Through My WindowTexts from Different Places

'Respect for cultural diversity is a core element of 21st century humanism. It is a vital constituent during these times of globalization. No single culture has a

universal monopoly. Each and every one can contribute to the consolidation of our shared values' Irina Bokova - EditorialUNESCO Courier, December 2011.

Silk Road

by W.F. Lantry

The stage is blank now. Ribbons swirling, smokeilluminated from beneath by redlamps focused on the emptiness, oak boardslaid down into a pattern which affordsa place to leap and land: the coloured threadof narrative in dance has disappeared.

Those arms, like crane wings catching air, once shearedthe curtained wind as if to fly, their linesas straight as quills, or intricate cleft braidswhose interwoven motion still cascadeslike water falling through the wreathed designswe only dreamed could be performed. But she

who danced with careless practiced ecstasy,and gave movement to form, her legs taut springs

to carry her along those lights where birdsno longer fly, the calligraphs of wordswritten in air by limbs where red silk clings,leapt into space and found no place to land.

We all must fall in pain. I understand.But still I dream of cranes among the reeds,their wings just opening, ready for flight,extended feathers catching sunset lightlike fingers parting strings of coloured beads,rising a little more with each wingstroke.

Siem Reap, Cambodiaby Greg Santos

Before stepping into a taxia young girl struggles to take the city with her:

Warm, sticky air bathing the street market,comforting scent of fragrant rice,pungent odour of dry fish,raw flesh hung on butchers' hooks,squawking of chickens in rusty wire prisons,crescendo of rickshaws, scooters, bicycles;the city she will no longer call home.

As she speeds away, the city recedes into memory,as does the rolling countryside,once dotted by women tending to the paddies,children splashing among water buffalo.

Now, echoes of distant missiles pierce her memories,murders of crows dive into reddened fields.

The faces of Angkor watch sadlyas their city crumbles,as another one of their children flees,taking nothing with her but me,gently growing inside.

MUSIC ONCE AGAIN---Boy 11---

Tanikawa Shuntaro

One day somewheresomeone played the piano.

From beyond time and space the sound caresses my ears,even now making the air tremble.

A sweet whispering from far beyond─I cannot interpret it.

I can only yield myself to it like trees in the grovethat rustle in the wind.

When was the first sound born?In the midst of the vacuous universe

like a code that someone secretly sent,and enigmatically...

No geniuses 'created' music.They merely closed their ears to meaning

and just listened humbly to silence,which has existed from time immortal.

音楽ふたたび　少年１１いつかどこかで

誰かがピアノを弾いた時空を超えてその音がいまも大気を震わせぼくの耳を愛撫するはるかかなたからの甘美なささやきそれを読み解くすべがないぼくはただ身をまかせるだけ風にさやぐ木立のように初めての音はいつ生れたのか真空の宇宙のただ中に

なにものかからの暗号のようにひそかに謎めいて

どんな天才も音楽を創りはしなかった彼らはただ意味に耳をふさぎ太古からつづく静けさに

つつましく耳をすましただけだBroken Numbers

by Sharon Hashimoto (Japanese writer)

Helen swallows her breath as the teacher hands back corrected multiplication quizzes. Mr Taggert

peers down at Jamie over spectacle rims, nods while he checks the name, flipping to the next paper in

his stack. Beside her, Jamie whispers to Marie, "An eighty-eight! What d'you get?" Helen's shoulders

tense: there's a high-pitched whistle as she inhales. Jamie and Marie giggle.

Helen clasps her fingers like a buckle on her lap. Mr Taggert stands in front of her desk, a frown

pulling at his puffy cheeks. A "D-" slashes its red across the top of her paper.

Mr Taggert clears a corner and rests his buttocks on the edge of his desk, polishing his glasses with a

corner of his suit jacket, "There was only one 100%." He pauses. "I won't say who," but his eyes are

on Frances Takata, sitting with neat saddle shoes crossed at the ankles. Her sailor dress has white

piping edging the square collar; her straight black hair is pulled back into a crisp ponytail. Frances

Takata is the only other Japanese student in the class. Mr Taggert's glance sweeps the room from front

to back like a lighthouse beacon, catching both Helen and Frances in the same pass. When the school

year and fifth grade began, she and Frances were the top two students.

The bell rings for morning recess. Helen stuffs the test into her math book, hiding the book in the

desk's dark cave. She doesn't want to see where she has forgotten a decimal point or carried the wrong

number. Mama made her study her mistakes, even in the quizzes in which Helen pulled B+s and low

As. But on timed tests, she had to be fast. "A D-," Helen sighs. Everyone must know how stupid she is

without her mother's help. Fingers rake through her bad perm.

At home, there had been all the drills on addition, subtraction, the multiplication table. Mama would

hold up endless flashcards while they sat in the kitchen, the clock ticking towards ten pm, white

counters reflecting the glare of the overhead light. Wiping dishes, Helen would repeat "six times seven

is forty-two, six times eight is forty-eight, six…" and on until the numbers stuck in her throat. But

Mama has a job now. There's no extra study time, just more cooking and clean-up chores.

Helen's handwriting is neat; she once read a part of John Steinbeck's "The Red Pony" in a papery voice

without any mistakes. And before Mama started working on the assembly line at ACME Poultry, she

would go through their old 1920s World Encyclopaedia and find extra credit projects Helen could do

for science. "Watch," she had announced as she lit then dropped a flaming piece of paper into a milk

bottle, then placed a hard-boiled egg on top like a stopper. As the fire went out, the vacuum sucked the

egg down with a small pop faster than the four times she and her mother had practiced the trick.

"Whoa," Michael had murmured, his friends around him nodding. Mr Taggert said, "I commend your

initiative," and gave her an A. Egg smell had lingered in the classroom for days. All during the

experiment, Frances had watched with her eyebrows pinched together, her lashes flicking at the blue

spark of the match.

Arithmetic is hardest. Solving problems at the blackboard, Frances never counts on her fingers. Helen

knows she has to calculate her columns right to left in addition, subtraction and multiplication. But

long division means left to right and she needs to "estimate." The textbook doesn't explain why she

should guess. What is the difference, the secret she's supposed to understand?

Slowly closing the top of her desk, Helen watches Jamie and Marie race out to claim a tetherball pole.

Four boys crowd around Michael who hides a Superman comic book beneath his plaid shirt. She

inches by Mr Taggert's thick back, his chalk squeaking out the next hour's reading lessons on the

blackboard.

"Helen," he says, glancing sideways at her, his voice snagging her from the safety of the hallway. "We

need to talk."

***

Helen buttons her navy wool coat all the way to the top even though the morning isn't cold. It's May

and some girls are already wearing thin cotton dresses. Hands in her pockets, Helen keeps her fingers

closed into fists so she won't widen the torn lining her mother was always re-sewing but finally let be

—so tired after work and Daddy far away on a fishing boat. As she leans against the play court wall,

the constant whomp of dribbling basketballs vibrates through the wood.

All around her, girls play four-square and tag. "Mabel, Mabel, set the table," chant the two enders who

whip the jump rope faster as they get to the "red hot peppers." Helen lingers near the line of tetherball

poles, walking its length. At the last pole, she stops, still seeing the grade book full of red checks and

minuses beside her name.

A crow caws overhead. The raucous cry feels like all the questions inside that get tangled or won't

come out. "Your grades have dropped," Mr Taggert had told Helen. "You began so well. Is something

wrong at home?" He kept asking questions Helen couldn't answer.

Helen looks up to see two blue jays dive bombing the crow, then lets her gaze settle on the second

grade portables where Frances Takata plays hopscotch with two other girls. She's talking to the one

with long honey-blond hair while the other, stockier girl throws the metal ID bracelet she uses as a

marker. The bracelet lands on a yellow line. Helen watches the sailor skirt and ponytail flip and

bounce as Frances hops five squares on one leg. The other two girls clap their hands as Frances bends

her knee to pick up her marker and complete her turn without a miss.

"Who do you play with?" Helen remembers her mother asking after the first week of school. "Are

there other Japanese in class?"

"One," Helen had answered. "Frances is very smart."

Helen's mother had looked up from scooping steaming white rice into their bowls. "Anata wa," she had

started out. Then Mama had switched to English, "Be her friend. Help each other."

Frances pitches her marker, a chain of linked paperclips, too far to the left. Frances' head swivels

towards the girl on her left and her lips mouth the words, "your turn."

Helen thinks Frances means her and starts to take a step forward, but the long-haired girl is jumping,

landing with two feet firmly planted in the squares of the hopscotch borders. Then they wave politely

to Mrs Pendergast, the fourth-grade teacher they had last year.

Frances never walks to school. Her mother drops her off and picks her up in a light blue Buick. She's

the only daughter in a family with four boys. Helen imagines milk and chocolate cookies on a pretty

enamel plate waiting for Frances, and every day after school she sits eating them at the end of a huge

rosewood dining table. Today, Frances will show her mother the multiplication quiz with the crisp "A"

and "Excellent Work" printed in Mr Taggert's bold letters. Frances' mother never helps her. Helen

wonders, what is the secret to being smart? If they were friends, wouldn't Frances tell her?

***

Helen wants to raise her hand when Mr Taggert asks, "What makes plants green?" She knows the

answer is chlorophyll, but six other students lean forward on their desks, shouting "I know," stretching

their arms like a picket fence blocking the sun.

Photosynthesis is today's lesson and the black and white diagrams in their science books illustrate the

veins running through different leaves: maple, oak, birch. Closing the curtains, Mr Taggert shows

slides of leaf-form types: simple, abruptly pinnate, odd-pinnate, twice odd-pinnate. Helen writes down

every word her teacher says. But she can't keep up. She only gets the beginning four or five words of

his sentences.

"Leaves are like feathers," says Mr Taggert. "There is a pattern and number of leaflets on each side of

the stem."

Helen blinks and rubs her eyes when the lights are turned back on. She feels sleepy like her head has

been stuffed with cotton.

Frances' index finger taps her chin as if she's doing story problems in her head, her eyes darting back

and forth between Mr Taggert and the blackboard. The ponytail sweeps Frances' shoulders like an

opening fan and Helen remembers the one time her own short hair had been tightly pulled back in

imitation, her tiny stub barely curling under. As if noticing her for the first time, Frances had stared at

her and blinked slowly. It had been at the end of the school day. Home again to bring in mail and milk

bottles, start a load of laundry, set the table, wash rice for dinner—only after Helen had seen her

reflection in the living room mirror, did she notice the untidy tendrils and loose knot askew on her

head.

Mr Taggert thumps the pointer into the palm of his left hand. "Everywhere we look around us, we can

see mathematical forms and structures." He picks up a piece of chalk to draw a stick character. "We

have two ears, two hands, two feet…what else?"

Frances answers loudly, "Our hearts are divided into two ventricles and two auricles."

Giggles escape from Jamie. She slaps one hand over her mouth, the other points to the back of the

room. Everyone around Jamie turns to catch a glimpse of Michael, his index fingers pulling down and

slanting each of his eyes while his head rolls from side to side.

"What's so funny?" Mr Taggert demands, pivoting to face his students.

The back of Frances' neck slowly grows red, but she doesn't turn around. Helen lays her wrist against

her own cheek, surprised it feels so flushed.

***

There are fifteen questions for the Chapter Review on Decimals and Percents. Before the exam, Mr

Taggert had the class take out blue-lined sheets of paper. Standing with the stack of dittos in the crook

of his elbow, he announced, "You have exactly one hour."

Helen rubs sweaty hands against the lap of her jumper. She writes "Helen Kayai" on the top line. The

shuffling of paper quickly settles down; Mr Taggert returns to his desk.

Helen frowns at the clock. Jamie is biting her tongue as her pencil erases a number. Behind her, she

hears Marie turn back a page. Helen is only on Question 3 and she has forty-five minutes to go. How

she performs is important; Mr Taggert had said she could still save her grades, still do better than

barely passing. All Helen can remember of his lecture were the words "I expect you to…" There was

something about needing to pay attention, to ask for help. Mama said she was putting in overtime

because she wanted to show her bosses that she's a good worker. Helen had been up late copying down

what she didn't understand. There is so much to remember.

Shaking her head, Helen rereads the exam instructions for the third time. Scooting the second sheet

beneath her answers, she can see the chart where she's lightly penciled in columns—tens, ones, a

decimal point, tenths, hundredths, thousandths, ten-thousands. Carefully, she prints her answer:

"100.06"

Michael sneezes and blows his nose loudly. Several students look up as Mr Taggert pushes back his

chair and rises to walk past the closets and bulletin board. The afternoon sunlight flares through the tall

windows and beats against bowed heads. Frances raises her hand to ask Mr Taggert a question.

Helen counts the dots her sharp-tipped pencil has made in a square like the four of a domino. Question

5 asks her to add: 2 + 0.4 + 1.15 + 0.0009. A shadow falls over Helen's answers, and she slides her

palm and right arm over the copied textbook charts. The pencil continues to make faint counting marks

and finally writes in a sum that Helen immediately tries to erase with short quick strokes.

Mr Taggert says, "Hel-en!" His voice is like a hammer as it strikes the first syllable.

Closing her eyes and sitting straight, Helen imagines that for this instant, she's in a dream, her head

rising up like a balloon. But Mr Taggert pulls the notebook paper out from under her spread fingers.

The pages slip away. She waits forever for the teacher to speak. Finally, she peeks at him to see her

test answer sheet in one large veined hand, her copied notes in the other.

"My students should know better than to cheat," says Mr Taggert. He stacks the pages on top of each

other, ripping them in half, then into quarters, then eighths. Finally, he walks away and pitches the

pieces into the wastebasket. The room is quiet. "Class," Mr Taggert begins in a stern, throaty voice. He

stands, knees locked, hands resting on his hips, elbows pointed to each side of the room. "You have

fifteen minutes to finish."

The sound of pencils scribbling increases. The tops of Helen's ears burn, hidden beneath her hair.

Everyone keeps their eyes focused on their exams. Marie writes, stooped over and hidden in the cloud

of her curls. Frances is the only one who looks straight at Helen. Finally, Frances turns to the clock,

then back to her exam.

The blue ditto sheet still sits on Helen's desk. She picks up one piece of paper from those fallen like

leaves on the floor. She uses her sleeve to wipe it clean of Mr Taggert's heel mark, then starts again

with Question 1.

***

"I can't believe she came back to school today," Jamie hisses to Marie. Jamie's plaid lunchbox swings

in sync with Marie's scuffed penny loafers. They don't hear Helen's light steps behind them; the

hallway is crowded with other classes letting out for lunch. Helen lets herself be swept towards the

cafeteria where gravy smells fill the air and utensils clatter against plastic trays. If she keeps her

shoulders hunched and her eyes fixed on the floor, she can pretend she's invisible. I didn't cheat, she

tells herself over and over again. I used my own answers.

All morning, nobody pays any attention to her. Mr Taggert skips past her, asking Robert and Frances

and everyone else to read a paragraph from "The Prince and the Pauper" out loud. Frances stumbles

over "lineaments." Mr Taggert corrects her pronunciation and asks her to repeat after him, "lin-i-a-

ment, a distinctive characteristic." In social studies, the class is given the hour to work on an essay

topic. Helen can't get past her first two sentences. Will Mr Taggert call her up to his desk and escort

her to the Principal's Office?

Nothing happens. Maybe nothing ever will. If she pretends everything is normal, won't everyone

eventually forget? I didn't cheat. I only copied down some rules and numbers to help me remember.

She won't get many points on the test, but Helen did three questions before turning in her answers.

Shouldn't Mr Taggert understand that I tried?

Helen clutches her three pennies for milk tighter. Seven students, some fifth and sixth graders she

knows on sight, chatter in the slow-moving line. The Vice-Principal stands beside the new cashier,

checking change. Helen pockets her money and slinks past Michael and the wall.

When Michael shouts "Cheater," Helen almost drops her sack lunch. She takes deliberate steps past

several tables, trying to act like she doesn't hear. "You're stupid enough to get caught," Michael

continues, his rising voice coming from behind.

Helen finds an empty seat just as Simon and Rudy finish half of their meat blanchette and leave. They

never speak more than a grunt, but she wonders now what they're thinking. Do they know? Now she

wonders if everyone thinks she's a cheat.

Helen opens her paper sack and unwraps her sandwich. Peeking between the slices she sees vertically

cut Vienna sausages lining the bread. As Helen lifts the sandwich, mayonnaise makes everything slide.

Julianne is the only one left at the table; she stares at Helen. Her jaw drops as she makes a face. "Eww

—what are you eating?"

Helen wipes her mouth after each small bite. The bread and cold canned meat taste dry without her

milk.

***

Helen swallows. How hard she's tried not to cry, blinking and holding back the tears, standing straight

in front of her teacher. He'd been disappointed, and angry. The sharp corners of Mr Taggert's letter to

her mother poke her palm. It's a stiff oblong and stark white; Helen is afraid to fold the envelope and

place it inside her coat pocket. But she doesn't want to carry it out in the open for everyone to see.

What will her mother will say? First, she'll study the words carefully. Mama's fingers will rub the front

of her apron.

"Mrs Kayai," is written in block letters across the front. Without touching it more than she has to,

Helen places the envelope inside her math textbook where it won't be crushed. In the empty halls of

the school, her steps echo.

Three girls stand outside the double doors under the eaves. One door is propped open to let in the fresh

spring air. Everyone else scattered for home after the three o'clock bell. The girl with long honey-

brown hair speaks to Frances Takata. Helen remembers that she's her own age, but is in Miss Tobias'

class. She tells Frances, "Your mom sure is late. Want to walk with us?"

Frances checks both directions on Graham Street, "She wouldn't forget me."

Their voices rebound as if at the end of a tunnel. Helen won't pass by the girls. But there's the nurse's

office and the teacher's lounge if she changes her route. In the shadows of the hall, she waits for

Frances and her friends to leave.

Sunlight glints on France's black hair as she shifts her books to her hip.

The stocky girl, Becky, sighs and yawns widely, without covering her mouth. Propped against the

brick wall, she says in a lowered voice, "The whole school is talking about how Helen stole the

answers right off of Mr Taggert's desk!"

"And Marie told me Helen sneaks peeks to copy. Marie has to hide her work all the time." The long-

haired girl tosses her head.

Dabbing her nose with crumpled Kleenex from her coat pocket, Helen feels her eyes begin to fill.

Everything around her looks blurry. Helen sniffs quietly and hugs her books tighter. She feels her knee

highs slipping as she sinks to a squat on the cold hard floor.

Turning towards her companions, Frances speaks in a sharp tone, "You're just as bad if you spread

rumours."

"Rumours?" Becky demands.

"I saw Mr Taggert take away her paper. I don't know anything about Helen stealing from Mr Taggert's

desk or what Marie thinks is going on." Frances' syllables sound clipped—the way Helen's mother

sometimes speaks in Japanese.

Becky straightens up, shaking her head.

The long-haired girl twirls and twists a strand of hair. She examines the ends. Helen imagines her

looping it around an index finger, playing with her lips. "Why'd she do it, Frances? Aren't both of you

Japanese?"

Frances doesn't answer for a long time. She must be looking down the street, Helen thinks. An old

Rambler usually parks on the side. The silver paint shows streaks of dirt. The two other girls don't

leave. Frances finally says "No, I don't know why."

"She's so…weird," Becky offers. "Her clothes are all pieced together. They never match. And she

brings all sorts of funny smelling stuff for lunch."

The long-haired girl adds, "She's not like you."

"Baka-tari!"

Helen slowly smiles, knowing the word. Idiots! That's what Mama sometimes mutters. She hears

Frances stomps her feet on the cracked sidewalk. "Rakko eyes! Daikon legs! You have breath like

natto!"

Helen feels a small glow. She cocks her head to hear more.

"Frances, what's wrong?"

"Go home, both of you!"

She must like me, Helen tells herself. She stuck up for me. She even talks like my Uncle Ichiro.

Slowly smiling, Helen stands, then tiptoes towards the entry way. Peeking past the arch, she spies

Frances sitting on the curb. Her books are stacked by her side. A red station wagon drives by, stirring

up a small whirlwind of dust. Helen studies the white sweater, its long sleeves neatly cuffed. With the

dark-haired girl's back to her, she feels brave. "Frances," Helen calls but her voice cracks so she says it

again, louder.

When Frances turns, her face is all straight angry lines.

Helen blinks, then says softly, "Natto? I didn't know…"

You're so stupid!" Frances explodes, "I didn't know, I didn't know." The ponytail wags back and forth

as she mocks Helen. "Mom makes me eat funyu just like you do."

Frances jumps off the curb to her full height. For the first time, Helen notices how tiny Frances is. She

can see over the other girl's head.

"Do you know how hard it is?" Frances rages. "Being smart for both of us?"

Helen backs up a step. She holds one hand out, fingers lowered and spread apart as if to stop what's

coming. She stutters, "I'm really sorry."

"But that doesn't do me any good! Does it, Helen?" Her name on France's lips look like a sneer. Helen

can't think of anything to say.

Three blocks down, a blue sedan takes a right-hand turn onto their street. Frances swivels toward it,

away from her. Helen stares down at her feet, at the long legs of their shadows. The cracks in the

sidewalk seem to widen.

The Buick pulls silently to the curb. A woman, her black hair worn in a short bob, leans out the

window. "You must have been so worried, Frannie. The dentist was running late and Bobby has to

have braces." Then she looks at Helen. "I'm so glad you had your friend to keep you company. Is this

Helen?" Mrs Takata smiles brightly. "Can we give you a ride home?"

For a moment, Helen imagines Frances saying "Come on, then." Japanese are supposed to help

Japanese, that's what Mama always says. Helen sees herself sliding onto the backseat. With Mrs

Takata there, Frances can't help but forgive Helen. In fact, Helen hopes, this is the day they become

friends.

But instead, Frances sweeps up her books, opening the front door and climbing in quickly. "No, Mom.

She has to go somewhere on her own."

Mrs Takata's mouth makes a small "oh." "Then we'd better get going. Goodbye," Frances' mother

waves as the Buick pulls away.

Helen counts backwards from ten, watching the sedan grow smaller. The speck of blue disappears.

Clutching them hard, Helen presses her books against the ache in her stomach. No one is around to

help her, except herself. All she can do is the same thing every day: walk to school, sit quietly at her

desk. Stay invisible. Inside her winter coat, she shivers. She closes both eyes. Through the lids, she

sees the sun's red glare.

Took The Children Away - Archie Roach

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aywDT6yHMmo

This story’s right, this story’s trueI would not tell lies to youLike the promises they did not keepAnd how they fenced us in like sheepSaid to us come take our handSent us off to mission landTaught us to read, to write and prayThen they took the children away,Took the children awayThe children awaySnatched from their mother’s breastSaid it was for the bestTook them away.

The welfare and the policemanSaid you’ve got to understandWe’ll give to them what you can’t giveTeach them how to really liveTeach them how to live they saidHumiliated them insteadTaught them that and taught them this

And others taught them prejudiceYou took the children awayThe children awayBreaking their mother’s heartTearing us all apart Took them away

One dark day on FramlinghamCame and didn’t give a damnMy mother cried go get their dadHe came running fighting madMother’s tears were falling downDad shaped up he stood his ground

He said you touch my kids and you fight meAnd they took us from our familyTook us awayThey took us away

Snatched from our mother’s breastSaid this is for the bestTook us awayTold us what to do and sayTold us all the white man’s waysThen they split us up againAnd gave us gifts to ease the painSent us off to foster homesAs we grew up we felt aloneCause we were acting whiteYet feeling blackOne sweet day all the children came backThe children came backThe children came backBack where their hearts grow strongBack where they all belongThe children came backSaid the children came backThe children came backBack where they understandBack to their mother’s landThe children came back

Back to their motherBack to their fatherBack to their sisterBack to their brotherBack to their peopleBack to their land

All the children came backThe children came backThe children came backYes I came back

Chief Seattle

Chief Seattle (more correctly known as Seathl) was a Susquamish chief who lived on the islands of the Puget Sound. As a young warrior, Chief Seattle was known for his courage, daring and leadership.

Chief Seattle's Letter

The President in Washington sends word that he wishes to buy our land. But how can you buy or sell the sky? The land? The idea is strange to us. If we do not own the freshness of the air and the sparkle of the water, how can you buy them?

Every part of the earth is sacred to my people. Every shining pine needle, every sandy shore, every mist in the dark woods, every meadow, every humming insect. All are holy in the memory and experience of my people.

We know the sap which courses through the trees as we know the blood that courses through our veins. We are part of the earth and it is part of us. The perfumed flowers are our sisters. The bear, the deer, the great eagle, these are our brothers. The rocky crests, the dew in the meadow, the body heat of the pony, and man all belong to the same family.

The shining water that moves in the streams and rivers is not just water, but the blood of our ancestors. If we sell you our land, you must remember that it is sacred. Each glossy reflection in the clear waters of the lakes tells of events and memories in the life of my people. The water's murmur is the voice of my father's father.

The rivers are our brothers. They quench our thirst. They carry our canoes and feed our children. So you must give the rivers the kindness that you would give any brother.

If we sell you our land, remember that the air is precious to us, that the air shares its spirit with all the life that it supports. The wind that gave our grandfather his first breath also received his last sigh. The wind also gives our children the spirit of life. So if we sell our land, you must keep it apart and sacred, as a place where man can go to taste the wind that is sweetened by the meadow flowers.

Will you teach your children what we have taught our children? That the earth is our mother? What befalls the earth befalls all the sons of the earth.

This we know: the earth does not belong to man, man belongs to the earth. All things are connected like the blood that unites us all. Man did not weave the web of life, he is merely a strand in it. Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself.

One thing we know: our God is also your God. The earth is precious to him and to harm the earth is to heap contempt on its creator.

Your destiny is a mystery to us. What will happen when the buffalo are all slaughtered? The wild horses tamed? What will happen when the secret corners of the forest are heavy with the scent of many men and the view of the ripe hills is blotted with talking wires? Where will the thicket be? Gone! Where will the eagle be? Gone! And what is to say goodbye to the swift pony and then hunt? The end of living and the beginning of survival.

When the last red man has vanished with this wilderness, and his memory is only the shadow of a cloud moving across the prairie, will these shores and forests still be here? Will there be any of the spirit of my people left?

We love this earth as a newborn loves its mother's heartbeat. So, if we sell you our land, love it as we have loved it. Care for it, as we have cared for it. Hold in your mind the memory of the land as it is when you receive it. Preserve the land for all children, and love it, as God loves us.

As we are part of the land, you too are part of the land. This earth is precious to us. It is also precious to you.

One thing we know - there is only one God. No man, be he Red man or White man, can be apart. We ARE all brothers after all.

Du Fu (China: 712 – 770)

Du Fu (also known as Tu Fu) wrote in the High Tang period. His work is very diverse, but his most characteristic poems are autobiographical and historical, recording the effects of the An Lushan Rebellion of 755 on his own life.

Nocturnal Reflections While Travelling

Gentle breeze on grass by the shore,The boat's tall mast alone at night.Stars fall to the broad flat fields,Moon rises from the great river's flow.Have my writings not made any mark?An official should stop when old and sick.Fluttering from place to place I resemble,A gull between heaven and earth.

Qiang Village (3)

The flock of chickens starts to call wildly,As guests arrive, the chickens begin to fight.I drive the chickens up into the tree,And now I hear the knock on the wicker gate.Four or five elders from the village,Ask how long and far I have been travelling.Each of them brings something in his hands,We pour the clear and thick wine in together.They apologise because it tastes so thin,There's no-one left to tend the millet fields.Conscription still continues without end,The children are campaigning in the east.I ask if I can sing a song for the elders,The times so hard, I'm ashamed by these deep feelings.I finish the song, look to heaven and sigh,Everyone around is freely weeping.

Thinking of My Brothers on a Moonlit Night

The army drums cut off human travel,A lone goose sounds on the borderland in autumn.Tonight we start the season of White Dew,The moon is just as bright as in my homeland.My brothers are spread all throughout the land,No home to ask if they are living or dead.The letters we send always go astray,And still the fighting does not cease.

‘You in America’ – Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie(Shortlisted for the Caine Prize for African Writing in 2002)

You believed that everybody in America had a car and a gun. Your uncles and aunts and cousins believed it too. Right after you won the American visa lottery, they told you, "In a month, you will have a big car. Soon, a big house. But don't buy a gun like those Americans."

They trooped into the shantytown house in Lagos, standing beside the nail-studded zinc walls because chairs did not go round, to say good bye in loud voices and tell you with lowered voices what they wanted you to send them. In comparison to the big car and house (and possibly gun), the things they wanted were minor—handbags and shoes and vitamin supplements. You said okay, no problem.

Your uncle in America said you could live with him until you got on your feet. He picked you up at the airport and bought you a big hot dog with yellow mustard that nauseated you. Introduction to America, he said with a laugh. He lived in a small white town in Maine, in a thirty-year-old house by a lake. He told you that the company he worked for had offered him a few thousand more plus stocks because they were desperately trying to look diverse. They included him in every brochure, even those that had nothing to do with engineering. He laughed and said the job was good, was worth living in an all-white town even though his wife had to drive an hour to find a hair salon that did black hair. The trick was to understand America, to know that America was give and take. You gave up a lot but you gained a lot too.

He showed you how to apply for a cashier job in the gas station on Main Street, and he enrolled you in a community college, where the girls were curious about your hair. Does it stand up or fall down when you take the braids out? All of it stands up? How? Why? Do you use a comb? You smiled tightly when they asked those questions. Your uncle told you to expect it; a mixture of ignorance and arrogance, he called it. Then he told you how the neighbors said, a few months after he moved into his house, that the squirrels had started to disappear. They had heard Africans ate all kinds of wild animals.

You laughed with your uncle and you felt at home in his house, his wife called you nwanne—sister—and his two school-age children called you Aunty. They spoke Igbo and ate garri for lunch and it was like home. Until your uncle came into the cramped basement where you slept with old trunks and wheels and books and grabbed your breasts, as though he was plucking mangoes from a tree, moaning. He wasn't really your uncle, he was actually a distant cousin of your aunt's husband, not related by blood.

As you packed your bags that night, he sat on your bed—it was his house after all—and laughed and said you had nowhere to go. If you let him, he would do many things for you. Smart women did it all the time. How did you think those women back home in Lagos with well-paying jobs made it? Even women in New York?

You locked yourself in the bathroom and the next morning you left, walking the long windy road, smelling the baby fish in the lake. You saw him drive past, he had always dropped you off at Main Street, and he didn't honk. You wondered what he would tell his wife, why you had left. And you remembered what he said, that America was give and take.

You ended up in Connecticut, another little town, because it was the last stop of the Bonanza bus you got on. Bonanza was the cheapest bus. You walked into the restaurant nearby and said you would work for two dollars less than the other waitresses. The owner, Juan, had inky black hair and smiled to show a bright yellowish tooth. He said he had never had a Nigerian employee but all immigrants

worked hard. He knew, he'd been there. He'd pay you a dollar less, but under the table. He didn't like all the taxes they were making him pay.

You could not afford to go to school, because now you paid rent for the tiny room with the stained carpet. Besides, the small Connecticut town didn't have a community college and a credit in the State University cost too much. So you went to the Public Library, you looked up course syllabi on school web sites and read some of the books. Sometimes you sat on the lumpy mattress of your twin bed and thought about home.

Your parents, your uncles and aunts, your cousins, your friends. The people who never broke a profit from the mangoes and akara they hawked, whose houses—zinc sheets precariously held by nails—fell apart in the rainy season. The people who came out to say goodbye, to rejoice because you won the American visa lottery, to confess their envy. The people who sent their children to the secondary school where teachers gave an A when someone slipped them brown envelopes.

You had never needed to pay for an A, never slipped a brown envelope to a teacher in secondary school. Still, you chose long brown envelopes to send half your month's earning to your parents. The bills that Juan gave you which were crisper than the tips. Every month. You didn't write a letter. There was nothing to write about.

The first weeks you wanted to write though, because you had stories to tell. You wanted to write about the surprising openness of people in America, how eagerly they told you about their mother fighting cancer, about their sister-in-law's preemie—things people should hide, should reveal only to the family members who wished them well. You wanted to write about the way people left so much food on their plates and crumpled a few dollar bills down, as though it was an offering, expiation for the wasted food. You wanted to write about the child who started to cry and pull at her blond hair and instead of the parents making her shut up, they pleaded with her and then they all got up and left. You wanted to write that everybody in America did not have a big house and car, you still were not sure about the guns though because they might have them inside their bags and pockets.

It wasn't just your parents you wanted to write, it was your friends and cousins and aunts and uncles. But you could never afford enough handbags and shoes and vitamin supplements to go around and still pay your rent, so you wrote nobody.

Nobody knew where you were because you told no one. Sometimes you felt invisible and tried to walk through your room wall into the hallway and when you bumped into the wall, it left bruises on your arms. Once, Juan asked if you had a man that hit you because he would take care of him and you laughed a mysterious laugh. At nights, something wrapped itself around your neck, something that very nearly always choked you before you woke up. ~ Some people thought you were from Jamaica because they thought that every black person with an accent was Jamaican. Or some who guessed that you were African asked if you knew so and so from Kenya or so and so from Zimbabwe because they thought Africa was a country where everyone knew everyone else.

So when he asked you, in the dimness of the restaurant after you recited the daily specials, what African country you were from, you said Nigeria and expected him to ask if you knew a friend he had made in the Peace Corps in Senegal or Botswana. But he asked if you were Yoruba or Igbo, because you didn't have a Fulani face. You were surprised—you thought he must be a professor of anthropology, a little young but who was to say? Igbo, you said. He asked your name and said Akunna was pretty. He did not ask what it meant, fortunately, because you were sick of how people said, Father's Wealth? You mean, like, your father will actually sell you to a husband?

He had been to Ghana and Kenya and Tanzania, he had read about all the other African countries, their histories, their complexities. You wanted to feel disdain, to show it as you brought his order, because white people who liked Africa too much and who liked Africa too little were the same—condescending.

But he didn't act like he knew too much, didn't shake his head in the superior way a professor back in the community college once did as he talked about Angola, didn't show any condescension. He came in the next day and sat at the same table and when you asked if the chicken was okay, he asked you something about Lagos. He came in the second day and talked for so long—asking you often if you didn't think Mobutu and Idi Amin were similar—you had to tell him it was against restaurant policy. He brushed your hand when you placed the coffee down. The third day, you told Juan you didn't want that table anymore.

After your shift that day, he was waiting outside, leaning by a pole, asking you to go out with him because your name rhymed with hakuna matata and The Lion King was the only maudlin movie he'd ever liked. You didn't know what The Lion King was. You looked at him in the bright light and realized that his eyes were the color of extra virgin olive oil, a greenish gold. Extra-virgin olive oil was the only thing you enjoyed, truly enjoyed, in America.

He was a senior at the State University. He told you how old he was and you asked why he had not graduated yet. This was America, after all, it was not like back home where Universities closed so often that people added three years to their normal course of study and Lecturers went on strike after strike and were still not paid. He said he had taken time off, a couple of years after high school, to discover himself and travel, mostly to Africa and Asia. You asked him where he ended up finding himself and he laughed. You did not laugh. You did not know that people could simply choose not to go to school, that people could dictate to life. You were used to accepting what life gave, writing down what life dictated.

You said no the following three days, to going out with him, because you didn't think it was right, because you were uncomfortable with the way he looked in your eyes, the way you laughed so easily at what he said. And then the fourth night, you panicked when he was not standing at the door, after your shift. You prayed for the first time in a long time and when he came up behind you and said, hey, you said yes, you would go out with him, even before he asked. You were scared he would not ask again.

The next day, he took you to Chang's and your fortune cookie had two strips of paper. Both of them were blank. ~ You knew you had become comfortable when you told him the real reason you asked Juan for a different table—Jeopardy. When you watched Jeopardy on the restaurant TV, you rooted for the following, in this order—women of color, white women, black men, and finally white men, which meant you never rooted for white men. He laughed and told you he was used to not being rooted for, his mother taught Women's Studies.

And you knew you had become close when you told him that your father was really not a school teacher in Lagos, that he was a taxi driver. And you told him about that day in Lagos traffic in your father's car, it was raining and your seat was wet because of the rust-eaten hole in the roof. The traffic was heavy, the traffic was always heavy in Lagos, and when it rained it was chaos. The roads were so badly drained some cars would get stuck in muddy potholes and some of your cousins got paid to push the cars out. The rain and the swampy road—you thought—made your father step on the brakes too late that day. You heard the bump before you felt it. The car your father rammed into was big, foreign and dark green, with yellow headlights like the eyes of a cat. Your father started to cry and beg even before he got out of the car and laid himself flat on the road, stopping the traffic. Sorry sir, sorry sir, if you sell me and my family you cannot even buy one tire in your car, he chanted. Sorry sir.

The big man seated at the back did not come out. His driver did, examining the damage, looking at your father's sprawled form from the corner of his eye as though the pleading was a song he was ashamed to admit he liked. Finally, he let your father go. Waved him away. The other cars honked and drivers cursed. When your father came back in the car, you refused to look at him because he was just like the pigs that waddled in the marshes around the market. Your father looked like nsi. Shit. After you told him this, he pursed his lips and held your hand and said he understood. You shook your hand free, annoyed, because he thought the world was, or ought to be, full of people like him. You told him there was nothing to understand, it was just the way it was. ~ He didn't eat meat, because he thought it was wrong the way they killed animals. He said they released fear toxins into the animals and the fear toxins made people paranoid. Back home, the meat pieces you ate, when there was meat, were the size of half your finger. But you did not tell him that. You did not tell him either that the dawadawa cubes your mother cooked everything with, because curry and thyme were too expensive, had MSG, was MSG. He said MSG caused cancer, and that was the reason he liked Chang's—Chang didn't cook with MSG.

Once, at Chang's, he told the waiter he lived in Shanghai for a year, that he spoke some Mandarin. The waiter warmed up and told him what soup was best and then asked him, "you have girlfriend in Shanghai?" And he smiled and said nothing. You lost your appetite, the region beneath your breasts felt clogged inside. That night, you didn't moan when he was inside you, you bit your lips and pretended that you didn't come because you knew he would worry. Finally you told him why you were upset, that the Chinese man assumed you could not possibly be his girlfriend, and that he smiled and said nothing Before he apologized, he gazed at you blankly and you knew that he did not understand. ~ He bought you presents and when you objected about the cost, he said he had a trust fund, it was okay. His presents mystified you. A fist-sized ball that you shook to watch snow fall on a tiny house, or a plastic ballerina in pink spinning around on a tiny stage. A shiny rock. An expensive scarf hand-painted in Mexico that you could never wear because of the color. Finally you told him that Third World presents were always useful. The rock, for instance, would work if you could grind things with it, or wear it. He laughed long and hard, but you did not laugh. You realized that in his life, he could buy presents that were just presents and nothing else, nothing useful. When he started to buy you shoes and clothes and books, you asked him not to, you didn't want any presents at all.

Still, you did not fight. Not really. You argued and then you made up and made love and ran your hands through each other's hair, his soft and yellow like the swinging tassels of growing corncobs, yours dark and bouncy like the filling of a pillow. You felt safe in his arms, the same safeness you felt back home, in the shantytown house of zinc.

When he got too much sun and his skin turned the color of a ripe watermelon, you kissed portions of his back before you rubbed lotion on it slowly. It was more intimate than sex. You felt involved, yet it was one experience you both could never share. You darkened in the sun but you were too dark to ever get burned.

He found the African store in the Hartford Yellow Pages and drove you there. The store owner, a Ghanaian, asked him if he was African, like the white Kenyans or South Africans and he laughed and said yes, but he'd been in America for a long time, had missed the food of his childhood. You cooked for him; he liked jollof rice but after he ate garri and onugbu soup, he threw up in your sink. You didn't mind, because now you could cook onugbu soup with meat.

The thing that wrapped itself around your neck, that nearly always choked you before you fell asleep, started to loosen, to let go.

~ You knew by people's reactions that you were abnormal—the way the nasty ones were too nasty and the nice ones too nice. The old white women who muttered and glared at him, the black men who shook their heads at you, the black women whose pitiful eyes bemoaned your lack of self-esteem, your self-loathing. Or the black women who smiled swift, secret solidarity smiles, the black men who tried too hard to forgive you, saying a too-obvious hi to him, the white women who said, "what a good looking pair," too brightly, too loudly, as though to prove their own tolerance to themselves.

You did not tell him but you wished you were lighter-skinned so they would not stare so much. You thought about your sister back home, about her skin the color of honey, and wished you had come out like her. You wished that again the night you first met his parents. But you did not tell him because he would look solemn and hold your hand and tell you it was your burnished skin color that first attracted him. You didn't want him to hold your hand and say he understood because again there was nothing to understand, it was just the way things were.

You wished you were light-skinned enough to be mistaken for Puerto-Rican, light-skinned enough so that, in the dim light of the Indian restaurant where you both shared samosas with his parents from a centrally placed tray, you would seem almost like them.

His mother told you she loved your braids, asked if those were real cowries strung through them and what female writers you read. His father asked how similar Indian food was to Nigerian food and teased you about paying when the check came. You looked at them and felt grateful that they did not examine you like an exotic trophy, an ivory tusk.

His mother told you that he had never brought a girl to meet them, except for his High School prom date and he smiled stiffly and held your hand. The tablecloth shielded your clasped hands. He squeezed your hand and you squeezed back and wondered why he was so stiff, why his extra virgin olive-colored eyes darkened as he spoke to his parents. He told you about his issues with his parents later, how they portioned out love like a birthday cake, how they would give him a bigger slice if only he'd go to Law School. You wanted to sympathize. But instead you were angry.

You were angrier when he told he had refused to go up to Canada with them for a week or two, to their summer cottage in the Quebec countryside. They had even asked him to bring you. He showed you pictures of the cottage and you wondered why it was called a cottage because the buildings that big around your neighborhood back home were banks and churches. You dropped a glass and it shattered on the hardwood of his apartment floor and he asked what was wrong and you said nothing, although you thought a lot was wrong. Your worlds were wrong.

Later, in the shower, you started to cry, you watched the water dilute your tears and you didn't know why you were crying. ~ You wrote home finally, when the thing around your neck had almost completely let go. A short letter to your parents and brothers and sisters, slipped in between the crisp dollar bills, and you included your address. You got a reply only days later, by courier. Your mother wrote the letter herself, you knew from the spidery penmanship, from the misspelled words.

Your father was dead, he had slumped over the steering wheel of his taxi. Five months now, she wrote. They had used some of the money you sent to give him a nice funeral. They killed a goat for the guests and buried him in a real coffin, not just planks of wood.

You curled up in bed, pressed your knees tight to your chest and cried. He held you while you cried, smoothed your hair, and offered to go with you, back home to Nigeria. You said no, you needed to go alone. He asked if you would come back and you reminded him that you had a green card and you would lose it if you did not come back in one year. He said you knew what he meant, would you come

back, come back?

You turned away and said nothing and when he drove you to the airport, you hugged him tight, clutching to the muscles of his back until your ribs hurt. And you said thank you.