Dey didn’t want ta let me go at de end of me time. Offered me lots more dough to stay too. But I said fuck it. I’d had some fun. I’d seen and done some dark, dark stuff and I’d had enough.”
“How long were you in it for?”
“Five years.”
“Not so long I suppose.”
“Not so long? You fucken try it. I saw enough for many lifetimes I can tell ye. Travelled de wurld over. Nearly every week in a different place sometimes. Ye live a lot in five years when ye live a life like dat.”
“So whatcha do when you got out?”
“Went back to Ireland. Settled down. Set up me own business.”
“Explosives?”
“Fuck off. Nah, security. High class stuff. I’d do special private contract stuff. Pick the jobs I wanted ta do. Southebys, Christies, ever heard of dem?”
“The auctioneers?”

“Yeah. So I’d work for de likes of dem. Sometimes dey come to Ireland. Some Lord such and such or Baron swankypants in debt from livin’ de high life is sellin’ off the family art collection. Dere’s more of dem feckers dan ye’d tink. Ye wouldn’t believe de number of Monets and Van Goghs and Rembrants and de like that are gatherin’ dust hanging on de walls of some of dem houses. Sometimes de fella doesn’t even live dere at all and has some penthouse in London or New York, or he mighta inherited de lot from some forgotten aunt.

Anyway, once de wurd gets ‘round that there’s all this stuff for sale, it needs to be protected. Easy work. Cameras and a coupla fellas in de back of a van with A-Kays usually does de trick. It’s de day of de auction where ye have to maintain a discreet, but visible presence. I only worked with fellas I knew. All ex-legion like meself. When you’ve been on the front line with someone, you find out quick who you can trust, who has your back like. It creates a bond.

So me and de lads would dress up nice, suit and tie, bullet-proofed and armed underneath, earphone radio contact with each other all the time. Other guys in trees and bushes all along the road. Photos and files on everyone on de guest list. A whole lotta work. A whole lotta dough.”

“So you made you fortune and retired?”
“Made a fair bit, yeah. But I got retired.”
“What d’ye mean?”
“Dunno why I’m tellin’ ye all dis. How’s yer boss feelin’?”
“Still in a generous mood no doubt. Same again?”
“If you insist.”

It was closing time and the bar was starting to empty. I gave Ray his drinks and gave the lads a hand clearing dead glasses and dirty ashtrays, then sat down at the bar again with another glass of water.

“Bet ye were an altar boy back home, were ye?” said Ray. “Did ye take de fucken pledge?”
“No and no to that. Anyway so you ‘got retired’.”
“Fuckenhell. And dey call me Mad Dog. You’re like a fucken dog with a Frisbee – ye don’t let go, do ye?”
“Ah, sure I’m just curious. It’s fun to hear about a more exciting life than chopping onions and cleaning dirty plates. Anyway, how’d you end up here in France?”
“Well the short version is the missis is French.”
“And the long version?”
“If I tell you the long version I’ll have to kill you.”
“The short version is good. Very good.”
“I’m only messin’. Sure who would ye tell? And who’d believe ye anyways?”

Though Ray had downed a fair number of drinks, he still seemed stone cold sober. Just a slight gloss over his eyes and an unusual level of loquacity gave any indication that the alcohol affected him in any way.

“I was sittin’ in me local in Rathfarnam. I was livin’ in Dublin at that stage, if ye can call Rathfarnam Dublin. Anyway, I’m on me own enjoyin’ a quiet pint. It’s the evening. It’s the winter. There’s a turf fire blazin’ in the grate... Jays, I miss de smell of burnin’ turf. I’m mindin’ me own business when this young fella comes in the door. I can see him reflected in the whiskey mirror hanging up behind the bar. He looks around, kinda nervous like, then heads straight up to the bar beside me. I have me elbows on the bar and he shoves something solid in against me ribs, just there.

‘Dere’s sumwin out in the cyar-park wants ti talk ti yis,’ he says. ‘If yi don’t come out, I have arders to shoot yi here and now.’ His voice is shakin’ but his hand is steady enough and I don’t think it’s a bluff. He puts de gun back in his pocket and follows me out de door. ‘Over deyre,’ he says, ‘Rewnd’ de bahk.’

Ye can’t see de road from dere and dere’s no windows from de pub either, just a pile of empty kegs and a few cars. Two fellas are standing in front of one of de cars. De young fella is acting brave now, tryin’ ta play it tough in fronta his boss. He has his gun out again and is pointin’ it at me. I know de setup. If sumptin’ goes wrong, de young fella takes de heat. He has to prove himself to de boss. I’m bargaining on de boss not holdin’ a gun himself, but I can’t really be sure. Nor about d'other fella standin' wit him.

I keep a cool face, but inside I’m boilin’ up. I’m not afraid, I’m just angry at dis little fecker pullin’ a gun on me. If he had asked nicely tings mighta gone better for him. Den again, maybe not. So he’s holding the gun out straight armed. I have me back to him, but I can see his reflection in the windscreen of one of de cars. I step aside to get a better angle and he follows. He might be de weakest link, but he’s de only one I know for sure is armed. Armed and scared, which makes him doubly dangerous.

‘What’s the story lads?’ I ask all casual like.
‘We know who you are,’ says de boss, a tall skinny fella in his fifties. ‘We know that you do work for the Brits. You turned your back on your own kind. We know about your past too, and the way you make things go bang. Your skills are very useful and we’d like for you to come back to your own kind and join the cause. We want you to take a few weeks off to teach your fellow patriotic countrymen a bit of what you know. Let’s call it an intersection of interests and specialities.’

I’m still feckin’ furious at being held up at gun point. In me own local too. That means dey’ve had deyre eye on me for a while. Dey’ll know about de missis too.

‘Well alright then,’ sez I. ‘I’ll give yis de first lesson for free. Never bring a man to a meetin’ witout friskin’ him first. I mean, if this gobshite here can get his hands on a gun, you think I can’t?’ I put me arms up in the air and give the second fella a nod, the one who is standing beside the tall fecker and hasn’t said a word yet. He looks at his boss, who nods too.

As he steps forward to frisk me I look the tall fecker in de eye and say 'Checkmate.’

I don’t even have ta tink about it. De instincts just take over and de body memory does its ting. I’m sorta like outside of meself watchin’ it all happen.

I swing around and grab de first fucker by his gun arm. I squeeze his fingers on de trigger and shoot the second fella, de frisker, pop-pop in de legs. I’m still spinnin’ d’other fella by de arm. I pull de gun free as I rip his arm up behind him with an awful fecking crunch. He screams. De frisker is lying on the ground with two pumping spouts of blood shooting up from his legs like little black fountains. I keep the gun trained on the tall fucker, who has gone white as a sheet and hasn’t made a move.

‘On yer knees ya cunt,’ I yell. He’s so scared he can’t even obey, so I bop him on de toppa de head wit de butt of de gun. He crumples and I grab a handful of hair. I don’t have ta, but I’m ragin’ and de killer instinct has taken over. I’m still watching meself as if from outside and I see the fella’s face smash on the bumper of the car, again and again. I’m screamin’ all sortsa shit, with the gun pointed at d’other pair, who are still rollin’ on the ground.

I realize dat the tall fella’s body has gone completely limp. I let him drop. I go over to de fella who I shot and kick him in de head. And d’other one, de one who pulled de gun on me in de furst place, is crying for his mammy now. Part of me wants to shoot him too, but the adrenaline is startin’ to subside, so I just stamp on his legs instead, so as he can’t run away. Then I shove de gun in me pocket and jump in me own car.

I’m shakin’ as I drive away. I don’t tink any of dem are dead, but I don’t hold out much hope for the fella shot in de legs. De reality of what I’ve done starts to hit me. I’ve just fucked with de wrong people. I’m a dead man. I am well and truly fucked.

I get home. The missis’ car is parked outside. She’s home. She’s safe. I strip off all of me clothes and put dem in a pile just inside de door at de bottom of de stairs. I tell de wife to pack a bag. We’re leavin’ right away. She looks at me and knows I’m serious. She never sez a wurd. I have a shower and change me clothes. Den I rip up the bedroom floorboards and pull out de emergency bag. I hoped I’d never have to use it, but it has everyting we need. Enough cash to lay low for a coupla years, new passports, new names. I reach in a bit further under de floorboards and pull out a coupla plastic wrapped petrol cans. I open one and splash petrol over de bed and de broken floor boards, de stairs, all de way to de front door where de missis is standin’ waitin’ with her bag in her hand.

‘We’re takin’ your car. You can drive,’ I sez, givin’ her de emergency bag as i push her out de door.
I dig the gun outta the pile of me clothes and den pour de rest of de petrol out on toppa me clothes. I liked that jacket and all, but it’s no time to be sentimental. I set fire to de lot. Den I open me own car and throw in d’other can of petrol and set dat alight too.”

“Why ‘d ye burn everything?” I asked, my own heart beating fast at this incredible tale.

“I wanted to disappear witout a trace. No time to wipe everything down for fingerprints. I got in de back and lay down hidin’ meself under a blanket as de missis drove away. ‘Where are we going?’ she asks. ‘Find a phonebox,’ sez I.

De first phone box was vandalized. De second one worked alright. I call a friend of mine in Wexford who has a fishin’ boat. A big one, like a trawler. We arrange to meet up in a spot in de Wicklow mountains. It was de middle of the night. We set de missis’ car on fire there too. A few hours later when we were far out at sea I dropped de gun into the Irish Sea. Two days later we were in France.”

“So you never went back?”

Ray never answered, he just emptied his pint.

The barroom floors were mopped, the glass-washer had spun its final round. The lads all poured themselves pints. Someone put another pint down in front of Ray. He accepted it with a silent nod. He didn’t join in as we all sat around chatting. After a while he drained his pint and with a silent wave over his shoulder he left the bar without looking back.

The Rubber Tappers' Mangle

2012-01-12T06:53:00.000-08:00

The rubber tapper’s mangle liesrusting in the old plantation grove. Subramaniam kicks it lightly. Pokes thecrank handle with his foot. It is immoveable. Rust scabs have welded the cogstight. Rust and blackened dried latex fill the diagonal grooves of the mangle’srollers. The rubber trees are all old now. No one bothers to tap them anymore.The estate owner is dead. His children all live overseas. None of them wantedto come back here and manage the estate. They had probably wanted to get awayfrom the stifled existence of the rubber estate just as much as Subramaniam hadwhen he was in his teens.

He walks towards the overgrownold concrete temple with its faded flaking blue and yellow paint. He hears theangry whining sound of chainsaws and the rumble of bulldozers in the distance. Palmoil will replace the rubber trees. Such is life, he muses. Everything isreplaced with something else.

He feels a helpless, gnawingmelancholic hollowness, coming back here after so many years. He will neverrecapture the purity of a childhood spent so removed from the world.

The isolation of the estate hadprotected him, but it had made him a prisoner too. The never-ending straightlines of rows of rubber trees as effective as any prison bars. And that elusivechildhood innocence had been lost long before he made his escape.

Inside the old abandoned temple helooks up at the mould-speckled image of the dark Goddess painted on the ceiling,and murmurs a little prayer to her.

He had tried to run away once. Hepicked a line of trees and followed it. The easiest way to get lost in a rubberestate is to leave the row you are in. At first he walked. Then he ran. But nomatter how fast he ran he seemed to be stuck in the same place. Caught in anunchanging landscape. All that lay beyond the neat rows of trees were more neatrows of trees. Only the rise and fall of the land, the slopes and hollows,showed him that he was moving at all.

He thought about turning back.There was no escape possible. The entire world was just one endless rubber estate.The thought discouraged him, then spurred him on. Gave him renewed will tocontinue. He ran again.

Eventually he made it breathless tothe edge of the estate. A small river separated the estate and the rainforest.Subramaniam didn’t know how to swim. He didn’t know how deep the murky brownwater could be. He took a fallen branch and prodded the water. Testing thedepth. Testing the current. The current wasn’t fast, but it was enough to tugthe branch. Enough to make it difficult to find the bottom. He prodded andtested the water with his stick the same way he sometimes prodded and testedand teased the drowsy brown plantation dogs.

He stripped off his clothes andtied them in a bundle, prudishly keeping on his underwear, even though therewas no one around to see. Back in the rubber tapper’s village he washed himselfin public at the well. He did so half-hidden in a sarong, just like everyoneelse except the smallest children. He stepped into the water. It was cool andrefreshing after his run. The water flowed around his ankles. Around his shins.Around his knees. Towards midstream, where the current was strongest, the waterreached his chest. It pulled him off balance and he lost his footing. Hisbundled clothes went under the water, but he held them tight. Then his facewent under too. He took a mouthful of muddy water. Then another. Coughing andspluttering and splashing his feet somehow found the riverbed again. He wadedout of the water half panicked, half elated. He had made it across. He squattedon a sun-warmed rock on the river bank as he caught his breath. Squeezed thewater from his clothes. Let breath and the thumping heartbeat in his headsubside.

The sounds of the forest weredifferent to the sounds of the plantation. Loud insects chirped and whined andscreeched. Suspended strands of spiderwebs caught tickling on his face. Theundergrowth had been dense along the riverbank. He had almost turned back. Butafter a few minutes of pushing and scratching he found himself standing betweengiant columns of trees taller and thicker than any rubber tree would ever grow.The trees were all different. There was no sense of order in the way they grew.For some reason Subramaniam’s spirit found that instantly liberating. Each treehad its own personality and character. Some with rough bark. Others smooth.Trees with enormous buttress roots, though he didn’t know they were called thatat the time. He walked balancing with extended arms along the length of a giantfallen tree.

There were more birds too, thoughmostly he could only hear them. Butterflies, in colours he had never seen onthe plantation, flittered and bounced. Drawn by the salt in his sweat theylanded on his arms. There were mushrooms and fungi in profusion and dozens ofsmaller plants and mosses and creepers that grew on and around the biggertrees. He had never known that nature could be so rich and diverse.

He hadn’t thought clearly aboutwhat he would find once he escaped the estate. His only thought had been to getaway. To get away from the rubber tapper’s village with its rusted tin-roofedtemple and its one-roomed school. To get away from his family and their tinywooden house. To get away from his uncle and his nasty wandering hands.

He knew it wasn’t right for hisuncle to touch him that way, but somehow didn’t feel he could tell his mother,or anyone else. He was too ashamed. He felt it was his own fault. Felt that itwas a sort of punishment for something that was wrong with him. For alwaysbeing that odd boy. That strange boy. For not fitting in the way he wasexpected to.

Subramaniam realized that he was utterlylost. He tried to turn back, but didn’t recognize anything. He didn’t knowwhich way he had come from, nor which way to go. He was beginning to understandthat the forest might be even bigger than the estate. Perhaps the rubber estatewas only a tiny island of ordered trees within the huge immensity of theforest. He started to be afraid. He would even be happy to see his uncle now,if he would help him find his way out of this forest.

It never takes long for the sunto go down in the tropics. Subramaniam knew that there was no point in tryingto find his way back in the dark. Though it frightened him, he knew that hewould have to spend the night in the forest. He saw the monkeys watch him fromthe branches of the trees overhead. He wasn’t sure what other animals wouldcome out at night. Maybe there were tigers or snakes or scorpions. He thoughtabout the monkeys and the way they slept in the trees. It was probably thesafest place to be. Of course there was still the risk of snakes, but Subramaniamknew snakes well enough from the estate. He would rather take his chances witha snake than a prowling tiger. It wasn’t easy to find a tree big enough to holdhim comfortably that he would still be able to climb, but eventually he foundone that he could scramble up. He huddled himself in a squat in the crook ofthe trunk and one of the biggest branches. Though he was still frightened hewas pleased at his own resourcefulness.

It was only when he wascomfortably squatting in the tree, as darkness fell, that he realized that hewas hungry. Ravenous in fact. He had stuffed a couple of idly in his pocket that morning at breakfast, but now the littlerice-flour breads had become a soggy congealed mess in his damp clothes. He atethem all the same. He was still hungry afterwards, but not with the same intensity.

As the sky darkened the sounds ofthe forest changed. Different insects and birds took over. Frogs and lizardstoo. If anything, the forest was even louder at night than during the day.Maybe because the creatures couldn’t see one another they had to makethemselves heard instead.

He tried to think about what hewould do. He could try and make his way through the forest and risk being lostforever. Or he could go back home to the estate. And be lost forever too.

He didn’t think he would sleep.But he must have, because when he awoke the sun was shining softly through thetrees. He had survived. No tiger had come to eat him. The position of the risingsun told him which way he would go.

When Subramaniam finally made itback to the tapper’s village his mother held him close for a long time. It feltgood to be there in her arms. But something in him had changed. He was nolonger the boy who had run away. He was the young man who had returned. Albeittired and hungry and weak. Covered with scratched and cuts. Bleeding from leechbites. Even though he had only been gone a few days he knew he had started anew chapter in his life. The villagers looked at him differently now. Morekindly. Perhaps they recognized themselves in him. Perhaps they all understoodonly too well the desire to flee the constricted confines of this place.Admired his bravery for making an attempt to escape.

A week later when his uncle’sfingers came in the night, he twisted them and bit them. When his uncle’s fistsstarted to beat him he fought back with hard fists of his own. But his unclewas a stronger and more experienced fighter and finally had his way. Throughhis angry tears Subramaniam swore revenge.

He knew his uncle’s habits aswell as he knew his own. Life on the plantation was led in a regimentedunchanging way, where every day was like the rest. He knew that when his unclereturned from tapping in the mid-morning he would eat and then take a nap. Heknew that his uncle would wake up in the afternoon still groggy. He knew hewould take his soap to the village well and wash away sleep’s sticky sweat.

Subramaniam stole his uncle’ssoap while he slept. He also took a little paper-wrapped rectangular bundle.Hiding in a row of rubber trees he carefully unwrapped the shining razor blades. He broke them down their jagged middle.Using a folded rag to protect his fingers he pushed the blades deep into thesoap. A little water rubbed on the surface sealed the scars. It looked justlike any innocent bar of soap.

Subramaniam waited three daysuntil he heard his uncle’s shouts. Then he heard the other villager’s too. Asmall crowd had grown around his bleeding uncle. They looked on in helplesshorror. Blood poured from small cuts on his torso, his arms, his neck and hishead. The blood turned the white soap lather on his dark skin pink. The mangasped speechlessly for breath, like a fish out of water suffocating on the air.A pulsing jet of blood splashed to the ground between his feet. Everyonewatched with horror as a blooming crimson flower spread across the front of theold sarong he wore around his waist. His eyelids fluttered and he collapsed ina soapy bloody mess.

Subramaniam was as horrified asthe rest of the villagers. He hadn’t meant to kill his uncle. No one daredtouch the bleeding man. Someone muttered that it was the work of evil spirits.A bomoh’s deadly spell. Subramaniamstepped forward and knelt over his uncle. His tears were real as he watched histormentor’s face turn grey and heard his last rasping gasp of breath. Shieldinghis actions with his body he quickly slipped the soap from his uncle’s handinto his pocket. He was confident no one had seen.

Later he buried the soap deepinside the plantation. Under the soil time worked to remove the evidence. Monsoonrains dissolved the soap. Speckled rust finally took the thin blades.

Richard Pickering stood back fromthe small crowd. He watched his workers carry the shroud wrapped body from themiserable lean-to hut that they called a temple. The smell and smoke of incensedrifted in the air. There were chants for their Gods Vinayaka and Murugan. Invocationsfor Shiva and Kali too. The women wore their best saris, miserable fadedlengths of cloth. Their oiled combed hair was tied back and decorated with littlebundles of jasmine flowers.

The workers had built a pyre alittle distance away and added dried cowpats and melted ghee to the wood. Somechemical combination of the two allowed the fire to burn stronger.

As the flames flickered up aroundthe body the crowd drew back from the heat. His own cook was playing the roleof priest, bare-chested with a clean white sarong tied round his waist. Hecould see the man’s dark skin shine with sweat as he ministered the fire. Then thecook stepped back too.

Richard watched in half-repulsedfascination as the flames ate away the shroud and flesh revealing the sinewsand bones beneath. It made one feel quite mortal to watch the process. Remindedone how precious life truly is.

A young man, the dead man’snephew apparently, barely a teenager, but big-boned and strongly built, steppedforward to the flames. He was armed with a long thick stick. Flickeringflame-light reflected in the boy’s intense eyes. Perspiration beaded upon hisforehead. He raised the stick high over his head and with sudden unexpectedviolence brought it down and cracked open the leering skull. It made an awfulcrunching popping sound. The brains dribbled and sizzled in the flames. Richardturned away.

It was an unsavoury business thiswhole incident but at least it had been contained. The last thing Richardwanted was to get the authorities involved. He had met with some of his workerswho had voiced their suspicions about the death. About the man. About the boy.They had come to an agreement. In exchange for their discretion they would geta new temple.

Subramaniam settled back into theroutine of school and household chores. There was alwayswork to be done around the house. Honing his mother’s hooked tapping knife,weeding and tending the vegetable plot with its twisted purple brinjals, fieryred chili peppers and creepers of bitter gourds and long beans.

There were other trees thanrubber around the village too. Towering palms that Subramaniam scaled to gathercoconuts. Curry leaf bushes with their little hard shiny leaves. Kapok trees withtheir horizontal branches and their suspended thick sausage-like pods that madethe children snicker. When ripe the pods were filled with soft cotton that wasused to make mattresses, pillows and cushions. The cotton was so soft that tofeel it Subramaniam caressed the sensitive skin on his cheeks. On his lips.

Jackfuit trees with their giantfruit, and its cousin Cempedak, provided sweet feasts. When the rich Durian wasin season, and fell dangerously from the trees, it was so nutritious that thevillagers even went without rice. There were mangoes and rambutans andmangosteens too. Fruits that were so delicious, Subramaniam could never decidewhich was his favourite.

The lazy slaps of wet soapyclothes against time polished washing stones echo through the sleepy afternoonair. Chickens cluck and scrape and scratch the bare soil around the centralplace between the huddled houses and huts the villagers call home. In thedistance goats bleat from the dark shade of the rubber trees where they havebeen pegged. They are kept as a source of occasional meat.

Unseen cows’ lows echo improbablyloud through the trees. They will return from the shade when the sun sinksdown. Subramaniam washes them with water from the well and whispers his deepestsecrets into their silent trusting ears.

He milks them daily as the sunrises and sets. The homely smell of the warm white liquid squirting into thepail mixes with dawn and dusk fragrances of frangipanis and the jasmine flowers- flowers the girls gather to tie into garlands to be offered and draped overcast bronze deities in the miserable village temple.

Later his mother will triple boilthe milk. He watches the frothy foam rising and falling in the pan like deepsighing breaths. Some will be used to make morning tea. The rest will bechurned to butter, then clarified to make cooking ghee. The cowpats are spreadas fertilizer on the vegetable plot or are sundried to be used as fuel.

Subramaniam was bored at school.He couldn’t relate the numbers and calculations to the world around him. Hisworld was made of countless colours and tones and different shades of light anddark. He could write the curly Tamil alphabet, but found it difficult to fitthe letters together to form words. When he looked at the words he saw shapes,but didn’t hear the sounds they were supposed to make. The letters becameconfused somewhere along the route between the page and his eyes and his mind. Insteadhe spent his time doodling and drawing. Since he was quiet and well-behaved theteacher was content to let him fill his exercise book with images and designs. Noone expected an uneducated rubber tapper’s child to grow up to be anythingother than a rubber tapper. The teacher thought that the villagers were justlike the other livestock, only bred to serve the estate and its latex drippingtrees.

While Subramaniam’s writingbarely evolved, his drawing became more detailed. One afternoon, a day he neverwould forget, he looked down at the picture he had just drawn on the page. Itwas a picture of a tree that he could see outside through an opening in themud-brick wall. Somehow it popped up off the page and became real. Some magicalprocess had breathed life into the pencil lines. He looked outside at the treeagain and closed his eyes. He could hold the image there. He could lift androtate it. He could move in closer or draw further away. He opened his eyes andlooked at his drawing. Behind his closed eyes he could manipulate the drawingin the same way. He realized right there and then that he could draw. He knewthen and there with sudden clarity that he would do this for the rest of hislife.

He stood in the temple transfixedbefore a framed picture of the Goddess Kali. The light shone down in diagonalrays through the lacework of holes in the rusted tin roof. He spent an hourstaring at the image and its faded colours. He committed every detail tomemory. When he closed his eyes he could conjure her up in every detail, butwith the colours and lines much more vivid and detailed.

Kali became his muse and he drewher over and over again until he got her just right. The teacher was soimpressed that he replaced the faded image in the temple with Subramaniam’s newdrawing. Soon all the villagers were admiring and even bowing and praying infront of Subramaniam’s Kali.

All the villagers came out to seethe newly arrived workers and their heavily laden truck. It was rare enoughthat they had the chance to see the faces of strangers, though the three men’sdark faces were very much like their own. The villagers watched with shyreserve as the temple builders set up the canvas tent that would be their homefor the next two months.

The men of the village lent ahand to dig the trenches and pits for the foundations of the new temple.Concrete was poured. Brick walls and pillars were erected in little more than aweek. Then the walls and alcoves for the Gods were smoothly plastered.

The temple workers weren’tunaware of the intense scrutiny of the strange man-boy who sat squattingwatching them.

“If you are going to hang aroundhere all day you may as well be of some use. You can get us some water todrink,” said the oldest of the three workers, a wiry hard-sinewed man namedGanesan. He was thin but he was strong and the long muscles in his forearmsrippled like snakes writhing just under the surface of his dark skin. His tonewas kindly, but authoritative. Subramaniam shook himself as if emerging from atrance and obediently fetched water for the three men.

Balaram, the painter, showedSubramaniam how to mix the paints. He explained how all colours could be madeby mixing red and yellow and blue. He showed him the long smooth brushstrokesrequired to paint the plastered walls in an even coat. Subramaniam studiouslyapplied sky blue to the back wall of the temple. Then he painted the pillars abright shade of yellow.

“Yellow is the colour of learningand happiness and peace. All these colours have meanings. If you try tounderstand them, then you will find out for yourself as you paint,” saidGanesan as he smilingly inspected Subramaniam’s work.

At first Balaram kept a close eyeon his progress, but he quickly understood that Subramaniam had a precise andsteady hand and never let the paint drip. He showed Subramaniam the importanceof cleaning the brushes after the day’s use, or else they would become hardenedand useless.

Subramaniam felt a newfoundconfidence in being entrusted with these jobs. He enjoyed seeing thetransformation from the bare plastered walls to bright new shining colours. Heenjoyed the resistance of the brush and the chemical smell of the paint, evenif it made him feel a little lightheaded.

While Balaram and Subramaniampainted the temple, Ganesan and his apprentice, a young man called Lingham whowas only a few years older than Subramaniam himself, were busy with the mouldedcement statues of the Gods. While Subramaniam finished painting the templewalls Balaram started painting the base colours for the statues.

As always Vinayaka, the elephantgod, the remover of obstacles, was the first. His rotund form was painted ashade of fleshy pink and left to dry before the finer details would be added.Balaram let Subramaniam paint the other Gods. When they were dry Balaram would addmore details. As each one was finished they were mounted in their alcoves orhoisted up on the roof by Ganesan and Lingam where they were fixed into place.

As the weeks passed dozens ofstatues had been added to the flat concrete roof. It really looked like aproper temple now and the villagers had started leaving offerings of flowersand coconuts at the feet of the statues, even though Ganesan chased them outand told them to wait until everything was finished.

It was time to move the few roughblackened stone carvings from the old temple to the new. Balaram and Ganesanstood together in front of Subramaniam’s Kali. They hadn’t noticed it beforeand discussed the unique attention to detail in the drawing.

“Who made this drawing?” askedGanesan. Subramaniam blushed to admit that it was his own work. “Well you are atruly talented artist. Why did you not tell us? You have been painting wallswhen you could have been painting Gods.”

There were still a few statuesleft to be finished. Now Subramaniam was allowed to paint the details underBalaram’s close supervision.

“The eyes are the most important.You leave the eyes until last,” said Balaram. He made Subramanian practice drawingand painting eyes on paper, then on rounded pebbles and finally on the statues.

“When you give eyes to the Gods theycome to life,” whispered Balaram. He saw that his student didn’t have much tolearn and what little he could teach him was quickly learned.

Ganesan and Balaram agreed thatthey should cultivate Subramaniam’s talents. They rigged a bamboo scaffoldinside the temple. There was a small platform on the top. Subramanian lay therewith his arm extended using charcoal to trace the outlines of her form withflawless accuracy. It was tiring on his arm to work at such an angle.

The following day he applied thepaints. While he slithered around the platform on his back he was aware of thethree workers packing away their things. He was sad to see them preparing toleave. These quiet men had accepted and befriended him. They had given him asense of self-worth.

When Subramaniam had finished thescaffold was removed. His body ached all over. He lay on the cool smooth cementlooking up at Kali.

Her four arms were spread open,one hand holding Shiva’s trident, another a bloodied blade. She also held asevered head and a bowl to catch the dripping blood. Her mouth was wide openand between her fangs protruded her long tongue. She wore only a skirt made ofsevered hands and a garland of human heads.

Where had she come from? Surelynot from him. It seemed as if the Goddess had come through him, from some otherdimension. Perhaps the realm of Gods.

Ganesan slipped silently into thetemple and lay down beside Subramaniam.

“She is the Mother of theUniverse, the demon slayer. She destroys all that is impure. All that sheleaves is perfection.”

They both silently admired theGoddess with only the sounds of the wind whispering through the leaves of therubber trees and the unanswered mournful call of a lonely Koel.

“You are a great artist,” Ganesansaid after a while. “If I asked you to come with us and build and paint moretemples would you come?”

Subramaniam turned to look athim.

“I cannot leave. My mother wouldnot allow. I must become a rubber-tapper. This is my destiny.”

“No, your destiny is what youmake it. You have the right to choose. I have spoken to your mother and thewhite man. They say only you can decide to stay or leave. If you come with usall I can promise is a simple life of hard work, but with fair pay. It is anhonourable life. The Gods have given you a talent. You must not throw theirgift back in their face. But it is for you to decide now, because we leavetoday.”

The sound of the chainsaws andbulldozers brought Subramaniam back to the present. Old, grey-haired Subramaniam,the one whose paintings hung in galleries and rich men’s homes all over theworld, thanked young Subramaniam for his courage that day. He slowly turned around andwalked away.

I made up my mind

2012-01-09T10:53:00.000-08:00

I made up my mind

It took me years to do

Thousands and thousands of words

and thoughts

and images

and impressions

and feelings

and emotions

all layered on top of each other

intertwined and meshed

into a unique neural network

I call my mind

None of it is real

or tangible

in any true sense

I can’t see it

touch it

smell

or taste

or hear it

I try to look at it

and realize

it’s all fictional fantasy

flight of fancy

all of it made up

I made up

my mind

My mind is made up

White Snow-Jackets

2012-01-09T09:31:00.000-08:00

I had already spent more than twomonths looking for a job and didn't seem any closer to finding one. None of thesmall ads in the newspaper or the offers at the job centre fitted my peculiarprofessional profile. If I had been a plasterer or a bricklayer I could havefound some work, but I wasn't so I didn't.

"Your main advantage is yourlanguages," said the counsellor at the job centre with a smile as shefluttered her eyelashes at me. "Imean not many people in this part of France are so talented to speak Englishand French and Dutch. The thing you have to understand though is that there's areason for that. There's absolutely no need for languages here. Maybe Spanish abit, but not really. Some people speak Basque, but that won't help you find ajob. You really should think about expanding the geographical scope of yoursearch. I think you'd have much more luck on the coast."

The French Basque coast stretchesfrom the Spanish border at Hendaye to Bayonne and has a thriving tourist trade.I was disinclined to return to the hotel and catering industry with itsunsociable hours, poor benefits and low pay. My flirtatious job counsellorsuggested I approach companies involved in import-export. I sent CVs out toproducers of the famed Bayonne Ham, but they all wanted me to speak Basque. Iwasn't willing to put in the time and effort required to learn Europe's oldesttongue. In fact Basque might be the most ancient spoken language on the planet.Its origins are lost in pre-history and still baffle ethno-linguists to thisday.

As well as Bayonne Ham the Basquecoast is famous for its waves. Huge Atlantic rollers wash in with dramaticcrashing grace. In the past I had often sat on the dunes and watched theaquatic acrobatics of the wet-suited surfers, or seen them bobbing like seals beyondthe wave-break waiting for The Big One to come along. These waves drew surfersfrom around the world and the exceptional quality of life in this corner of theSouth West of France tempted many of them to stay. The big brand surf companiesall had their European bases here. I sent them my CV.

I made it to interview stage withQuiksilver. They had a big bright open-plan work space that faced out to thoseiconic Atlantic waves. There was a barefoot work-ethic that appealed to mestraight away. The brash confident staff looked as if they had just stepped outof a catalogue, wearing clothes of their own company’s brand. They had sun-bleached hair and salt-curedskin, broad shoulders and slim waists. Like the army, there seemed to be aminimum height requirement of over six feet. That was both the men and women.

I didn't match any of thesecriteria, but my paperwork looked good.

"Well, we like what we see?" saidthe personnel manager, a whiny voiced Australian whose voice went up at the endof each sentence? As if everything was a question? "But just one important thing we need toknow? I don't see it mentioned on your CV? Do you surf?"

A few years earlier, in OxnardCalifornia, I had tried to learn to surf. I struggled to move from kneeling tostanding on an enormous unsinkable long-board, that was really more like asmalll raft. A massive wave caught me by surprise and for endless seconds I wason spin-cycle in the ocean's laundromat. I surface just in time to see thesurfboard pop up out of the water like a giant high-velocity slice of toast,narrowly avoiding decapitating two paddling children, who screamed out infright. Back on the beach their furious father roared angry saliva into my face.I was still shaken and breathless from my tumble-wash in the waves. The wholeincident marked me strongly and left me with a sour and salty taste in mymouth. Though I still swam regularly, I never tried to surf again.

I didn't bore the personnelmanager with the details. But when I announced that I was not a true member ofthe tribe, his facial tics were enough to tell me all I needed to know.

"We'll be in touch with you? Thanks for taking the time to stop bytoday?"

In fairness they did write back,to say they'd keep my application on file. It could be there still for all Iknow.

But while Billabong, RipCurl andQuiksilver might have been the big boys on the block they weren't the only surfcompanies based on the Basque Coast. I got a call from one of the smalleroperators. I'll give it a fake name. Let's call it Crusty.

There were no sprawling open-planbeach-front views here. Instead Crusty's European headquarters were hidden in asmall industrial zone in an area behind the local prison in one of the BasqueCountry's larger towns.

The interview went better than Iexpected. In fact they offered me a job straight away. I sat opposite themanaging director, who kept his hand on his financial manager's shapely kneethroughout most of the interview. The director was a short, stocky Californianalmost as wide as he was high. In every sense of the word.

He asked me to call him 'Brando'. His brother's had given him the nickname. He assured me that he deeply lovedhis brothers, who it seemed, ran the Californian side of things.

"Man, it's great that youspeakee English dude, ya hear me? Mean I'm half goin' half out my head lisnento these Frenchies speak that shit. Youn me talk the same thing. We unnerstanmano to mano, right?"

"Sure," I said.

"But man what rilly blew meway is that you can speak Dutch. That's kinda skill we need in an operationlike this."

I was a bit sceptical as to thelinguistic advantage that my mastery of Dutch was supposed to bring to the job.Most Dutch speakers speak perfectly coherent English, and many of them do somuch more intelligibly than my future-ex-employer.

Then the interview took a strangeturn. I should have realized right then that this was not the place for me.Brando lifted his hand from the financial manager's leg and placed both elbowsheavily on the table.

"You know, you like dude wecan pay part, or all your wages in cocaine. That would really work for us. Andwe're talking the pure here man. This shit uncut. Least not much. You could cutit yourself and make a lotta bucks. Like you could make way more than we gonnapay you. We pay you to make more than we pay you. You see the beauty of it?Win-win for both of us. Specially for you and for me.

I made up a story on the spotabout a bank loan. "...you see, so my banker really would prefer to see apay-cheque on my account at the end of each month."

Brando looked at the financialmanager who still hadn't said a word. She shrugged and then nodded.

"But you change your mindmano let us know. We'll give you a really good deal. Be here tomorrow at nineand we'll show you the ropes. Meantime me and Francine gotta get down on someeuh... financial planning, hearme."

I thanked him and got up to leave.He stood up and punched me on the shoulder so hard that it left a bruise for aweek. "I like you Irish, you gonna teach me speak somma thatAmsterdam." Then in mock whisper, "but right now ima gonna teach Francine some financialtricks. Later man."

I was so happy to have found ajob that I didn't dwell too much on the weirdness. I had grown up knowing thateven though Americans spoke more or less the same language as we did in Irelandthey were essentially an alien race.

A friend had offered me the useof his holiday apartment just outside St Jean de Luz. I could stay there untilthe summer, which would give me time to get back on my feet financially andfind a place of my own.

Basically my job at Crusty was anoffice job. I was given my own desk in an open office with a dozen or so otherpeople. There were lots of complicated customs declaration details to learn. Eachcountry had its own particular sets of rules. Europe might have been on thepath of harmonization, but it wasn't quite there yet. I also had to deal withsports goods shops, agents and distributers based all over Northern Europe. Inever once had to use my Dutch.

Crusty had started out withsurfboards and quickly expanded into lycra rash-guard shirts and wet-suits.They later broadened their range to include a much wider range of goods, fromswimwear to sunglasses, from snowboards to shirts. Backpacks and snow clotheswere among the hundreds of items shipped into the warehouse downstairs. Thoughthey were made cheaply in China they were mostly good quality. A generous staffdiscount and a freebie seconds-bin soon revitalized my ailing wardrobe.

My co-workers weren't surfers, oreven wannabees. Most were quiet introverted folks who kept their heads down andtheir mouths shut. I soon found out why.

The main office was upstairsabove part of the warehouse. At one end was Brando’s office, his bathroom suite,and what he called his ‘playpen’. Encouraged by my colleagues, I sneaked a look at it one day when he wasout. I was surprised by what I saw. The room was quite small, perhaps fourmetres by four and was completely empty. That in itself wasn’t what made itstrange. The floor I recognized as rice-straw tatami mats in the purestJapanese style, but it was the padded walls that gave the room its peculiarlook. That, and what looked suspiciously like splattered bloodstains on thewhite ceiling tiles.

“Il est la? Is he there?” asked agiant of a man who had appeared at the top of the stairs dressed in animmaculate white starched judogi.

“He’ll be back in half an hour,” answered Dominique, the office supervisor.

“Okay, I’ll wait for him inside.”

Half an hour later Brando camebounding up the steps thumping a fist in an open palm.

“Did he get here yet? Did he gethere yet? Did he get here yet?” he asked, bouncing up and down on the spot.Dominque nodded and Brando headed for the windowless playpen. As the doorslammed shut glances were exchanged around the office, but no one said a word.

“Brando takes judo lessons?” Iasked my neighbour.

“Eh...not exactly,” she replied.

Soon I heard muffled shoutsemerging from the padded playpen. The wall’s themselves vibrated, as someone’sbody was slammed hard against the other side.

Forty-five minutes later the judoteacher emerged from the cell. His neat white judogi was soaked in sweat. One of the trouser legs was torn andthere was blood all down the front of his chest. One eye was swollen shut witha nasty blackish bruise. He limped across the room towards the stairs withoutlooking at any of us.

“Wow, the poor guy,” I said whenhe was gone.

“Oh don’t worry about him. He’snot poor. That forty-five minutes just earned him more than you or I will earnhere in three months. And he’ll be back again next week.”

A few days later I witnessedanother demonstration of Brando’s propensity for uncontrolled violence.

“Godam mutha’ fuckin’ bullshit!”roared Brandon as he stormed into the office. His face was almost purple, hishands rapidly clenching and unclenching into fists.

“Don’t look in his eyes,” whisperedthe girl at the next desk.

“Fuckers!” screamed Brandon,spittle flying and foam flecks gathering at the corners of his mouth. Hegrabbed the edge of a desk, lifted it with ease and flung it halfway across theroom where it landed with a crash. The computer and the printer that had beenon the desk lay in a broken pile on the floor. He kicked the lot repeatedly,sending keyboard keys flying like a spray of broken teeth, then turned andstomped back to his lair.

Everyone just went on with theirwork as if nothing had happened. Francois came out from the computer room,uprighted the desk and cleared up the broken computer.

When dealing with orders from thecustomers I often had to make and receive phone calls. I was in constantcontact with agents, distributors and shopkeepers from all across NorthernEurope.

“Tell Brando I need more of thewhite snow-jackets. Four XL size this time.”

“I’ll let the warehouse know andthey’ll ship them with the rest of your order.”

“No, no, no. You have to letBrando know. Tell him yourself. Make sure he knows that it’s a special order.Four white snow-jackets, extra-large. My customers were very happy with thelast shipment and they want more of the same.”

I had many similar phone calls. “TellBrando that demand for white snow-jackets is very high now. Let him know that Icould probably sell twice as many if he can supply them at the same quality.”

Each time I knocked on Brando’sdoor and gave him the new ‘special order’ he punched the air with an elated “Yesss!”

I had no idea that snow-jacketswere such a high-fashion item. Surely on the snow you want to wear a colourthat can be seen. Why would anyone choose a jacket that would make them halfinvisible? I was curious about what they looked like, so I leafed through thecatalogue. There were no white coloured snow-jackets. I searched the reference numberand didn’t find them either. I keyed the reference number in to my computer andit came up listed as ‘in stock,’ but with no quantity mentioned, which was odd.

Every month there was an open dayat Crusty, when members of the local police force were invited to bring theirfamilies into the warehouse and purchase anything at cost price. There was alsowine and refreshments and finger-food provided by a local caterer. Properfinger food. Foie Gras canapés, caviar... the works. Brando himself, on his best behaviour, wouldserve the drinks himself, tousle kids hair and crack bad jokes in his terrible French.I had to admit that he really knew how to turn on the charm when he wanted toand could be a really likeable guy.

At this stage I had my doubtsabout Crusty’s activities and sources of revenue flow, but Brando was on suchgood terms with the police that I couldn’t possible approach them with my suspicions.I wouldn’t have anyway, because I still needed the job, which was varied enoughto keep my interest up and I really liked living on the coast. I had startedback some serious swimming and even if I still didn’t know how to surf, I startedto get a surfer’s chest. My Irish skin was even taking on that salt-curedpickled look and I spent my days in an office full of reasonably pretty, thoughrather shy, young ladies.

I was leafing through the moundof paperwork that had landed in my in-box. One was a form filled in for a returnof defective goods. I had come across this before, but it wasn’t really mydepartment so I sent the paperwork down to the warehouse. But this time Inoticed that under ‘description of articles’ someone had filled in ‘whitesnow-jackets.’

My curiosity got the better of meand I waited until most of the warehouse staff were gone off shift. Most ofthem started work around six so the merchandise could get out on the road earlyin the day. I put a wad of paperwork on a clipboard and headed downstairstrying my best to look like I knew where I was going.

It didn’t take me too long tofind the shelf where the returned goods were stacked. I picked up a box cutterand slit the tape on the box that had the serial number that matched the one ofthe return-form. Inside, wrapped in clear plastic, lay three pure whitesnow-jackets.

I pulled one out to look at it,to check what the problem was. At first I didn’t notice anything amiss, until Ipulled the zipper and opened it up. The lining of the jacket hat been slitsopen inside in long vertical cuts that looked like they were made with abox-cutter just like the one I had just put down. I slipped my hands into thesleeve and found that the lining there was all slit open too.

“Don’t worry ‘bout it man, Brandoreassured me the next morning when I went reported my find to him. He seemed tobe back to his ‘normal’ self, whatever that might mean.

“We’ll gettum stitched up andsendem back again. Stuff comes back all the time. No need to sweat it.”

“Maybe I can check any others andsee if they are okay before we ship them out,” I suggested.

“Nah, no need dude... Just forgetabout it right?” He fixed me with an unreadable look, but something in the coldway he said the last phrase made me understand that it was an order, not asuggestion.

After lunch I sat back down readyto attack a whole new batch of customs declarations when Dominque, the officesupervisor came over carrying a huge heavy stack of computer print-out paperand dropped it on my desk.

“You’ve got some new stuff to dotoday. The data-entry girls are falling behind, so you are going to have tohelp out.”

I’d done some data-entry in thepast and found it dull, monotonous work. Dominique divided the pile of paperinto three six inch high slabs. Each was a different report, with differentdetails that all needed to be entered manually into the computer to make a new spreadsheet.Each page had seventy-five entries. There were hundreds, if not thousands ofpages.

After half an hour ofmind-numbing data-entry I was halfway down the first page. At this rate it wasgoing to take me weeks, or even months to complete. I authorized myself to take a walk outside toget some fresh air.

Why had I suddenly been given theworld’s dullest job to do? Was I expected to handle the orders and the customsdeclarations as well? Something wasn’t right.

I went back inside and sat backdown and looked at the three reports. They had all been printed from the samesoftware system. So why did I have to spend my time inputting information intothe system when it was all already there?

I went to the coffee machine andgot two cups, then headed into the refrigerated computer room. Francois, theresident computer-manager was seated at his desk, wearing a padded snowboarderjacket to protect him from the cold. He looked up from the comic book he wasreading with a smile.

“So here’s Mister Marc come to relieve me from myboredom. You must want something or you wouldn’t be here. You know you are thefirst person who has come in here all week. I think sometimes they forget I’mhere, until something goes wrong with the machines.” I handed him a cup ofcoffee which was steaming in the cold temperature. “Coffee. That’s very thoughtful.You’ve just gained some extra points. So what can I do for you?”

I explained about the threereport sheets and the fields and values I was supposed to fill in for the newreport.

“Surely since they all come fromthe same data-base it must be possible to create a new report with theinformation that is already there.”

“Of course. So basically you’retelling me that the bosses are wasting your time?”

“And their time too. And theirmoney come to that.”

“Don’t worry about their money.Revenue isn’t a problem in this place. All the numbers come through these machines.I see them all. Even with negative sales this place would still turn over ahuge profit. Quite miraculous really,” and he burst into a fit of laughter. “Anywaypull over a chair and we’ll work on this report.”

It took Francois ten minutes to createa new report from the data-base that would only select the chosen fields Ineeded. We double checked it together and then he pressed print. A big noisyprinter shuddered into life regurgitating a continuous flow of paper that it swallowedfrom a cardboard box.

Half an hour later I dropped theprintout on Dominique’s desk.

“What’s this?” she asked.

“Your new report,” I answeredwith a cocky grin.

“But that’s not possible. Itshould take you weeks.”

“Well now I’ve just saved Crustya lot of time and money and I can get back to the rest of the stuff I have todo.”

She didn’t look very happy aboutmy incredible productivity.

“No. I think you should take acoffee break and I will check this report with Brando.”

I poured myself another cup ofcoffee and was halfway through it when Brando’s head appeared.

“Dude. My office.”

Used to the casual atmosphere atCrusty, I carried the mug with me.

I stepped inside and realizedthat there was nothing casual about the atmosphere today. Brando, Dominique andthe mute financial manager sat in a row behind his massive desk.

“Sidown. You got some splainin’to do.” He turned his desk lamp towards me, so I was half blinded and couldonly make out half his silhouette.

“Dominique here tells me that youdisobeyed a direck order and went bothering Francois for some unauthorizedreport. That true?”

I explained as best I could. Itmade perfect sense to me.

“Why do things the hard way whenyou can do them the easy way?” I asked.

“Funny you say that dude, ‘costhat’s the same thing I was gonna say to you. You been disobeyin’ orders andstickin’ your head in where it don’t belong. I’m gonna show you something now.And better you watch real good.”

He turned a little monitor on hisdesk round to face me. Thankfully he moved the light out of my face. I blinkedfor a moment and the image on the little screen came into focus.

It was staggered black and whiteshots from a security camera with the time and date printed in a little box inthe corner. I recognized the stairwell that led downstairs to the warehouse.Then I felt a sick, sour feeling spread through my body as I recognized myself frombehind moving down the stairs. I was carrying a clipboard in one hand.

The next shots were in thewarehouse and the clipboard had been replaced with a box cutter. I saw myselfslit open a cardboard box, then pull out a white snow-jacket. Next the camerazoomed in and I saw the vertical slits in the lining of the jacket I washolding.

“Now you think hard and you thinkgood. You know what went on down there with those jackets. I know what went ondown there with those jackets. You know I know because you told me yourself.But ya gotta remember one thing man – the camera never lies. I know you’re asmart guy. Maybe little bit too smart. Or not smart enough. If you had come onboard earlier and taken me up on my offer from the start, hell you’d be rollin’in a Beemer now.”

“You can try to fight this thingif you want. But trust me - you don’t wanna fight with me.”

He slid a thick white envelopeacross the desk.

“You get all your back pay, yourdue holiday pay and a little bonus too, to give you amnesia. No hard feelingsdude, but you gotta go. You’re fired.”

How to re-cycle a stolen bike.

2012-01-06T08:48:00.000-08:00

Friday night in downtown Brusselscirca 1992. Car tyres thump-bump-bump percussive on the cobbled streets. I teeth-jarfreewheel my red bicycle down the bouncy road, heading for the bar where I’llmeet my friends. Muffled laughter and bass beats audible from outside. I chainand lock my bicycle to a children crossing signpost pole. No children out thislate.

Inside pinball lights flashingthrough cigarette smoke. All you wanna do is ride around Sally. Someone has puton that bloody Commitments album. Again. It’s late enough for drunken-dancing, drunken-sing-alongs.Ride, Sally, ride. In a corner two pretty girls snog. Mine’s a Kriek - a cherrybeer of sorts. That gets me jeered and teased. Start off easy, the night isyoung. Later I move on to more manly Trappists.

I work nightshifts. It’s my nightoff. I could go ‘til dawn. But by three ayem my friends are flagging. With falteringsteps and bleary eyes we leave the bar. The air outside is bracing cold. Frost sparkleson the silent cobble stones.

I look for my bike-lock keys and findthem. I look for my bicycle.
It’s gone.

Children crossing lying on the ground,uprooted from loosened cobbles. I see how it was done. The lock slipped off thepost.

A stoner sitting on a stoop smokingon a spliff. Was that your bike man? It’s gone. (No shit?). Maybe half an hour.Young guy, white guy, running off that way, he points to an empty cobbledalleyway with yellow pools of soft street lamps. Carried your bike up on hisback. You’ll never get it back. Back and back, he guffaws. Get it? Back toback. He takes a long toke and zones out. Yeah. Okay. Right.

Fucket. I drunken kick the children crossing.Kick them while they’re down. The big girl tugs the small boy. They try to get away. Black on yellowwarning sign that should read - beware bike thief.

I wake up with a headache. Make thata hangover. I mutter ritual never-agains.
Paracetemol - the breakfast ofchampions.

I remember my bike. My frustratedanger finds itself powerless. It wasquite a good bike. A sturdy steel steed bought at the Sunday morningFietsMarkt. The Brussels I know is more Flemish than French. I live just offthe Dansaertstraat. The unfashionable end. More Berber-Arab and Turkish spokenhere than Flemish or French. Dark brown hair, dark brown eyes, light brownskin. The girls are gorgeous, but don’t even think to look. I stand out with mypink skin and fair hair. I pass for Flemish. Goededag, bonjour, asalam aleikum.
Downtown melting pot.

I have another bike. An old blackDutch bike, left behind by a young white Dutch friend. I cycle the length ofthe Dansaertstraat, cross the Anspachlaan at the Beurs. Architectural echoes ofancient Greece. A mega-monolithic stock exchange with giant, scroll-topped Ioniccolumns. The police station is just behind it, down another cobbled way. I lockmy black bike to a signpost.
It says one-way-street.

The police station is a warren ofwindowless corridors. The walls are nicotine yellow. Clouds of blue haze driftfrom open doorways. Off-duty (or on-duty) cops in cheap shiny uniforms smokingBelga cigarettes. Typewriter keys clack and tap. Ding! It’s the end of theline.
I get lost inside the maze.

Mijnheer? I’m lost, I explain. My redbicycle is lost too. Stolen in the night. I follow directions deeper into thelabyrinth. Places where sunlight never shines. The end door of the corridorstands ajar.

Two mismatched policemen at a desk.One short and fat with jacket cuffs too long. Sandy moustache and smudged thickglasses. The other possibly a giant. Seven foot tall or more. Even seated he’staller than I am standing. The old big cop-small cop routine. The small cop pops freefrom his chair. Stand up routine. Roly-polys out the door.

Giant cop rumbles Brussels dialect. Acocktail of Flemish and French and a few added secret ingredients. I explainabout the red bike. The children crossing. Omit that I was drunk. My head stillhurts. Looks like giant cop’s head hurts too. Bleary bloodshot hound dog eyes.Translucentnocturnal skin that never sees the sun. Bad greasy haircut and poorly shaved.

Carbon paper forms in intricatetriplicate with tobacco-yellowed fingers too big for typewriter keys. A simplethree line statement takes an hour of smouldering cigarettes in an overloadedashtray.
You’ll never get it back, he says.
He was wrong.

I break out into the daylight. Thebright light hurts my eyes. My clothes stink of cigarettes. A passive smoker’snicotine headache added to my hangover. I mumble grumpy curses as I unlock myblack bike. The cobble stone bumps jar my brain as I ride back the wrong one-way.

I’m ready to pedestrian walk my bikeback across the Anspachlaan as soon as the lights change. Then I see him. Icall him Blondie. I don’t know him, but I sure recognize that bike. He’s straddledon the saddle talking to a big guy. Could it be anotherbike that looks just like mine? I dismount and lock my black bike thirty metresaway. Hurry before he goes. I’m seething with hungover rage. I approach slowly.Look for the crossbar scar. A battle wound from a long train trip to theArdennes. It’s there. The crack on the mudguard too. There’s no doubt in mymind that it’s my bike. The pavements crowded with jostling Saturday shoppers.Safety in numbers. Perhaps.

I approach cautiously. Blondie on thebike is slight, but his friend is much too big. I’m out-numbered and out-sized. What Ineed’s a cop. The pig-pen is just around the corner, but if I cycle back andtry to rouse them from their tobacco induced lethargy my bike will be gone. I’llnever see it again.

“That’s a very nice bike,” I say.

Blondie looks surprised.

“Where did you get it?”

His eyes are darting. He looksconfused.

“At the Fietsmarkt” he says.

“But the Fietsmarkt isn’t untiltomorrow. It’s only Saturday.”

“Yeah? I bought it last week andwhat’s it to you?”

I grab tightly to the handlebarsso he can't cycle away.

“It’s my bike and it was stolen lastnight, so you couldn’t have bought it last week.”

“Are you calling me a liar?”

“Yes, in fact I am.”

“You hear that Christophe? ThisEnglish git is calling me a liar.”

My patriotic pride seethes at beencalled English, but I let it go for now.

“Is he? That’s not very nice.”

Christophe gives me a shove, but I’mstill gripping the bike. Blondie nearly falls off, so I try to pull it free.Passersby give us a wide berth.

“This guy stole my bicycle. Pleasehelp me.”

A feisty old woman tells them toleave me be.

“None of your business old woman. Getlost,” says Christophe.

I’m still playing tug of war withBlondie and the bike.

“You’re crazy. I’m not giving youthis bike. Get lost before Christophe breaks your arms.”

He looks like he could do it too. Thisis not going as well as I had hoped.

I look around in desperation forsomeone who can help. Woohoo! Coming down the Anspachlaan is a van full ofuniformed cops. I shout and wave. They don’t see me.

Wait, they’re slowing down.

Christophe is already across theroad.
Blondie sees he’s on his own.

He jumps off the bike. Disappears into the pavement shoppers just as the cop van reaches the corner.

The van slows almost to stop.
Turnsdown the cobbled way.
Then keeps going right on by.

My jaw drops. They haven’t seen me.
Of course, they are just heading for the cop shop.

I unlock the black bike and I hear ashout. Big Christophe trying to get back across through traffic.

I wobble push both bikes by the handlebarson the cobble stones. I stumble and nearly fall.

Blondie’s back in sight again. He’sskinny but he can sprint. I hear his footfalls flapping as I try to mount mybike. I nearly fall again. Christophe has made it across the street. Now he’srunning too.

They’re ten meters behind me, thecorner fifty meters ahead. I’m in the saddle. I push the pedals hard and reachthe corner. It’s their city and they know the cop-shop is within eyeshot. Iwhoop around the corner trying to steer both bikes at once.

Back through the Kafka-korridors andthe nikotene smoke. I find the giant and tell my tale. He’s angry for thewasted paperwork. He calls a superior, who berates me for taking the law in myhands. A long debate ensues. I sit for an hour on a plastic chair in a drearycorridor. The seething giant calls me in at last. I have to give a newstatement. More intricate triplicate carbon copied cops. More second handsmoke. More bad breath and the smell of old dead socks.

By the time I leave, the sun is low.My stomach tells me I haven’t eaten all day. I have two bicycles to steer backhome. It’s a short straight hop.

At the crossing by the Beurs I hear adistant shout. On the steps up by the columns Blondie shakes a fist. I respondwith a single digit and a nasty victorious grin. He replies with an indexpassed slowly across his throat. Something in that chills me, and I’m suddenlyafraid.

The lights change and I cycle awayand lock my bikes at home. Then to the barber for a new haircut, trying foranother look. I change my jacket and my route to work and take the metro for amonth.

How to become a vegetarian

2012-01-02T11:14:00.000-08:00

I was 19, a student and a Francophile. In love with all things French. French food, French cinema, French accents. French women. One in particular. Let’s call her S.

We spent a summer at her family home in the north of Burgundy. A landscape of vast deciduous forests, not the endless vineyards further south. Her parents favoured the self-sufficient style of life and lived at the entrance of a tiny village in a sturdy limestone roadside house that had once been a traveller’s hotel. If you kept going along this forgotten back road you would eventually reach Paris, but no one travelled this winding national road anymore. Unless they were lost, or lived nearby.

There was land behind the house that led down to the village stream. Every square inch of the acre or so was cultivated with neat rows of vegetables and fruit trees. The picture perfect kitchen garden and then some. Her parents also owned a flowering meadow on the slope of land across the road. At the foot of the slope stood a sturdy limestone barn, occupied by a rusting old Citroen 2CV and a host of dusty tools. There was a rough-hewn limestone water trough beside it, fed by a trickling flow from a metal pipe that protruded from a mossy damp stone wall.

It was the height of summer, when nature pushes forth abundant. There was plenty to be done in the garden and on the land. I picked raspberries and broke out in an awful itching rash. I stooped to knot the stalks of onions to push the growth down to the bulbs. I bent lower still to gather brimming Tupperwares of glossy strawberries. I picked runner beans and tomatoes, spread compost with an outsized pitchfork. I learned to use the hoe that put blisters, and later calluses, on my soft student hands. I slashed swathes of lush long grass with the swishing of a scythe. A giant homemade wooden rake gathered the new mown hay into long neat rows. The sun beat down and dried the grass, but it needed to be turned. After a week the hay became golden yellow. My skin went from white, through pink, to almost brown. I built my first haystack around a planted wooden pole.

On timeless shaded afternoons, among the beech trees and the oaks, S showed me her childhood mushroom gathering grounds. She taught me what could be eaten and what must never be touched. We picked egg-yolk yellow chanterelles with their tapered ridged gills, brown dome-capped meaty cepes that were larger than a hand and the black funnels of Death’s Trumpets, les trompettes de la mort, edible, despite their morbid name. In the depths of the forests we tripped over the moss covered ruins of an ancient Roman garrison and followed the straight line of pathways they had paved two thousand years before. The best mushrooms we kept to cook at home. The rest we sold for pocket money to a local man. He soaked them in water to add to the weight and brought them to Rungis market in Paris once a week, where he sold them for much, much more than he had paid.

When it rained we donned our K-Ways and rubber boots. S showed me a metal ring. It would protect us, she said. Stop us from breaking the law. It was the same size as the circle between the tips of a joined index and a thumb. We carried a rolled up hessian sack and set out on the hunt. Burgundy is world-famous for its snails. With the rain they came out to road verges and grassy clearings in the woods. We probed the wet grass with our hazel mushroom hunting sticks, but didn’t have to look hard to find these gastropods. We picked them up by their distinctive striped brown shells. If they passed through the ring they were returned to the ground. The bigger snails all went in the sack.

Back in the cellar they were put in a wire mesh cage mounted on a metal pan. They were fed with only white bread, for a week, to make them fat. Then starved another three days to void their digestive tracts.

Then came the salt. And the slime.

I watched in horror as they squirmed and writhed in their death throes and dripped their lubricating mucous through the bottom of the cage. The slimy contents of the basin beneath were later added to the compost. Nothing here was ever wasted or lost.

I boiled a huge pot of court bouillon with last season’s carrots and freshly picked bay leaves. Some of the snails were still alive before they went for their final steaming swim. They were scooped out as quick as they went in, then plunged into a bucket of cold water to stop the flesh becoming tough.

Once dead and cold it was easy to grip the meaty bodies and pull the hidden black coils out from the shells. The separated coils went to feed the compost too. The empty shells were boiled clean. Later some were re-stuffed with their former tenants. I sealed them in with generous knobs of homemade garlic butter.

French butter, unless stated otherwise, is unsalted. I hadn’t taken that into account.
S’s moustache father roared as he tasted his first unsalted garlic snail. A greasy shell was flung angrily across the table. I dodged it, barely, but took the full brunt of the diatribe against the ‘Anglo-Saxons’ and their inability to cook. Even to this day, when making garlic butter, I always check the salt. As for the snails, I couldn’t eat them either myself. Not for lack of salt, but because I had seen and done too much.

This was the beginning of my loss of innocence and gave me my first glimpse of the darker side of the ‘good-life’. Just how dark, I would find out all too soon.

Early in the summer, in Chatillon-sur-Seine on market day, we bought a trio of tottering goslings and a box of chirping chicks. I fed the fowl every day with handfuls of scattered grain. They grew so fast. I watched hatchling feathers moult.

I also fed the rabbits and cleaned their stinking stacked concrete hutches. The giant male was moved from hutch to hutch and took his pleasure with the females, and sometimes other males that had somehow escaped detection at an earlier cull.

As summer lengthened the earth grew drier and harder. The air became hotter. Water became scarce. The cool shade of the forest and the musty earthen-floored cellar were the only refuges from the heat. At night, in our room under the eaves, I sweated more than I slept.

I killed the chickens first. S’s mother showed me how (S conveniently sick that day). She said “bring the rake”.

The chickens had been grain-tempted into a coop. She reached in and grabbed and held the struggling bird’s wings with one hand and its feet in the other.
“Now the rake,” she said.
I didn’t understand. Was I to beat the chicken senseless? How was it to be done? With a frustrated sigh she passed me the chicken’s feet to grasp. I tried to clasp the wings but the frightened bird flapped free.

Eventually I held it the way she had shown.
“Now the rake.”
She told me to hold the chicken very tight and lie it on the ground. She placed the rake handle flat across the base of its neck and told me to stand on the rake, my feet apart either side of the head. The chicken had stopped struggling now. Its unblinking eye looked up at me with an emotionless blank stare.
“Now pull.”

I couldn’t do it.

Before I knew it she grabbed my wrists in an iron grip and pulled my arms in a quick sharp jerk that broke the chicken’s neck.

It was a crossing point. I could never go back. I was tainted now.
It is a simple thing to do, to kill. To deprive another being of its life. It is there one moment and then it’s gone. We killed a dozen more that fateful fatal afternoon.

“This is how meat is made,” explained S quietly in bed that night, as she consoled me while I wept.

Next were the geese.

They were bigger birds. All pure white.

“Bring the scissors and some string.”

S’s mother was more gentle this time. She knew I had been upset. I knew she took no pleasure in what we did, or what we planned to do.

“Bring three big basins too.”

“No rake?”

“No rake.”

I cut lengths of string and she deftly tied the geese’s feet and then their wings and hung all three geese from the lower branches of a tree. I placed the galvanized metal basins below each hanging bird.

We were on the edge of the meadow on the hill. The grass was growing long again, briefly ripple-ruffled by a faint breeze. The sound of a cuckoo came from somewhere deep inside the woods. It was scissors time.

“Don’t cut their throats or they will die too fast.”

She held the goose’s head and plunged the scissors into its neck. “Just cut the vein,” she said through gritted teeth. A pulsing gush of blood shot out and spilled into the waiting basin below. The blood would be used to make boudin sausages and to thicken sauces. The dying bird honked and set its two companions off.

Then she handed me the scissors. She couldn’t look me in the eye.

It took them hours to bleed to death. It took more hours under the shade of the tree to pluck out all their feathers, now splashed with pink and red. They had tried to hold their heads up, writhing their long necks. Their necks went lank and their bodies became still. We prodded them. They briefly revived for a final hopeless struggle, swaying in the heat. Spending hours watching creatures die is unforgettable. An education I would gladly have missed.

The chickens had been sold, but the geese would be kept.

Back in the kitchen I used a big sharp knife to remove their heads and their webbed feet. More food for the compost heap, where the bloodied feathers were already mixed in. It was easier after that. I needed no instructions to gut and truss and cook.

It was like a Thanksgiving dinner, except I wasn’t giving thanks. I carved the golden roasted bird and served out the steaming meat.

“You are not having any yourself Marc?”

I helped myself to vegetables instead.

Shipping lanes

2011-12-29T08:39:00.000-08:00

Shipping lanes
Defined and confined by wavelength and alternating currents
Crystal ice prisms on salt-sprayed portholes
Scratched artificial glass and motor tremors
Flicker-filter the shuddering grey seascape like aged film-stock

The ship’s tail of churned ocean spreads a foamy icy wake
Blurred and softened by freezing fog

The slippery deck outside is eye-watering cold
An angry flag flaps and snaps
Whip-crack lash the whining wind

Coarse wool grates my hated wrinkled forehead, my tight-scarved shivering neck
Bitter cold paints my hands
Livid tones of blue and purple and grey

My teeth are cold
My gums are sore
Salt wind stings my frozen face

She was never further
and closer
to me
than she is now.

Cheshire Cat Moon

2011-12-29T07:47:00.000-08:00

3 a.m. cats

outside my bedroom window

yowl in impassioned heat

A bucket of water

and a sleep slurred curse

send scattering cats scram

A misty sideward crescent moon

grins down at me

a disembodied Cheshire cat smile

Tropical Madness

2011-12-19T13:10:00.000-08:00

Major Singh put a bullet in hisbrain. It was the only thing to do. His wife, Balbir Kaur, and their three sonsnever knew why. He had never told them about the past. About the terriblethings he had done.

At the time, back then, he toldhimself he was doing his duty, distasteful though it might have been. Hecertainly wasn’t proud of it, but what was done was done. They say time healsall wounds. Major Singh knew that wasn’t true. Since his retirement the scabsand scars of old wounds festered and became seeping open sores again. Insteadof the past fading away into the distance, it drew closer every day.

At first they came while he slept,in his dreams when his defences were down. Then the dreams spilled over intodaytime waking. They laid siege day and night. They surrounded him as he andothers had surrounded them. He saw them leaning against the walls of the diningroom when he sat for meals with his family. Their rope tied hands. Their pleadingeyes. Their starved, stinking bodies. They tormented his every waking hour. Theirsilent screams audible in his ears as they begged for mercy again. And again.

What sort of tropical madness hadtaken them over? What twisted fate had brought them together? Japanese,Indians, Chinese. Who decided who were to be the ones to give the orders, theones to do the killing, the ones who were to die? For Major Singh there was nodecision. No choice. In wartime the rules are simple. You do what you have todo to survive. Not to live. Just to survive.

Men, women, children, he and theother Sikh soldiers killed them all. Killed them while their pleading handswere still tied. He shot them in their hearts. The deafening noise of gunshots.The ringing in his ears. The silent rows of rubber trees stretching out likeendless gravestones. Then he shot them in their heads at point blank range.

In a jam on the night shift

2011-11-30T08:50:00.001-08:00

“What’s the French for jam?” It’sroom service on the phone. Another recent Irish recruit to the hotel. The Paddiesown the night. The reception desk, room service, night audit – we are all Irish.Afghans wash the dirty dinner plates, scrub the pots and pans and clean themess the French chefs have left in the kitchen. Political refugees, they areall doctors and teachers and now specialize in grease removal. The doorman isfrom Zaire, university educated in Eastern-bloc Hungary. He’s Patrice Lamumba’scousin. There’s a price on his head if he ever goes back to Zaire. Moroccansclean the lobby and the restaurants. One of them is very pretty. There’ll be aprice on my head if I even think about it. Floor-polishers and vacuum-cleaners huminto the night.

“The French for jam? Confiture. Why? Someone wants jam atthis hour ?”

“Ehh, no, not really. Got to gonow. See ya later.”

I get back to the refrigeratedcomputer room and change the backup tapes. Every transaction, every order,every payment, every check-in and check-out from the last 24 hours is writtenonto these magnetic tapes. The printers churn out hard copies in triple-layeredself-carbonated sheets. I tear off the perforated feeder edges, compile anddistribute reports to pigeonholes. It’s not taxing work, but varied enough tokeep my interest. There are no bosses peering over my shoulder and I can workat my own rhythm. Some nights I speed through the work in a caffeine inducedrush and later kick back and read, or chat with my colleagues. Other nights Itake my time and work through the night at a slow and steady pace. At the startand end of the shift I help out at the reception desk.

“Cut the bull and give me thekeys,” snaps a late check-in.

Surly business travellers.

“Good morning sir, checking out?”

“What the fuck do you think?”

One of the things that initially appealedto me about hotel work was the opportunity to meet all sorts of people, fromall over the world. People you might meet at a resort hotel or a holidaylocation are people who are where they want to be. They are generally happier,friendlier people. They’ve saved all year for a week or two break and aredetermined to enjoy themselves.

Here, people usually stay justone night. Very few people want to be here. It’s an airport hotel. Airports area sort of limbo. Airport hotels are just a five-star extension of that limbo.People are all on their way somewhere, getting a head start on the earlyflights, or on their way back, too late to go any further. Or cheerful business travelers(an oxymoron if ever there was one) arriving for a meeting the next day, thenan evening flight out. It’s an airport hotel. An airport hotel in Belgium - whichjust about says enough.

Sometimes there are celebrities. TheFlemish security guard – we call him Biker Ben - looks tough. He’s built like aheavyweight wrestler, but is one of the nicest most gentle people you could ever meet. Somehow Bengets chatting with Joe Cocker, stranded from a late flight cancellation. EarthyJoe and Biker Ben become the best of friends. For all I know, they still are.

Richard Clayderman – a regularguest. His piano playing made me cringe, but such a gentle man. He knew half ofus by name and always took the time to chat. Toots Thielemans, harmonica playerextraordinaire is tight with the General Manager. Whatever Toots wants, Tootsgets. Which is okay, ‘cos he’s kinda old and doesn’t want much.

One night at three, in walksGrace Jones. Sunglasses at night. Long legs, long neck. This was the early ninetiesand she still had it going on. As a teenager I watched her in strangefascination, as if she was an alien lifeform, when she skimpy-clad starredwith Arnold in Conan the Barbarian. The closest we had to an alien lifeform inCounty Meath when I was growing up was Eurovision Johnny Logan. Grace and Johnnyjust weren’t in the same league.

Grace doesn’t want to fill in theregistration card. Her minions can do that. I need a signature. The lackeysigns. I say I need the signature of the guest. She won’t do it. I play cheekyIrish. “Ah come on now Grace. Pull up to it. Don’t drive through it.” A flickerof a smile, but she still won’t sign. “Still driving the long black limousine then,are we?” The lackey mutters something about five stars, but Grace is grinning asshe turns and walks across the lobby to the elevator, flattered by a fandespite herself. (1*)

It’s time for food. The kitchenalways leaves us something to eat. Usually on the dried up side. Room-serviceNiall is engrossed in Thoreau’s Walden. He’s the literary type, is Niall. Someof the best books I ever read were ones he lent me or told me about. We’d have reading-grouptype discussions over food.

I say food, because I never knew what to callthe meal we ate in the middle of the night. Never knew when breakfast waseither. Was it still the meal you had in the morning? If that was the case, then wesometimes had beer for breakfast. We’d sit out on the terrace of a café nearthe central station and have a few beers after work, like anyone else. The thingwas it was only eight or nine in the morning. The barmen knew the score, butthe puffy faced rail commuters on their way to work cast us filthy looks andthe occasional insult.

Niall slips a room-service billbetween the pages as a bookmark.

“Fancy a bite?” I say.

“So long as it’s not too hard,”says Niall.

We head for the empty canteen andshuffle around until the microwave pings. Then we sit down.

“So, d’ye sort out yer jam then?” I ask, tucking into my food.

“Jaysus, don’t feckin’ even ask.”

“Well now I have to, don’t I. Wasit about preserves?”

Niall blushes and laughs. “How’dye know?”

“It was the only thing that madesense,” I say.

“Well, 3049 rings me up and asksfor preservatives. I didn’t know the word. So like an eejit I say ‘what flavourdo you want? We have strawberry, raspberry, blackberry, blackcurrant andmarmalade’. So yer man says ‘it doesn’t matter, just bring some up real quick.’Of course I think it’s a bit strange, but people like odd stuff, so I put aselection of different jams on a plate and took the lift to the third.”

“I knock on the door and this oldguy is there, just wearing a towel. He’s all sweaty and out of breath, as if he’sbeen working out. I’m thinking maybe he’s diabetic or something and his bloodsugar has gone down. I try to be all polite. ‘Vos preservatives monsieur.’ He looks at me and at the jam and then shouts ‘What is the meaning of this?’”

“I’m still standing at the doorholding the plate, so he takes it from me and throws it down the corridor and slamsthe door. Lucky there’s carpet, or the plate woulda broke. Took me ages toclean up the jam. I could hear the old guy shouting inside the room, ‘mais c’est pas possible!’ They say thatall the time, don’t they, ‘it’s not possible’, even if it is.”

“So you figured it out then?” Iask.

“Yeah, I think so. I meanpreserves, preservatives (2*), it’s almost the same.”

“An honest mistake,” I say.

“Stupid word to use,” says Niall.

“What flavour would you like?” Ilaugh.

“Yeah, I’ll have a hard timeliving that one down.”

Niall eats a few more forkfulsand then asks, “Anyway, do you think they really make blackberry or marmaladeflavoured condoms?”

Footnotes:

1* Pull up to my bumper baby,
In your long black limosine,
Pull up to my bumper baby,
And drive it in between.

Pull up, to it, don't drive, through it,
Back it, up twice, now that, fit's nice.

Grace Jones - From the album Nightclubbing -1981

2 French - préservatif: condom

The Uncles

2011-11-28T09:53:00.001-08:00

Grey-haired bespectacled unclesin white singlets and black shorts waddle their distinctive wide-footed walk,feet turned outwards from years of squatting and sitting cross-legged. Theymeet at the local hawker-food restaurant most mornings after walking theirschool-bagged grandchildren to school. Some uncles are heavy-jowled and heavy-paunched.Some uncles have deep wrinkled creases folded in their faces. Some uncles have liver spots onthe backs of their hands. Some uncles have blue-white circles around the irises oftheir eyes, caused by years of harsh glaring tropical sunlight. They all slouchback in their plastic chairs, knees wide apart.

Some uncles smoke cigarettes thatleave yellow streaks in their grey-white hair. They hold their cigarettespinched between the thumb and the first two fingers with the glowing coalturned inwards to the cupped palm of the hand. A trick they copied from theBritish soldiers who were stationed in what was then Malaya, back when theywere all still young men. A trick to avoid the sharpshooting sniper’s sights.There’s an ashtray on the round plastic table. It sits empty. The cigarettebutts are either crushed underfoot or flicked toward the metal grilled drainoutside. When they miss, the butt lies smouldering on the pavement, but neverfor very long. These uncles suck their cigarettes right down to the end. Theyare all clean-shaven, except for moles that sprout long wiry hairs for goodluck. Some uncles keep their little-finger fingernails long too – also for goodluck.

The uncles read newspapers inChinese, Malay and English. There are pots of tea on the table and smallhandleless ceramic cups. There are sweating plastic glasses of murky icedcoffee. There are bottles of Guinness in an ice bucket. Uncles sip stout on therocks.

The TV plays loudly, the radio isloud too, the noise bouncing off the white tiled walls and the age-polishedshiny bare cement floor. When they talk, they talk loudly, sometimes all at thesame time. They speak the mixed dialects of their immigrant Chinese ancestors.Sooner or later they all lapse into silence. Perhaps lost in contemplation ofthe distant past, or more likely just distracted by the long bare-legged figureof an attractive young woman on her lunch break. Their minds writing chequestheir aged bodies can no longer cash.

Tai Keong sees all this as hechops onions and peels garlic. These lazy old uncles who do nothing butcomplain. He has to work. Spend hours banging on a flame-cupped wok. Listeningto their stupid old men’s stories. He has to stay here all day and all night tomake money to feed his wife and his two hungry daughters. How did that happen asecond time round? He had already lost his first wife and two children, thegirl and the boy. He blames himself. His fault, and smashes smooth yellow-white peeledgarlic cloves with the flat side of the cleaver. Smashes the garlic to an angrypulp. Smashes it so hard that the stupid uncles all look round. Then theylean in towards each other and talk in lowered voices, throwing excited glanceshis way. He pretends he hasn’t seen them. Watches the young woman instead.

Sheturns to see what all the noise is about. Tai Keong knows how to be charming.Knows he’s good looking too. He flashes her a disarming smile. Sorry aboutnoise Miss. Must kill this garlic one beforecook. Don’t want to let it get away lor. She smiles back, but is about to turn.He has to be quick. You eat my food already or not? You never taste food sogood. You like Char Koey Toew or not? Eat already, she replies. She shifts herchair around so she can see him better, always a good sign. No need money one.Buy one free one. You pay next time only. Aiyo lah. Tell you I eat already, shelaughs.

Her teeth are perfect and hersmooth skin is very pale. Must be an office girl. No need work hard in the sun.Look at those finger nails too. This one got time and money one.

You so thin, must eat more. Noneed worry about put on weight. The girl lowers her eyes and blushes slightly.Sorry lah. I not mean like that. You not too thin, just very nice. But evenmodels must eat too or not? Okay, maybe tomorrow can? Tomorrow my off day lah. Off day? You solucky one. Where got off day? Must work all the time. Maybe I take tomorrow offday. We do something. Go somehere. Can or not? Do what? she asks. I don’t know,you like fishing? Fishing? Where got fishing lah? Got fish in the old tin mine.You know the place? I show you. Very nice. Very beautiful, just like you.

Tai Keong knows how to charm agirl. The next day he prepares a special picnic, with different dishes he hasspent all morning preparing, all packaged into individual Styrofoam boxes. Theuncles watch him as he closes early and sets off on his father-in-law’smotorcycle with his jacket turned around backwards.

She’s there waiting for himoutside the kopitiam coffee shop. He hands her the spare helmet he has broughtalong for her. He wasn’t sure she would come. A pretty girl like her could haveany man. But Tai Keong wasn’t just any man, and he knew it. From that day onthey met every week. He taught her how to fish, how to hunt. This is what hedid with all the women he had known. This one was more frightened in the junglethan his wife had been. She still couldn’t kill the fish that she had learnedto catch, but she was happy to eat them.

She was discovering a new life.An outdoor life she never knew. She looked forward to their outings every week.Even when he stopped cooking at the hawker centre and moved to Klang for a new job he would still come backand see her every week. He never told her of his other life. His other lives.He never mentioned he was married. Married, divorced and remarried. The fatherof four children – three girls and one dead boy. That was what the death noticein the newspaper had said. An accident. He had fallen from a height.

She never went fishing or huntingagain. That was a part of her life she’d rather leave behind. Now she sitsalone again on her lunch breaks. She sees the uncles without their wives.Wonders what it is about men. Wonders why they are like that. The uncles sitand read and talk and drink and eat. Perhaps that’s all there is to men.

Ocean Poem

2011-11-28T04:24:00.001-08:00

Weall come from the ocean.

We all go back to the ocean.

The ocean is the source.
Shifted by the gravity of the moon, she rises andfalls like a lover's sleeping breath.

She doesn't judge, but if we don't loveher, she will give back all that she has taken.

And take back all that she evergave.

Photo courtesy of George J. McTernan.

Generation Emigration

2011-11-25T12:01:00.001-08:00

FOREWORD

This essay is based on on article I was asked to write for the Generation Emigration section of the online version of The Irish Times in November 2012.

This is the first time I've had anything I’ve written published in Ireland.

It’s a homecoming of sorts.

The column allowed comments, and a surprising number of people took the time to write their reactions to my piece.

While the majority of them were very favorable and flattering there was one comment submitted by a person pen-named Elle that was particularly vicious and scathing. Her anger was palpable in her words and I could visualize her hammering the keyboard keys and enraged flecks of spittle hitting the computer screen. Reading my article had obviously pushed her buttons in some way. Her comments gave me an insight into what from this distance seems to be a prevailing mindset of negativity that has engulfed Ireland in the last few years.

My own reactions to Elle's negativity also gave me pause, and while I sat for my daily meditation I saw that my mind, my ego, had taken great exception to what she had to say.

I wondered how best to respond to her, or even whether I should. I thought about it long and hard and decided I would show the flip-side of the first article. Sometimes we need to be plunged into darkness to better understand and appreciate light.

My response was published as a comment to the original article in The Irish Times published. This essay is an amalgamation of both articles with a few other pieces added in.

Dedicated to Elle - a muse with views.

“Would you ever move backto Ireland, given the chance?"

I can’t say. It’s not inmy plans. But none of it ever was.

It’s been more than 22 years. Mylife is elsewhere now. Maybe in the early years, but even then I was enjoyingmy life abroad too much.

I rarely go back now, even for a holiday.

When you have the time, you don’t have the money. When you have themoney it’s because you’re busy working and don’t have the time.

When you have the time and the money – well you know how it is. It’llprobably be raining and cold more than half the time. The prices of things willbe extortionate. You’ll have to do the rounds of the same old relatives andfriends. They’ll look just the same as last time. Maybe the wrinkles around theeyes are a tad deeper, the hair thinning and more grey, the tummies a wee bitsofter.
The same old questions. The same old answers.

They’ve changed. You’ve changed. The world has changed. The things youhave in common now are only in the blood and in the past.

You’ve made your life elsewhere. You’ve made yourself new friends.You’ll never love them like the old ones and blood is still as thick. You’llalways be Irish and loved for it (except perhaps by other Irish – you know toomuch). You’ll still be proud of your cultural heritage and your bitter-sweetpast. But that’s what it is – the past.

On my mother’s side all my uncles emigrated. Nine-out-of-tenof their sons and nephews emigrated too. Some went back. The restspan the globe. Most of the daughters and nieces left too.We were nineteen-seventies children. Bred and buttered for export.

As a foreigner you have freedom. You can be yourself. They tolerate yourquirks, your eccentricities in a way they never did ‘back home’. He’s odd, butsure he’s Irish, they’re not made quite like us.

Though there were no jobs to be had in Ireland, I was a willingemigrant. Homesickness is not a steady state. It’s a dull toothache that comes andgoes away.

June 1989 Aer Lingus Dublin-Heathrow. The flight attendant recognizes me and my best friend. “Youse were inCathal Bruagha Street,” she says with a smile and so we sip Champagne on thehouse. A final parting round. One for the road. Airborne, the roads rises withus.

In London I immersed myself inculture. Wet autumn afternoons spent waiting in the rain for the cheap tickets atCovent Garden Opera. La Traviata and the smell of wet wool from the sweater mymother had knitted for me. The yarn chosen from Arnotts on a Christmas triphome. Do mammies still knit sweaters for their emigrant sons? And would theywear them if they did? I explored museums, never missed an exhibition at theTate. I boated on Hyde Park’s Serpentine and ate food from Bayswater’s Arabsand Greeks.

I lived out in the suburbs. Allmy neighbours Hindus and Sikhs. I learned to tell the difference and to eattheir spicy food. My housemates were Greek and German. They taught me theirswearwords. All I knew to teach them was “pógmo thóin.” I told them a really good one was uachtar reoite, but never explained that it just meant ice-cream.My colleagues were French. I knew their swearwords already, so they taught megutter slang. It stood me in good stead.

Five years living in downtownBrussels in a North-African neighbourhood. Pepita from Andalusia runs the shop downstairs.She always keeps me a slice of tortilla,oh heavenly omlette. She tells me her ‘esecret’ – a spoonful of Dijon mustardmixed in with the eggs. Cultural integration.

I knew more Irish in Brusselsthan I knew in Ireland. Most of my class from Cathal Brugha Street had leftIreland’s shores. We all lost touch. Or maybe it was just me. In a fit ofpatriotism I tried to learn Irish from a Belfast man. I had no more successthan I’d had at school with that befuddling tongue. Brussels weekends and thelive music scene. Gigs and concerts. Pub quizzes at the James Joyce. Kitty’swas cleaner and nicer, but full of Eurocrats. We were the other Irish inBrussels, for a while at least. Some still had cement on their hands as theysank their pints. Those with degrees graduated to cushy commission posts. My merediploma kept me in the airport hotel. Weekends away - Paris, Amsterdam, Trier,the Ardennes. Christmas shopping ship to Canterbury. Would you step this waysir. A statement, not a question. Closed rooms and body searches. What is thepurpose of your visit? The following years we chose the Christmas Market inCologne. German border guards a much friendlier crowd indeed.

I lived in French-speaking Brusselswhere I learned to curse and count in Arabic. I worked in Flanders. Alinguistic divide crossed every day. It took me years to learn French. Flemishcame easy to me. Closer to English and more down to earth. Night classes andlove affairs, the best way to learn. (Maybe there’s something in those Gaeltachtromances). My colleagues all astounded at my progress. But that’s nothing inBelgium. Even the train conductor reads newspapers and speaks to passengers in4 different tongues. The Waloons think I’m Flemish and so do the Dutch. I don’tcorrect them. Integration and disintegration. Cold winters were hard though.I’m made for the heat. Fly south like the winter’s geese.

I hitch-hiked instead. A cold,cold winter’s week standing on the hard edge.

Belgian French and PyreneanFrench read both the same. But what comes through the eyes is not what comesthrough the ears. It took time to tune in to new sounds and expressions. NoIrish here. At least not at first.

12 years in France. I almostlost my mother tongue. I spoke with a distorted accent, just like StephenRoche. I hiked in the mountains two days a week. I bought cheese from shepherdsand strayed across the border. I learned enough Spanish to get my face slapped.I learned enough Basque to be bought a drink. I learned that you could drinkand eat at the same time. Much more civilized around a good table than in asmoky pub. Winters were cold. I was made for warmer climes.

Work was hard to find. Even forthe French. Odd jobs, a year or two here, a year or two there. Teaching Englishin the school year and seasonal summer work. Castrating corn. Early morningwork. Stretching high, plucking flowers in dew-soaked knife-leaved cornfieldsthat lacerated forearms. The sharp-end of cutting-edge genetic engineering.Telling lies part time in a call centre. I was so good at telling lies they tookme on full time. It’s the soft Irish accent that gets them, they said. Lies,lies and more lies. A wedding. A divorce.

My life veered off on another path. Years spent back and forth betweenIndia and a Pyrenean mountain hut where I worked. India, where I sought to findmyself, to lose myself. And succeeded on both counts. India, where I learned tospeak English again. And to wobble my head. India, where I met my Malaysianwife. France or Malaysia? Not hard to choose. I’m a warm weather man. Humid tropicalheat on a balmy palmy island. Winters aren’t cold here. The climate suits mewell. It could be paradise. Perhaps it is.

How many different livesI’ve led. How many things I’ve seen. A palm reading Tibetan monk on a Himalayanmountain slope tells me I’m only halfway. Tells me to use the years wisely. WhenI cycled to school on frosty Meath mornings I never imagined any of this. Doesany schoolboy?

The written word is powerful indeed. The emigrant’s letterhome is an emotionally charged thing. If things aren’t going well, you glossover it and highlight the good. Ye wouldn’t want to worry the mammy now, wouldye? Everything I wrote above is true, but I could have just as easily told atale of woe that would be true too.

I’ve missed many family milestones, births, marriages anddeaths. I’ve been an absentee brother, son, nephew, cousin, grandchild, uncle. I’veknown the self-esteem sapping desperation of dole queues too. 3 years I workedthe nightshift and was thankful for the job. For a year I held down three jobs.I lived most of another year in a tent. I spent a hard cold winter sleeping ona hard cold floor. For a month I ateonly rice. I know hunger well enough to know that it’s only the first threedays that are hard. After that there’s a lucid clarity and a sort of apatheticpeace. If lives are lost cat-like, I’ve lost some of my nine. Death is familiarenough to me that he doesn’t frighten me anymore.

When I left Ireland I wanted to leave some of my past. Thealcoholic schoolmaster who used me for a punch bag. The school-bus bullies whobeat me daily for being gay, which I wasn’t, though in a disturbed adolescentway wished I was, so I could at least deserve their kick and punches. Thedrunken manager in a Connemara hotel who tried to rape me while I slept. Ittook a bloodied broken nose for him to loosen his grip enough for me to escape.I got away with bruises and bite marks and hitch-hiked back to Dublin. Misguidedfrightened individuals, the products of a culture of fear and repression andslowly simmering rage. All forgiven, but not forgotten. I wanted to leave all thatbehind, but carried it for years. Long hours with psychotherapists. Longerhours of tears.

Hard times forge us in their fires. Make us stronger. If welet them, those fires will burn off the impurities and the dross. I’ve comethrough it scarred, but intact. I’m a better man for it too.

Wherever we are, whatever our circumstances, we go through itfor a reason. Weight can press us down or we can resist it to grow stronger.Hardship chisels away the superfluous. Reveals what is essential. It’s whenyou’ve touched the bottom that to go on you must go up.

Every day I sit and watch my breath coming in and going out.Remind myself that I’m alive and how precious that can be. My life bears fruit,but I bare the cost. Today is more important to me than the things I’ve lost.

I let go of everything. Absolutely everything. I stoppedfighting the current and followed the flow instead. I still got snagged onrocks. Good people gave me help in smiles and kind words. In hard words too.Some of the things I let go of I picked up again, but I make my choicescarefully and I can still let them go.

I’ve been to my limits and found theyweren’t real. When I went far beyond those paper fences I found that I wassomething other than the simple image of myself that I had let my life carve.I’ve flirted with the borders of time and space and gone beyond the petty mind.When we really find the foundation we see that all is one. There is noseparation in anything.

There’s peace and joy everywhere if you want it hardenough. The irony is that it comes not in that wanting, but in letting go of thewanting. Wanting things, having things, lacking things - there’s no happinessin things.

But mystic words are not enough. Words are powerful, but hide asmuch as they reveal. How can you describe what it means to swim to someone whohas never been immersed in water?

Life is in the details, the stuff we never look to see. Apartfrom family and friends it’s the simple stuff I miss. I’d murder a decent cupof tea and a slice of fresh brown bread.

The simple stuff is the essentialstuff. A smile, a wink, a nod. Those are things the Irish haven’t lost. I hopewe never will.

We’re a resilient race.

We weather storms.

You can read the original article and comments on The Irish Times website at this link: http://www.irishtimes.com

Many thanks to Ciara for taking the time and for giving me a chance.

Lucky Strike

2011-11-18T06:25:00.001-08:00

The day I got hit by lightningwas swelteringly tropical hot, my brain slowly stewing inside my overheatedskull. When it gets like this even breathing seems like such hard work. Downstairs,in the shared swimming pool, I still sweat from the heat.

I share the pool with a fewhundred residents, in theory at least. Less than a dozen use it regularly. I amone of them. I swim most days in a vain attempt to curb the inversion of the triangulartorso of my youth. I’m fighting a losing battle against the combined effects ofgravity, middle age and rich Malaysian food. When the rain comes the securityguards come too. Nice chaps, all Nepali. I spent a few months in their countryonce and know enough words to make them smile. I argue that I am wet alreadyand rainfall won’t make me wetter. They point fingers to the dark clouds.Fingers that make descending zigzags. Very dangerous, they say. I laugh, butget out to humour them and towel myself dry.

The day of the lightening strikemy sweat soaked shirt stuck to my skin. I pack a bag and drive an overheatedhour to a waterfall near Rawang.

Fully clothed children splash inthe little stream, floating improvised Styrofoam boats fashioned from discardedtakeaway boxes. One even has a satay-stick mast and a pink plastic bag sail. Itall ends up downstream anyway. The shade is cooler under the trees. Thesunlight never hits the forest floor. If there were more trees in myneighbourhood it would be cooler too. Instead the concrete soaks up the sunlightand seeps it back late into the night. If there were more trees and more shadein the city then my car might be less like an oven. I’m a pink-faced slow-cookedpot-roast.

I follow the trail under thetrees and reach the waterfall at last. I put my bag down on the rocks. Localteenagers with motorbike helmets are taking an illicit break from school. Theyeat fishy smelling rice from more Styrofoam. They straw-sip lurid colouredliquids from tied up plastic bags. They share hand-cupped cigarettes and tryhard not to cough. I sarong slip into my swimming shorts.

In the pool below the waterfallare a few smiling young men. Dark-skinned big-boned fellows sitting waist deepin the water. Their big hands clutch small glasses. A bottle of whiskey on therocks. The water is cold at first, but my body quickly adapts. The young menoffer me a drink. I politely refuse. They are local boys, Malaysians, but callthemselves Indian.

I float on my back and see cloudscoming. The blue soon fades to grey, and greyer still. I surface dive in thedeepest part. I hold a rock and hold my breath, half bobbing with my eyesclosed in the quiet dark coolness. When I resurface it is raining. Raindropsdimple and pockmark the surface of the pool. Concentric circle ripples spread. I liftmy face to the sky and let the rain run down my face. Irish rain is soft, butcold. Tropical rain falls in warm heavy drops. The rain gets heavier, agitatesthe water even more. Thunder rumbles, like a heavy laden truck. I like a goodstorm. It clears and cools the air.The hissing rainfall whitenoise, theelectrical buzz in the air, make my mind sharp and alert and calm.

Forked lightning flash-bangsnearby. My heart leaps. Adrenaline surges through my body. The school kids aregone. The Indian men clamber unsteadily from the pool. I let the strongest partof the waterfall beat down upon my shoulders. I swim to the pool’s edge and thenI get out too.

The water turns yellow-brown fromwashed off soil upstream. I join the Indians in the shelter of a small open hut. Thedownpour batters a frenetic beat upon the sloped tin roof. We are wet andstanding in a puddle, waiting for the rain to stop. The men’s eyes are bloodshot,their grins lopsided now. The whiskey bottle lies empty. They clink glasses forlast round. They clink glasses and thunder cracks. Loud, just overhead. We alljump and laugh surprised at the conjunction of clink and thunderclap. For amoment they are Olympian gods. Then just drunk young men.

Lightning flashes with asimultaneous bang. Loud like an explosion. We all jump and howl. Massiveelectric shock. I’ve tripped the mains before, but nothing near like this. 220volts is a finger flick against this knockout punch. I’m blinded for a momentthen vision returns. I check to see if my feet are still there. They feel as thoughthey’ve been ripped off. My mind panics and my heart is sore. I remind myselfto breathe and climb up on the concrete bench. Little baby Marc wants to cry. TheIndians are quiet too. Shocked into sobriety, they look close to tears as well.We bite our lips and rub our legs and avoid each other’s eyes.

The rain begins to ease off to agentle soothing hiss. The water dimples fade and there’s sunlight once again. Isay goodbye to my companions. Shaken hands and shoulder slaps. We are bound byelectricity. I pull a towel over my head and hobble to the car. Frightened, butrejoicing I turn my face up to the sky. I let the storm’s last raindrops wash awaymy tears. When death comes that close it reminds you how this fragile life issweet.

Roland's Breach

2011-11-16T23:38:00.001-08:00

Whenit was quiet and the weather was reasonable, I sat by the open doorway toadmire the view. I breathed in the fresh mountain air and soaked up whateverwarmth the sun was willing to afford me. Staying by the door, I was withinearshot of the telephone and could see any potential customers approaching. I alsohad a direct view on the Breche, (or Breach) that other open doorway, to Spain in thesouth. I spent a lot of time contemplating this dramatic opening. I knew itscontours and relief by heart. It was more than a hundred metres tall and fortymetres wide and the most impressive border crossing I had ever seen. It was anempty space, defined by the absence of matter. But it was more than just aspace, it was an invitation. It was a promise of adventure, of other horizons,of the exoticism of the Iberian lands that lay beyond it.

Legendsays that the Breche was hewn open by the mighty Roland, wielding the sacredsword Durandal. Nowadays it is more commonly accepted that Roland perished in aless dramatic landscape near Roncevalles in the Basque country. The historyaround the legend is almost as interesting as the legend itself.

Inthe year 777 Charlemagne was the Emperor of the Frankish Empire, which extendedwell beyond the borders of modern day France. He was an innovative emperor andwas the first to introduce schools in an attempt to educate the population.Even today, French schoolchildren still sing songs about him. Every emperormust have an empire and he was eager to extend his.

Apossibility presented itself in the Iberian Peninsula. Charlemagne had beenencouraged by the governor of Barcelona, Soliman ibn al-Arabi, to take the cityof Saragossa and seize control of the entire north of Moorish dominated Spain.The disgruntled governor was rebelling against the oppressive authority of theCaliph of Cordoba, Abd al Rahman and promised to engineer a popular uprising tocoincide with Charlemagne’s arrival. However, the Caliph got wind ofCharlemagne’s planned invasion and when Charlemagne arrived at Saragossa withhis army, he found that there were ample Moorish forces deployed ready todefend the city. Al-Arbi’s promised rebellion and reinforcements never materialized.Meanwhile, news came from much further north that the hitherto subjugatedSaxons had revolted and were marching on Cologne. Charlemagne and his army wereobliged to retreat and return to France.

Theyfollowed more or less the same route they had taken on the way, passing throughthe town of Pamplona. On the outward journey, the army had been welcomed andheralded as defenders of Christianity, but on their way back they sacked andpillaged the town, taking valuables and treating the local population withdisdain. Charlemagne had counted on the spoils of battle from Saragossa and wasloath to return to France empty handed. He and his army took what they could,where they could, because they could.

Onthe fifteenth of august 778, as the troops made their way back across thePyrenees their rear guard was ambushed in a pass. Rocks were rolled down ontothem from above, crushing many of the soldiers to death. The survivors werecharged upon and forced down into a narrow ravine, where they were almost allmercilessly and savagely slaughtered. Roland (Hruodland), who was Charlemagne’snephew and Duke of Brittany, was amongst those killed. Most historians nowplace the scene of this battle as the valley of Roncevalles in the Basqueprovince of Navarra.

Thelocal Basques claimed responsibility for the ambush, justifying their actionsas retaliation for the sacking of Pamplona. (Though some accounts say that itwas just the work of some opportunist bandits.) When Charlemagne’s forces nextcrossed the Pyrenees, led by his son Louis Lepieux, they took Basque women andchildren as hostages to ensure their safe passage.

Thoseseem to be the facts, but the legend of Roland tells quite a different story. Itoriginated as a tale aimed to galvanize the spirits of those battling inHastings in 1066 and in the tale Roland is idealized as a hero, witharistocratic blood and God on his side. In 1130, Sancho de la Rosa, the bishopof Pamplona, claimed to have seen the ambush of Roncevalles in a dream. Thechurch was still keeping Roland alive in people’s imagination as a folk hero.Forty years later, in 1170, an anonymous poet allegedly wrote the 4002 versesof the Song of Roland, (though apparently the original text was only unearthedin 1832).

TheSong tells the story of brave and pious Roland, who carries a magical swordcalled Durandal, with sacred relics concealed within its hilt. Upon his retreatfrom Spain, he and his army are caught between a rock and a hard place, namely,the pursuing enemy and the impenetrable barrier of a sheer cliff wall. Roland sees death and defeat close at hand.He is loathed to allow the sacred sword to fall into impious hands. In an actof desperation, in order to break the blade, he strikes Durandal against therock.

Rollant his stroke on a dark stone repeats

And more of it breaks off than I can speak.

The sword cries out, yet breaks not in the least

Back from the blow into the air it leaps

Destroy it can he not; which when he sees,

Within himself he makes a plaint most sweet.

"Ah! Durendal, most holy, fair indeed!

Relics enough thy golden hilt conceals:

Saint Peter's Tooth, the Blood of Saint Basile,

Some of the Hairs of my Lord, Saint Denise,

Some of the Robe, was worn by Saint Mary.

It is not right that pagans should thee seize,

For Christian men your use shall ever be.

Soit is not Durandal that breaks, but the rock. Our hero hacks an opening in themountain and through this newly hewn doorway, his army escapes north intoFrance. This gap was the Breche de Roland,Roland’s Breach.

Thelegend was widely diffused by the church, particularly along the pilgrimageroute of the Saint James’ way. Statues of Roland were erected, sermons werepreached and some four hundred years after his death, the name of Roland wasalive again. In the legend, gone are the disgruntled Basques of Pamplona andRoncevalles. Another enemy – the Saracens, cruel and infidel by both nature andinclination, replace them. But never fear – social rank, God and true braveryare seen to gain victory over the hordes of Islam.

Whywere Moslems now seen as the enemy and no longer the marauding Basques? There seems to be a very simple, if somewhatcynical, answer to this which still remains relevant today. The Christians wereinvading the Holy Land and fighting for Jerusalem in the Crusades. The churchwas having difficulty finding recruits to fight the holy war and funds tofinance it. Those seeking salvation on the Saint James’ way were promised thatheavenly deliverance if they joined the Crusades. The Song of Roland was anelaborate, though admirably poetic, exercise in propaganda.

The Milking Pen

2011-11-07T09:23:00.000-08:00

Balbir Kaur lives alone by theriver’s edge in a tiny one-roomed house built of unplastered cement brick. The roofis a simple slope of rusting corrugated tin. The only opening in her windowlesshome is the blue-painted wooden door. Behind the house is a fenced off area ofhardened earth, shaded by surrounding trees. This is where the cows come everymorning and every evening when they want to be milked. Balbir Kaur calls eachof her cows by name. She talks to them quietly in her lilting soothing voice asshe milks. The dreamy-eyed cows stand patiently and obediently, each waitingher turn for the old brown-skinned woman’s hands.

At night the cows fold their legsbeneath themselves and sleep in the long grass that grows by the riverside.Frogs and cicadas chant hypnotic lullabies while the water gently chuckles. Onfull moon nights the cattle get restless. They graze through the night in themoonlight, though they never stray far from Balbir Kaur’s simple home. Duringthe day their range broadens as they seek out the most succulent grasses andplants on the unkempt overgrown common land. In the heat of the tropicalafternoons they stand or sit in the shade of the leafy low-hanging branches ofthe trees that grow by the water’s edge.

The cows get nervous on thunderymonsoon nights. Balbir Kaur gently herds them into the milking pen where theystand close together in a protective huddle. Balbir Kaur doesn’t sleep muchthen either and she will come out to comfort her herd if she hears theirfrightened lowing. She doesn’t need much sleep these days anyway and is usuallyawake before she hears the early morning call for prayer from the nearbymosque. Occasionally she naps if she feels tired during the hottest part of theday. After dark she sometimes sits with the light of her kerosene lamp or joinsthe cows to watch the twinkling stars.

Twice a week Balbir Kaur walks tothe local night-market where she sells the cow’s milk. When she was younger andstronger she could carry the heavy milk churn on her shoulders. Now she uses alittle trolley made from a suitcase that she found abandoned by the road. Peoplethrow out all sorts of useful things. It has a long extendable handle and a setof little wheels. The straps that once held clothes in place now secure herheavy milk can. On other days she sells most of the milk to the local SouthIndian banana leaf restaurant. They use the milk for tea, but also make dahiyoghurt and tooth-rotting sugary sweets like pedas and ladoo.

The owner of the restauranttreats her like he would treat his own mother. He always insists that she staysto eat. The wrinkled old woman in her threadbare salwar kameez reminds him of his own motherback in his native village in India. He tells her she can have anything on themenu, but she always limits herself to the same simple order of two chapattis withsome dhall. She is so thin he wonders ifshe ever eats anything else. She accepts the food, not as charity but as partialpayment for the milk.

During the day while the cattleroam and forage Balbir Kaur wanders too. She is a familiar sight in the nearbyvillage, easily recognizable by the same simple salwar kameez she always seems to wearand the long grey single plait of hair that hangs down the centre of her thinback. She is a slight figure, barely more than skin and bones, but those whoknow her also know the hard sinewy strength or her hands. Her years of daily milkinghave made her grip as strong as any oarsman’s.

Those who know her also know herinner strength, the unshakable placidity she radiates. They also know herkindness. Her readiness to smile. No one can be insensitive to the quietness inthe air that surrounds her, and even the most naughty, boisterous childrenbecome calm and well behaved in her presence. She still thinks of it as avillage, but it really is a town. The city’s streets have spread this far andmost of the trees cut down. Things change. She knows and understands this truth.

In the past the parents wouldsend their hungry children to see her and she gave them nutritious freshlyboiled milk to drink. That was long ago, and yet hardly a generation past. Theywould return at other times with shyly offered gifts of fruit or vegetables orrice. Nowadays no one goes hungry anymore. Balbir Kaur knows this is a goodthing, but when she sees the children so plump now, she also sees that they aresad. The children no longer come to play by the riverside like their parentsdid. They no longer ride their rusted bicycles along the bumpy river path thatleads to the long abandoned tin mine. They no longer throw the stones thatclattered nosily on her tin roof with their fearful giggling cries as theycalled her Bangala Witch.

Balbir Kaur has been called Bangala for most of her life, though herfamily never came from Bengal, but Punjab, almost as far away from Bengal asKuala Lumpur lies. Her father was a soldier. A high-ranking officer in fact.Shipped to Malaya with his troops at a time when the British flag flew overPunjab and Malaya both. People think it was a long time ago, but she remembers itwell, just as she remembers the war. These days her childhood memories arecoming back with a sharp intensity that makes these things seem closer still.It’s the recent memories that tend to become blurred and confused.

The locals think Balbir Kaur hasalways been poor, but she grew up well fed, well educated and well spoken andlived in comfort for more than half her life. While English was always spokenat home, her mother taught her enough Punjabi so that she could understand theprayers and ceremonies at the Gurdwaraand read the sacred texts of the GuruGranth Sahib. Her Malay is fluent and lightly accented and while it is thelanguage she speaks most she still thinks and dreams in English.

Some days Balbir Kaur sits withthe cows under a shady tree and watches the murky brown river flow past. She cando this for hours at a stretch. As she watches the water her mind opens up andthe thoughts and memories of her long life flow past. As she watches the rivershe watches her mind, as if it is something separate from her. As if it doesn’tbelong to her and she is just a curious observer.

When she closes her eyes thethoughts seem to flow from right to left. It’s rarely the other way round. Shewonders briefly why that is, and then lets that thought float past too.Sometimes the thoughts blossom and expand like a cauliflower storm clouds swellingup to fill the sky. Other times the thoughts are more like the bubbles of airthat sometimes rise up through the water and burst with an inaudible pop asthey break the surface.

She never saw these things whenshe was younger. Never took, or had the time to sit and watch her mind. Onething she understands now is that the mind always wants to be somewhere else –either in the past or the future, caught up in memories or imagination andprojection. This is like the water in the river wanting to be further upstreamor further downstream, she thinks. But the water doesn’t want to do that. Wateris where it is. Why does the mind not flow as quietly and smoothly and just bewherever it is, rather than constantly running away to past or future?

If she sits by the water for longenough her mind eventually does become quiet like the river. Then she becomesintensely aware of everything around her. The buzzing fly by a cow’s blinkingeye. The dancing shadow of a single leaf. The glint of the sunlight reflectedon the water. The intertwining songs of the birds and the insects. The rustleof a lizard in the long grass. The solidity of the earth beneath her. The softnessof the warm humid air. The touch of the thin cotton cloth of her salwar kameez against herskin. The breath moving in and out of her body.

When she is at one with all thesethings there is no past or future, only quiet contentment and peacefulness.

Her son comes to visit her. He oncewas tall and handsome, but now is aging too. Long hours stooped over a deskhave rounded his back and softened his belly. He has children of his own. They callher ‘bebe’. She thinks it might be the only Punjabi word they know. But theyspeak perfect Mandarin they learn at school and English from home, full of new wordsshe doesn’t know. They play with toys with flashing screens and funny beeping soundsthat keep them captivated for hours. They aren’t interested in drinking the freshcreamy milk that she has boiled. Her son sits with her under a tree andcomplains about the sound of the traffic from the new highway on the other bankof the river. He tells her about his latest business deals and gives her newsfrom his two younger brothers who head the family company’s offices in HongKong and Toronto.

He has long since given up tryingto convince her to move in with his family. She could have a room of her own. Amaid of her own. Anything she wanted. But over the years he has grown to acceptthe life of renunciation she chose for herself after his father died. He couldn’tunderstand it at the time. Now as he gets older, and more worn out by thedemands of work and family, he can see a certain appeal. He secretly admireshis mother’s determination to live an unencumbered self-sufficient life on herown terms. He sees that she is happy and content with the little that she has.

He would like to bring herpresents, but can think of nothing that she needs or wants. So he brings herfruit. Sweet mangoes and scarlet rambutans in season. Shiny green dimpled guavasand round purple-black mangosteens. Chikus and papaya and pink dragonfruit. Toomuch for her to eat alone. He knows the cows will get their share.

After he is gone she watches thesunset and hears the echoes of her grandchildren’s voices in her head. Shepictures her younger sons and their lives so far away. She squeezes open amangosteen and savours each juicy sweet succulent segment. She watches the cowscome ambling back along the river path, their milk heavy udders swinging fromside to side like pendulums.

Later by the light of herkerosene lamp she eats more of the fruit her son has brought. She sees herselflike a fruit that has been a long time growing. She has long since lost the ephemeralflowerlike beauty of her youth. Her smooth golden skin, her firm strong body, herblack shining hair, her dark twinkling innocent eyes are all memories of longago. Like someone she once knew. An old and dear lost friend. She sees herselfas a fruit more substantial and abiding than the fleeting flower of youth. Thisfruit has ripened to a sweetness that comforts her old age. And she knows that itis when the fruit is sweetest that it will drop from the tree. This is thecircle of life. From the flower comes the fruit. Within the fruit are seeds.

My good-looking bad-luck husband.

2011-11-04T09:51:00.000-07:00

Me, myself I am Chinese. NotChina-Chinese. Not real Chinese.Malaysian-Chinese only. My grandparents come from China. Came. I must remembermy tenses. I’m old enough to have had an English language education. And oldenough to have forgotten the rules of grammar too. But this story is not aboutme. This is a story about my husband. My bad-luck husband. My dead, bad-luck husband.

I needed a holiday. I deserved aholiday. At least that’s what I told myself. My boss didn’t really agree. Whatto do? I had some savings. Incredible, I know. Long time already. Now, I havedebts only. Last time was not like that. I told myself I could find a new boss.Then I told my boss.

I wanted to get away. Go to anisland somewhere. It seems like more of an escape when you go to an island. Asif the separation from the mainland can make a separation from your life. From yourself. But it’s not like that, is it? Someone saidin a book I once read - wherever you go, there you are. But I didn’t understandthat last time.

So an island. But which one? Somany to choose from. Penang too busy and too close to the mainland. East coastmonsoon ruled out Tioman and the Perhentians. I had already been to Langkawi.Such a sleepy place. Nothing to do.

“Why you don’t go Pangkorlah?” asked one of my friends.

“What to do in Pangkor?”

“Got seafood restaurant.Beachside. Snorkeling. Cheap place to stay. Maybe you meet rich Gwai Loh.”

A few days later I took a bus fromPudu to Perak and stayed the night with my auntie in Ipoh. Next day I caughtthe ferry from the jetty in Lumut, happy to see the mainland disappear. Leavingall my problems far behind me. All my worries.

That was what I thought. Ididn’t know that from then on my life would be so many problems. Full ofbad-luck. Don’t misunderstand me. I loved my husband once. But if there was onething in my life that I could change, I wish I had never have taken thatferry-boat to Pulau Pangkor.

Beachside seafood restaurants.Yes, my husband owned one with his uncle. They were originally from Sitiawan onthe mainland. The fish was fresh, the beer was cold and my future husband wascharming. So charming that when Tai Keong offered me a job in his restaurant Iaccepted immediately. I knew for surethat I would not go hungry working in a restaurant. And my new boss so handsomeone.

Soon we were spending all ourtime together. Ah Keong had a little wooden boat with a Yamaha outboard. Heused to bring me out fishing. A seafood restaurant needs fish, right? He hadfishing rods and worms and nets. He also kept a facemask in his boat too. Hetaught me how to dive down among the coral with a knife to gather sea urchins.We ate them raw in the boat. Sometimes we would go to one of the smallerislands nearby where we ate fresh fish cooked on a driftwood fire and laterslept under the stars. He was very good at living off the land. He could killand cook anything.

During the low season Ah Keongwould go back to the mainland to go hunting. When he asked if I wanted to gotoo, I said yes. He was very patient, teaching me how to be quiet in theforest. How to observe the direction of the breeze. How to listen to the soundsof the insects and the birds. And ofcourse how to fire a shotgun, and later a rifle. I became quite a good shottoo. He said women were better shots than men. A woman doesn’t use a gun in thesame way as a man. A man sees a gun as an extension of himself. He used to jokeabout men enjoying having a long hard barrel and the satisfaction of the strongbullets shooting out. A man with a gunwants to show off, and that can make him a bad shot.

It was just after our firsthunting trip together that he asked me to marry him. He was the first boyfriendI had who wasn’t like a boy. He was a man. A real man, who knew how to do realman things. And so good-looking too. I said yes.

He had been married before.His wife had left him a few years earlier. That was before he moved to theisland. It was a sad story and made me cry when he told me. He had twochildren. A girl and a boy. Four andfive years old. He came home early from the restaurant where he worked lasttime. It was middle of the afternoon. The children watching television. Theysaid that their mother was upstairs with uncle.

The uncle wasn’t a real uncle.He was Ah Keong’s best friend. It turned out that he was also his wife’s bestfriend. When he found them in bed together he thought he would kill them both. Iknow he was capable of it. First he shouted at them. Then he started beatinghis best friend with his fists. His wife pulled on her clothes and ran down thestairs screaming. She knew Ah Keong had a bad temper and was frightened of whathe might do to her. She quickly grabbed the children, ran out to the car withthem and drove away as fast as she could. Ah Keong saw the car speeding awaydown the street. He turned and broke his best friend’s nose. Then he kicked himdown the stairs and threw his clothes after him.

An hour later two Malaypolicemen came to the door.

“What you want?” he shouted. Hehad been drinking. “You think I must accept my wife and this man behave likethat. You would accept that, would you? Cannot lah. You arrest me and take meaway, but if happen to you like this, you do same as me.”

“It’s about your wife andchildren,” said the first policeman, a grey haired Malay man with a thinmoustache.

“What my children?”

“Boleh masuk sekejap, tak? – Can come in for a moment?” asked theelder policeman.

“Tak boleh. Sini rumah saya. Cannot. This my house.”

“We come with bad news.”

“Bad news? What bad news?”

“Your wife, she have very badaccident lah. She in hospital.”

“Not possible. How can? What ‘boutmy childrent?”

“Your wife unconscious andyour daughter badly injure. She break one arm, one leg.”

“Ayo! Dan anak lelaki saya, and my son? He is not harm? He is alright?”

The two policemen remainedsilent. They both looked at the floor and then at each other. The olderpoliceman slowly shook his head. “Mintamaaf, sorry lah. It was instant. He did not suffer.”

My bad-luck husband. His wifenearly died too. She spent six months in the hospital. He blamed himself foreverything. He fell in love with her again. And hated her at the same time.

My skin turned brown under thePangkor sun. I was as dark as a Malay fisherman. Local tourists did not believeI was Chinese. Ah Keong said he liked melike that. I was strong and natural, he said. Not like the weak and skinnywhite-skinned city-girls who came for holiday from Kay El or Singapore. I also likedthe fact that he wasn’t anything like their soft, nervous boyfriends, who allseemed to wear glasses and hair-gel.

I woke up from my nap to hearAh Keong shouting. When Ah Keong shouted half the island knew. He was scoldinghis uncle. Then his uncle Jao Lo, runaway. He ran away with all the money from the restaurant too. All their savingsthat they kept buried in the sand behind the kitchen in an old Tupperware box.I told him not to worry. Money would come. Tourists still needed to eat.

But tourists didn’t come. Whilethe other restaurants were busy every night, we sat there turning our thumbsand drinking beer. Then Ah Keong got sick. His whole body broke out in aterrible rash and he couldn’t sleep at night. The local doctor said he hadnever seen anything like it.

Ah Keong took the ferry to themainland to see a Chinese doctor in Sitiawan. Again the doctor said he hadnever seen anything like it.

“Do you have enemies?” askedthe doctor.

“Enemies?”

“Someone who might want to puta curse on you?”

“A curse?”

“Yes. I think this might bethe work of a bomoh. If that is the case then I cannot help you. Only anotherbomoh can help.”

Ah Keong certainly did haveenemies. I’d be the first to admit that he wasn’t always the easiest person toget along with. As I grew to know him better, I understood that there weretimes where he was best left alone. Atfirst I wanted to help. To listen. To support him. But I saw that his anger wastoo strong and he didn’t want support. Needing support was like being weak. AhKeong didn’t like weakness. Especially in himself.

There’s always a chickeninvolved. Our Malaysian bomohs do like chickens. But for whatever reason – itworks. At least in this case it did. Sort of.

“People cannot see your restaurant,” explained thewrinkled old bomoh that Ah Keong had brought back with him from the mainland.

“It is hidden by the curse.Where you see the restaurant, they only see bushes. The spirit helps me to seeboth bushes and restaurant.”

The chicken led the bomoh to aspot in front of the restaurant. The old man told Ah Keong to dig a hole in thesand. He didn’t like what he found. It was a piece of metal in the shape of aperson with a lime attached to it by a needle. The needle pierced the centre ofthe human shape. The bomoh took it carefully in his hands.

“This needle is for to killyou. You see rust on the body? This is same on your skin. The juice in the limerust the needle too. See?” He carefully removed the needle from the body. “Ifthis needle break from the rust then you die. I remove the spell.”

The bomoh told Ah Keong towash his whole body with special water made with lime leaves and flowers ofseven different colours. He did exactly as the bomoh asked. Within a few dayshis rash was gone and customers slowly started to come back to the restaurant.Too slowly. Ah Keong decided that we should leave the island and the cursebehind.

We moved to Kay El. Wellreally to the little village of Ayer Jingga on the outskirts of the city where Igrew up with my parents in the big squatter house they had built. We lived withthem to save money. But that didn’t happen. No matter how hard we worked ortried to make money we couldn’t save a single sen.

We tried many things. Webought an old van with my savings and used it to go to the Pasar Borong Selayang wholesale wet market. We bought vegetablesthere in the middle of the night when the air was at its coolest. Then we broughtthem back to sell on our local market in Kampung Ayer Jingga. We might not havebeen rich, but at least we had a place to live and lots of vegetables to eat. Thatwas when I had my first daughter.

At first Ah Keong was happy tohave a baby, but when the baby cried at night he got very angry. He complainedthat he needed to sleep, otherwise how could he get up so early to go to thewet market? I wasn’t able to go with him because I had to look after the baby.Soon he stopped getting up on time and didn’t go to the market anymore.

He sold the van and bought acar. We started growing bean-sprouts to sell to restaurants. That didn’t lastlong either. What little money we had he spent on drink and some nights hewouldn’t come home. He seemed to be angry all the time. The baby reminded himof his own daughter that he never saw. And the dead son he never would see.

Ah Keong worked for a fewmonths cooking with my mother on the big Chinese pasar malam - night market in OUG. In one evening they could makequite a lot of money. He was a very good cook and very good looking too. Heknew how to talk to the aunties who came to buy food on the market. But onenight a week wasn’t enough and the other nights he would spend the money heearned on beer. Or sometimes whiskey. You didn’t want to meet Ah Keong when he wasdrinking whiskey. All the anger bubbled up to the surface. He frightened me,and my mother cried, asking me why I had brought this man into her home.

One afternoon we were in thecar. It was very hot and the air-conditioning wasn’t working. The car was likean oven. The baby started to cry. He shouted at me to make her stop. I shushedthe baby as best I could. I rubbed her head with a damp cloth to try to keepher cool, but she was hot and tired and so was I and she just wouldn’t stopcrying. Ah Keong shouted at her. Then he leaned over and slapped her across theside of the head so hard that the marks of his fingers left bruises on her facefor weeks. She lost the hearing in her left ear. Permanently. She was only sixmonths old.

I thought about leaving him.Or kicking him out, but I knew that he would create a scene and he might evenhurt my parents and the baby again. I didn’t care what he did to me. I hadlearned to take his slaps without a sound. Then I realized there was anotheroption. It wasn’t really a sudden realization, it was something I’d thoughtabout in the past. Especially after the beatings. But now he had deafened my daughterI knew I had to act. I decided I would kill him.

I didn’t know how I would doit. He had left all his guns with his parents in Setiawan. I didn’t think Icould shoot him anyway. Shooting is a man’s way of killing. I had to findsomething less risky. Something I could get away with.

A relative gave him a job at afood court cooking. He worked long hours and was tired at the end of the day.He didn’t need to drink much before he’d fall asleep in his chair.

My mother knew a medium. Shewas an old Hakka auntie and she sometimes came to see my mother. They had grownup together in Teluk Anson, a small town in Perak, and belonged to the fewfamilies that didn’t speak Hokkien. The auntie offered to read my palm, but Iwas frightened that she might discover my murderous plan. I made an excuse thatI had to change the baby’s diaper. For some reason Ah Keong was home that daytoo. The auntie asked him if he wanted his palm read.

We were all surprised when hesaid yes. He sat down beside the auntie and put out his hand. She took his handand became very still. Her lips moved silently, but rapidly. Then suddenly she stoodup and pushed his hand away. She wouldn’t look at him again. She spoke to mymother in their shared dialect. I knew enough to understand.

“I cannot see his hand. Thereis only black. This man is very bad luck. Everything he touches will be badluck. If he does not change his life, very soon he will be dead.”

It was only that day that Ifound out that my bad-luck husband knew Hakka too. He didn’t say anything. Hejust got up and left the room.

Soon after that, my mothertold me that some neighbours had seen Ah Keong at the temple. He was talking tothe abbot, they said. Over the next few weeks I started to see a change come inmy husband. He stopped drinking and even asked for vegetarian food. This from aman who saw every living creature as walking meat. He weighed up every animal,judging if he could kill it, cook it and eat it and if so how. I think maybe heeven saw people in the same way. But now he was kind to me again, in the way hewas when I first knew him on Pulau Pangkor. He even started to play with thebaby, something he had never done before. When I told him I was pregnant againhe was happy. He thought this baby would bring us good luck.

A baby in a village is acommunal affair. Because the mother must stay indoors, all the village womencome to visit her. Also to admire the new baby of course. When my seconddaughter was born she was quite hairy. The old women in the kampung stared atthe fine hair on her back. It grew in a spiral centered on the middle of herback. If you half-closed your eyes it looked like a target.

“This is very bad,” whispered Balbir Kaur,an old Sikh woman who kept cows by the riverbank. She was an old friend of mymother’s. My mother had never been to school and what little English she knewshe had learned from Balbir Kaur. Some people said Balbir Kaur was a witch, but I wasused to seeing her around the village since I was a small girl and she didn’tseem like a witch at all.

“This meaning one of theparents soon will die,” she said in a low lilting voice.

Ah Keong showed me a photo. Icouldn’t understand where he had gotten this photo of my new baby. I asked himwho was the woman holding my baby in the photo. He started to cry, the onlytime I ever saw him cry. He explained that it was a photo of his dead son andhis ex-wife.

He couldn’t bear to look at oursecond daughter because all he saw was his son. They looked exactly alike. Ah Keong fired his boss again and started backdrinking. It was hard to see him change back to the way he was before. He hadborrowed all the money my parents could afford to give him. Then he asked formore. He shouted at my father. My father was a small, shy, quiet man and AhKeong frightened him. That was Ah Keong’s way. He either charmed or frightenedpeople. Sometimes both. My father pawned his motorbike to get the money. AhKeong promised he would pay my father back, but no one ever expected he would.He worked odd jobs here and there. Barely enough for drinking money.

Meanwhile at home we had nomore money for rice. My parents had eaten leaves in the jungle when theJapanese came during the war. They knew all about hunger and reassured me thatwe would be alright. I learned the taste of monitor lizard and the river gaveus fish to eat. I left my daughters with a neighbor once a week to help mymother on the night market, but we couldn’t afford much to sell. My olderdaughter was walking now and growing fast, but she was so skinny it made mecry. Balbir Kaur brought us milk. Not something Chinese usually take, but it kept mychildren from starving. No mother should know what it is not to be able to feedher children.

Ah Keong announced he hadfound a job. A two month contract in Port Klang. He would make good money andpromised us that we would have plenty to eat soon. Klang was too far for him togo and comeback every day, so he stayed there and came home one day a week. Hesurprised us all by giving his first pay packet to my father. My father wasable to get his motorbike back and when he brought it home he had a big sack ofrice on the back and a chicken with its legs tied together hanging from thehandlebars. We ate so much that night that we all got sick. My parents knew wewould and warned me not to eat so much, but we were all too hungry to care.

I saw Ah Keong once a week only.During those visits he was always sober and nice to me. He said he wanted togive me a present, but didn’t know what to get me, so he gave me money instead.I gave it to my mother so she could buy more food to cook and sell at themarket. Our luck finally seemed to be changing.

Ah Keong had one more week towork before the end of his contract. His boss said he would take him on for anew job when they finished. They were cleaning an old factory chimney. It wasmostly made of bricks and needed to be cleaned inside and repainted outside.Dirty work, but for some reason Ah Keong liked it. Maybe cooking was too muchfire for his own fiery character. Better for him to do something else. He leftto go back to Klang for the week.

That night I had a dream aboutAh Keong. We were in a small boat together, under the sun, out of sight ofland. Then somehow I was walking behind him in the jungle. The sound of nightbirds and cicadas. He had a gun, I had a gun. We were walking very quietly. I didn’tknow if he knew I was there behind him. I could kill him now. Shoot him in theback like a wild animal and leave him there. Let the wild pigs get rid of thebody. No. He was my husband. I wasafraid of what I might do. I whispered his name to warn him. He stopped andturned towards me. His face was gone. An empty black space was there instead. Iscreamed. I woke up. The ceiling fan was turning round, making a sound like aboat in the distance on the waves.

The police came the next day.Was I the wife of Tai Keong? I nodded. What kind of trouble had he gotten intonow.

“Your husband is dead.”

There it was. The cold hardtruth. It hit me like a punch. Maybe it was better to be told that way.

He had fallen from the top ofthe chimney. Fallen down on the inside. There were men working on the ground,sealing up the opening in the brickwork they had used to clean the lower partof the interior. They heard a loud noise inside. An echoed thump. One man tooka flash lamp. No one understood how it could have happened. There were safetyrails. No one heard him shout. They found his body on the ground, swollen andblack and very dead. Every bone was crushed. His body one huge bruise. Theyidentified him by the I.C. in his wallet and the clothes he wore. Did he jump?Was he pushed? I’ll never know. But one thing was certain. My bad-luckhusband’s luck had run out.

Muthu's Barbershop

2011-11-01T11:00:00.000-07:00

I push open the glass door and step into the air-conditioned freshness of Muthu’s tiny barbershop. The lingering antiseptic smell of Dettol fleetingly revives distant childhood memories of scraped knees and salty tears. A neat pile of freshly clipped hair has been swept into the corner of the tiled floor. The tiles are white, the hair is black.

“Wannakam.” Muthu the barber nods a reflected greeting in the mirror, welcoming me with his broad back. The mirror covers one whole wall, making the room appear bigger than it really is. His fingers are busy clipping and snipping at another black-haired head. Three sets of dark eyes turn towards me from the row of plastic chairs against the opposite wall. I nod and return the greeting in the vernacular: “Wannakam.”

The eyes turn away in silence, but one or two hesitant smiles flicker on the faces of the three young men.

I remove the newspaper, with its indecipherable curly Tamil script, and ease myself down onto the only empty chair. We sit shoulder to shoulder in companionable silence. A Tamil movie is playing loudly on the television bracketed to the wall. In the movie, two men on a motorbike are being chased through traffic by a band of thugs in a black-and-yellow auto-rickshaw. The haircuts of the movie stars are the same as those on the poster on the wall: sixteen black-and-white headshots of light-skinned Indian men with hair backcombed in

bouffant variations of the mullet—short on the sides and long at the rear. Of the sixteen, only two are clean-shaven. The remainder wear moustaches, as do the movie stars and Muthu.

Of my three companions on the plastic chairs, only one is old enough to grow a real moustache. But this hasn’t stopped the other two from trying. Muthu says something to the mirror and all eyes turn to me again with looks of curiosity and warmer smiles. I don’t understand the barber, but I smile back and nod. The barber knows me. I come here once a month, usually around the full moon.

At first Muthu told me that he was from Chennai. When I told him I had spent several months in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu, he revised his location and was more than surprised when I told him that I knew his hometown of Villupuram, a dusty grey place, where, coincidentally, I once had a haircut while killing time waiting for a train. For whatever reasons, presumably involving cheap labour costs, most barbershops in Kuala Lumpur seem to employ Indian barbers. Many stay for two or three years, working long hours almost every day and eventually returning to India with a pair of scissors and comb in one pocket and a wad of cash in the other.

Muthu tells me that it has been more than two years since he last saw his wife and children. He has a sixteen-year-old daughter who harbours ambitions of becoming a dentist and a fourteen-year-old son who wants to be an accountant. When he gets back to Villupuram, he plans to open his own barbershop and take on an apprentice or two.

This he has revealed to me in private on the occasions when there were no other customers around. When other people are present, he maintains a professional reticence and limits himself to short murmured consultations as to which particular tonsorial procedure is required. I have seen him spread wads of mudlike dye on greying hair, apply noxious skin-whitening creams to dark faces and scrape a week’s stubble from a foam-covered face with a few fast flicks of his cutthroat razor. At times the intensity of his concentration makes him pucker his lips. Today he uses an electric clipper to shear short backs and sides. One by one my silent companions leave and soon it will be my turn to mount the red PVC-covered throne with its adjustable headrest.

Just then the door opens and a wizened old man leans in and asks Muthu something. The old man’s white whiskers stand out in stark contrast to his dark leathery skin and his watery eyes show the initial stages of developing cataract. Muthu answers with a few short words that all seem to end in long vowels. The old man closes the door and turns

back down the street.

A few moments later, the door opens again and a large woman in a long floral shift comes in. It’s rare to see women in barbershops, which are the reserved bastions of masculinity. Traditionally, Hindu women rarely have their hair cut. This woman’s hair is an unruly mop that looks as if it hasn’t been washed, cut, or even brushed for a while. She brings with her a strong smell of stale cooking oil, curry spices and sweat. She also carries a very small baby. I take it that the woman is still in ‘confinement’ after the birth of the baby, a practice all but forgotten in Europe but still regularly observed throughout much of Asia. The old man shuffles in after her with a plastic shopping bag advertising the local supermarket and seats himself in the barber’s padded chair. Muthu signals to me to wait with a gesture of an upraised hand. “Mundan sanskar,” he says solemnly, as if expecting me to understand, which I don’t, but it soon becomes apparent what he means.

The television volume is muted and Muthu lights an incense stick. He places it in a holder in front of the gold-framed brightly-coloured image of Ganesha, the elephant god, which stands on one end of the counter, just beside an industrial-sized tub of hair gel.Son of Shiva and Parvati, Ganesha is the remover of obstacles and is always the first deity to be honoured in Hindu ceremonies. The explanation for this is a whole story in itself, but let’s just say it involves Shiva mistakenly decapitating his own son.

The woman hands the baby to the old man, who tenderly supports the baby’s head with visible emotion. The baby may be his grandchild, or even his great-grandchild. I watch the scene both in the mirror and from behind. The muted television and the smell of incense changes the atmosphere and I notice Muthu’s lips pucker as he inserts a new blade into his razor. The hero of the movie is now dancing with a generously proportioned woman. Their dance somehow inexplicably brings them from a field of red and yellow tulips to a tropical beach and just as suddenly they are transported to a green grassy meadow with snow-capped mountains in the background. They sing and dance in technicolour silence as the barber brings the razor to the baby’s head.

At first the baby is still and quiet. The barber’s blade leaves blank swathes of scalp in the baby’s soft black hair. Then the baby starts to cry. A few coughing complaints at first, but soon a full air-raid-warning-signal wail fills the barbershop. Muthu’s face is full of tenderness as he bends over the baby. The woman’s eyes are motionless and speak of intense fatigue and resignation. A single tear runs down the old man’s wrinkled face. The woman says something and Muthu stands up. The old man reluctantly relinquishes the bawling baby and now the woman takes his place in the barber’s chair. Her ample frame is a tight fit and she has to waddle her hips down into the chair. The baby continues crying while Muthu finishes shaving its head.

The old man produces a bowl of yellowish paste made of turmeric and sandalwood and uses his hands to smear the stuff over the baby’s bare scalp. I notice a couple of bright red lines where the razor has nicked the skin. The paste seems to soothe the baby and it soon stops crying. The woman gets paste on her hands as she supports the baby’s head. Then the old man produces a string of jasmine flowers from his plastic bag and places the garland over the baby’s head, murmuring something solemn in Tamil, or perhaps Sanskrit.

A few minutes later I am alone with Muthu. I sit in the chair, still warm from its previous occupant. The hero is grunting loudly on the television as he single-handedly fights off the inevitable gang of hoodlums. As he cuts my hair, Muthu tries to explain the connection between hair and karma in his halting English. From what I can understand it seems the baby’s hair is a link to its past incarnation. Shaving off that hair is a symbolic way of cleansing the child of any undesirable traits that may have been brought from its past life, severing the link between past and present. I later learn that Chinese Malaysians also shave their babies’ heads, and even eyebrows, but supposedly to make the hair grow stronger and thicker rather than for clearing karmic balance sheets.

“Baby live long life,” Muthu says, nodding slowly as he runs the electric clippers over my head. He puts the finishing touches on my haircut with the same cutthroat razor he used on the baby, but with a fresh blade. Then I am momentarily engulfed in a perfumed cloud of talcum powder. Finally Muthu treats me to an excruciating head massage, finishing off by wrenching my head from side to side, my cervical vertebrae protesting with loud clicking noises.

Another young man has just come in, so I pay Muthu and leave, reflecting on the ancient ritual that I have just had the privilege of observing. It seems that every day in Malaysia I learn something new. There are even lessons to be learned at Muthu’s barbershop.

Night Fishing in Langkawi

2011-11-01T08:23:00.000-07:00

Cloud-cloakedlightning flashes out on the horizon. Floatingfishing boats in brief illumination. Out on the waves old men with flashlightsand wrinkled faces mumble in kampong dialect Malay. Pulling nets of cuttlefishaboard. Clove scented cigarettes hang from the corners of their mouths. Makethem squint. Make their mumbled words even less intelligible. Distant thundermumbles too.

Itwon’t rain tonight. The wind blows away from the main island. Away from itstwinkle-lighted shore. The storm must be centred over Penang. Or maybe themainland. Monsoon muddle. The seasonal storms seem to have skipped Langkawi thisyear. Call it climate change. The localsdon’t need it explained. They see it in the sky. They see it on the land. Theway the paddy fields flood one year and go dry the next. The way this season’scoconuts are small and hard and dry. The way the fish are smaller now. And takemore time to find. The dark water makes slapping sounds against the wooden boats.Wrinkled old men’s faces in brief illumination. Distant lightning andcigarette coals.

Theold men don’t need to talk. They know each other very well. Long hours and longlives in close proximity. Shared boats and shared catches. Shared kampungs andshared families. All entangled in the same net. By marriage and by blood. Twinlines many times entwined. Lines that would take a fisherman’s patience tounravel and untie. Thirty boats ofcousins dipping and rising on each wave. At night time on the sea.

Theirgrandfather’s grandfathers were pirates, perhaps. Preying on trading shipssailing through Malacca Straits. Plundering parties pillaging in the AndamanSea. Orang Laut. Orang Selat. The Lanun and Celates. The scourge of the Sultansand Siam. The enemies of the Empire. They plundered the Portuguese. They doggedand dodged the Dutch. Then they slipped away and lost themselves. Hiding inthese islands is not difficult to do.

Theirdescendants all are Muslims. They set out when the sun sets down, sinking intothe sea beyond their fishing grounds. The waters have changed within theirlives. The sharks are all long gone. It’s rare now for a turtle to get snaggedup in the nets. There once were crocodiles in the Mangrove swamps. Mangroveschopped for charcoal created new mudflats, where fishermen’s children, andtheir children’s children, hunt for shellfish at low-tide. Land beneath thewaves, land that was never claimed, is filled with toppled mountains and thenbecomes reclaimed. Other projects project long walls into the sea. Barriersbuilt to keep in mud kept out the Tsunami. The airport runway ends where oncethere was a bay. The fishermen see late-flight night-lights in the sky. Theairplanes fly low overhead. More tourists come. More tourists go.

Thefishermen’s children, and their children’s children, work in five star hotels.Drive air-conditioned taxis. Cook and wait in beachside restaurants. Sellplastic shoes and plastic eagles to eager tourists in their shops. An easierlife than a life at sea. The lines they know have more to do with broadbandthan fishing. Pirates and surfers on wireless waves.

Thebeachfront restaurants turn out their lights. Replaced by stars above. The oldmen have their own names for the stars and constellations. Names that werenever written down, and probably never will be. Spotlights burn outnight-vision, but bring the fish to nets and lines. Nets are hauled bycalloused hands. Water splashes sparklein the flood-lit night. The night air is heavy and humid. The nets are half-empty and light. Shining silvery fish flap and flop. Cuttlefish squirm and squirt black ink. Laterstained hands are washed. The salty water is warm and stings in new net cuts. Helpsthe small wounds heal faster.

Longnights of water and waves. Mumbles and clove cigarettes. A long night near itsend, broken by a sudden shout from a rocking boat. An old man stumbles andfalls overboard. This never happens. Something isn’t right. He’s hauled backin. His breath comes in croaks and gasps. Box jellyfish. A new threat from thesea. Anaphylactic shock. Vinegar and banana peels don’t work this time. The oldman wheezes in pain and clutches a cousin’s hands.

Otherboats motor closer. Wooden hulls bump and touch. A hollow thumping sound. Morewatery wooden slaps. A standing man raises his palms in prayer. The othersstand up too. They bow their heads and join him. A cousin’s hands feel the oldman’s grip tighten. A bone-crushing grip. Fisherman-strong. Silent last prayer movement of the old man’slips. The fishermen see the night time fading. The spread of morning light. Thesun breaks the horizon and with a final sigh the old man’s grip loosens.

This is the ebband flow of life. Time for the tide to go out. A cousin’s rough cut fingers tenderlyclose the old man’s eyes. He left on the water at sunup.

He’llbe buried in the ground by sundown.

Strange healing

2011-10-30T11:36:00.000-07:00

I’m fond of the water. I like to swim and since I now live ten minutes from the beach (a lifetime dream come true) I used to swim most days. Usually I tried to get there early, before the jet-ski operators spread their noxious petrol fumes over the waves and filled the air with the noisy whine of their motors. I left my bicycle near the coconut stand and swam from there down as far as the lifeguard’s watchtower.

Other days I used to come down to the beach towards sunset and sit in the warm water watching the great fiery orb sink down behind the tip of one of the cluster of small islands towards the horizon and admire the changing colours of the clouds reflected on the water. The sun still had a bit further to descend so I put on my goggles and set off swimming at a leisurely pace with long smooth front crawl strokes slicing through the salty water. It was low tide and the water was very shallow. Even after ten minutes swimming I could still put my feet on the sandy seafloor.

I endeavoured to make my swimming sessions part of my spiritual path. With each set of strokes and breath I recited the Gayatri Mantra.

Om Bhur Bhuvah Svah

Tat Savitur Varenyam

Bhargo Devasya Dimahi

Dhiyoyo na Prachodayat

The Gayatri Mantra is one of the oldest mantras known to humanity. It comes from Rig Veda, the most ancient of the Vedas, which linguistic historians estimate is at least three thousand five hundred years old. It is sometimes called the mantra of spiritual light and is said to have the power to heal body, mind and spirit. Like any human being, I had (and have) things that need healing on all three of these levels.

The sun was lower now. Tropical sunsets are a quick affair. There’s none of the lingering dusks of northern Europe. It can go from broad daylight to pitch dark in less than half an hour. I readjusted my goggles and started swimming back towards shore where my wife was practicing yoga while waiting for me. While reciting my mantra, part of me was thinking of the green mango and papaya salad already prepared in the fridge at home. A romantic sunset stroll on the beach and a healthy evening meal would round off the day nicely.

Without warning, I entered a world of pain. Searing burning pain. My left shoulder, my back, my chest were on fire. I stopped swimming, stood up, gasped for breath and spat out some salty expletives. I knew instantly that it was a jellyfish but I wasn’t going to hang around and look for the culprit. I swam again, my heart pounding from the adrenaline surge. Added to the pain, my left arm began to grow heavy. My shoulder started to cramp up. I could feel the burning sensation spread to my waist, the back of my legs, my face. The water was waist deep. I stood again and waded back towards the shore wincing with pain. I could see a small restaurant van that sold Laksa soup, a local speciality, and knew that they would have lemons.

Get out of the water, get lemons and everything will be fine. I staggered out of the surf and called out to my wife who was still standing on her head. It’s something she does a lot. Anyway, we got some lemons and the security guard of a fancy hotel nearby, who had seen me hobble out of the sea, kindly squeezed lemon juice over my back and shoulders. After a minute or so I could feel the stinging pain start to ease. Now it was just an unpleasant, uncomfortable sensation, though definitely still much too uncomfortable to enjoy sunset. We would cycle home, I would douse myself in vinegar. I only had balsamic vinegar, epicurean that I am, but it would have to do. I would shower later and everything would be fine. Or so I thought.
I never made it home.

An hour later I was coming round. I knew I was in a hospital.
People were thumping me on my chest. I wanted to tell them to stop because they were hurting me, but I couldn’t catch my breath to talk or even open my eyes. My whole body was in pain. Someone slipped a needle into my arm.

When I opened my eyes again I had a rubber tube wrapped around my head and oxygen tubes up my nose. People in white coats and surgical masks flocked around me. I tried to get them to understand that I still couldn’t breathe. I was frightened. Was I going to die because of a stupid jellyfish?
It seemed ironic to me that I was in a hospital at all. Healthy people don’t go to hospital. I’m a healthy person. I try to make responsible lifestyle choices. I don’t drink, at least not very often, I don’t smoke, I take regular exercise, I eat healthily – lots of fresh fruit, no deep-fried stuff or any meat or fish. I avoid stress, I practice yoga, I meditate. Thanks to this regime I am almost never sick. So how come I was writhing in agony in the emergency ward of a hospital? What lesson was life trying to teach me? Was it the ocean wreaking its wrathful revenge on me for the countless times I have disrespected it by peeing in the water?

As I lay there I had vague flashbacks of getting off my bicycle on the quiet back road through the paddy fields that leads to our house and waiting while my wife went home for the car. I felt dizzy. I remember feeling strangely detached as my arm and my leg started to go numb. The sun had set and I was suddenly surrounded by dozens of bloodthirsty mosquitoes. I had to get away. I leaned on my bicycle and half limped, half staggered up the road. I must have fallen. The road was warm underneath me. I couldn’t breathe. Someone lifted me into the car. Then I must have blacked out again.

More pain, more painkillers. Time and space collapsed in on themselves. In the next bed in the emergency ward was a pretty Korean girl in her twenties (amazing how some faculties of observation remain unimpaired).

“I can’t breathe!” she gasped, sounding frightened, echoing my own internal dialogue. She had also had a heated discussion with a jellyfish. The jellyfish had won of course. As a species they have some very compelling arguments. Another young man had been in the same bed with the same complaints what seemed like moments earlier. Meanwhile my abdominal and leg muscles jumped in uncontrollable spasms. Ridiculously, despite the pain I felt hungry. I took it to be a good sign.

I’ve been sick before – mostly in India - food poisoning, chikun gunea, dengue fever... I’ve been in pain before too, but this pain was like nothing I had never experienced before (except maybe the time I had a toothache that required root canal surgery). I would have used some breathing techniques to calm my mind, except that my lungs weren’t responding to mission control and my abdominal muscles were all locked tight.

I didn’t know what was going on - either in my body or in my immediate surroundings. No one else in the hospital seemed to know either. I asked for the doctor. The doctor was off saying his prayers. Perhaps I should have followed his example.

An hour later the doctor was still praying. It was reassuring to have a man of such strong convictions at the helm of the emergency unit. No doubt his intervention was most helpful. Another hour of pain and suffering and laboured breath. I trembled. I shook. I moaned. Tears flowed.

Where is the doctor?
What doctor?
The praying doctor.
No, no doctor now.
Is there anyone I can talk to?
Talk to?
Yes - someone who can tell me what’s going on?
What’s going on?
Yes, that’s what I’m wondering too. How long do I have to stay here?
You don’t have to stay.
Should I go then?
I don’t know.
Is there anyone who does know?
Knows what?
Is there someone I can talk to?
Talk to?

I was getting frustrated. I took a painful breath and gritted my teeth. Here I was hours later still clad only in my swimming shorts and half-covered in a mixture of sand and lemon pulp. The air conditioning made me feel cold and the painkillers seemed to have worn off. The pain was still awful, but at least it was bearable now. My wife, who had stood by all the while, helped me from the bed. I stood tentatively. My legs seemed to hold, though I felt a little shaky.

“I’m going,” I informed the nurse.
“First we remove this,” she said indicating the needle still taped to my arm. She gave me a few bags of painkillers and some ointment to take with me and I hobbled out of the hospital with my empty stomach growling for food.

I felt better after eating, but by the time I got back home I realized that it was only now that the painkillers were actually starting to wear off.
Then the real fun began.

If I’ve spent a worse night in my life it certainly doesn’t spring to mind. I literally lay on the floor writhing in agony for hours. The bag of pain killers from the hospital seemed as ineffectual against the pain as a box of Smarties. Maybe I just have a low pain tolerance threshold. In any case tears were shed. In fact I bawled like a baby for hours.

And with the tears I let go of years of baggage. Heavy weights on my heart and on my mind melted and flowed out through me tear ducts.

Sometime after dawn I eventually fell into a fitful slumber for an hour or two.
Being Friday, all the doctors on the island were off praying at the Mosque. After trying several clinics closer to home we drove back to the hospital. Well my wife drove – I just sort of rocked back and forth in a semi-catatonic state and gritted my teeth and moaned a bit.

I took my place in the waiting room, but when they saw the state I was in I was gallantly jumped up the queue. I was helped into a wheelchair by a security guard who smelled strongly of stale tobacco and he kindly pushed me back into the familiar surroundings of the emergency ward.

A novice nurse made several unsuccessful stabs with a needle and just when my arm and hand were starting to look like a much maligned pin cushion she finally managed to force the needle into a vein.

“This morphine,” she said, producing a syringe. “Well, not morphine but like morphine,” and she named some chemical compound I had never heard of. She managed to squirt half of it over my arm before she finally plunged the needle home, so I figure that at best I only got a half dose.

It didn’t hit me like a crashing wave. It was more like a gentle slide. I could feel my mind softly separating from the physical sensations in my body. I felt very peaceful. It felt very natural, like the deep, still peace that you sometimes feel after a good yoga class.

“We are all prisoners of perception and perspective,” I whispered to my wife. I know that’s exactly what I said, because I asked her to write it down. It seemed like a very important insight at the time.

I woke up a few hours later feeling rested and relaxed, though I wanted to slip back into that peaceful silent sleep. It didn’t happen, so I just gazed for a long time at the patterns of holes in the white acoustic ceiling panels overhead instead.

Somewhere along the line I had been fitted with a saline drip. It seemed odd all the same, as I had drunk litres of water to try to flush the poison out of my system. Added to that, for some reason I hadn’t been able to pee. I felt swollen and bloated on top of everything else. The nurse insisted that I was dehydrated – I surmised that I had probably lost half my body fluid through my tear ducts the previous night. In any case as it happened the tube from the drip wasn’t opened so I didn’t get any of the intended rehydration until later when another more competent nurse checked me and remedied the problem.

After a while discomfort started to creep back in, but the drugs had definitely taken the edge off. Then the doctor appeared. I had expected a devout long-bearded gentleman with a prayer bruise on the centre of his forehead. Instead it turned out that the doctor on duty was a teenage Chinese girl who seemed decidedly unsure of herself. For some reason she didn’t believe in the jellyfish story, though she suggested I stay in hospital for a few days observation all the same. Usually I take doctors’ professional opinions seriously, but she seemed so young and inexperienced that I was reluctant to follow her advice. That said, if she had promised me more of the morphine that wasn’t really morphine, but was like morphine I might have given the matter further consideration.

Instead I said I would rather go home and that I would come back again if I ran into more trouble. She sort of shrugged and looked a bit dubious and asked me to stand. I was still quite lightheaded but complied and stood rocking back and forward on my heels while clutching the side of the bed for support and my eyes open too wide. She announced that I appeared to be fine and sent me on my way.

I ventured down to the beach this afternoon when the rain finally let up. It was cold (relatively speaking), still drizzling and a little windy. I eyed the ocean warily and certainly didn’t contemplate getting in. I didn’t stay long, but before I turned away I paused awhile. I listened to the lap of the water and gazed out to the horizon. Then I thanked the ocean for healing me.

pantai cenang - langkawi

Revenge of the Temple Spirit

2011-10-30T10:53:00.000-07:00

I wanted to go to the temple. Not for any particular spiritual or religious reason - just plain old curiosity. I had heard a few stories and rumours about the temple and the spirit that was said to inhabit it and wanted to see for myself. I even brought my camera along to take a few photos.

The temple is a Chinese Taoist temple and is said to be the oldest on the island, established more than a century ago by the local ethnic Chinese population when Langkawi was still part of the Kingdom of Siam (present day Thailand). It's not far from the seafront and close to the banks of a small tidal river filled with fish and monitor lizards at high tide and acrid, but not unpleasant smelling silt at low tide populated by crabs and amphibious mud-skippers who scuttle and slide across the mudflats while surrounded by the inevitable discarded plastic bags and styrofoam food containers from the night market a little further upstream.

There is a big ten-storey hotel next to the temple. It is one of the tallest buildings around. The side of the hotel facing the temple is a blank wall bristling with hundreds of rusting metal rods extending outwards about 2 metres. Definitely bad Feng Shui. These rods are meant to reinforce the concrete of a planned extension of the hotel. An extension that never happened.

I snap a few photos of the side of the hotel, trying to capture its porcupine spines in silhouette against the brooding monsoon sky. The angle and the light are good and I scroll through the images on the digital screen, thinking that I have caught a few good pictures, but I will have to see them on a bigger screen to really know.

I take a few photos of the abandoned rusting crane and the masses of climbing plants that have grown up the length of the chain, threatening to engulf the entire machine someday soon. It doesn't take long for nature to reclaim its rights over any manmade structures in the tropics. A twelve month growing season makes for a near unstoppable growth of greenery.

I turn my attention to the temple. It is a simple single storied structure, dwarfed by the hotel towering above it on the next lot. The roof of the temple is made of corrugated iron and the walls are a mix of brick and painted wooden planks. I raise my camera to take a few shots, but my camera screen tells me that my battery is dead. This surprises me a little since I had just recharged the battery two days earlier.

The planned extension of the hotel would have engulfed the site of the temple, but despite the odds the temple is still standing and the extension project seems to be indefinitely shelved.

There are several versions of the same story, but the best of my understanding is that the hotel offered to buy the plot of land where the temple is and even give a new plot of land behind the hotel for a new temple to be built. But before any decision could be taken the temple spirit had to be consulted first. It seems that the spirit inhabited a big old tree that grew within the temple. A medium asked the spirit if it agreed to move the temple. The spirit maintained that it was happy where it was and had no intention of moving. These wishes were conveyed through the medium to the temple committed, who in turn informed the hotel management that it wouldn't be possible to move the temple. Further proposals were made and again the medium was called in to consult the tree-dwelling temple spirit. Again the spirit refused to move.

Quite what happened next is the subject of some debate and it is hard to get a neutral account of events, but the upshot was that the hotel decided to go ahead with the plan to remove the tree and demolish the temple.

When the tree was removed the spirit became, understandably, quite upset. The roots of the tree were excavated and a sealed metal box was found buried beneath it. Documents in the box dated from more than a hundred years earlier, adding proof to the belief that the temple was more than a century old. When the box was removed a hole appeared in the ground beneath it. Water started to flood in, presumably from some underground conduit between the sea or the river. The whole ground started to collapse and engineers determined that the land was unstable and unsuited to supporting a ten-story extension to the hotel.

So the temple was saved from demolition and the crane sits there rusting, with the creepers climbing higher every week.

Since I couldn't take any photos and not finding anyone around to answer my questions about the temple I left. I made my way back towards the main road where damp old buildings are slowly collapsing and are being quite beautifully taken over by strangler figs which have wrapped their sinuous roots around the aged brickwork. Mosses and ferns fill cracks and gaps in the crumbling plaster. I tried my camera on the off chance that I would have enough battery for one photo. The battery meter showed that the camera was fully charged and I was able to take as many photos as I wanted. When I got home and went to look at the photos on my computer screen I found that all the pictures I had taken of the hotel and the crane had disappeared.

Spooky Stuff at the Seven Wells

2011-10-30T09:42:00.001-07:00

Abang Lan is a small, square, dark-skinned man with strong hands and broad shoulders. His calm clear eyes twinkle when he talks and he keeps a ready smile under his black moustache. When he’s not on the beach selling coconuts to tourists he can usually be found in his massage hut nearby. He does traditional Malay massage, which he tells me he learned from his grandfather, who in turn learned from his grandfather.

I've known Abang Lan for a good while now and we chat while his meaty hands and fingers probe the sensitive reaches of my muscles, ligaments and tendons. Knowing that he is an avid nature lover I was telling him about a hike I did recently from the Seven Wells.

The Seven Wells, or Telaga Tujoh as it is called in Malay, is situated on the lower flanks of the Matchinchang mountain range on the west of the island. The mountains are the oldest in South-East Asia and the popular boast is that the rainforest that covers the Matchinchang range is the oldest in the world. Certainly there is a sense of something very ancient when you step into the green silence. The Seven Wells themselves are water-worn bowls eroded in the smooth granite at the confluence of two mountain streams that flow out of the forest. The legends say that the forest spirits bathe here early in the morning.

A trail leads into the forest from the Seven Wells. I have adopted the local custom of asking permission of the spirits before entering. The trail gently follows one of the streams at first, before becoming much more abrupt as it leads to one of the summits of the range. It is a steep and gruelling hike and roots and branches become useful banisters as well as the ropes that have been installed along some of the more delicate passages. In the strange half-light under the shade of the giant towering trees it is easy to imagine that you are being observed by unseen eyes.

“Don’t ever go in forest alone,” warned Abang Lan. “Never alone - always with friend.”

I grunt an involuntary agreement as he leans an elbow into my lower back.

“Many story about that forest,” he continues. “People get lost. Few year ago one old man, foreign tourist, he German I think, he go in jungle on his own. He tell guesthouse owner he come back evening time.”

“Evening time come he German man still not come back. Guesthouse owner - his name Pak Din - he worry and call Bomba, you know - fire brigade. Bomba say already night time. Cannot go in jungle night time. Cannot see. Really they afraid go in jungle at night time. Too many spirit there.”

“Next day Bomba say okay lah can go look for German man. Many people go looking. I go too. Call for him. No answer. We go all the way to top. Still no German. Look all day. Maybe he fall, maybe he sick, but look and look and cannot find. Night time come and Bomba say cannot stay in jungle. Everyone think spirit take German man, but no one say until we go out of jungle. No one know what to do. No point looking next day.”

“After four day he come back to guesthouse. Pak Din say where you been? Everybody looking everywhere in jungle for you. German look surprise. He say I go this morning only and now come back evening time.”

“No, no say Pak Din. You gone four day already. Bomba been looking. Everybody looking. Cannot find. Where you go?”

“German man say I go for one day only, but Pak Din show him newspaper and date and he see German a bit confuse now.”

“I go in jungle and meet one old man. Old man say come visit my village, so I go with him. Very nice village in the jungle. Lots of fruit tree - mango, banana, papaya, rambutan, durian. Beautiful women in this village cooking rice and meat. They say you come eat with us and I sit with old man and we eat. Later after food old man bring me back to Seven Wells and then I walk back down and take taxi.”

“Not possible say Pak Din. No village in jungle. No fruit tree.”

“But I see say German. I eat and drink. Very nice village.”

“Not possible. You gone four day.”

I wince as Abang Lan digs his fingers in under my shoulder blade.

“Pak Din call Bomba and tell German come back and then call me and I go see German. He still say same. I look at him. Four days and night in jungle he should be all scratch and mosquito bite. Maybe leech too, but nothing. He go four day and seem like one day only. Strange of all he got no beard. After four day nothing grow. That why I tell you never go in jungle alone.”

Working-Man-Sized-Burrito

2011-10-27T01:41:00.000-07:00

George andMama were both mid-fifties, small, stout and graying, with sallowEastern-Mediterranean skin. Their shared life had engraved the same deep linesin their faces. They both had the same gestures, the same music in their accents,the same linguistic and facial expressions. They could have passed as easilyfor brother and sister as man and wife.

They owned aconvenience store on the outskirts of Petaluma, at the frontier of what hadonce been chicken country. The surrounding Sonoma landscape of rolling hills thatwas once known as the ‘egg basket of the world’ was dotted with the warpedwooden shells of old abandoned chicken coops. The sun had bleached theweathered slats grey. Some of the coops were as big as barns. Chicken farminglost some of its momentum over the years, though there were still quite a few moderncommercial chicken farms left. A generation later, many of the chicken farmers’children worked corporate jobs in San Francisco - an hour south on Highway 101.The family farmhouses became part of the rural commuter belt. Any eggs laid onthe farms were often just for home use.

Some of these people would stop at the store for groceries or takeaways from the deli counter in theback of the store. The deli counter was Mama’s domain. George sat up at thefront of the store by the cash register where he could see the customers comein from the parking lot and keep his watchful eye on them as they browsed thefour narrow aisles in the store.

Hisperch gave him a clear view of the “Godam Meskens” who hung around the parkinglot hoping for farmers or building contractors to pick them up for day work.They were all illegal immigrants from south of the border. And an essentialelement of the Californian economy. George was particularly vigilant on therare occasions when any of the Mexicans dared to come inside his store.

George likedto boast that he never took a day off and the store was open all day, everyday.

“We cannotclose. Otherwise how we gonna send our son to college? How we gonna pay for himto live down in the city?”

When he saidcity (which he pronounced C.T.) he meant San Francisco. He always gave anexaggerated shudder when he said the word and chuckled at his own humour.

“Californiaso nice and sunny. Just like our country. But the C.T. – so cold, so damp. Likewintertime even in summer. Why he want to study there? I ask you? I tell himSanta Rosa has good college. He can get good degree and still live at home. Buthe wants the C.T. What to do? He is young, no? They all want the, what you say,bright lights. Anyway, you not here to lissen me talking. You get back to workwith Mama now Irish – okay?”

He gave me awink and a friendly punch in the shoulder. He was strong. The easy understatedstrength of a man who had worked, and worked hard, all his life.

My mainduties were at the deli counter, working with Mama. Her real name wasJosephine. George always called her Mama and it suited her and I always thought of her as Mama, though I never called her that to her face. She was assolid and as grounded as her husband, and as stereotypically maternal as he waspaternal.

“You cut the meat?” sheasked.

“Yes, I cutthe meat. It’s in the fridge under the counter like you told me.”

“You weighthe meat?”

“Aquarter-pound exactly in each pack.”

“So you tellme I open the fridge and take out any packet, it weigh exactly quarter-pound?”

I nodded.

“You wrapthe meat in the paper right?”

“Littletriangles to big triangle, just like you showed me.”

“I open thefridge that’s what I’m gonna see?”

“Sure.”

“Don’tworry. I don’t check. I believe. I trust you. You’re a smart boy. Good worker.”Then she pinched me on the shoulder.

I sort ofenjoyed the rough physicality George and Mama showed in their affection for me.

“Why soskinny?” she asked , grabbing my forearm to examine it. “You got no food inyour country? You gotta eat more. I tell you already – you work with me, youeat all you want. Just write it down in the book. A hungry worker is not ahappy worker. You hungry?”

“No, I’mfine”

“You happy?”

I smiled.“Yes Mm… Josephine, I’m happy,” I said, and it was the truth. She smiled backat me.

“Good youhappy. You happy make me happy. Me happy make papa George happy. So we allhappy. And when customer come they get happy too. People come in sad and leavehappy. People leave with something they don’t have to pay for. You hear me? Youcan’t buy or sell happy, but they get it anyway.”

She started to laugh.“Special offer - Happy today! Free of charge! On the house! Available forunlimited period!” She laughed so hard that her whole body shook. I laughed with her until my cheeks hurt. She was right – happy is contagious. She wiped hertears.

“Good. Nowwe ready to cook. Happy go straight into the food. Special ingredient. Peoplecan’t taste it, but they can feel it. Even if they don’t know.” She took myhand in both of hers. “I like you skinny Irish boy.”

In truth Ihad never planned on visiting America. In fact quite the opposite was true. Myteenage years were haunted by the twin specters of the Two Ronalds – Regan andMcDonald. Like two headed Orthrus, who guarded the red cattle in the red sunsetland of Erytheia, they formed a dicephalic monster that represented the politicaland corporate menace America had become. America’s finger was on the red button,perpetuating the cold war, casting the malignant shadow of imminent nucleardisaster over my youth. I rebelled against the fast-food world that was beingfoisted upon us. I railed against the pernicious and pervasive culturalcolonialism. The Two Ronalds were a dangerous-duo. But comical too - and allthe more scary for that. One was an actor and the other was a clown. I wasnever quite sure who was which.

Nothing goodcame out of the USA as far as I was concerned. Apart from some of the movies.And cartoons. And music I guess.

On closer examination I found that my entiremusic collection was almost uniquely limited to the works of black Americanmusicians, from Leadbelly to John Coltrane, from Gil Scott Heron to DigablePlanets.

And the writers too. I had to admit that Steinbeck, Hemingway and Bradburycaught my imagination in a way that Joyce, O’Casey or Synge failed to. Orperhaps the failure was my own. While the wit of Oscar Wilde and Flann O’Brienentertained me, it was the voices of Americans like Kerouac or T.CorraghesssanBoyle who inspired me to start writing for myself.

In truth Iowed America a cultural debt. When a good friend offered me the chance to spenda summer in Northern California I hesitated. My old prejudices came to thefore. But prejudices ought to be challenged. Especially when they are our own.

And that is how, in the autumn of my twenties, I flew from France to ‘Friscoand back again.

George andMama were from the Lebanon, but had been in “Amrika” for more than twentyyears, so as well as mythical sandwiches like Pastrami-on-Rye, that had onlyexisted in books for me, the deli also carried a range of Lebanesespecialties. Mama showed me how to make hommos from scratch, starting bytoasting sesame seeds at low heat in an oven to make her own homemade Tahineh.

“You don’tput garlic in your hommos?” I asked

“No, no, no.Never. The real hommos never has garlic. The only reason to put garlic in thehommos is if there is something wrong with it and you want to hide a bad taste.This is a sin, to ruin hommos with garlic.”

Mama made taboulehwith more parsley than couscous, very different to the North-African tabouleh Ioften ate in France. She told me that the secret to good falafels was to soakthe chickpeas overnight, but not to cook them. She said adding soaked broadbeans to the mix helped add flavor and made it stick together better.

As much aspossible was to be done by hand.

“Machine isgood. Machine is fast. But machine is cold. Has no soul. Food needs hands andheart.”

To prove the point, she gave me a crate of courgettes to wash andgrate. Then she sprinkled them with salt and showed me how to take a handfuland squeeze out the water. I made fists until my forearms ached and then addedeggs and flour under her watchful eye to make the batter for her famouszucchini fritters.

I likedworking in Mama’s deli kitchen. It was neat and easy to keep clean. Every taskwas systemized – the result of years of trial and error. Soon Mama wasconfident enough in my abilities to let me work on my own. She announced thatshe was going to take a few days off and go and visit her sister.

“You lookafter Papa George,” she ordered. “You make sure he eats right.”

As well assandwiches and Lebanese food the deli also had a few Mexican dishes – or 'Godam-Meskin' dishes, as I had come to think of them. The men hanging around the parking lotwere a constant theme in George’s conversation.

“They try tosteal from me I lock the door and call the cops before they even know I’ve seenthem steal. Gotta watch these guys or they steal everything in sight. Illegalimmigrants all of ‘em. Lazy Godam-Meskins.”

I didn’tpoint out that he was an immigrant too. Maybe he thought having a Green-Cardmade him as “‘Mrikan” as anyone else. Maybe it did. And as for illegal, well Ihad been deliberately vague about my own status in the country, though Icouldn’t understand how a human being could be ‘legal’ or ‘illegal’. We allshare the same flesh and blood. As far as I could see the Godam-Meskins hadmore Native-American blood in them than most other ‘Mrikans. In my eyes thatgave them as much right to be there as anyone else.

Despite theracial slurs, George and Mama were happy enough to take the Godam-Meskin’s hardearned money whenever they did venture into the store. They were always politeand friendly and respectful to them and the Godam-Meskins always returned the courtesy.Perhaps deep down they identified all too easily with the immigrants plight andprobably knew that they had more in common with them than they would care toadmit.

I liked the Godam-Meskincustomers. They were hard working men with meaty, calloused hands and well-wornjeans to prove it. Their faces fascinated me with their slanted, almost Asiaticeyes, a legacy of their Mongolian ancestors who crossed the Bering Straitsduring the ice ages. None looked to have much in the way of Spanish or Europeanancestry.

I grew upwatching bilingual Sesame Street. Another cultural debt I owed to 'Mrika. I knew how to countfrom one to ten in Spanish before I even learned it in Irish, so though I hadnever formally studied Spanish I had an early exposure to the language that hadleft a deep and positive impression on my mind.

An old man cameto the counter. His skin was like cured leather. His face was gentle and kind.His shoulders were broad and strong. Though he looked nothing like him, hereminded me of my grandfather.

“Hola jefe,”he said.

“Buenas diasSenor,” I said, with my awful Irish pronunciation.

“Hoy tengomucha hambre – entiendes?”

“Nocomprendo.”

“No. No es ‘comprendo’.You say ‘no entiendo’ - I no unnerstan.”

“No entiendo.”

“Si, asi –good now you speak like Mehicano. Tengo hambre,” he said pointing to his mouth.

“Food?”

“Yes, food,but hambre is hunger. Tengo hambre –I am hungry. You make me big burrito jefe. Grande – entiendes?”

“Si,entiendo. Un burrito grande.”

“Si, porfavor jefe”

I generouslypiled rice and beans onto the flour tortilla and spooned on sour cream,homemade spicy salsa and grated cheese. I ladled carne asada from the hot-pot of stewed meat that Mama had prepared.

“Mas, jefe.Mas carne por favor,” he said with a ladling gesture.

Mama hadbeen very specific about portion control when it came to expensive ingredientslike meat. Only one ladle, she had said. I shrugged and put a second ladlefulonto the pile on the tortilla. In fact I had piled on so much extra ingredientsin my attempt to please the old man that I could hardly close the burrito. I had to use little wooden toothpicks to hold its shape, the way Mama had shown me to do to deep fry the burrito to make a chimichanga.

I wrapped the lot and put it in a paper bag with somedisposable napkins and handed over the package. The old man winked and smiled.He lifted the bag up and down gauging the weight and nodded appreciatively.

“Eso es unburrito para hombre. Gracias jefe. Hasta luego.”

“AdiosSenor.”

He paidGeorge at the front of the shop.

As soon as he left George was down in front ofthe deli counter.

“Mama showyou how to make burrito, right?”

“Yes.”

“You make itlike she show you?”

“Of course.”

“I thinkmaybe a little bit heavy, no? Maybe you add a little bit extra?”

I started toblush. “Maybe. Sorry. He said he was very hungry.”

“Sure. GodamMeskins always hungry, always thirsty, but you can’t give too much, okay? Nex’time you make it like Mama show you how, okay?”

“Okay. Sorryboss.”

“No needsorry. You gotta good heart. You just wanna be kind, right?”

I blushedsome more and nodded my head.

“I know youare kind, Irish. Mama know it too. That’s why she trust you. You the firstperson ever she let run her kitchen without her. Not even me she trust likethat," he winked. "Just nex’ time you make it like she show you – no extra, okay?”

“Okay.”

“And onemore thing. You don’t call me boss. You call me just George, okay?”

Thefollowing evening two farmer’s pickup trucks pulled into the parking lot andunloaded a dozen tired looking sweat-stained Mexican workers. The old man ledthem all into the store. George jumped up in alarm.

“What youguys want? You not gonna rob me, right?”

“No, we nogonna rob you hombre. We working men, no criminales. We work for money, we nosteal.”

“Why so manyof you then? What you want? ”

“We come seeyour new cocinero. He make burritothat ain’t no Taco-Bell. He make man-size burrito.” There was general laughterand any tension in George’s face dissipated.

“Working-man-sizeburrito? You like?” asked George.

“We like.Hard working man can eat that every day. Know he’s eaten too.”

Morelaughter, while George scuttled down to the deli counter.
He had his seriousface on.

“Now you seewhat you done? These twelve guys all want big burritos.”

“Sorryboss.”

“I tell youcall me George.”

“SorryGeorge.”

Suddenly hisface melted into a huge smile and he laughed.

“Sorry? Whyyou sorry? I see these guys out there every day. They use my parking lot and nevercome in. Never they spend their money with me. Now you bring me twelve newcustomers and you want to apologize? Just like the old movie – Twelve-Hungry-Men,right? I’m running a business. Mama letsyou work on your own and straight away these Godam-Meskins want to give metheir money! No need sorry. Maybe I give you a raise. You bring me goodbusiness.”

“But onething I ask you Irish.”

“SureGeorge, anything.”

“You forgetabout how Mama show you make burrito. Don’t worry, I explain to her. I want youmake burrito your own way. From now on we gonna call it ‘Working-Man-Size-Burrito’.”

Roller Shutter Blues

2011-10-24T12:26:00.000-07:00

I tie on my apron.

It’s a good thick dark-bluecotton apron and reaches past my knees.

It gets hot in the kitchen soI often wear shorts and a white t-shirt under the apron.

The bar-staff in the Irish pubnext door tease me and call me “the-boy-in-the-blue-dress”.

“The-boy-in-the-blue-dress isgoing to cook your dinner, so you better be nice to him,” I say.

We all laugh. The lads know I will never let them go hungry.They’d make sure I never went thirsty, given the chance, but on the rareoccasions I do drink I usually limit myself to a half pint of Guinness at theend of the shift.

“It’s no wonder they kickedyou out of Ireland,” says Seamus. “Bringing shame on us so y’are. Half pintsare for girls.”

“Well just call me the-girl-in-the-blue-dress if that makes youfeel more manly. Anyway you know how it is in the kitchen. Here be dragons.I’ve got to face flames and sharp steel blades and vats of boiling oil everynight. Can’t afford not to be sober.”

The kitchen is connected tothe bar by a set of double doors. The space between the doors used to be astorage cupboard filled with boxes of beer glasses, promotional beer mats andwithered dusty Christmas decorations. Now the space is clear. I bring plates inand out between the kitchen and the bar, feeding hungry drinkers.

The kitchen used to be a fish-and-chipsshop. I used to work in a call-centre. I made reasonable money telling lies topeople all day. It was a comfortable 35 hour week (a French speciality), but Icouldn’t face myself in the mirror at the end of the day. I was brought up tobe honest. When the owner of the town’s only “real” Irish pub, with“real-Irish-people” working there, said he wanted to change the chipper intosomething a bit nicer I volunteered to take on the project.

“Can ye cook?” says he.

“I can,” says I.

“Fair enough then,” he says,and as easy as that I had a new boss.

I hand in my notice and stoptelling lies for a living.

I spend a summer and a wad ofhis cash with some friends gutting and renovating the place. We install anL-shaped counter where people could sit at and eat and watch me cook. We paint theplace burgundy and orange and put wood paneling on the wall on the customerside of the counter. Years later people ask “where were you that day?” Iremember precisely. I’m wearing two bandanas – one covers my hair, the othercovers my mouth. An electric sander whines in my hands, kicking up a duststorm. Eric the neighbor bursts in the door and starts shouting. I turn off thesander and rinse my face and join him in the bar. The television is on CNN. Iwatch a jet plane attempt to thread a Manhattan building like a needle. Thenanother one.

“Putain!” says Eric in twodrawn-out syllables. “Les ‘ricains. Qui sèmele vent récolte la tempête."

I finish sanding the wall andvarnish it dark. I fill a shelf with old flea-market cooking utensils fordecor. Mirrors on the wooden wall make the space seem bigger and brighter. Theyalso give me a good view of the back of my customer’s heads. A notuninteresting double-edged perspective from which to view people.

The final result looks good.The chipper is now a kitchen. The boss decides to call the kitchen “TheKitchen”.

“If you toucan, I can too,” hesays.

I give him a blank look. Wemight have been brought up on the same little island, but that doesn’t meanthat we share the same cultural references. Seamus explains to me later. “Yeknow like - the band?”

People come from the bar andorder food to take away and eat next door.

The boss sees that it‘s good forbusiness. People “pop-in-for-a-quick-one” on the way home from work. They smellthe onions frying - an old trade trick to get the saliva running. They have abite to eat and another drink to wash it down. Two drinks is the top of theslippery-slope. It makes it easy to slide into a third, fourth, fifth drink.Yes, the boss sees that it’s good for business. He pays me just about as muchas I was paid for telling lies and I have a lot more fun at work.

Soon we put menus in the barand the orders come into the kitchen through a little printer. People still cometo sit at the counter and watch me cook and listen to the jazz and blues comingout of the kitchen speakers. Thelonius Monk with his melodious thunks. Coltranetaking giant steps. Miles taking the elevator when it rains. Robert Johnson wailsfor his devil-promised-soul –“Woncha comin ta ma kitchen…”

The Kitchen has a takeawaycounter on the street, hidden when the roller shutter is closed. There’s alittle window onto the counter that I can open or close to pass out orders oruse for ventilation depending on the weather.

I always open at six.

In the winter its cold when Iarrive in the kitchen. Once I have my apron on I start by putting on the ovenand baking vanilla and chocolate cookies that fill the street with anirresistible odour. I light the grill and turn on the two electricdeep-fat-friers. Pretty soon it gets warm. Only then I open the roller shutter.

The roller shutter is anautomated mechanical one. All I have to do is press a button and gears and cogsstart turning. The sound is terrible. The edges of the shutter let out ahigh-pitched metallic screech as they scrape against the vertical runners thatframe it on both sides. The noise puts me on edge and plays havoc with thetinnitus in my left ear. I use both index fingers – one on the button, theother in my ear. The sound puts me in foul humour. Not the best way to start ashift.

In winter the foreign studentsfrom the university come at opening time for oven-fresh cookies and pots of hottea. In summer the students are gone and the locals tend to eat later, sousually I’m not too busy with orders until around seven.

It’s not a fine dining emporium- more like honest wholesome home cooking at affordable prices. People likethat. I gain a reputation for having thelargest variety of vegetarian dishes of any eating establishment in the wholetown. Folks come in and sit at the counter and tell me stories. I get lots ofdifferent types of customers. A good cross section you could say. They comefrom offices and wear suits with loosened ties. They come from building sitesand wear work boots and have paint-stained hands. They come from psychedeliccaravans in the mountain valleys and wear long unbrushed hair and home- knittedwoolen jumpers. They come from rich families and have master’s degrees and weartribal facial tattoos and eyebrow piercings. They all rub shoulders. They alldig in.

It’s just gone six and I’vedone the double digit thing with the screeching shutter. A man walks in.Unkempt is the word that springs to mind. His dark hair is greasy. His dark beardis thick. His lined face is weather-beaten and his clothes are well-worn andstreet-dirty. He’s very thin and I can see that under the beard his cheeks arehollow. He looks like someone used to sleeping rough, but his posture isstraight and his eyes are clear and twinkle with nervous intelligence. He haslong, thin, almost feminine fingers. I recognize a fellow sensitive soul.

“I have a proposal to make,”he says in a clear, precise voice. “I won’t take much of your time. I just ask thatyou do me the courtesy of listening to my offer. If in one minute from now youare not interested, then tell me and I will go away and I will never bother youagain.”

He’s got me. I’m hooked. Hisposture. His eyes. His diction. His almost overly formal way of expressinghimself. I smile. I nod.

“I offer a unique service toshop-keepers and business owners. I believe that there is no one else in thistown who provides this service. I have no fixed price. If you are happy withthe result then you can give me as much as you choose. If you are not happythen you don’t have to pay me anything.”

I’m still smiling. Intrigued,I nod encouragement.

“You have a problem. Your rollershutter makes a terrible noise. My mission is to render all the roller shuttersin this town silent. I have my own tools and it will take me less than tenminutes to solve your problem. Does my proposal interest you?”

“You bet it does. I hate thesound of that stupid shutter. It hurts my ears. Do your stuff.”

Now it’s his turn to nod andsmile.

It doesn’t take much. He has acan of some sort of petroleum gel, or axle grease, and a paintbrush in a thin plasticcarrier bag. He uses the brush to smear the gel along the inner sides of thevertical runners. His movements are neat and precise. I imagine him beddingdown in a cardboarded doorway. His sleep disturbed by the banshee screech oflate-night and early-morning roller shutters. Annoyance constructivelyconverted to inspiration. A unique business plan is hatched.

A customer comes in and asksfor a couple of falafel sandwiches and two cans of soft drinks to take away. I get busy preparing the food while theshutter-man climbs onto a stool and daubs grease on the cogs and gears at thetop of the shutter. Then he asks me to close and reopen the shutter. I put onefinger in my ear and another on the button. The shutter slides silently alongits rails with just a gentle electric hum from the motor.

“Fantastic!” I laugh.

The customer nods and smiles hisapproval too. Nobody likes the sound ofunoiled roller shutters. “That’s cool man,” he says to the shutter-man. He paysand exits. I leave the cash on the counter. I nod at the money and say “that’syours.”

He thanks me and puts themoney in his pocket.

“Now I have a proposal to maketo you,” I say. “Listen to it first and if you agree that’s fine, and if youdon’t, well then that’s fine too.”

The shutter-man nods andarches an eyebrow.

“Well you really have helpedsolve a problem that has annoyed me for a long time, so I’d like to help youtoo. Are you hungry?”

He answers hesitantly . “Withthe smell of the cooking in here? Yes, of course this awakens the appetite.”

“Well my proposal is that yousit down and order anything you want on the menu. It’s on the house and youdon’t leave here until you’ve eaten your fill. Is my proposal acceptable toyou?”

“It most certainly is,” hereplies with a broad beaming smile.

We are both happy men. We are bothhuman beings helping each other.

ACROSS THE SQUARE - A TRUE STORY

2011-10-13T22:50:00.000-07:00

"...enjoyed it very much - both lovely and chilling." - Roddy Doyle

Ireland. Early nineteen-seventies.

Indian summer. Canadian soundtrack.

Lo-Fi pirated music. From ships and BASF.

Joni and Gordon and Leonard and Neil. All singing and strumming.

Long cold teenage winters perfected their art. Gave it an edge.

Joni paving paradise and seeing both sides now.

Neil packing it in.

Gordon reading minds.

Leonard twisting stems.

Leonard didn’t get much airplay.

Too risky for a dipso-nation.

Early nineteen-seventies.

I remember, but I don’t, but I do.

I was too young. Too young to understand.

I had forgotten things I never knew.

My parents told me. Thirty five years later.

They hadn’t forgotten.

Some things you just can’t forget.

They couldn’t understand.

They still don’t understand.

Some things you just can’t understand.

I close my eyes.

Plunge into meditation.

Scanning deep in my memory banks. Call it self-hypnosis.

I found things I had forgotten.

Things I never knew.

Nothing is ever truly erased from the hard-drive.

Early nineteen-seventies.

The housing estate.

The Square. Boxed in by identical homes.

Semi-detached and terraced.

Each neighbour’s home a mirror image.

Same grey lino floor-tiles in each kitchen-cum-dining room.

Families.

Two kids. Three kids. Four kids. More.

My sister and I. Only a year between us.

Almost like twins.

Same nineteen-seventies white-blonde hair.

Ears covered. Hair touching collars. Eyebrow length fringes.

Dunnes Stores clothes. Clarks shoes.

My brother still toddling. Grasping the bars of his crib to stand.

All three in a shared room. Me in the top bunk. My sister below.

We played in the garden after school.

Sometimes we played in the square.

Grey ridged concrete.

Slabs seamed and sealed with black summer-soft tar.

White dog-shit.

Shattered car-glass diamonds sparkle in the sun.

Heat-haze shimmers over car-rooves.

Tayto crips and Mother’s Pride bread.

Glass pint bottles of milk.

Beyond the square a grassy hill.

The path to school. Daisies. Buttercups. Dandelions.

The library-van comes to the square.

A magical bus.

I climb the steps. My Mammy’s hand holds mine.

The smell of paper. The smell of ink.

The librarian pushes picture-books.

Give me books with only words.

I can make the pictures in my head.

Daddy went to work.

Daddy grew a Big-Bushy-Beard.

On my father’s side, all my uncles grow beards.

On my mother’s side all my uncles stay clean-shaven.

On my mother’s side all my uncles emigrate.

On my mother’s side nine-out-of-ten sons and nephews will emigrate too.

Some come back. The rest span the globe.

Most of the daughters and nieces will leave too.

Nineteen-seventies children.

Bred and buttered for export.

Mammy stays at home.

Mammy cooks.

Mammy cleans the house.

Mammy cleans the clothes.

Mammy cleans the children.

Sometimes she brings us shopping to the main street.

I smell butcher-shop sawdust mixed with old women’s perfume.

Another smell too.

The smell of slaughter.

The smell of fresh blood.

The doors at home sprout keys.

The doors in the square are kept locked.

Even during the day.

Daddy grunts as he pushes home screws.

Daddy fixes bolts to the garden gate.

The gates are kept locked.

Even during the day.

Neighbours huddle in small groups.

Talk in low voices.

Muffled voices through the bedroom wall at night.

My parents talk late.

The summer dragged on.

It must have been just days.

It seemed like weeks.

The sun shone. The tar-seams melted. We stayed indoors.

Lego and colouring books. Salty homemade play-dough.

Rainy day stuff.

Can we go outside Mammy?

Play inside instead.

Learn more words.

What’s your name? Where do you live? Tell me again.

The ice-cream van tinkles operetta arias.

Lonely Mr. Whippy.

The Mammies keep the children indoors while the sun shines.

Muffled phone-calls and folded newspapers shared between neighbours.

The words passed around.

I don’t know the words. I can’t make the pictures.

That much I remember, though I had forgotten.

The rest made sense of it all.

If sense can be made of such things.

The rest was told by my parents. Thirty-five years later.

A little boy.

He was in my sister’s class.

I remember his name. I remember his wiry hair.

His family moved away.

I never knew that boy was lost.

Search parties of parents and police.

Call them “Gards” in English, from Gardai in Irish.

Search parties to no avail.

Tracker dogs leash-tugged Gards across the square.

A house on the opposite side.

An old woman and her simple son.

He’s nineteen.

He’s not all there.

He’s not right in the head.

His upstairs bedroom curtainless at night.

His silhouette paces back and forth.

The Gards find the boy.

He’d put him under his bed.

The dead boy’s sister rocked catatonic.

She was never the same again.

The Gards find a notebook.

A list of little boys’ names.

At the top of the list is the dead boy’s name.

Crossed out.

The next little boy’s name.

My own.

Bulawayo or Bust - The Train Crash

2011-07-26T12:04:00.000-07:00

I was back in Harare, at the airport to be more precise, waiting for D to arrive from France. Unlike me she didn't have the luxury of a 2 month summer break, so she was only joining me for the second part of my trip. My plan was to meet her with my brother's pickup truck (or bakkie as they are called in Southern Africa) and spend 2 weeks travelling around Zimbabwe, then come back to Harare airport and meet my parents and sister. From there we would all drive together to Zambia for my brother's wedding.

I had already managed to upset the first part of the plan by spectacularly crashing my brother's bakkie on a stretch of straight road in the middle of the Namib desert. Now the car was hopefully sitting in a repair shop somewhere in Windhoek. Instead of enjoying visiting Zimbabwe we would have to travel all the way across Africa by rail and road, pick up the car and then drive back across the continent again. The rail connections were good, the roads long, straight and empty. I figured we could do it in about a week and still have time left to drive around Zimbabwe for a few days before travelling north with my parents.

I waited along with Innocent, the driver from my guest house, and half a dozen other guest house and hotel touts hoping to catch fresh arrivals off the plane. D's flight was on time and she looked fresh and lovely as ever. Innocent drove us back to the guesthouse. I tipped him what I would have spent on taxi fare and was rewarded with one of his great big Zimbabwe smiles.

We had a choice of staying the night and catching a train to Bulawayo in the morning for the first leg of our transcontinental jaunt, or taking the night train and saving ourselves an extra day and the price of a night's accommodation. D said she was fine for travelling. There's no timezone difference between France and Zimbabwe, so despite the long flight she wasn't jet-lagged.

A few hours later, with our backpacks on our backs, we were pushing through the bustling crowds at the train station. Though D was metisse, she had never been among so many black people before and was feeling quite aware of people looking at her. After almost a month in Africa (and four previous trips of several months each time) I had lost most of the initial self-consciousness of being part of a conspicuous minority.

Although we had given ourselves plenty of time to spare, the train was already waiting at the platform. I had expected the usual dusty old Zimbabwe Railways rolling stock, but instead here was a sleek shiny new train that looked as it had come straight from the factory.

"Yes, this train is branew," smiled the conductor as he showed us to our carriage. "Second time only. A present fram the British gavament."

We stowed our bags in the overhead compartment and settled into our seats. Loud music screamed from speakers embedded in the ceiling . Television screens suspended from the ceiling showed images that didn't match the music. I used the seasoned traveller's essential companions - a set of earplugs. My own breathing became louder in my ears. The music was still too noisy, but at least a bit more bearable.

A few more westerners with backpacks boarded the train, but mostly it was big local women with big bulging bags, old men with grey hair and watery eyes and small children with chubby cheeks and shaven heads. The train engine chugged into life, whistles were blown and the train slid out of the station into the African night.

The loud music made it almost impossible to sleep and when I found the conductor, he told me that no one knew how to turn down the volume or how to make the televisions and the speakers play the same thing. D's flight must have caught up with her because despite the blaring music she fell into a deep sleep, a rolled up jacket as an improvised pillow.

Once the urban sprawl of Harare was behind us there was only dark night and the window reflection of the interior of the carriage. An occasional fire burned orange in the night with glimpsed snippets of life around them - a woman bent over stirring a cooking pot, a group of men with drinks in their hands, laughing and staggering or perhaps dancing around the flames. But mostly it was the opaque darkness of a moonless night.

I must have dozed off eventually because I woke up to hear beautiful singing. Some time during the night someone must have found the volume controls, because apart from the singing and a few gentle snores and the hypnotic click clack of the wheels on the rails everything was quite. I couldn't quite get my eyes open but the singing seemed to be getting closer. I pulled the earplugs from my itchy ears with a slight pop. Now I could hear that the voice singing was that of an old man. His voice was soft and clear and almost angelic. I prised my eyes open and saw him moving slowly down the carriage, rocking from side to side with the movement of the train, his song rhythmed to the click clack of the spaces between the rails.

Outside the darkness was starting to fade to a grey pre-dawn light. The landscape revealed itself as flat Africa bush of thorn trees and dust stretching all the way to the horizon where a band of brightness was starting to fill the sky.

The old man rocked his way down the aisle, holding the head rests of the seats and stopping for a moment at each one. I saw that he was blind. He wore a small open bag around his neck, into which people dropped coins or crumpled notes. D was still asleep beside me, with her head back and her mouth slightly open. I thought of waking her to hear the song, but figured she needed her sleep. I put a few notes in the old man's pouch and he gave a slight nod of acknowledgement without loosing a note of his beautiful hypnotic song. I was captivated and sat listening to him and watched the grey light creep across the dusty plains. The door to the next carriage opened and the old man and his song were gone.

There was a stillness in the carriage, the vibration of the old man's song having cast a spell on all the passengers. A rim of red orange sun appeared above the horizon, the air shimmering around it. Elongated shadows of the gnarled thorn trees reached out towards the slowly moving train.

Suddenly there was a colossal bang, quickly followed by the unnatural sound or wrenching metal. I was thrown forward in my seat and D woke by slamming her forehead against the seat in front of her. I held onto her tightly as the train started to skew sideways, falling as if in slow motion. There were yells and shrieks. Everyone was awake now, but the train had stopped. The train groaned and shuddered again and tilted a bit more to the side so that the floor was at a forty-five degree angle. Bags fell from the shelves above the opposite row of seats and slid down the slope of the floor.

After a moment a tall black woman hauled herself upright and taking her bag with her clambered across the seats towards the door. Moments later we saw her scramble up the embankment and look back and forward along the length of the train. Other women followed her lead, carrying wide-eyed children. I helped a few people retrieve their luggage and then we slipped on our own backpacks and made our way out of the train too.

From the embankment we had a good view of the train and could see what had happened. A head-on collision with another train. The engine was crushed and completely off the rails. The carriages were still coupled to each other and the first two had fallen on their sides. The following carriages, including our own, tilted precariously with only the wheels on one side of the carriage still in contact with the rail. The train we had hit was in similar disarray.

We stood for a while with the other onlookers. I even snapped off a few photos as a macabre holiday souvenir. I counted my blessings. I had survived a near fatal accident in my brother's car in the desert and now a head on collision in a train. D's forehead had a nasty looking bruise, but as far as I could tell she wasn't concussed.

After a while a couple of ambulances arrived and a bakkie with railway workers. A few stretchers carried people to the ambulances. I saw women blessing themselves as they spoke to the emergency crew.

There had been no one in the other train. Strangely, it hadn't even been moving at the time. That didn't make sense. The track was long and straight and we hadn't been travelling very fast. The driver should have seen the other train and could have easily braked and avoided the crash. The only explanation I could think of was that he had been asleep at the wheel. If the other train had been moving, I'm sure the death toll would have been much higher.

"The drava he is dade," said a small man wearing thick rimmed glasses and a neat shirt and tie. "It is betta to leave this place and walk. Where is it you are going to?" "We want to get to Bulawayo," I said. "Then you must walk. Day will be no train fram heah." "Walk to Bulawayo? Is it far?" "Yes it is fah, but day is no adda way. You mast walk to Bulawayo."

We followed the crowds along the dirt track that eventually led to the main road. Then we walked to Bulawayo.