MEMORIES from the EAST

by Abdulla Kazim

  I didn’t feel any embarrassment at all, but I realized it might not be so appropriate to be seen in such a position in front of a mother, any mother. I didn’t know what time it was then, and I was waiting for this newcomer to move out so that I could move freely. But she didn’t.

  “I don’t know how it can be that you sit there and sleep while a girl is awaiting you in bed,” she commented. Her gaze now dropped to my muscular chest. Her expression could not hide the definite lust that was painted in her eyes. “Go on, give her a hug.” She was referring to her daughter. “Come on.” She waved her hand, requesting me to rise to my feet.

  She wasn’t blind. She could see me sitting naked there, and yet she firmly stood in front of me and made such a shameless request. I could see what she wanted. I granted her the scene she longed for—that of a nude muscular male. I didn’t feel even a bit of shame with so shameless a lady. I could see with my conscious mind, her eyes pricking me as I calmly stood and moved under the blanket and next to Qiuyue.

  The door closed then, and before that the one light in the room was turned off. My eyes remained open for several minutes. The damp but sweet, fragrance of Qiuyue’s skin was allotted for my zest; my nose enjoyed sniffing it again and again. It is beautifully cosy lying next to a handsome girl.

  11

  The small bouquet of feelings I had developed for my childish Qiuyue started to evaporate over the next few weeks with the heat of my melancholy a bit a time. As days passed, I could see nothing in my heart for her but an absolute pure lust.

  But I kept in strong touch with Qiuyue. She poured some dim light of happiness into me that my soul lacked. Our night-time affair was reduced to its minimum, especially when we both had exams in the way. Still we would go to the cinema from time to time. (No more caressing was needed from my side to awake her gentle numb animal.)

  What bothered me about the new development was her mother, Ah Cy. She would call me from time to time, sometimes even in the middle of the night, asking when I was expected to visit her daughter and her again. To be honest, the daughter didn’t call me as many times as did the mother. I couldn’t understand what she was expecting from my side. Did she expect me to hug her and kiss her with her daughter there near her, I wondered at the time.

  I always answered her calls and answered her politely, but she bugged me in my personal time. I saw that she always tried to start conversations with me, but I always put an end to them by saying that I had to go and that I was busy. (She knew it to be a lie, but who cares what she thought?) I was embarrassed to tell Qiuyue about her mother’s calls and intentions towards me. However bad I am, I never tried to break people’s family bonds.

  It was a Sunday night when my cell phone rang to indicate I had received a new message. I was sitting in front of my laptop with three windows of Java code open; I was working on developing a Snakes game for my Sony Ericsson cell phone. I was in the last stages of developing the game, which I spent more than two months on. (The first had been spent studying the Micro Edition of the Java programming language, something that wasn’t taught to us in the college, where only the Standard Edition of Java was taught, and that lightly.)

  Like father like son. Yes, you may say so, but for me it was just a passion to learn something. Sometimes I would just wish to be far better than my father in the field he might have mastered the most.

  Before going to bed that night, I picked my cell phone. (I normally did so to set morning alarm.) There I saw the new text message. It was from Ah Cy. Seeing her name as the sender irritated me, but what filled me with surprise was the content:

  “Those whom the Gods love grow young. Happy birthday.”

  At the end of the message she posted a smiley face. How did she know about it, I wondered. I didn’t get a call from her daughter for the same purpose, and I didn’t get any greetings from anybody else. How the hell had this lady found out about a day I happened to just forget?

  I didn’t mind it. I ignored it. It was the whim of a woman with some emptiness in her life. Otherwise, who would bother to remember days from other people’s lives when their own lives demanded more attention? I didn’t reply to the message, not even with thanks.

  The next day when I reached the college, I headed to the cafeteria. I used to have my breakfast there two or three times a week. I took a cup of coffee and one egg sandwich with no mayonnaise and no cheese. Whatever little oil the sandwich contained was more than enough for the consumption of my body. I just hated to spoil my body’s looks for trivial reasons such as filling the small silo with a load that later would get discarded in the toilet. The days when I didn’t go to the cafeteria, I would have my breakfast at home—two egg whites for the sake of the four grams of protein they contain, and a glass of milk.

  I went to the cashier, but the usual lady, who was in her fifties and who knew me, wasn’t there. In her place was now sitting a younger version of her with brighter colour and a much smaller shape. I could only say she was tastier than my breakfast. I wouldn’t really have minded having her for breakfast instead if offered the opportunity. She looked me in the eyes while I tried to avoid gazing at her. I took out my wallet and paid for my breakfast and then, with a smile, tried to walk away.

  “What is the major of your studies, sir, if it is all right for me to ask?” came her polite voice, forcing me to pause there near the counter desk.

  I gazed at her for a while, and her face was all cosy smiles. I gathered myself and opened my mouth in an attempt to reply, when all of a sudden Trinh, my Vietnamese classmate, appeared from nowhere just near the counter, her eyes holding fire that was strongly turned on the counter girl. My eyes turned from the natural fine-coloured face of the cashier girl to the synthetic, rainbow-painted appearance of Trinh. Trinh slapped, as it seemed to me only, her tray on the counter desk. I could see the cashier girl stir for a while and put one hand on her chest. I just walked away and took the nearest table.

  I held the cup on my tray. It was so hot that the heat bit my pinkie finger, which was always the nearest to the hot liquid in glass containers. I spread my pinkie finger in a ninety-degree angle and circled the top rim of the cup with four fingers. I took the first portion of a sip. I always liked the aroma of milk.

  As I put the cup back on the tray, the chair opposite to mine was pulled out, and there was Trinh again. She put her red tray just parallel to my brown one. I glimpsed at our trays; they were perfectly in line with one another. Trinh sat down rather noisily as she pulled her chair back in under the table. I looked at her face, and she gazed back directly into my eyes. I turned my eyes away and had a small bite of my sandwich. When I raised them again, I was met with the same gaze. What was different in the scene was her small-lipped mouth that was chewing on some pieces of fruit. Her small eyelids blinked more frequently than normal, but beautifully, winging over her dark eyeballs.

  “Such girls, eh,” she said after almost two minutes of silent gazing. “So poor and naïve they are.” Her eyes were directed at the new cashier girl, who was handling another customer now. “The first day they get a job; the second they search for a catch.”

  I could follow her meaning, but I didn’t know what business it was of hers. I caught a glimpse of her tiny jaw bone. A small dark spot was stained on the upper part of the right side of her neck; it looked like the remains of an old contact with flame. Her earlobes carried long dangling earrings, on the ends of which were gathered small greenish-grey ovals that generated a nice rhythm when put in contact with each other.

  While she was staring at the cashier girl, I kept examining her face. I think she was the only girl I knew in the class without a partner. She was always alone. I never saw her even with other girls for a long period of time. She walked alone, sat alone, and dined alone. The thought had come into my mind that she might be a lesbian, otherwise what sane girl in a diverse open community would paint her face like that and ke
ep every guy away from her! She was a source of laughter for my classmates and a source of jokes for the instructors, but she simply took it all with a calm soul. Once our programming teacher, Howin, was discussing during a break period about aliens and a program she had watched the day before on the National Geographic channel about the subject, and in the middle of the discussion she referred to Trinh as an alien. The whole class (whoever was there in the break) laughed, including Trinh herself, but I didn’t. It is so hurtful to mock one another in their presence.

  But honestly, didn’t Trinh know that girls are the objects of passion and art? Didn’t she realize that feminine influence has a stronger grip of power on us men than that of devils?

  Her long eyelashes flapped. I couldn’t determine whether they were original or false, but I inclined to think the latter. The tops of her eyelids were painted in thick violet. The cheekbones were flushed in pinkish red and the small lips were thickly painted in shiny brown. How much time did she allocate for painting such a portrait, I wondered. And there was her hair, dark ash blonde, with so many braids, some interchanging with each other, but delicately designed. I remembered seeing a small girl in a mall some time ago with the same hair style.

  “Why you are so upset with her?” I asked and then lowered my eyes to my cup of milk.

  She kept silent for a while, but again her eyes were fixed on me.

  “I am not,” she answered.

  We went back to our silence and both tried to finish our breakfast. I realized that she was a fast eater. After finishing, I noticed her open her small bag that was strapped on her right shoulder and lay on her left hip side, and, to my surprise, she took out a long piece of chalk. She broke it in half, returning one half to the bag while the other ended up in her mouth!

  “See you in the class,” I said as I gathered myself and walked away from that strange girl.

  I entered the class, but for the first time ever it was empty, although only five minutes remained until the start of the class. I occupied my seat, lifted the lid of the desk, took out a notebook, and started sketching. I recalled the message of Ah Cy about my birthday. The message served as a reminder that I had been in China for almost two years. That meant I was twenty, which meant that I was spared to live for eight more years. Another thing appeared in my mind: my house, which once used to be my father’s house. During those two years, I had not even seen my old home, for which, all of a sudden, my heart was homesick.

  Students started coming into the class room and flashing me smiles as they passed me. I just ignored it. Then came in Howin, followed by Trinh. The former was holding a round tray of cake, and the latter two small delicately wrapped boxes.

  “Happy birthday!” Howin gave me a big smile as she put the cake on her big square desk. Some of the students gathered then, putting together four student desks and then helping the instructor to shift the cake.

  “Happy birthday, Gerald,” came random voices from my classmates, some soft, others thick.

  I was sitting on my chair, motionless. I could see what was going on, but couldn’t see why. I turned my eyes to Trinh. She smiled at me, and the ends of her lips stretched wide. I noticed now a nice small line on top of her cheekbone, and the only reason I discovered it at that moment was that Trinh was a person who rarely smiled. Suddenly, I received a small wink from her.

  My gaze was only on Trinh. I saw her as a different person now, more beautiful than the clown face she put on. I think she noticed me gazing at her. She turned her eyes to the left and right to make sure that she was the only object in the range of my gaze. She blushed; I just could see it through her white-powdered face.

  Howin approached me now with the two small boxes, which just a minute before I had seen in Trinh’s hands. She put the boxes on top of my desk.

  For half an hour my classmates and Howin celebrated for me. I didn’t care much about the celebration, and one class was already wasted for it. They brought in soft drinks and potato chips and shared them between themselves in the classroom. Trinh was now nowhere in front of me. I turned my head and saw her sitting quietly on her seat, having a small piece of brown cake; her gaze was floating on me.

  I didn’t like it either to move out my seat and celebrate madly with others; I just sat still. On the desk I arranged the two wrapped boxes. The wrapper papers were so shiny and colourful and decorated with childish objects. They were so displeasing to my eyes. I slowly pushed them aside on the table, putting one on top of the other, fully aligned. One of my classmates approached me with a glass of coke, and I asked him about who was behind arranging the celebration. He told me that it was Howin; she had collected money from the students, bought the gifts (of which only Howin knew the content) and the cake, and arranged for everything to be a surprise.

  Howin was standing behind her desk, her mouth chewing in slow motion, and her narrow eyes fully concentrated on me. Despite her age, she was a hot beauty.

  Thinking about it, what had forced this instructor to put even the slightest of effort into arranging that party for me? I could understand my classmates contributing money for the celebration, the reason for which would be that I helped them when needed in their assignments. But what could explain Howin’s initiative?

  How girls love to remember things we, men, see as trivial!

  12

  I was twenty years old. Oh, how time moves so fast! It seemed only yesterday that I left the United States, and now two years were over—two years out of the limited lifetime that lay in front of me, two years out of the journey that seemed long for me, but was surely very short for most people.

  I stopped contacting my uncle and his wife, but being better persons, they continued to send me many letters asking about myself and the status of my studies. During those two years, I sent them only two replies to say that I was doing fine. Don’t misunderstand me, reader. I carried no sort of hard feelings for the most wonderful couple I have ever met. They were my sky and earth. It was only that I had this feeling that I needed to ward off anything related to my past, and my uncle and Elizabeth represented a big portion of it. Everything related to my past brought me agony and echoed in my emptiness with loud screams to get rid of this life I held within me. Memories of my heartless father and unmotherly mother were already thorns in my heart and aches in my mind. I couldn’t discard those ashes of memories that kept blindfolding me from embracing, joyfully, the present glimpses of happiness that were floating around me.

  People around me were like objects I had to use to survive. I didn’t need them, but they added colours to the black and white portrait of my life. It is like oxygen that you inhale; it is important to you only because you need it to live. I admit that loneliness is a deadly weapon and its effect is faster than many lethal poisons. I did adore my solitude even though it was really killing me slowly, but living among humans did reduce its deadly effect. That is not to say that people amused me to an extreme extent; that never happened. Long interactions with people bored me to death, and crawling to my solitude was tantalizing that boredom with arrays of thoughts, mostly dark ones, about death and God.

  Though Uncle Eugene was a very religious person who did not drink, I wasn’t. I don’t believe in God and could never see any real purpose for adopting a belief that you grew up seeing people around you adopting. My uncle and his wife used to go to church every Sunday morning and would stay long praying to God. I would be dragged with them, but the only reason I put up with attending church with them was to show my respect for them, not for their God. They were faithful Christians, and I do deeply wish from my heart that they will meet the destiny their hearts long for. For me, God is a fantasy ship in a stormy sea with the promise of salvation, but he does not exist in my realm. It is just a portrait of a ghost, an angel with so much beautiful colour only when looked at from afar. When you approach it, it is nothing more than some trick of the eye. If God is there, then why do w
e suffer? Why do we end up suffocating in a life that we loathe to behold? Why doesn’t heaven give us another chance to choose a new, gleeful, and useful course for ourselves?

  Sometimes, I just think of the path my life might have taken if there had been a happy alternative to my family experience. What if my mother had been a good mother? What if my father hadn’t killed her? What if they had chosen each other based on true love, which I know nothing about?

  I just try to work up my imagination an attractive scenario for my parents. My father chooses the path of his brother and tries to marry at an early age in the full belief of love for a girl he used to physically see, meet, and know. This girl might be a family member or she might be a stranger, but she is one whose social welfare is well known to the society and to the people around her. Elizabeth, my uncle’s wife, approaches my father, along with my uncle, and tells him about this girl whose genteel character speaks about her in society. My father refuses the well intentioned initiative at the beginning, but as days pass, he finally agrees under one condition: that he will see that girl first in person without her realizing who he is. My uncle and his wife agrees to that, and Elizabeth, knowing the girl briefly already, calls up on her and invites her for dinner with her husband; there is no mention there of my father. As the girl accepts the invitation, Elizabeth invites my father as well. Then comes the dinner night. Father, Uncle, and Elizabeth are seated on a pre-booked table, while a chair is empty awaiting the promising girl. My father hasn’t given her enough attention and her promising personality isn’t well established in his mind, but everything changes at the moment of the meeting when the girl approaches the table, dressed up in full red, her delicate long fingers wrapped around a red purse, and her long light-brown hair gathered and poured on top of her left breast. Elizabeth goes now against her plan and doesn’t introduce one to another, as their eyes are already commuting some secret message of infatuation. This brief meeting leads to a gentle affair between my father and his new girlfriend. This affair smoothly flows to the bond of engagement, which finally engulfs them under the kiss of marriage. The couple share their deepest secrets, and they both show gratitude for each day spent together. The fruit of the holy relationship is me. I grow under the lovely warm wings of parents that every child would heartily demand. I fall in love with life and get around me bunches of loyal friends who love me and whom I love. I love being alive, and every day of my life is bliss.