Evil Spirits

"I will cane you and you see if I won't!"

Bibi advances threateningly with her dark hands akimbo on her hips, her lips twisted into an ugly rope knotted with tension. The white of her eyes protrude glaringly at Sam as the air is whipped with fear.

The local fair had come to town. Racing the herd home so that he could make it just in time to watch the elephant show, Sam had left a calf behind, being in such a hurry that he did not count the animals in the stall. After all, he had done it many times, hadn't he, shepherding the animals forth and nothing had happened before? Ok-once Sam had been careless and had left a nursing cow out in the fields while he shooed the rest back home. The newborn calf had died in the night. But Danny, his older brother, in a fit of protection from the wrath of Bibi because Sam was still 'young', in his opinion, had quickly got the cow home, and broke his money bag to present to Bibi the coins he had gotten from 'selling' the calf because he noticed it was getting 'sick'. Both of them narrowly missed Bibi's hellfire judgment after bearing the scrutiny of her piercing eyes, for after all, since when had her boys become so concerned with money for the home?

But Danny was not there to help Sam this time. They had had a fight-he had caught Sam taking money from the money bag that Danny had been saving in from harvesting for a new motorized airplane toy that he had planned on buying at the fair. Danny had caught Sam, smacked him upside down before Bibi hollored from inside the thatched house for them to 'watch it', snatched the money and headed off alone to the fair. How Sam wished for Danny to be there now. Bibi, in her characteristic sadistic way, would march Danny to look for the 'biggest and fattest' stick from the forest for her to strike Sam with, and Danny, in his usual protective but helpless stance, would be careful to choose the thinest one that he could possibly get by without being under suspicion as an ally. Michael, his other younger brother, would have gleefully cantered off to search for something that amounted to a mini tree trunk which could have pinned a medium-sized animal down. At least that was what Sam had done for Michael on a number of occasions when instructed to by Bibi. No, Danny would have been on Sam's side. How unfortunate that we would steal from somebody in whose good-naturedness we most trust.

Sam's heart raced as his eyes lingered on the big stick that Bibi brandished in her hands. Oh how he wished that he had just done the usual to count, how he wished that his mind was not so on the elephant show in town! The tension now became worse than seconds ago when he was listening miserably in a corner at the echo of  the thundering footsteps of Bibi as she had stomped off in anger to hunt down a stick for the deed.

"You have an evil spirit in you", Bibi whispered as she came upon Sam, pushing him under the table. He looked wildly through the legs of the table and chairs in a bid to make a dash for another empty space. "And I am goin to cane it out of  you!" Bibi's voice suddenly rose to a fiery height as her strong brown arms lashed down on Sam's scrambling legs.

"I am goin to cane out the spirit of evil! Do you know how long we had waited for that calf to be born? We need a male calf  munggu damn ni! Come here I am goin to give you spirit of meekness and curse out this evil one!" 

Sam fet tears welling in the corner of his eyes as his calves and feet and arms bore the brunt of lash after lash. The excitment of the elephant show faded away as the searing pain slapped him after the whipping sound of the stick cut abruptly through the air seconds before it hit flesh. At the back of his mind he thought about the jeers that he would get the next day in school with all the stick marks. Oh how he hated the cows and elephants now.

Love Hurts

~by Isaac

   ~by Isaac

The crude wire fences sheltered the village from the ghost children of the forest beyond.

Now a seemingly peaceful and tranquil landscape littered with the ever accommodating though reserved locals, Missa would never have thought that the poor village has seen through such a devastating event-not of the war, unfortunately, because to have been suffering from the war would have been just another recounted tale of hapless victimhood-because she had never accounted or thought to expect the wilful self-destructive tendencies of the people she had ever faced.

Missa had been trekking along the trail leading through from the small town to the Cambodian countryside, with much foolishness I fear to add, never heeding to or even hearing of warnings of unexploded landmines all around. Having wandered into one of the bare and harshly pieced together wooden houses in search of tea, she was met with the woman of the house who had been sick and could not join her husband to the plantations that day. Her belly was swollen with a seven month old pregnancy.

The tea was sipped in silence and appreciation; Missa never having learnt the local langauge enough to hold a conversation but the amiability has been enforced with eyes that met and resultant smiles. Like most weather-beaten women, her hostess had crows' feet whenever she grinned agreeably though she never gazed full into Missa's face for too long-like a swan who has swam up to the outstretched palm and quickly turned away at the last minute from fear and distrust, or just plain shyness.

Having wandered out of the house after much curtsies of thanks, she noticed the entire area encompassing several similar looking wooden houses on crude stilts surrounded by wire fences. Clothes of varying sizes, but ostensibly that of children were draped intermittently along the fences, and old though they were, they looked comfortable and well-worn with their faded colors, the long of the pants and the sleeves of the shirts swaying lazily in the hot wind. They hung expectantly as if awaiting the childish and impatient tug from the wire fences to be donned on, untattered if they are lucky, the bodies of children in a haste to continue with their play.

But play there wasn't. The village was empty of children. Missa pointed to the fence and gestured low down to her hips, querying the whereabouts of the children by outlining their small statures. The lady shook for a moment and did Missa notice a chilled breeze through her skin?-no-that would have been odd, chilled breeze would never take the place of the hot wind in that part of the world, or so Missa thought.

The lady hobbled back into the thatched house-only now did Missa notice her limp which had not been apparent before when they were sitting or walking slowly-and emerged with a black and white picture of  boy with a tattooed body. He gazed blankly at the camera, as if taken from a bygone age similar to the stern countenances of our grandparents connoting sobriety. The tattoos on his body were mesmerizing: a geometrical pattern of a temple-like structure imprinted across the chest, which Missa, upon staring harder, realised it to be resembling that of a breastplate. There were sun-like patterns on each of his forearms followed by long lines of inscriptions of words. At the bottom of the picture Missa realised it was inscripted: 13 Feb 1953-24 June 1968. He died when he was 15 years old.

Missa looked up and saw the clothes fluttering again-strongly this time-along with the renewed wind, as if to fly away but was pinned back by the sharp hooks protruding on the wire-like fences and saw and understood the silence of the clothes caught by the fences of each house. But Missa, looking for sorrow in the lady's eyes after having imparted such a painful revelation to a stranger, saw only joy, or what she perceived to be joy as easily recognized from the upward curve of the lady's lips. The lady took the picture back and hobbled painfully back into the house.   

The carelessly discarded husks of the sunflower seeds were sprewn everywhere on the rocky granite ground. They contrasted jarringly with the feminine black and silver fabric of Amira's long skirts. So were her dirty and cracked toenails which peeped from under the folds. She mindlessly cracked the husks with her teeth and scooped the seeds with her tongue and her eyes were glazed as she looked out at her children. They were screaming delightfully wile waddling ankle-deep in the dirty jetty water. For them holiday was lounging in the backwaters of the otherwise tranquil picture postcard of the Meditarranean islet that thousands of holiday makers come streaming to to feel a wisp of wind from the sails of the white crusing ships.

Amira has always been a make-believer, that girl. She used to make-believe that the fish-women in the sea which she saw pictures of in that story book would help her father, being enticed by his well-worn gray beard, by bringing up fishes to the surface for them to pull in. Never mind that these women were half-fishes themselves; haven't they been enchanted with the two feet that the humans in the boats have, and believe that if they give of enough of their half-blood, their big undulating scales would thin in the middle and split into flesh? Or else how else would the fish swim into the net again and again, amidst the numerous nets suspended sensually in the sea? For once she had dived from the boat to catch sight of the fish-women who would scoop the fishes into the silver nets, but before she was hurled up on board amidst curses she had caught sight of the silver threads glistening softly in the quiet waters, the implanted invader of the natural deep-and no fish-women. They had been scared off, no doubt by her uninvited presence in the waters. They had been hiding from amongst the rocks and the reefs, the underwater floating reeds and plants swirling through the cracks of the huge rocks being the dark hair of the fish-women, the only part of their bodies daring, unwittingly to express their longing to reach out and touch the human child.

The fish trade teetered off when she married her husband; much of the fishing now being done by the huge fishing boats with their infinitely large chain-ropes stretched roaring across the waters-no longer silver and beautiful and wispy, but big and dark and heavy, enough to oppress. Amira herself had watched while the fishermen drew the traps up from the waters groaning with the fishes dragged out into the sun where they got no respite. Her husband had no choice but to repaint the old family fishing boat, and Amira herself had added a crudely drawn picture of a fish-woman with her hair like floating grass swirling around her body on the front of the ship, hoping that they who had helped her father then would help her husband now-to draw tourists-the white people-onto the boat. She believed that if she walked long enough along the sea, on the decks, with her children in tow, unknowing live sacrifices yet as objects of pleading to the fish-women, her proximity to them would make a success of her husband's boat, she would be the earth fish-woman who would draw people to help make her life complete, free from anxiety.

But her make-believe ceased, even as Amira did not want it to. She had to leave her home, her sea. Her husband had gone to Germany-JER--MA--NEEE to seek work, not in the catching, but in the building--far from the sea, on hot rocky concrete, and she will go. She and her children. They will have to go to that land of JERMANEE and make believe a new life , away from the placid yet turmultous one that she had always known and love.

She cocked her head up, her thoughts interrupted by the girl who came up and pointed at her camera. Oh yes-one of those things. Perhaps she could get one in JERMANEE. Then there needn't be make-believe, no, there wouldn't be: just hard outlines and images which gives all there is to see, to believe. The girl pointed to her face, made a rounded motion around it and gave it a thumbs-up. The girl loves her face. Amira thought she could be-maybe-one of the fish-women who have climbed from the sea, her black hair straightened and dried in the sun, no longer circling portentously, frighteningly, beautifully around her crown.  She wants an image of Amira. To capture and freeze Amira.

Amira turned and looked behind her. At the sea, the people, the men who used to be fishermen, and the boats she loved so much. Why not? She smiled at the human fish-woman. She would never have to make-believe of her home and the sea again; she would go to JERMANEE and make believe there on new and strange ground, just like how now, it is this human fish-woman's turn-indeed many like her-to make believe of the new lands that they see.