Originally written February 14, 2007
Autumn used to mean the start of something new. Leaves would change color, fall to the ground and gather together in little piles. The air used to have a crispness to it, fresh, cold on the lungs. September marked a return to familiarity, returning to school year after year, a summer that wouldn’t be forgotten gathers dust behind us. A changeover, one act would carry on to the next.
In a jungle seasons do not tend to carry a whole lot of sentimental value. September. Heat unlike anything we could imagine, a city built upon a sauna. Walking through the open air markets, you are in disbelief that your sense of smell has betrayed you. With sunlight beating down on you, everything cooked. From the swarms of people pushing each other through the crowds, to the recently deceased chickens literally hanging by hook under a tent, we choked on what air there was to be found.
But these were my people and they would wash over me in waves.
In Mong Kok, English had gone the way of the democracy. From the doorman of the hotel, to the restaurants, train station, police, and clerks, I would travel from the mainland to the island and back again, and everyone we encountered along the way were as alien to me as I was to them. We existed in the same world, but our lives would never intersect, our eyes would not meet in some unspoken confirmation of the others’ presence.
Yet for this old man, this one September still meant a return to school. A diverse collection of contemporaries if there ever was any. From the mainland students that could not speak English in sentence form, to the westernized kids returning home to all the traditions and burdens of the East they had left behind. Then there was me, the sole gweilo among them.
The ghost man was the first American nearly a hundred of these students had ever met. And I would be lost in that thought…that every impression these kids had of America came from what censored news the government would pass along to them. But I was real, in flesh and blood, right there in front of them. I took great pride in what impression I would leave upon them, I would shape their perceptions of the West. Whatever were my reasons for coming to this island, I had replaced them with far greater expectations. I now had a purpose here.
Slowly I began to win them over. I would put the world on my shoulders and carry her kicking and screaming to the end of the day. I did what I had to do to survive. The times were changing me, for I never was like this. Not knowing the culture, language or people, the only thing I could do was engage them on their terms. It had to be done one by one, hundreds of students I would smile at, wave to when the translation would break down, talk with in the best broken English I could find, patiently wait as they formed a thought from Chinese back into English. I had the patience of Ghandi, and the tolerance of a saint.
As I stand at our terminal recounting this story, I understand the meaning of why I was chosen to be here. What had worked in the past would not be enough, and so we began anew, and created this image of ourselves that would feel no anxiety, no embarrassment. We believed that we were the best at what we did; I believed that I could do anything.
Our world began to fall into place, just as it always does. The center of attention, even if I did not remember their names, they would remember me. I had overcome whatever apprehension I had about initiating that contact. I had lost the anxieties that would make most people shy away from taking on this responsibility. One at a time is what it took to put together an army. Imagine this world for yourself. Where whoever you encountered thought of you as the superstar, imagine the responsibility that would belong to those perceptions, that it would consume everything about you to remain the focus of their admiration. The student government, the promotional advertisements for the law school, the Hong Kong law fair, coaching the moot team, if there was a way to be involved I would be there.
I would find myself in the middle of those crowds; a simple acknowledgement from me would light up their faces. And it became addictive, this power, the center of attention. Even if we couldn’t communicate with words, a simple gesture of kindness is all that would take to make them believe things were going to be all right. This was supposed to be my penance. If there was a reason why I had been brought here, it was to find retribution. But I was using them for that glow…that feeling of being invincible, of taking back that which should have always been mine.
And she would ruin everything.
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