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Yu Yan Chen (陈瑜燕) is an award-winning poet and literary translator. She won Singapore’s Golden Point Award in 2015 and garnered the top prize at the Flushing Poetry Festival in 2019. Her first poetry collection, entitled Small Hours, was published by the NYQ Books in 2011. Her second poetry Grandma Says (祖母说), was published in 2017. Her translation of The Chief Cellist, a children’s book by Taiwanese author Wang Wenhua, was published by the Balestier Press in 2015. She currently resides in Singapore and has translated short stories, essays and poems by Yi Sha, Mai Jia, Li Juan, Han Dong, and Zheng Xiaoqiong.

Zheng Xiaoqiong (郑小琼) was born in rural Sichuan in 1980 and moved to Dongguan City in southern Guangdong Province as a migrant worker in 2001. She is the author of eleven collections of poetry, including Women Migrant Workers, Huang Maling, The Rose Manor, Selected Poems by Zheng Xiaoqiong, Pure Plants, and Pedestrian Overpass. Women Migrant Workers (2012) has been hailed as “the first symphonic verse on women, work and capital in the history of Chinese poetry.” Her works have garnered numerous accolades including China’s Avant-garde Poetry Prize, 2006, People’s Literature Award, Zhuang Zhong Literary Award; the In-Presence Cutting-Edge Prose Award, and the Lu Xun Literary Award, among others. Some of her poems have been translated into German, English, French, Japanese, Korean, Spanish and Turkish. Her poems in Women Migrant Workers have also been set to music by American and German musicians and performed in a number of countries.

Child Labor, Liangshan

Zheng Xiaoqiong

(translated by Yu Yan Chen)

Life is bewildering, and time has gradually gone

blind. A girl of fourteen suffers the fatigue

of our era on the assembly line among us.

Sometimes she yearns to return to rural Sichuan,

to chop wood, to cut grass, to pick wild berries and flowers.

In her timid eyes a desolation lingers, something I don’t

know how to express in words. I only know

“child labor,” or a paper-thin sigh.

Her eyes are capable of breaking hearts.

Why must the tiny bits of leftover sympathy

be ground up by the machinery of the assembly line?

Her slowness often triggers a flood of scolding

from our team leader, but she doesn’t cry.

Tears circle in her eyes, “I am an adult now.

I can’t cry,” she says earnestly.

How bewildering – all that’s left of childhood

is nostalgia. She talks of the things in the mountains –

the hillsides, the blue sea, the snakes and the cows.

Perhaps living is about carving out a path in the maze,

going back to basics. Sometimes her dark face

is full of contempt for her friend.

Pointing at a girl even thinner and weaker, she says –

“She is younger than me, but she has to sleep with men at night.”

~

凉山童工

郑小琼

生活只会茫然  时代逐渐成为

盲人 十四岁小女孩要跟我们

在流水线上领引时代带来的疲惫

有时 她更想让自己返回四川乡下

砍柴 割草 摘野果子与野花

她瘦小的眼神浮出荒凉 我不知道

该用怎样的句子来表达 只知道

童工 或者像薄纸样的叹息

她的眼神总能将柔软的心击碎

为什么仅有的点点同情

也被流水线的机器辗碎

她慢半拍的动作常常换来

组长的咒骂 她的泪没有流下

在眼眶里转动 “我是大人了

不能流泪” 她一本正经地说

多么茫然啊 童年只剩下

追忆 她说起山中事物比如山坡

比如蔚蓝的海子 比如蛇 牛

也许生活就是要从茫然间找出一条路

返回到它的本身 有时她黝黑的脸

会对她的同伴露出鄙视的神色

她指着另一个比她更瘦弱的女孩说

“她比我还小 夜里要陪男人睡觉”

Michael Linn is a writer and teacher from Oxfordshire in England. He has written a number of poems, as well as two children’s novels A Tale from Wonderful Wigworth and Rebecca Rose and the Red Bicycle. He has lived in Shanghai for the past three years.

Nature’s Refuge: Parks of Shanghai

Writers over the years have often stated how parks and areas of nature are vital in stifling cities because they cleanse the soul and mind of the grease and dirt of the modern, metallic, merciless metropolis. Walt Whitman called nature a ‘teacher and a comforter’; William Blake would often frequent Peckham Rye in order to escape the black, suffocating smoke of London (and it is where he saw those beautiful angels); Henry David Thoreau found nature’s slower rhythm and gentleness as a superior alternative to the greed, consumerism and lack of spiritual nourishment in the modern, capitalist American society of the 1900s.

Parks in the city are a rustic refuge from the consumerist and financial battle zones; they are the open windows that let in cool, fresh air to the stuffy, dirty room of the city.

I am going to now tell you about my very own natural refuge and open window in our home of Shanghai.

When I first moved onto Pingwu Lu (near Jiaotong University) a few months ago, there was a sinuous ribbon of blue fence skirting a piece of large land near my apartment. After consulting Google maps, I discovered that this was a venerable, beautiful park called Huashan Greenland. Why it was fenced and closed was a mystery to me at first (and no internet searches or local residents could assuage my distress and bemusement at its closure). I prayed that it would reopen (and dreaded that it might be closed permanently).

On the third day of living in this area, the mystery was solved when I spied, upon a section of the encompassing fence, a small sign nailed to it. I could not decipher the Chinese symbols, but I could read a date that was in vibrant, red, bold letters: 06.06.19. I presumed that this was the date on which the park would reopen after, presumably, undergoing renovation. The date I saw this sign was on 07.05.19, which meant I would have to wait a few weeks to see if my presumptions were correct.

In the meantime, I went on morning walks past the blue fence and the secret garden behind it down the little streets and alleys that surrounded Pingwu Lu. I was not alone in my rambles as many other local residents also had to replace morning walks in the park with walking on the roads discontentedly beside it. There are many older, local residents around this area, all possessing a gentle nature, polite smiles and memories of old Shanghai and China that the young, naïve modern skyscrapers and business offices shooting up around the area have no idea about; memories of a China that young, naïve, new residents like me and many others have no idea about. Hardships and struggling economies are hard to grasp when luxury apartments, European-style cafes and flash cars are common sights.

My apartment, however, is an old one and although I am fond of it there is no denying that it looks like the scruffy schoolkid compared to the well- off child that the luxury apartments up the road represent. However, both old and new, roughed and pristine, are needed to create a great city instead of a generic one.

06.06.19 finally came. As I walked towards the park to catch a taxi to work, I had no reason to doubt or question famous Chinese efficiency because, just as the sign had proclaimed, the park had reopened on this exact day and, already on this morning, was full of eager morning ramblers. It was a perfect day for it, one of those divine, bright, warm ,golden mornings where nature and the city are singing in harmonious joviality.

That warm evening, where the harmonious song was still being sung but was slightly quieter, I had the chance to take my maiden walk around the park.

When I got to the park, a natural masterpiece decorated with trees, ponds, pink and white peonies as well as meandering paths, it was buzzing with life and energy: runners and walkers; young, excited children; world weary, lethargic elderly; strong, young basketball players; solitary, gentle thinkers. I walked amongst them with contentment and joy in my heart. This was nature’s playground and all of nature’s children were welcome to come and play. Van Gogh said that ‘nature laughs in flowers’ and all around this park I could hear jolly laughter from its pink, purple and red residents.

We had all walked into the park with different masks, identities, and levels of contentment from the individualistic, isolating city but now had had all become equal children of nature. This is the true beauty of city parks: they are indiscriminate, communal, and egalitarian. They are where we can go to reclaim our ‘noble savage’ soul and exist in peace alongside complete strangers; where motherly nature can tend to our wounds that are inflicted by working in the harsh, dangerous workhouse of the city. From Huashan Greenland and Fuxing Park to Zhongshan Park and Century Park, Shanghai is lucky to have these natural havens that we can escape to. So whenever you feel beaten down by the world or you want to share your joy with someone, take yourself to your local Shanghai park because the trees, flowers and jovial birds will be happy to have you. Let nature care for you; she is a loyal friend that we have far too often neglected and taken for granted.

I have visited Huashan Greenland many times since that day it reopened. In my personal opinion she looks the best attired in early evening or sunny mornings, so these are the times I often dwell there. Whitman was right: parks are teachers and comforters. Being amongst nature, in China and in England, has taught me compassion, empathy, and that you do not need to move at a fast, aggressive, and all too human destructive pace to get things accomplished. As Lao Tzu said, ‘Nature does not hurry but gets everything done.’

Nature has also comforted me by providing me with the medicine to take away the fears, anxieties, and lack of contentment that isolation in the city and in our apartments can induce. The natural world is immortal and will easily outlive us, but during our lives, which are full of so much angst about death, we can go to a beautiful park, forget about our inevitable ending, and gift a piece of our soul to eternity. We must not abandon the progression, thrill, and culture that cities cradle, but we must find a balance between the art of nature (parks) and the art of humans (cities) and not let the latter take over the former.

Yu Yan Chen (陈瑜燕) is an award-winning poet and literary translator. She won Singapore’s Golden Point Award in 2015 and garnered the top prize at the Flushing Poetry Festival in 2019. Her first poetry collection, entitled Small Hours, was published by the NYQ Books in 2011. Her second poetry Grandma Says (祖母说), was published in 2017. Her translation of The Chief Cellist, a children’s book by Taiwanese author Wang Wenhua, was published by the Balestier Press in 2015. She currently resides in Singapore and has translated short stories, essays and poems by Yi Sha, Mai Jia, Li Juan, Han Dong, and Zheng Xiaoqiong.

Li Juan (李娟) was born in 1979 in Xinjiang Province. She spent her childhood in remote towns in both Sichuan and Xinjiang. She used to work on the assembly line, but became a government employee at a later time. In 2007 she resigned to write full time. Her works center on her sensitive meditations while living among the Kazakh nomads of the Altay region. Her prose collections include Nine Chapters of Snow, Corners of Altay, My Altay, Please Sing Out Loud while Traveling through the Night, and Remember Little, Forget More. Corners of Altay has been translated into French and Korean. She has also won a number of prestigious awards including the People’s Literature Award, Zhu Ziqing Prose Prize, Mao Dun Literature Prize, and Shanghai Literature Prize, among others. She currently lives in Altay, Xinjiang.

The Strange Bank at Kawutu

Li Juan

(translated by Chen Yu Yan)

The Kawutu township government consists of a row of little red-roofed houses in the forest to the west of the village. There is nothing official or serious about it, since there are sparrows and wild pigeons all over the place. There is even a group of Gula chickens calling gula gula in the bushes right outside the window. The dudu sound of the woodpeckers comes from high in the trees, while crows take this opportunity to roam about with their hulala calls.

On the contrary, the Kawutu post office is an elegant house made of red bricks, complete with a bright yellow roof and a snow-white wooden fence. Unfortunately this lovely place has never opened its doors for business. Rumour has it that the postmaster bought a house in a more urban area and moved away with his family; since then he’s become a city man and has never returned to Kawutu, yet he is still somehow considered as the postmaster.

Aside from him, there is another staff member at the post office. He’s normally our bricklayer and handyman. From time to time (when he suddenly recalls his duty as a postman) he will deliver the mail from one house to the next. There was one occasion when he went to each household to ask if anyone would like to subscribe to magazines. We happily subscribed to two, but to this day we have yet to see any trace of them. However, you can still get stamps and envelopes from him – not in that fairytale-like red brick house, but in his own home. I went through nearly half the village one day, going through all its nooks and crannies, in order to find his abode. After I told him the purpose of my visit, he pulled up one corner of the felt blanket on his bed and searched inside with his hands for a while, eventually dragging out a stack of old newspapers in Kazakh. The government stamps and envelopes were stacked inside, along with crochet samples from his grandmother.

Though we all call it a bank, the Kawutu Bank is actually a small credit union. Located right across the road from my house, it is simpler than the government building and the post office. It’s a one-story house made of red brick with its eaves heavily covered in wild grass, and there is a small yard at the front surrounded by a short and tidy wooden fence. About a dozen tall willow and poplar trees have been planted in single file along it. The entrance archway is very short, with a copper sign hanging on the fence. A narrow gravel path leads straight to the front steps. There are a few roses scattered about, as well as a couple of tall sunflowers. A well can be found at one corner, its lip smooth and shiny, while a wooden shed at the other corner is filled with coal. Actually, it’s not much different from any other household in this area, if you were to tie up a dog inside the yard.

There are also ropes between several trees, which I assumed were used for laundry because the location has the best sunlight exposure. So after I washed my clothes I walked over and hung them on the ropes, resulting in several rows of brightly-coloured clothing drying in the sun. The garments that didn’t fit were draped haphazardly on branches. Just as I thought I’d found the perfect place, the head of the bank erupted in fury. He dragged down the bedsheet and crossed the streets, brandishing it. When he reached my house he let out a torrent of angry words. We couldn’t understand what he was trying to say, except that drying my laundry there was not allowed. This was surprising – if it wasn’t permitted, why did they put up the ropes?

Thinking back, it was rather funny that I tried to dry my underwear and a bedsheet patterned with red flowers and green leaves in front of a bank.

Given that it is such an unassuming bank, there is probably not much money available. Neither have I seen anyone who looks like a client going inside. On top of that, the few bank employees look drunk every day, and go around asking for credit at different shops. For example, Dawulie left his leather hat as collateral at our store last year, but hasn’t come back to reclaim it this winter. He’s probably in a bind: if he wants the hat, he’ll have to pay back his debts, but if he doesn’t get it back, how will he get through the winter? He’d need to spend money to buy a new one… In the end, he’ll have to spend money no matter what.

All the local children like to play in the bank yard without their trousers in summer, because a creek with lots of small fish passes through it. The trees inside grow especially well, and are perfect for climbing: the kind with lots of branches and trunks grown into curls within curls, with bulges big enough for a person to stand on while holding onto something else. As a result, they are always full of children. Whenever you call out in that direction, all the heads and eyes turn in unison. The one doing the shouting is usually the head of the bank, and the tree – that was laden with children one second ago – will drop them like fruits the next. Putong, putong. In the blink of an eye they all fall off, and leaves scatter all over the ground.

The bank is always quiet during the summer. It must be relaxing to work there; you don’t have to do much except guard the building. With all those trees, it must be cool and comfortable. My house is hot as an oven. Without a single tree around, it stands naked under the sun. Even sitting inside, our sweat drops like rain. I would go across every day to get water from the well, watching the sunflowers growing taller, their leaves becoming denser as they climb. It would have been lovely for us to live there; I love the creek, its clear water rimmed with yellow dandelions.

As soon as winter arrives, the bank employees tend not to come to work. They aren’t the only ones, though. The Kawutu business bureau, tax bureau, and town cooperatives all shut down. They’re so lucky. We often see knee-height snow inside the yard with one deep set of footprints in it. The staff who do occasionally go in (they really have no choice) use the same path, leaving behind the same set of footprints. These footprints are a fixed scene in front of the bank for the entire winter.

When the long winter finally ends after nearly six months, my mother prepares to follow the herdsmen north into the mountains. Of those doing business in our region, most will operate a roaming grocery shop with the sheep flocks. It is profitable to do business in the pasture, but we don’t have enough capital to buy merchandise to last the entire summer. With her mind set on that bank, my mother went for a loan one day.

How on earth was she able to get the loan? As far as I know, the bank only has one type – the agriculture loan given out before the spring planting – but she is neither a farmer nor a local resident; we’ve only been operating the store in Kawutu for over a year. Nonetheless, my mother was able to get it. Maybe it was because we were neighbours, and the fact that we couldn’t avoid seeing each other all the time made them embarrassed to say no.

Indeed, just because there are no customers for the entire year doesn’t mean that the bank isn’t full of noise and people on the two days when agricultural loan is accepting applications. Even before it opens in the morning, people are already waiting in line. Villagers from several hundreds of kilometres away come by (Kawutu township is very long: even though it’s only a few kilometres from east to west, it spans several hundred kilometres from north to south). The wooden fence surrounding the yard is obscured by horses, and the road outside has clumps of people engaging in heated discussions about the loan. Perhaps because this type of loan has only been around for two years, the locals see it as money distributed by the government for everyone to spend. Even if they don’t need the money, they want to get it just in case. At least that was what we gathered.

My mother asked, “Are you thinking about not returning the loan?”

Someone replied, “Why not? We will return it whenever we have the money.”

But that wasn’t the biggest surprise. The oddest thing was how my mother was able to get a loan.

She’d been standing in line for the entire morning. When lunch time came around I went to look for her. As I pushed through the crowd, I was shocked when I met a sea of heads.

When you first pass through the front door you’re forced to descend a few steps to get to the bank interior proper, which consists of a tiny lobby with a red brick floor and colourfully-foiled ceiling, and a counter surrounded by a metal barricade. Of course, I could barely make out any of these, nor the green-painted wooden windowsills, because of the crowd packed into the barely ten-meter-square space, even though I was standing at the highest point at the top of the steps. However, I could see over the entire crowd, and I searched eagerly for my mother. I couldn’t identify the back of her head amid the chaos, and had to call out several times before she finally turned around. She was waving an envelope in mid-air, pushing onward through the wave of people, trying her best to leave the counter.

That was it. She was able to get a loan of 3,000 yuan. But we didn’t pay it back for a long time. It was embarrassing.

According to my mother, the head of the bank moved away, so she had no idea who to return the money to, and no one came to ask us about it. Besides, we moved several times ourselves since then.

In the summer of 2006, we finally paid it back. One of the bank employees went to a summer ranch to visit his relatives. He got lost on the way, and ended up at our house by accident.

~

喀吾图奇怪的银行

李娟

喀吾图的乡政府是村子西边树林里的一排红屋顶小房子。那里一点儿都不严肃，到处都是麻雀和野鸽子。还有一群呱啦鸡整天在政府办公室窗外的树丛中“呱嗒呱嗒”地东突西窜，啄木鸟不停地在高处“笃笃笃”啄着木头，乌鸦也“呼啦啦”到处乱飞。

喀吾图的邮政所则是一个较为精致的红砖房子，还有黄艳艳的木头屋顶和雪白的木头栅栏。可惜这么漂亮的邮政所从没见开门营业过。听说邮政所的所长很多年前在县城买了房子，举家搬走了，从此成为城里人，再也没回过喀吾图。但说起来仍然还是喀吾图邮政所的所长。真是奇怪。

除了所长，邮政所还有一个工作人员，但平时是村里的泥瓦匠，谁家有活干就去帮着打打零工。偶尔仿佛某天突然记起来了才挨家挨户送一次信。还有一次他挨家挨户上门征订杂志，我们就很高兴地订了两份，但是直到现在也没见着一本。不过在他那里还是能买上邮票和信封的，但却不是在邮政所那个童话般的红房子里，而是在他自己家里。那天我打听了半个村子才拐弯抹角找到他家，他把他家床上的毡子揭起一角，伸手进去摸了半天，终于摸出来一沓子哈文旧报纸。公家的邮票和信封就在里面夹着，居然和他老祖母的绣花毡的花样子放在一起。

喀吾图的银行 其实只是个小信用社而已，但我们都称之为银行就在我家门口的马路对面。比起乡政府和邮政所，银行朴实了许多，也是红砖的平房，屋前的小院子围着整齐低矮的木头栅栏，沿着木头栅栏一溜儿栽着十来棵高大的柳树和杨树。院门低矮，栅栏边挂着信用社的小铜匾。一条碎石小路从院门直直地通向红房子台阶下，红房子屋檐上长满了深深的野草。院子里稀稀拉拉种着些月季花和两三棵向日葵；院子一角有一眼井，井台又滑又亮。另一个角落的小木棚里堆满了煤 如果在院子里再拴一条狗的话，就和一般人家的院子没什么区别了。

院子里那几棵大树之间牵了好几根绳子，估计是用来晾衣服的，而那一片也正是坦阔向阳的地方。于是我洗了衣服就端一大盆过去，花花绿绿地晾了几大排。晾不下的就东一件西一件地高高搭在树枝上。我还以为自己找到了好地方，结果可把他们的行长给气坏了。他拽下我晾着的大床单，一路挥舞着穿过马路跑到我家来，啊啊呀呀，嚷嚷半天也没说清楚什么 总之就是不能在那儿晾。

真是的，不让晾衣服的话，牵几根绳子在那儿干啥？

后来再想想，又有趣。我居然在银行门口晾内衣和红花绿叶的床单。

这个银行这么小，这么不起眼，里面也肯定没什么钱的。而且，我几乎从没见有人进去过。再而且，银行上班的那几个伙计每天都一副醉醺醺的样子，到处赊账。银行的达吾列在我们家商店抵押的那顶皮帽子从上个冬天一直放到了这个冬天都没有来赎呢。他一定很矛盾吧 想要帽子的话，得还债；不赎吧，冬天得戴帽子呀，另外买帽子的话还是得花钱……反正怎么着都得花钱。

我们这里的小孩子到了夏天都喜欢光着屁股在银行院子里玩，因为经过银行院子的小水渠里有很多小鱼苗子游来游去。另外银行院子里的树也长得挺好，是那种最适合让人去爬的 枝枝丫丫特别多，树干长得曲里拐弯，随便一个鼓出来的大树蔸上都能攀着站个人。于是，这些树上便总是人满为患，抬头冲那里喊一声，所有脑袋转过来，所有眼睛看过来一般来说，喊的人当然是银行行长。于是，这棵栖满了孩子的树在下一秒钟内，像掉果子一样，扑扑通通，转眼间就一个也没了。只剩一地的树叶。

一整个夏天，这个银行安安静静的。我想，在那里上班一定很惬意，大约什么也不用干，把房子守好就行了。而且那里树又多，肯定很凉快。而我们家店里热死了，周围一棵树也没有，光秃秃袒露在阳光下，坐在房间里挥汗如雨。我天天到银行院子里的那眼井里提水，看着向日葵一天一天高了，叶子越抽越密。唉，要是我们住在那里面就好了。我很喜欢院子里的那条小渠，水总是很清，水边长满开着黄花的蒲公英。

冬天的时候，银行的那几个职工几乎就不怎么上班了。不仅如此，喀吾图工商所的、地税所的、供销社的……统统都不上班。这些人真幸福呀。因此作为对街邻居，我们经常可以看到的情景是：银行院子里平整地铺着没膝厚的积雪。雪上深深地陷着一串脚印偶尔回单位办点事的职工进去时都只踩着同一串脚印聪明地(其实是毫无办法地)进去。因此整个冬天里银行门口就只有那一串脚印。

长达半年的冬天结束之后，我妈就开始做准备，要随牧民进山了。凡是我们这里做生意的人，夏天大都会开流动的商店跟着羊群走，夏牧场上做生意利润很高的。我们也想那样做，但要准备充分的商品的话，我们资金又不够。于是我妈把主意打到银行那里了，有一天她去贷款……

天啦，她是怎么把款贷到手的！要知道我们这个小银行的贷款只有一种，就是春耕前的农业贷款。可是她不但不是农民，连本地人都算不上 我们才来喀吾图开店一年多时间，甚至连富蕴县人都算不上，虽然来到富蕴县快二十年了，但仍然没有当地户口……反正她后来就贷上了……

总不可能因为大家都是邻居，抬头不见低头见，不好意思不贷给我们吧？

对了，这家银行一年到头冷冷清清的，可是到了农业贷款发放那两天却热闹非凡。一大早还没上班，人们就在门口排队等待了。几百公里以外的老乡也赶来了(喀吾图乡地形狭长，东西不过几十公里，南北却长达好几百公里)，银行院子周围的木栅栏上系满了马。马路上也三三两两聚拢着人，热火朝天地谈论着有关贷款的话题。有趣的是，大概这种贷款在当地发放没两年的原因吧，当地人对“贷款”这一概念的认识模糊到 居然以为那就是国家发给大家随便用的钱，哪怕家里明明不缺钱也要想法子贷回家放着。起码我们了解到的是这样的……

我妈问他们：“难道不想还了吗？”

那人就很奇怪地回答：“为什么不还？什么时候有了什么时候还嘛……”

这还不是最奇怪的，最奇怪的是我妈，她怎么贷上款的？

那天她去排了一上午的队，中午快吃饭时我去找她回家。穿过银行院子里热闹的人群，好容易挤进门去，一脚踏进去就傻眼了：黑压压一片人头……

银行屋里的情形是陷在地里半米深的，一进门就是台阶，所以我所站的门口位置是最高处。但居高临下扫视了半天，也认不出我妈究竟是哪个后脑勺。里面闹哄哄的，喊了好几嗓子，才看到她回过头来，高举着一个信封，努力地挤在人堆里，想要离开柜台。

那是我第一次瞧见银行内部的情形。很小很小，焊了铁栏杆的柜台外不过十几个平方的空地。红砖铺的地板，金色的锡纸彩带编成一面天花板绷在上方，木头窗台刷了绿漆。

就这样，钱贷到手了，虽然不过3000块钱，但是不好意思的是……好长时间都没有还。据我妈的说法是：那个银行的行长调走了，实在是不知道该还给谁……也从来没人找上门来提这事，而且后来我们又搬了好几次家。

2006年夏天，那笔钱到底还是还掉了。因为那个银行的一个工作人员到夏牧场走亲戚，在深山老林里迷了路，不小心竟撞进了我们家……

Habib Mohana was born in 1969 in Daraban Kalan, a town in the district of Dera Imsail Khan, Pakistan. He is an assistant professor of English at Government Degree College No 3, D. I. Khan. He writes fiction in English, Urdu, and Saraiki (his mother tongue). He has four books under his belt, one in Urdu and three in Saraiki. His Saraiki novel forms part of the syllabus for the MA in Saraiki at Zikria University Multan. His short stories in English have appeared in literary journals in India and Canada. In 2010 and 2014, his Saraiki books won the Khawaja Ghulam Farid Award from the Pakistan Academy of Letters. His book of short stories in Urdu, titled Adhori Neend, won the Abaseen award from the Government of KPK. This is the opening chapter of his novell, The Village Café, for which he is seeking a publisher.

The Village Café

I

The year was 1942. In  Daraban—a flourishing village on the drab and dusty Damaan plains—there lived an eight-year-old boy named Molu. His father had perished in a smallpox epidemic, and his elder brother Dadu worked in Musa Zai, in the house of a feudal lord. Dadu’s employer paid him in wheat. He gave him four gunnysacks per annum. This was enough for them and their one-horned nanny goat, but wheat alone could not keep the family afloat.

Dadu visited his family every other Friday, and brought gifts of the fruit that grew in his boss’s orchard.

For a few weeks Molu grazed his neighbours’ cows to eke out a decent living, but the work proved too hard for him and soon his mother made him stop.

One day, Molu’s mother—whose name was Bakhtawir—said to her neighbour, ‘We are living in desperate circumstances. Find Molu some work. He needs some money. We do, too. His father’s death has left us penniless.’

The next day, the neighbour took Molu by the hand and set off for bazar. Molu’s brindled dog tagged along with them. He yelled at it to go away, and it turned homewards. But after a while it came back, determined to follow its owner. Young Molu, with his wheat-coloured skin and pencil-thin body, was thrilled; he had only been to the bazaar a few times before. His callused feet were shoeless, and his faded indigo shirt did not go with his patched pyjamas. The lower part of the front panel of his oversize shirt had virtually turned into a tube for want of ironing.

The early summer sun shone brightly in the pale sky.

Their short journey ended at a café that sold tea and homemade doughnuts. The neighbour was an acquaintance of Ramzi, the café man. He introduced the boy, ‘This is Molu, an orphan. He has a mother and a little sister to support. I have known them forever. They’ve fallen on hard times. Can you take him on as an all-purpose boy? Pay him whatever you consider reasonable.’

‘What did he do before coming here?’

‘He grazed cows.’

‘You’ve brought me a jungly guy… Okay. I’ll take him on. I’ll give him three rupees a month. I’ll also give him tea, lunch, and one penny per day as pocket money.’

‘Alright. Can he start work today?’

‘Yes. Why not?’

The café man brought them tea in glazed teacups positioned in saucers. The neighbour started drinking, but it was too hot for Molu. To cool the liquid, he poured it into the saucer and blew on it. He slurped it, still standing. His belly stuck out, his nose was running, and his breath was whistling, but he savoured every sip. It was worlds away from the hot brown liquid he had at home. For the first time in his life he was drinking tea made with sugar and not with gur. The café’s teacups were stylish too. They had fine-looking flowers painted on them, unlike the crude clay cups he used at home, which were made by the village potters. In those unglazed cups his mother’s cloudy tea took the hue of floodwater.

His neighbour gave him a reassuring pat on the shoulder.

‘Molu, I’m going,’ he said. ‘Ramzi is an old friend of mine. He’ll treat you like his son. Work hard, and never give him a chance to complain.’

Molu glanced up at his neighbour, feeling as if he’d been sold off to the café man. The neighbour said his goodbyes and left. Molu’s gaze lingered on him until he was swallowed by the crowd of pedestrians. He wanted to run and lock his arms around his neighbours’ legs, but he stayed where he was.

The café was a long mud room with low ceilings. The inside walls were spattered with streaks of sputum and naswar—moist powdered tobacco snuff that was stuffed under the lower lip or inside the cheek. The café’s double-leaf door was slightly higher than Molu. To enter, you had to bend low. Half a dozen twine cots lined the walls, and between them stood a long low mud platform, which acted as a table for cups, caps, and turbans.

Rolling his sleeves up Molu approached the table, on which lay a batch of dirty teacups quilted in houseflies. When his shadow fell on the table, a dark cloud swirled into the air. He had never washed cups in his life, but luckily it didn’t require much skill.

He grabbed a teacup by the handle, plunged it into in the bucket of murky water, and whirled it around. When he fished it out, it was as clean and spotless as a peeled egg. He didn’t feel the need to scrub the cups. He had finished. Touching water was so relaxing. When the cups were clean, he flipped them over and arrayed them in lines on the moss-encrusted table. First he arranged them colour-wise, and then shape-wise. He upturned the saucers on the teacups, but shook his head and changed his mind. Finally, he stacked the saucers in piles of five. He made to give the cups yet another dunk, but Ramzi stopped him. ‘Give it a rest. You’ll rub the paint off them.’

Molu dried his hands on his shirt. He hated sitting idle, so he put some logs on the fire, causing the flames to rise and roar.

‘Take them off!’ Ramzi bellowed. ‘We don’t need a fire. We don’t have any customers.’

Molu planted himself on a string bed, his feet bicycling in the air. Then he remembered the stone marbles in his pocket. He had carved them when he went to the scrublands to graze cattle. He sat down in a corner of the café and played with them, all by himself.

Across the room, Ramzi reclined in his rustic straw-bottomed chair, plucking nose hair with a pair of tarnished tweezers. Tears were streaming down his cheek, and he was depositing the nasal hairs on his trousered knee, leaving it strangely furred.

Molu’s dog, which had been hanging around outside for a while, sneaked into the café. To dissociate himself from it, Molu turned away. When he hissed at his pet in muffled tones, it only nuzzled him and licked his feet. He pushed it with his toe but it rolled over onto its back, showing its bald belly and private parts.

Ramzi rose from his seat and strode over to the fireplace, edging an ember out of the fireplace with a stick as if he were playing ping-pong. Then, he strode back to his seat and dumped the ember into the tobacco-filled bowl of his hubble-bubble pipe. His eyes fell on the dog, and he yelled at it. This emboldened Molu. He hurled a clod of earth at the creature. It bolted but waited outside the café, wagging its tail in eager anticipation. When Ramzi went to relieve himself in the bushes behind the building, Molu slung his canine companion a juicy blob of old tea leaves. It lapped them up like ice cream.

Ramzi’s son brought lunch in a double-decker tiffin container. Ramzi skimmed the cream off the milk, put it on a plate, and covered it with coarse sugar. They sat down at the mud table and dug into the sweetened cream, paper-thin chapattis, roasted okra, onions rings, and chutney. For Molu it was the feast of his life.

Ramzi’s son was taking the lunch things home when he noticed a dog hanging around outside the café. The boy picked up a discarded date-frond twine from the street, lassoed the dog and pulled, but the creature wouldn’t go with him. It shot an anxious look at Molu. Not wanting to reveal that the dog belonged to him, Molu didn’t do anything to help. It yelped and wriggled to free itself, but to no avail. Molu watched helplessly as the other boy dragged the struggling dog homewards. It left a long trail in the brown yielding dust.

After a while, the tired creature made its way back to the café, trailing its makeshift leash. It was a sorry sight, waiting outside the café for its master to finish work.

Ramzi lounged in his chair while Molu worked like a robot. He washed cups, took tea to the customers, and brought money to his boss, which he dropped into the small wooden cashbox. Curious, Molu wondered what sort of things the grimy cashbox contained. Many a time he was tempted to sneak a peek, but managed to resist. At last, he had a stroke of luck. As he was handing money to Ramzi, he got a tantalizing glimpse at the contents of the cashbox. It held pigeonholes, tiny shelves, and a murky underground store. It was cluttered with coins of various colours and sizes, as well as paper money. It also held cowry shells, a pair of tweezers, a rosary crafted from date seeds, a phial of perfume, and a fine-toothed wooden comb.

Towards the end of the day, Molu’s shirt was smudged with tea stains. His feet were wet and muddy and his toes squelched. He was worn-out but glad. In a single day he had seen and experienced many new and enthralling things. And so much cash had passed through his scrawny little fingers.

Before he closed the shop, Ramzi opened the moneybox to count the day’s takings, which mostly consisted of coins. As he went through the cash-counting ritual, his piggy eyes sparkled. After counting it, he cascaded the jingly palmful of loose change into the side pocket of his kurta so it bulged like a nanny goat’s udder.

Molu went home and told his mother and grandmother about all the marvellous things he had witnessed at the café. They listened with rapt attention, as if he had arrived from another planet. They were living in the same village, so how come they were unaware of these astonishing things?

*

In the café, Ramzi kept all edible items under lock and key except for moist brown sugar, which he stored in a lidless bin. When he went to relieve himself, Molu would shovel sugar into his mouth and chew it quickly, gulping water to wash it down. In order to conceal his theft, he assumed an expression of innocence.

One sweltering noon, his boss had gone for a toilet break, and Molu decided to experiment. He scooped some sugar into a tumbler, added water, and stirred it nervously. His heart was going a mile a minute. The sugar wasn’t dissolving properly, and he was running short of time. He swallowed the saccharine mixture in three big gulps, wiped his mouth on his threadbare sleeve, and sat the tumbler on the mud table. To avert suspicion, he busied himself scrubbing a pot with crushed charcoal and a gourd sponge.

Ramzi returned, holding the tasselled ends of a knitted drawstring in his clenched teeth. Inside his loose trousers his left hand was busy catching a drop of urine on a clod of earth as was the custom. When he was satisfied that the dripping had stopped, he chucked the urine-soaked clod away, tied the string of his trousers, and picked up the tumbler Molu had just used. As he shuffled towards the earthenware vat to wash his hands, he realised that the tumbler was sticky. He peered into it, and there it was: a small, wet heap of sugar. He scooped it up with his forefinger and licked it tentatively. Then he tugged Molu’s raven hair harshly. ‘You stole my sugar? You drank it? Does sugar grow in the goddamn fields of Daraban?’

‘I didn’t steal it.’

‘Then how on earth did it get into this tumbler?’

Molu was promptly fired. After two days, his neighbour went to Ramzi, apologized on the boy’s behalf, and persuaded him to reconsider.

*

During spare moments Molu sat in front of the café and played with his stone marbles. Every now and again he was joined by Ramzi’s son, and they would play short games in the middle of the bazaar. Once, Molu screwed a hexagonal iron nut onto a little stick, and taught his friend how to shape marbles by striking a small piece of stone with this improvised hammer.

Mtende Wezi Nthara lives in and writes from Malawi. She currently works at the Catholic University of Malawi as an Associate Lecturer in the English and Communication Studies Department. Some of her work appears in Nthanda Review, Kalahari Review, and Suicide: A Collection of Poetry and Short Prose.

The Night

Doors shut, frightening yet comforting.

A sweet melody from a hungry mosquito lingers in the darkness

Like a loud quartet –

Organised yet irritating.

Quiet sounds, frightening yet comforting,

Grapple for originality

But are eaten up in vanity

As dogs bark at shadows of darkness.

Untraceable noises, still recognisable from the hushed voices of sleep

Slowly fading away

Into the silent night

Until dawn, at the shout of a neighbour.

Chronicles of the night in a ghetto.

Felix Rian Constantinescu was born in Romania in 1982. He made his debut in 2002 as a writer of short pieces for theatre, and his published works include  Imersiune posibila – Possible Immersion (2004), Canon in d si alb – trei povestiri (2011), O mama de lumina (2015), Momentul in care D-zeu exista (2015) and Yin (2016).

*

Jos în grădină

E zăpadă mucedă.

Soare – bec aprins.

Down in the garden

There is moulded snow.

Sun – fiery bulb.

*

Prin haturi albe

Felinare aruncă

Nuanţe nocturne.

Through white baulks

Street lamps throw

Nightshades.

*

Pătrar de Lună

Peste tren înzăpezit.

Afânat deşert.

Moonquarter

Over snowed up train.

Beaked up desert.

*

Pe scaunul pătat

Becul plouă alb-gălbui.

Iarnă sub astre.

On the stained chair

The bulb rains yellow-white.

Winter under stars.

*

Porţelan negru

Unde, ceaiul fumegă

La miezul nopţii.

Black porcelain

Waves, the tea smokes

At midnight.

*

Aici în Haţeg

Blocurile sunt dune

În neagra beznă.

Here in Haţeg

The blocks of flats are dunes

In the black darkness.

*

Falduri lichide

Recif sticlos palpitând.

Solare lumini.

Liquid kerchiefs

Glassy reef throbbing.

Solar lights.

*

În pervaz, în geam

Picură rotogoale.

Ochiuri albastre.

In the frame, in the window

Rolls drip.

Blue water eyes.

*

Îngheţatul geam

Salcâmul umed şi alb.

Palidă iarnă.

The frozen window

The damp and white acacia.

Pale winter.

*

Lângă fereastră

Salcâmul se înălbi

De dimineaţă.

Near the window

The acacia has been whitened

Of morning.

*

Pe ceru-n amurg

Prunii, negru filigran.

Aer limpede.

On the sky at dusk

The plum trees, black filigree.

Transparent air.

*

Prin crengi albăstrii

Reci ceţuri electrice.

Sfârşit de iarnă.

Through blue branches

Cold electric mist.

End of winter.

*

Înnegrit salcâm

Azur vitraliu, amurg.

Busuioc uscat.

In blackened acacia

Blue stained-glass, dusk.

Withered basil.

*

Pe o creangă albă

Un sticlete ţopăie.

Frig fosforescent.

On the white branch

A thistlefinch hops.

Phosphorescent cold.

*

În pervazul ud

Firimituri pentru vrăbii.

Picură ţurţuri.

On the wet window frame

Crumbs for sparrows.

Icicles drip.

*

Peste sat ninsă

Noapte – pată sepia.

Fulgi de hârtie.

Over the village snowed

Night – cuttle fish stain.

Flakes of paper.

*

Stradă pustie

Câteva geamuri licăr.

Noapte geroasă.

Desert street

A few windows sparkle.

Frosty night.

*

În apartament

Frig conturat limpede.

Umbră de pin nins.

In the flat

Clearly outlined cold.

Snowed pine shadow.

*

Înroşind burgul

Găuriţi monoliţi dalbi

Luminoşi în frig.

(haiku în amintirea Revoluţiei din Decembrie 1989)

Red colouring the city

Pierced white monolithes

Bright in cold.

(haiku in the memory of the Revolution of December 1989)

Lillian (Quan) Zhou is a student at Beijing No. 4 High School. She began learning English at a young age, and has a passion for prose.

Once More Back Home

I spent nine years – my childhood years – with my grandmother in an old Chinese house in the countryside. I developed a deep-seated aversion to caterpillars from their ubiquitous presence, and had to wear long-sleeved shirts in the garden, since my grandmother hated using pesticides on her organic herbs and naturally nourished sakura trees. But apart from that, my grandma’s house and the countryside became my idea of heaven. From then on, I never thought there was any place in the world like that tranquil haven. Those years and my childhood were exquisite. My memory is filled with tender chartreuse springs, fiery cerulean summers, autumns with a mixture of amber and crimson hues, and frosted winters with a pleasant smell of home-made cherry pie. I have since become a city dweller, but sometimes there are days when the restlessness of urban traffic, the gnaw of loneliness, and the incessant crowds make me wish for the peace of the countryside. Two months ago, this feeling grew so strong that I bought myself a long-sleeved shirt and returned to my grandmother’s house for a week’s rest away from the urban heat, planning to revisit my old haunts.

On the journey back to that familiar landscape, I began to wonder what it would be like. I wondered how time would have marred this unique and almost sacred spot — the blossoms and the forests, the woods that the sun set into, the quaint house and yard in front of it. It’s strange how vividly you can recall a usually blurred piece of memory like that, once you allow your mind to return into the groove that led back to that countryside, back home. You recall one scene, and it suddenly immerses you into another one. I guess what I remembered most clearly were the cozy middays, when the sun was casting its leisurely heat and light; I remembered how Grandma’s cherry pie smelled of the blossoms it once took the shape of, and of the mellow wheat whose scent permeates through the field a mile away from the house.

My memories are just as lively as the actuality: again, I was exposed to that pleasantly warm sunshine as my senses captured a wonderful and familiar mixture of smells. As I settled into the house (the dusting kept me busy for a while) and the kind of tranquility I had known, I could tell that it was going to be pretty much the same as it had been before — I knew it, smearing oil on the fissured wooden pillars, sleeping until middays on weekends, and inhaling the satisfyingly blended aromas of the field and home-made pastries from the neighborhood. I began to sustain the illusion that no time has passed, and thus that I was the nine-year-old me. I would be in the middle of a simple act – wandering in the field of mingled green and yellow, or deliberating over whether to have salmon and beef for lunch – and suddenly it would not be me but a carefree child who was making these gestures, saying these words. It was not an entirely new feeling, but it grew much stronger and more compelling during this visit, after six years away. I seemed to be living backwards through time.

On the second day, I went to the sakura forest, my weariness having ebbed after the first day’s midday nap. A faint but familiar sense of melancholy fell upon me as I trod lightly on the moist earth, which was covered in a pale-pink veil woven from fallen petals. An early, rose-toned light shed on the maroon twigs. I saw a butterfly alight on one of them after hovering a few inches above me. It was the arrival of this creature that convinced me beyond any doubt that everything was as it always had been. The years were only a mirage; there had been no years. The flowers were just the same, blooming fully under beams of golden sunshine, petals drifting to the ground as a breeze ruffled the leaves. The sun was the sun from six years ago, coloring the trees with the same gradation of muted shades that move from pink to rose to scarlet and to a glistening gold. I stared silently at the tip of the twig, at the butterfly that had seemingly traveled six years to approach me. I deliberately made the branch quiver, dislodging the butterfly. It flitted five inches away, paused, flitted five inches back, and came to rest again on another twig a little farther above. There had been no years between this butterfly and the other one — the one that was part of my memory.

The countryside, the summertime, the indelible pattern of life, the fade-proof woods, the ineffaceable house, the meadow of four-leaf clovers and daisies forever and ever, summer without end; this was the life away from the coiled urban mess. It seemed to me, as I remembered all this, that those times had been infinitely precious and worth saving. There had been jollity, calm, and goodness.

The ride to shuttle back and forth through the field had been big business in itself: on the bumpy paths my bike tires crunched the gravel, sometimes with a hollow rush of wind generated by a thrilled acceleration. I would catch the first glimpse of smiling neighbors from the other cottages, and at the end of the last long street, the first view of Grandma’s house, reaping the assuring feeling of home after an exhausting day. Sometimes, in a hurry, I would cross the field, prickly crops making the skin around my ankles itch, and speed up to form a blurred profile when an angry farmer tried to recognize the mischievous saboteur. Traveling is far less exciting nowadays. You get into your car and let GPS choose one of the flattest cement roads. You intentionally seek a smile from a neighbor through the car window. In ten minutes, the trip through the field would be over with no fuss. No itchy, thrilling, wonderful fuss.

Happiness and goodness and calm . The only thing that was wrong now, really, was the sound – an unfamiliar nervous sound from the shopping mall . This was the note that jarred, the one thing that would sometimes break the illusion and set the years moving. Among the extensive stretch of farmlands and scattered cottages, the mall had previously been a market – the only place where crowds had gathered. In the old days, it had been busy in a cordial way. The noise of hawkers bargaining with buyers was a comfort, an ingredient of countryside gusto. The fun part about wandering through the market was the conversations. There were polite reciprocations and rowdy squabbles. Some were appraisals of summer clothing between housewives, and some were vendors’ concessions to a ten cent discount, but they all cast a comforting and intriguing sound across the landscape. Plastic bags rustled and swished, and footsteps pattered and pattered. That was a heartening sound as well. But now, the crowded market had been transformed into a modern shopping mall. The sounds of peddlers selling home-grown vegetables and craftsmen showing off their wares were overwhelmed by the stiffly sweet sound of welcome from the trained salesgirls. After years of faking this affected, urban style, I loathed its bourgeois overtones. Other teenage girls loved the mall, and coveted the outfits on display. They soon learned the trick of befriending the salesgirls, who would let them wear expensive skin-tight sundresses for a day. Watching them, I remembered the things you could do in the old crowded market, where a pleasant chat could be everything. I remembered how you could grow attached to a place if you got really close to the heart of it. Old-style markets in those days didn’t attract stylish young consumers. They sold basic necessities and fresh food, not high-end commodities associated with fads and fashions. However, frequent visitors to the market were captivated its charms. You could have frequent interactions with neighboring cottagers, or with tired travelers who always carried a heap of weirdly compelling stories in their dusty backpacks. Sometimes you would be lucky enough to spot a workshop selling the sort of fine, hand-made gadgets that my grandmother loved. In the early morning the market was always quiet. Swept by a refreshing breeze , it was difficult not to slow down and stop worrying about trivial things.

Now, listening to the canned pop music in the shopping mall, for a moment I missed the market terribly – the hawkers, the shoppers, the backpackers and its crowded serenity. It gave me a menacing feeling.

I had a good week in the countryside. The flowers smelled sweet and the sun shone endlessly, day after day. When I grew tired at night, I would lie down in the heat of the little bedroom after a long hot day. The breeze would stir almost imperceptibly outside, the smell of the field and swamp drifting in through the open windows. Sleep would come easily, and in the morning a mockingbird would be on the windowsill, tapping out his morning routine. Lying in bed until midday, I sorted through my memories— the pink bicycle with a wicker front basket woven by my grandmother, and how proudly I rode it in front of other girls. The older boys playing their guitars and the girls watching them as we sat around a bonfire, and how sweet the music was across the field under shining moonlight. What it had felt like to ride a bright pink bike and let the breeze waft the faint smell of my perfume to the boys. After lunch I would quietly explore the streams running by the fields, where groups of tadpoles quickly spread out in all directions when they detected minor man-made tremors. I wanted to see a turtle and pretend it was the one that my grandma let go years ago, after a boy gave it to me as a gift. Everywhere I went I had trouble telling whether those years had genuinely passed, or whether I was still the unworldly girl who spent hours waiting for a turtle.

One afternoon while I was watering the cherry trees a postman arrived. It was like the revival of an old tradition that I had seen long ago with childish delight. My first instinct was to run to the gate and greet the smiling middle-aged man. This was a daily necessity, and is still a daily necessity. The whole thing was so familiar: the first feeling of curiosity for news, the excitement to hear fresh countryside anecdotes, and the one moment among all tranquilities that is close to drama. I heard him stuffing newspapers and mail through the crack of the door.

When I opened the gate the postman couldn’t hide his astonishment at encountering a girl in an old abandoned house. A letter in his right hand, he stood still for five full seconds. Then he greeted me in a warm, professional tone, and I took the mail from him. Wincing slightly, I watched his figure disappear over the horizon, and suddenly my heart began to ache. It ached from the sudden collapse of my illusion – the sudden recollection of my grandmother’s death six years before.

Habib Mohana was born in 1969 in Daraban Kalan, a town in the district of Dera Imsail Khan, Pakistan. He is an assistant professor of English at Government Degree College No 3, D. I. Khan. He writes fiction in English, Urdu, and Saraiki (his mother tongue). He has four books under his belt, one in Urdu and three in Saraiki. His Saraiki novel forms part of the syllabus for the MA in Saraiki at Zikria University Multan. His short stories in English have appeared in literary journals in India and Canada. In 2010 and 2014, his Saraiki books won the Khawaja Ghulam Farid Award from the Pakistan Academy of Letters. His book of short stories in Urdu, titled Adhori Neend, won the Abaseen award from the Government of KPK. He is currently seeking a publisher for his novel The Village Café.

            The Village Court

Ikram sold cosmetics and items for women and children. He travelled on his brakeless Sohrab bicycle through the scattered villages on Damaan, peddling his wares. The itinerant hawker was a well-known figure in the village of Kot Lalu. Upon his arrival into the village he would blow his rusty whistle beguilingly, and women, girls, and children would gravitate towards him like rats of Hamelin. His weathered bicycle groaned under his wares. Only its saddle and pedals were visible. The rest of the bicycle was buried under cartons, baskets, and bundles that housed lipsticks, creams, perfumes, hairclips, face powders, glass bangles, fake jewelry, looking glasses, toys, and toffees. Only Ikram had the knack of riding or wheeling a bicycle so chaotically laden with goods.

The chatty hawker was a cheerful, decent man. He would exchange gossip and news with his female customers, cracking jokes with them and asking them about their kids and their lives. He ran tabs for ladies who were strapped for cash. Sometimes the women paid him in eggs, wheat, or butter oil. If Ikram was thirsty he asked the women for water, and if he was hungry he asked them for bread. His female customers obliged graciously.

Seldom did the village men buy anything from the hawker. They held a very low opinion of him. In their view, he was a crafty and clever creature who made his living by preying upon the imaginations of ignorant village women, and tricking them into buying his substandard trinkets. The village men considered Ikram effeminate and weak, as he shunned manly professions like farming or herding or wood-chopping. Some men would shoo him away from their doors so that he wouldn’t be able to entice their women and children into buying his third-rate stuff. But the women folk always held him in high esteem. For them he was a huge source of modern trends in fashion and news from the outside world. He gave the village women useful beauty tips and offered them advice about their children’s health. He had once lived and worked in Karachi, and he told the women breathtaking stories of the city with its sky-hugging buildings, and the fashionable ladies that walk in high heels in busy markets. For the illiterate village housewives whose horizons were limited, the hawker was an entertainer, educator, and trendsetter.

His arrival into the village was always keenly awaited, especially before festive occasions like Big and Small Eid.

Although the forty-year-old wheat-colored hawker hailed from a village, his clothes were relatively well-stitched and cleaner than the clothes of other villagers. His lustrous eyes were always lined with kohl; his well-oiled, raven hair was done in the style of film actors’, and his clothes exuded a heady fragrance of attar. He was a short man, and inwardly he seemed painfully aware of it, but God had compensated him in another way—he was blessed with a long aristocratic nose. He had been married for ten years and had sired four children.

It was whispered among the womenfolk of Kot Lalu that the hawker was having an affair with the potter’s wife who had borne three children. They said that Ikram spent more time at his beloved’s door, and gave her cosmetics and knick-knacks either for free or at an insanely low price.

Mid-June’s punishing sun was in the middle of the sky and the village streets lay deserted. The villagers had confined themselves to their homes or thatched sheds that were erected in the orchards. A farmer, who had searched every nook and cranny of the village for his lost donkey, found himself at the village graveyard. The fenceless cemetery sprawled over a huge area. He was scanning it for his lost donkey when he saw a reflection of something from a clump of trees. Goaded by curiosity, the farmer pushed on through the tangle of vegetation and young acacias towards the source of the reflection. It was coming from a looking glass that was suspended from the handlebar of the hawker’s Sohrab bicycle, which was propped up against a gnarly tree in the middle of the graveyard. Then he heard whispering from a nearby clump of toothbrush trees. He tiptoed to the clump, parted the lacy branches, and saw the hawker and the potter’s wife engaged in an amorous tête-à-tête.

The peeping Tom hurried to his friends who were playing cards under the thatched shed in the village community centre. He told them what he had witnessed in the cemetery. A posse of ten men rushed to the scene and crept into the clump of toothbrush trees, catching the besotted pair in the act. Ikram and his lover scrambled to their feet and made a dash towards the exit point, but the glowering men had blocked all routes of escape. Gibbering like a monkey, the hawker went down on bended knees and beseeched the men to forgive him. Weeping, the woman threw her head scarf at the men’s feet and begged them to let her go, but they wouldn’t listen to their pleas.

‘Have you no respect for the deceased? Weren’t you ashamed for the dead who are buried here? You call yourself Muslim? Even a Kafir would not dare to do such a filthy thing in the graveyard.’ The first villager gave the hawker a stinging clout across the face.

‘Blacken their faces with soot, seat them on a donkey, and give them a tour of the village,’ the second man screamed.

‘Hang garlands of old broken shoes around their sinful necks,’ the third man thundered.

‘Take the adulterous couple to the mullah. He shall decide it according to sharia.’ The fourth man stamped his foot.

The hawker’s mistress slumped to the ground and started writhing in the dust like a crushed bug. The men let her go, but captured her lover. First they thrashed him brutally, then tied his hands behind his back with his shoulder sheet and dragged him to the village community centre.

The news that the hawker and the potter’s wife were found in a compromising position spread through Kot Lalu like wildfire. The male villagers converged upon the community centre. The offender was tied to the leg of a charpoy. Tears were rolling down his cheeks; saliva was drooling from his mouth, and his hair was awry. Every newcomer gave him two or three spicy slaps in the face or hot kicks to his side. Some made shaming gestures at him, and others spat at him. One man brought a platter full of fresh cow dung and dumped it over the hawker’s head.

‘I have eaten crap! I have committed an awfully wicked thing. Please pardon me! I will never do it again. I will never set foot in this village again,’ the hawker begged the village chief.

‘You should have thought about it before. But lust rendered you blind. This is a village of respectable people. This is not a brothel.’ The old village chief lashed him with his crooked waking stick.

Later, the village headman sent for the potter, but he had gone to the neighbouring village to sell pots, pitchers, and spouted jugs. The news had hit the nearby villages. Some men got onto their bicycles and whooshed to Kot Lalu, anticipating some action. The news reached the farmers and goatherds, and they raced towards the village to witness the drama. The community centre heaved with men and boys. To get a better view of the proceedings, several men had climbed the roofs and walls of their houses.

More than five cooking disks were brought to the scene. Those who stood close to the hawker scraped soot from the lower side of the cooking disk with their fingers and then applied the dark powder to his face. He looked like a stage character of some morality play being punished for his sins. Some laughed at him and some hurled abuse. Then from nowhere appeared garlands made out of old, broken shoes. The shoe-garlands were put around the hawker’s neck. A boy was passing by with his donkey laden with fuel wood. The spectators pushed the load off the beast’s back and dragged it into the community centre. The ringleaders made the hawker ride the creature, and it was led out into the street followed by the shouting, clapping crowd. The hawker sat hunched on the donkey. The broken shoes hung from his neck like dried gourds. They yelled abuse at the rider. Some men beat the donkey while others beat the rider. Twice he was given a tour of the village. Afterwards he was brought back to the community centre in a pathetic condition.

The congregants offered opinions as to what sort of punishment Ikram deserved. Some said that the case should be reported to the police; some suggested that his throat be slit, while others maintained that his nose should be chopped off. After a while, the village court agreed upon the last punishment. Now the question was, who would cut off the hawker’s nose? The ringleaders sent for the barber but he had gone to a nearby village to perform circumcision on a child. Instead, they sent another man to the barber’s house to ask his wife to lend them a razor, but she replied that her husband had taken all his tools with him. The ringleaders looked at one another.

Rolling up his sleeves, a middle-aged goatherd stepped forward. He pulled out a small, tough knife from his pocket. The ringleaders pinioned the culprit, who bleated like a goat. Unhurriedly, the goatherd touched the hawker’s nose on each side. He thought for a while, and then positioned the shiny blade on the nasal bridge and pressed. In a flash, the nose had been sliced off neatly. The amputator held it, dripping with blood, between his thumb and forefinger and showed it to the crowd. The throng let out a thundering roar of moral triumph. The amateur surgeon placed the nose in an upright position on his callused left palm. It looked like a frog on the verge of taking a leap. He knocked it down with the tip of his bloody knife so it lay on its side. For some moments he examined the dismembered organ, and then threw it down on the ground as if it were a malignant growth. The spectators crowded around the nose. They expected it to jump, dance, and wriggle like the hacked-off tail of a lizard, but it showed no sign of life. The villagers looked a little disappointed. The nose lay on the ground motionless, like a small pear chopped in half. One villager tentatively kicked it with the toe of his shoe. Another hurled a stone at it, and yet another struck it with a stick. Then, a flight of stones, clods, sticks, and brickbats landed on the nose until it was buried under a heap of assorted missiles.

The onlookers had lost interest in the owner of the nose, who was screaming in excruciating pain. A small fountain of blood was bubbling from the place where once had stood a long, proud, aristocratic nose. It ran into the hawker’s mouth, spilling over his chin and then down his neck, painting his shirt crimson red.

The disoriented, noseless hawker lurched to his feet. He placed his shoulder sheet on the bleeding stump and stumbled towards the exit. No one stopped him leaving.

‘Where are you going?’ someone remarked. ‘Will you not take your snout with you? Gentlemen, give him back his nose. After all, it’s his property.’ Mad laughter erupted from the crowd.

‘No, we won’t do that,’ the village chief said. ‘We should feed it to the dogs.’

‘No –’ the amputator replied. ‘Even dogs wouldn’t eat the nose of an adulterer.’

Vaughn M. Watson is a New York-based fiction and non-fiction writer who lived in China for two years. He has appeared on NPR and has work forthcoming in Tahoma Literary Review. He was the winner of the 2016 Winston-Salem Writer’s Flying South competition and has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. He is currently working on a collection of stories and essays, Payaos, and serving on the Newtown Literary editorial board.

The Brightest Light It Will Ever Know

They are beautiful at first, their wings adorned with symmetrical patterns. They are browns, golds, and reds, always dark and earthy colors that contrast the green of local flora and the blue Yunnan sky. Their wings are camouflaged in the red dirt roads that connect this town to the city. This does not matter; however, as more often than not one sees them in rooms, reflected on the cold stone floors or perched on walls painted in layers of beige. The moths hang from the walls patterned and colored, their wings spread flat against the wall, two-dimensional as paper.

They come in through the windows and always at night. Their entrances are made of glass and metal, painted a red, Martian rust. A section of it, one that can slide, is left open to let wet air into the room. They come in on their second or third attempts. As if propelled by winds, the moths enter the room and settle on a resting place. They move once or twice, shifting around as things do in an effort to prepare for a resting state. In the case of the moth, this state is called torpor, and if the moth survives the night, it may remain on the wall or the stone floor in that state for the daylight hours. Its resting state mirrors that of humans, but entomologists say they are more aware than humans are when sleeping. They are resting but aware, able to return to their nocturnal state at the slightest change in stimulus.

When night falls, a moth comes alive. It is decorated with colors of the earthy, dark shades of brown and black and brass. Its wings and the lines on them curl like brackets, perfectly even on both halves. It is on the western wall, the emptiest one. Of the four walls, this one is painted the best. Most of the it has been painted using the same shade of white, but there are patches that have been painted over in a slightly darker beige. The room smells of smoke.

The moth lands on one of these patches, near the upper left corner, as if able to discern this difference in color. Its wings flap twice and then rest flat, revealing their naked detail. Hanging from the ceiling’s center is a string and a makeshift light fixture. A light-emitting diode (LED) light bulb is screwed into the fixture. The light is off now, but the sun will set soon.

At night, the windows should be closed to prevent the moths from clamoring in to experience the siren of fluorescent light. The mountain nights get cold and after the sun disappears behind the clouds and myriad peaks, one begins to feel the effects of altitude. With the doors and windows closed, the room is a comfortable temperature, just slightly cooler than that of a room at sea level, because stone lacks insulating properties.

The light goes on and the bracket moth is aware of this. It is still in torpor, resting but conscious. It considers movement, its wings aflutter, but the moth’s interaction with the light is troubling. Instead of flying directly into the light, a moth to metaphorical flame, it begins a choreography.

Moths are positively phototactic. They are attracted to light, counterintuitive to their nocturnal nature. Entomologists theorize that they are so attracted because they use the moon, the brightest known light to them, as a compass. The invention of light, the use of fire and electricity, has confused them. The brightest lights have now become closer than ever before, and the moths have confounded these lights with the light of the moon. They approach the brightest lights, thinking they will carry them to safer places. It is their nature; it is their tragedy.

Now the moth is dancing, circling the brightest light it will ever know. After several rotations, the moth winds around the bulb with sickening speed, always getting closer and closer. It is pulled into the light it believes has guided it for most of its short life. It is pure instinct; it is their romance.

The moth is closing in on the light and beginning to touch it for the first time. It circles and touches, then it only touches, knocking into the light with all its might, the path to the heavens. It knocks and knocks, but then it knocks a final time and retreats to the wall. The moths in Yunnan are large and do not die so easily. Instead, it goes into shock, experiencing the singeing of its insect flesh for the first time. It rests, a brief torpor, then convulses, flying to each corner of the room, taking off as abruptly as it lands. The wings are still for seconds, resting on the stone floor. It convulses again, moving three-quarters of an inch at a time but somehow managing to fly.

When it is certain that the moth is dead, it is swept into a metal dustpan and left outside to rot. But for tonight, it will remain on the coldness of that uncovered and dusty section of the stone floor, not in torpor but in death.

The room is silent without the fluttering of its wings and its constant crashing into the furniture. It sounds empty and the light goes off. A fainter light goes on beneath the covers.

From the front window a sound can be heard. It is like human knocking. The room is quiet all except for that drumming. The moths are knocking against the doors and the windows. They are knocking with all their might.