by Alana Terry
Atheist guards, suddenly superstitious, did whatever they could to appease the Old Woman’s God. Many agents laid offerings outside our cell: rations of bread and grain, a cup of tea, even some dried meat. A few of the men called on the name of Jesus Christ, not knowing who or what he was, but apparently hoping that if they showed him enough reverence he would refrain from unleashing his fury and wrath upon us all.
I sat and waited, wondering if the Old Woman’s prophesy regarding my freedom was about to be fulfilled. I wouldn’t have been surprised to see my father’s friend Moses, the legendary hero of my childhood, come marching down the stairs to escort me to my safe haven in front of dozens of National Security officers.
Instead … silence. An hour passed. I kept watching, expecting to see some semblance of life or beauty in the Old Woman’s body that her spirit so recently abandoned. There was only the stillness and finality of death. The Old Woman’s mouth hung open with an empty, almost senile, gaze. Her eyes, which I expected to be shining with joy at her long-awaited homecoming, were cross, and her brow was furrowed.
After a few hours, the guards grew tired of their fearful and reverent wake. One or two began to chuckle, making jokes and mimicking the Old Woman’s imbecilic, open-mouthed expression. I sucked in my breath when one of the men unlocked the door to our cell. While a few guards lingered in the hallway, most entered and stood around the corpse, some laughing, some cursing the memory of my friend.
I sat in the corner, hoping to stay unnoticed. A bottle of soju was passed around, and the soldiers increased their jocular irreverence. The fear of the Old Woman, which held every single one of her guards captive for as long as I knew her, was suddenly lifted. The mood turned celebratory.
“Here’s to you, old hag!” exclaimed a guard, splashing his repugnant liquor on the Old Woman’s face and chest. While I huddled in the corner, begging the shadows to conceal me, the Old Woman’s body and memory were defiled in every way imaginable. Then all too quickly, her abusers turned on me.
“Here’s the witch’s little pupil,” exclaimed one guard who was already slurring his words.
“Perhaps the Old Woman taught her how to cast a spell on us.”
“She can put a hex on me. I don’t mind.”
“Come here, girl-witch. Let’s see if the Old Woman or her God have any power left to protect you.”
I shielded my face and shrieked, unaware that I was in a coal car next to Shin and not back in the Old Woman’s cell at the merciless treatment of godless creatures.
“Please! Stop screaming.” Shin begged. “Someone might hear you. We could be caught. Please!”
I opened my eyes and saw Shin, bloody claw-marks etched across his sooty cheeks. “You’re safe now,” Shin promised. “It’s just me.”
Shin didn’t touch me as I whimpered softly into my palms. My teeth chattered in rhythm with the train’s lurching.
“I had no part in what those guards did to you that day.” I hated Shin for his pitiful attempts to comfort me. How did he expect me to react when I found out what he was? With joyful gratitude? I might have accused him to his face, but instead I wanted even more to forget that he was in the coal car beside me, as if by my sheer will power I could make him disappear and free myself from these haunting memories.
“You need to rest.” I didn’t want to acknowledge Shin’s presence by arguing with him. At least asleep, I could try to forget he was there. A moment later I was unconscious, while dreamless slumber offered only partial relief from the ghosts of my past.
JOURNEY
“I lift up my eyes to the hills – where does my help come from?”
Psalm 121:1
“Wake up,” a man whispered, shaking me out of my fitful and troubled sleep. I blinked in confusion, wondering why my shirt was soaked with sweat and why my body was rushing through space.
“Hurry,” the man urged. “We don’t have much time.”
I was not awake enough to remember why I was crouched beside crates of coal. My mind felt foggy, and my body still trembled slightly from some trauma I couldn’t recall. The man opened the door to the train car, letting in a blast of salty air. I had never been to the coast before. The smell startled me awake.
“We have to jump,” Shin explained above the roaring of the train. He reached out for my hand, and when I took it I recoiled at his touch as if by some latent instinct. Suddenly remembering who this man was, I looked around for any other means of escape. The detainment guard looked at me with wide eyes. “It’s the only way. Please, come with me.”
There was no choice. I could feel the train slowing down on the tracks, and I needed to be out of the car before we reached the steel mill. As much as I loathed Shin, I decided that being trapped with a detention guard was still better than being sent back to prison camp and punished for my escape. I held my breath and watched the ground racing by beneath my feet.
“Jump!” Shin shouted. Still holding my arm, he leapt off the platform. I hesitated a moment too long so that it was the weight of Shin’s body being jerked downward that yanked me out of the coal car, causing us both to roll and land dangerously close to the tracks.
A sharp rock broke my fall, knocking the air out of me. For a horrifying moment, my lungs were paralyzed and I couldn’t breathe at all. Shin approached to help me up, but I waved him away with a determined hand and forced myself to stand up on my own.
“How do you feel?” Shin cleared his throat and stared down at my feet.
I shrugged away his question. The last thing I wanted was to speak to this detention guard about my waking nightmare on the train. “Fine,” I declared through gritted teeth.
Shin shifted his weight back and forth. “We’ll need more food.” Shin eyed me up and down, standing several paces from me with his hands hanging limp and useless by his side. He had taken off his prisoner clothes in the coal car and now wore a drab civilian’s shirt and khaki pants. I still had Shin’s burlap coat over my gray uniform. Shin didn’t speak of my outburst on the train but only commented, “You look too conspicuous. You’ll have to stay here while I buy us some food.”
Shin helped me hide as best as I could in the outskirts of the city limits by what appeared to be some abandoned sheds. He promised to come back to me within an hour, and I waited in tortured uncertainty, wondering if it would be better to flee from Shin and his unforgiveable and dangerous past or to continue on with him to China.
I knew that there was no way for me to survive if I tried to stay there in Kimchaek. I had no papers, no trade, no relatives. I didn’t even have regular clothes. For a moment I contemplated abandoning Shin and trying to find my way to the Chinese border by myself, but thoughts of the Hamyong mountain range to the north kept my feet planted firmly on Kimchaek soil.
When he returned, Shin handed me a winter coat and lined snow boots. “Where did you find these?” I asked, unwilling to accept stolen goods as a gift from this National Security agent. Because I had been in Camp 22 since the worst of the famine, I didn’t know about the ten-day markets, nor could I have guessed that Shin planned our escape to coincide with a market day in Kimchaek where he could legally purchase food and supplies for the upcoming mountain trek.
Shin didn’t say anything. He shook his head and helped me cover my prison uniform with my new coat, taking painful efforts to keep from touching me directly. His delicate, almost fearful, treatment was humiliating. I grumbled a coarse “Thank you” as Shin handed me my shoes. I pulled them on awkwardly. They were the first boots I ever wore.
After Shin packed our new supply of food in the burlap bag that once served as my jacket, we walked northwest toward the interior of North Hamyong Province. Shin walked a pace or two ahead of me, every now and then glancing back and asking how I was doing. I refused to answer. Shin was in much better physical health than I. Even if I wanted to talk to my companion, the uneven terrain would have made any discussion difficult. It took all my focus to keep up with Shin’s pace without stumbling.
Shin and I stopped right before nightfall in a thick forest grove that sheltered us from the wind and the worst of the cold. We shared a small roll and ate a few roots, careful to ration our food to last for as much of our journey as possible. We were still a two-day’s hike from the mountains themselves, and once we arrived at their base we would spend at least another week crossing their wintery passes.
It was too dangerous to light a fire this close to town, so we sat with our backs to the wind and shivered with cold. It was Shin who first tried to break the strained silence.
“You are a courageous girl.” Shin stared at a tree branch where a solitary brown leaf flapped in the howling wind.
“You can’t think me courageous after this morning.” I poked the snow with a small stick while the defiant leaf flapped in the breeze.
“I know how brutal guards can be,” Shin whispered into the night. I winced at this unwelcome reminder of exactly how familiar Shin was with the torture and cruelty of the underground detainment center. I wrapped my arms around my chest and turned away from him. “But you have your spirit left.” Shin reached his arm out to me and then dropped it to his side again. “You carry around in your heart a hope that is a mystery to me.”
I shook my head. “You must be mistaking me for the Old Woman.”
Shin packed a handful of snow into a ball and threw it at the leaf, which finally surrendered and fluttered into the snow bank below. “You just don’t know how strong you are,” he grumbled.
Weary Traveler
“For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” Matthew 11:30
Shin and I woke up the next day with the sunrise. We skipped our morning meal and continued walking northwest. I was so unaccustomed to wearing boots that in the afternoon my feet erupted in painful blisters.
“I’m afraid we can’t stop yet,” Shin apologized. We were too close to the inhabited area of Kilchu-up for comfort, he explained, and we still had several more hours to walk before we could stop safely to build a fire. By nightfall, the soles of my feet were covered with open sores.
When we finally found a forested area to spend the night, Shin cut long strips off the top of his burlap bag and bandaged my wounds with gentle hands.
“I’m sorry.” I didn’t even think to ask what he was apologizing to me for.
The following evening, after yet another day of hiking in strained silence, Shin bandaged my blistered feet again. Shin cared for my wounds with such tenderness that I might have expected him to be a life-saving physician instead of a detainment center guard who worked for the National Security Agency. It was that night I finally found my voice.
“How old is your daughter?” I asked. The treetops were covered in hoarfrost that reflected the grayish-pink of dusk.
“She is seven,” Shin told me. I was surprised, expecting her to be older. While he dressed my second foot, Shin told me of his family. “My wife died of complications after childbirth. Our daughter was born with club feet … and some other abnormalities.” Shin glided my boot on, careful to disturb the bandages as little as possible. “Since the doctors believed our daughter’s condition might be genetic, my wife was sterilized. She died of infection when our daughter was only two weeks old.”
“And you raised her by yourself?” I asked, trying to imagine how a man whose job was to torture and kill could nurture his own child when he went home from his shift at the detainment center.
“She went to nursery school, allowing me to continue my work at the …” Shin stopped himself. “Allowing me to stay employed.” He rubbed his hands together before putting his gloves back on. “There never was a sweeter child born. When she turned five, they didn’t let her attend grade school. She couldn’t talk. She wasn’t even toilet trained and had many other problems.” I wondered if the guards Shin worked with knew about his daughter’s disabilities. A tender father who doted on his handicapped kid didn’t seem to fit the image of the typical National Security agent.
“Her grandmother, my mother-in-law, moved in with us to care for my little girl while I was at work,” Shin explained. For a brief moment, I considered the possibility that all of the detainment center guards I met over the years had children of their own. The idea was incomprehensible.
“Why did you send her to Yanji?” I asked, trying to think of something else.
Shin wiped his brow with the back of his hand. “Because of you.”
“Me?”
“Last summer, my daughter developed an infection in her lungs and couldn’t breathe properly. The doctors refused to give her medicine. They said she didn’t deserve medical care.” Shin turned his head aside and spat in the snow.
“I was desperate. After my wife died, my daughter was the only light in my life. I knew the Old Woman’s story. So I asked her for help. I’m sure you remember that night. When I returned home, my mother-in-law was awake. She told me how my daughter’s breathing cleared up in an instant, at the same time I was in your cell.
“When I got to work two days later, I learned about what happened to the Old Woman. And what happened to you as well.” I stared at the snowy carpet beneath me while Shin continued. “Any hope that I had left in the Party vanished. We weren’t victorious upholders of the revolution; we were barbarians. Gruesome, cruel beasts. My colleagues and I were not even fit to be called humans.
“But I was scared,” Shin confessed. “I knew what would happen if I openly rebelled. So I sent my daughter on to Yanji for her own protection and made a vow to the Old Woman’s God that I would do everything in my power to correct the mistakes of my past and make up for the shameful behavior of my comrades.
“I used my position in the detainment center to help as many as I could. A few, like yourself, I sent back to the main camp. But my authority was limited, and eventually my colleagues realized I lost my zeal to their cause. I was demoted. They sent me to guard the train depot. It was a lesson meant to teach me not to interfere with camp politics.
“With my daughter no longer by my side, I grew very depressed and withdrawn. If you must know, I came close to drastic measures.” Shin paused and lowered his head. “Suicide,” he finally admitted.
I cringed at this confession, not because I felt sorry for Shin and the anguish of his past, but because I couldn’t shake the image of my father hanging in his cell after denying the God he once loved so passionately.
“What stopped you?” I asked, trying to rid myself of the horrific picture.
“You did,” Shin answered. “I knew that you were close to the Old Woman. If anyone could explain her mystery to me, it was you.”
I sighed. “Then I am destined to disappoint you. She spoke very little about herself during our entire nine months together. There’s not much I can share with you.” I regretted that I didn’t press the Old Woman harder to tell me the rest of her story. In the comfort of her cell, I imagined that she and I would always enjoy unhurried days filled with easy conversation and restful silence. I never realized that my respite with the Old Woman would be curtailed so abruptly.
“I’m not talking about the Old Woman’s past,” Shin commented, “although it was undoubtedly miraculous. I’m talking about what happened the night I was in your cell. The Old Woman told me that it was Jesus Christ who healed my daughter. I’ve heard this name before, but I don’t know who this man is or whether he is dead or alive. And I don’t understand how my daughter was healed on his account. That,” Shin concluded, “is what I wanted to ask you for eight months. That is why I decided to take you with me when I escaped to Yanji.”
For the first time during our conversation, I turned and stared at Shin. “You planned to escape with me from the beginning?”
Shin nodded. “I knew what unit of the garment factory you were working in. It wasn’t difficult. When the fire started I gave orders for the women from the garment factory to come put it out.”
“But you were wearing prison clothes when you found me,” I recalled.
“I acted lik
e I had to find some important papers. The fire had already claimed several lives by then; it wasn’t hard finding a uniform.” Shin pointed to his civilian shirt and pants. “I wore these under my guard clothes that day. I planned it all several weeks in advance, you see.”
I shut my eyes. My feet stung from the blisters as well as the cold. “I did what I had to do,” Shin insisted. “My hands were already stained with the blood of innocent men, women … even children.” I didn’t want to hear such a confession and tried to silence Shin with the shake of my head. He wouldn’t stop. “I need to correct my past. For eight months, I’ve done what I can to appease your God, but I still have no rest. No matter how much good I’ve done, I’m still haunted by my guilt. Can’t you help me, you who were so close to the Old Woman and her Lord?”
I stared at Shin who finished bandaging my feet and was pacing restlessly back and forth in the snow. “What must I do to finally experience the peace my soul needs?”
“I wish I could tell you,” I answered. But even if I knew the answer myself, I wondered if I would share it with this blood-stained detainment guard.
Mountain Cleft
“His way is in the whirlwind and the storm, and clouds are the dust of his feet.” Nahum 1:3
As we continued on our journey through the wintery mountain passes, I grew more comfortable with Shin’s company. Shin told me of his childhood as the eldest son of an important Party cadre. I told him of Father and his bold and relentless faith.