Drunken Love - Que Son (sites to read books for free .txt) 📗
- Author: Que Son
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That night, after people were asleep, she took all of his letters and gifts--including a weather-beaten little book of poetry by Tagore--that she had saved as her personal treasure, and brought them out to a corner of the garden and built a fire. And as the little flames danced and as each letter was fed into the fire, tears rolled down her face. She watched as the wind scattered the ashes into the night air. That was the end of the affair. That night she stayed up and cried.
Days after that, she became mute, and her face hardened. She was thinking about what she was going to do. She still wanted to leave the country, but now it would not be to look for Adam, but to make a life for herself; and besides, she could not languish here being haunted by memories about Adam everyday, and she thought that wherever Adam had settled, that was where she was going to settle to. They would be under the same sky, but they would not see one another. Because she still loved him and knew that she would love him to the end of her life, the thought of being under the same sky with him gave her some comfort, even though she now had a strong feeling that fate had not meant for them to be together. They had crossed path, and now each were going into different directions, or in the same direction but on parallel paths perhaps, which mean they would never meet. At the same time, however, a small voice from the bottom of her heart whispered that not all had been lost, that maybe something could be savaged, that Adam would think again and leave whoever he was with and come back to her. After all, she did not believe there was anyone in the world who loved him like she did, and besides, she tried to convince herself that he still loved her, despite what he had written and despite whatever that was going on with him. There might still be a chance they would find one another and all would be forgiven and they would be together again. These thoughts, even though flickering like candles in the wind, made the pain less intense, and Eve said to herself that she would take to the sea, whatever the price, come what might.
Eve started asking her mother for help arrange an escape. Seeing the state Eve was in, the mother secretly made contacts with snakeheads. She found a man who was planning an escape and after much pleading from her, the man agreed to let Eve on board for nothing-- only on the condition that once she reached the other shore she would make money to pay off the debt of passage. So one moonless night Eve with a few others from the village sneaked out on to the beach and boarded a small boat. There were men, women, children on the little vessel. They headed out to the ocean. The wooden boat, with a small engine that was intended for river and coastal sailing only, sailed northwest across the Gulf. People knew that if they kept going in the that direction, they would arrive in Thailand where they would be accepted as refugees, given temporary shelters and eventually settle permanently in a third country. That was the hope. The boat held out against the big waves; and on the second day of the journey Eve had become used to the violent movements of the vessel and she stopped vomiting. In fact, there was nothing in the stomach to throw up any more, and even though there was food on the boat, she could not eat. She helped the young men throwing the water out of the boat. And she was alone, while traveling with her were families with husbands and wives and children.
On the third day, after eating some of what was left of the food supplies, she regained some strength. Then over the horizon they saw a big boat and all were excited because that was the first human sighting after three days floating on the open sea. They thought they could batter for food, water, and fuel with the gold some were carrying with them. They even hoped they might be picked up and saved from the rough sea by the people on the big boat. So they sailed in the direction of the other boat and realized that it was heading toward them too. When the two boats came closer, they realized that it was a fishing boat at least ten times bigger than theirs and made of steel, not wood. Fishermen on the big boat came out to look at the small boat. They were all men with dark skins and they made gestures and seemed wild with excitement. Then as the boats touched, one of the fishermen jumped onto Eve’s boat with such a violent landing that he almost threw some people overboard. He had a cleaver in his hands. And after quickly regaining his balance he shouted in the language of Eve's people that they all must lied down; and as he was screaming, he pumped the cleaver repeatedly in the air as if he was going to chop someone, and his face contorted with savagery. People lied down and made no attempt to resist, they did not have any weapons and beside, after three days exposing to the elements on the sea, they had little strength left. Then another fisherman on the big boat threw down a rope and the man below tied the two boats together. Then more men jumped onto the small boat and all carried some kind of weapons even if it was only a wooden stick. And they started to rip people of their neck chains, rings, gold. And when they started to grab the women, people screamed. One man jumped up and lunged to defend his wife when she was grabbed by a fisherman/pirate but was held back by two others and stabbed in the stomach. He collapsed, blood gushing out of his wounds. The woman yelled and kicked and punched wildly and her two small children cried hysterically and it took three pirates to hold her down and one of them hit her repeatedly in the head with the handle of a hatchet, and she fell. They lift her up and carried her to the big boat and some of them stayed on the small boat to guard the people while the rest of them were raping the woman. After they were done with her and two other young women--including Eve, and all happened in the same manner--they threw them back to the small boat and sailed away. The same thing happened the next day and the next day and the next day with other groups of fishermen/pirates. Out of food and water and fuel, all on board passed out and let the boat drifted in the intense heat of the sun during the day and in the cold of the night. Eve and the other young women were raped and brutalized repeatedly over many days and now all were dying of hunger and thirst. They looked dead.
On the thirteenth day, they were picked up by an ocean liner, nursed back to consciousness, and transferred into the custody of the Thai authority. Two people died.
On land, Eve became a mad woman. The local Thai authority kept the people in a camp near the beach and everyday Eve wandered along the water looking into the distant horizon and nightmares of the days at sea made her scream out. She was a bundle of cuts and bruises inside and out. She had lost grip on things around her and people had to force her to eat, consoled her, trying to bring her back. With a cloudy mind and a confused heart, Eve felt that she had lost the most valuable thing she had: integrity and dignity. She had no courage to face the light of day, to look at people in the face, she felt like a piece of rag, dirty and unwanted. Since a very young age, her mother had drilled into her head that for a woman, the integrity of the body was the most sacred thing to be protected at all cost. She believed her husband was the only person allowed to take off her shirt, to touch her body, to see her naked and what she had as a gift to her him was her own virgin body. But she had no such thing anymore. During the
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