I propped myself up with several flat pillows that felt part-felt and part-faux. It was sufficiently dark, and the divan beneath me was cold. I ran my hand across the fake leather of a slim bolster and dragged on my cigarette. My coffee was nestled in a solid, mahogany food tray beside me. The setting was perfect, and the strains of a dubbed out Groove Armada track with the volume down low set the mood.
Wispy curtains swayed in the artificial breeze of the air-conditioning, and in the distance, past the high glass walls I could see pieces of paper fluttering, slowly coming to settle on a banked fire. There was a middle-aged man outside, in beige pants and a dirty polo t-shirt the colour of fresh mud. I saw him toss a handful of yellow, rectangular pieces of paper and watched the cascade of offerings settle on the fire, again.
John was beside me, a bottle of beer tucked between his legs. He was saying something, and it sounded like he was offering me assurances of his own settled life. I didn’t care, and I wasn’t in the mood to; the evening was too perfect, and I didn’t have the patience to be a friend.
I watched the man standing across the street. He had progressed from tossing paper offerings, to clasping his palms together. He bowed, quickly, barely three times; he bowed, hands clasped, in supplication. In was perfunctory, like he had done it a dozen times before; watching him gave me the impression he’d expected to do this sort of thing many more times in the coming years.
I could feel my mood dampen. The light flashed a brief, burnished orange and then slowly began to fade. It was like watching the colour in a photograph slowly denature into night. Before the night seeped across the scene, the man busied himself with bags of offerings and made ready to head off. I didn’t want to watch, so I looked up to the ceiling, and stared at the disco ball strung up above.
It felt like an oddity.
And so was watching a dozen Chinese men on Discovery channel, thumping the remnants of the Great Wall of China and singing some tune. They were tamping dirt in, making an attempt to restore the wall to its former glory. I watched them tamp down the earth, their tools rising and falling rhythmically to the beat of their song. I had a sudden disconnect, watching those people work.
I was suddenly reminded, strangely enough, of a large man shaking his fist at a stupefied Cimmerian saying, “what good is steel but for the hand that wields it?†Twisted self-empowerment for a cause propagated by one man. I imagined those many who died building the great wall of China, and marvelled at the commentator declaring something or other about walls built on sweat and blood. The price of a monument: sweat and blood.
Comments (7)
xpyred! i am back home. wahlao, i sms-ed you while i was there, asking about the bombing, you didn’t reply! did you get my sms or not? was so anxious and scared you know and was thinking who among my friends monitors world news fervently! but nevermind, the office sent to me a reply later. glad to see you’re still alive too. haha! :D
hey!! i received an sms from you and tried to reply twice but couldn’t get through, man. when i read about “bombings” i was wondering what the hell was going on.
haha okok. nah, i received an sms from home saying that the UN posts were being shelled. and it’s just nearby. that night, there were gunfire shots. scared out of our wits. then we received frantic phone calls in the morning, some guy said that he heard news that one of us was injured. we asked what’s going on, he said “activities activities” but refused to let us know what. phone network down and all. but ah well, false alarm. no UN post bombed, but there was definitely gunfire. dunno who’s fighting who or what.
very exciting! did you get to see any insurgents?
no we didn’t, thank god. i saw refugees fleeing the indian-controlled side though. haha. they locked us up with a huge padlock in the madhouse because they din want us roaming around unnecessarily at night. the locals were lying, telling us there’s a wedding going on. later they said it’s someone celebrating elections win. pls lah, then why lock us up? we were at the border. gunshots throughout the night for three consecutive nights, we saw the pacer (is this an army term?) flashing southwards, and then shots. after three days, no more noises. and we realised it’s the same day news broke abt the fight with sri lanka. so maybe the troops all went southwards after that. exciting, but damn frightening lah. i really thought i would die ok, especially since we could not find english newspapers. we were crouching and crawling in the dark lor, worrying if we would end up being a human shield for the troops. then we heard abt earthquake nearby. really thought that’s the end of me.
pacer or tracer? if tracer, then you must be talking about night-fighting, right? there’s usually a tracer round every 5 or 10 ball (normal) rounds, i think. zero would know. i may be getting it wrong :p
but very exciting leh..!!
ah tracer. yayaya. nevermind if you’re wrong it doesn’t matter, no need to consult anybody! bleargh! *pinches xpyred’s backside*