I thought about my father. Long ago, I had asked him how he came to be my father. He sat poised in thought, before finally answering that he was, in fact, a foreigner, an officer who could pick locks and pilot aircraft. Before I was born, he had been a fighter pilot during the war, and he had been shot down during a sortie and crash-landed on a remote island in enemy territory, where he was captured. The islanders held him in a large dog cage under a banyan tree by the village square, awaiting the day when someone would convey him to a prison camp. And there he remained, for three long years. Every night, when he could not sleep, he would lie face down and imagine that it was all a dream. When the scorching rain fell from the sky, he would strip and shower in the downpour that came pounding through the leaves above him, which reeked of death. When they brought him food to eat, he devoured everything on the plate. When they came to throw a leash about his neck and take him out to an open field to relieve himself, he dutifully followed and shamelessly shat in full view of his captors. But wait, wasn’t he an expert at picking locks? Indeed, during the three years that he was caged, he had become so familiar with every steel bar that he could have set himself free with a flick of an eyelash.
But here’s the problem: the island was far too small. From within the dog cage, all he could see in every direction was the sea beneath the bowl of the sky, offering no escape, as if he were trapped in a giant ladle. And even if he were to slip from his cage in the dark, evade the guards, and hide himself in the windbreak, he was certain that these hardworking villagers – who had as little to occupy themselves as he did while waiting for the war to end – would run him to ground in whatever corner of the island he fled to, before dragging him back, dead or alive. My father would be fighting a losing battle, and so he planted himself within the cage like a seed, quietly awaiting the moment when he could breathe freely again under the sky. His wait went on and on until three summers later when, with the finger-wide band of the Milky Way spilling across the night sky between the Weaving Girl Star Vega and the Cowherd Star Altair, the two sorrowful lovers gazing across the celestial expanse that separated them, it occurred to him that life was absurd. Next to his cage was a sentry post, where the village head himself stood watch from four to six each morning. After his shift, the old man leapt upon a nearby dirt mound and delivered a spirited speech to the entire village, and thus became my father’s most dedicated playmate.
What my father remembered best, among these and other diversions, were the festive assemblies, when the elementary school teachers brought their students to observe him in the cage. On these occasions, he always tidied his garments, sat cross-legged, and put on a cheerful air to welcome them. On their respective sides of the bars, he and the students listened to the teachers pontificate about their nation’s inviolable dignity, about humiliation and hatred. After that, the teachers invariably ordered the students to step forward to the cage, one by one, and gaze down upon his face, the face of their enemy. When their eyes met, he composed himself and made a concerted effort to smile. He observed those little kittens in front of him learning how to deal with prey, insulting him with freshly acquired phrases, spitting at his face. There were always a few inventive ones, like those who struck the steel bars with their little caps in an attempt to scare him, which drew admiring looks from other children and transformed the event into a competition. None of this troubled him. What made him smile, and what he wanted to confirm with his smile, were the moments when a child who faced him showed signs of hesitation – a trace of confusion, or perhaps, as their eyes shifted and lips trembled, pity. He voraciously soaked up these moments, which gave him the conviction that he would one day, once again, become human. This was no exaggeration, he said, recalling that throughout his entire war-torn imprisonment, it was these moments, these signs alone, that sustained him. They might seem insignificant, but they were the only thing that made him feel touched.
He lived for those moments. Which was why, when the losers of the dare competitions returned the next day to humiliate him, pelting him with slingshots, he let the pebbles strike him without making a sound. Which was why late at night, he would sit with the village head and calmly, without a drop of self-pity, discuss the best way to raise well-mannered children. Which was why no dreams disturbed his sleep, why his meals were always delicious, and why he remembered, distinctively, every child’s face. It was because doing all this allowed him to be at ease. He did not dwell upon the past or future, conjure up crimes he had never committed, or subject himself to sufferings he did not deserve – that would have snapped his last thread of hope. Each time he was let out of the cage, all he concerned himself with was taking in the fresh air; each time he showered, all he cared about was getting clean. Perhaps the sole purpose of those isolated moments, in the continuous and eternal flow of time, was to allow him to survive, to occupy the only possible mode of existence for such a forlorn man. To some extent he, too, like all the villagers, had become a child of the war. And yet among them, he was somehow the only one capable of laughing aloud.
And there he lived until that morning, when the village head leapt again upon his dirt mound and declared, in a woeful voice, that the war was lost and they had surrendered. Which meant that the nation my father fought for had won. And which also meant, on this border island that had never been invaded and suffered no more than a single downed fighter jet, that my father had inexplicably become, after his long years in the dog cage, the solitary victor. My father tried to grasp the meaning of all this, but for some reason he could not wrap his head around it. Gazing upon the villagers on the square, he thought that they too were mulling their defeat. There was a calmness about them, as if a long-suffering toil was silently draining away, through the veins of some hidden aquifer. The villagers gathered into small groups, and the village head approached them one by one, murmuring in their ears a few words, exchanging a few thoughts. Now and then, someone raised their head and looked at my father from a distance. Apart from that, no one approached him at all, let alone talked to him. And then, as after every village meeting during the war, the crowd dispersed, going their separate ways, leaving my father alone on the boundless square.
He did not know what to do, so he remained in the cage and awaited whatever would befall him. He waited and waited yet more, but no one returned to stand sentry, and no one came to release him. The sun slowly reached its zenith, and cooking smoke began to rise from the chimneys around the square, soundlessly and delicately, matter-of-fact, as if evaporating whatever tension remained in the air. Completely drained, he lay down in the cage and fell asleep. It was a long and profound sleep, in which he dreamt of things being destroyed, though not anything worth cherishing. He awoke near evening, when the gentle breeze was combing through the silvergrass by the cage, and the smell of the ocean, like moldy dust, was drawn from the air by the westward light. He felt the salt crystals on his skin shedding themselves flake by flake, as if departing on tiptoe. He turned, and in the bottom of his vision, which had lost its sense of depth, he noticed the cage door gently swaying on its hinges.
That was it: the dog cage was open. While he was sleeping, someone had quietly come and unlocked the door. The world around him was so serene. He took a hesitant step out of the cage, and then stood tall on the open square. On the vast ocean enveloped by sky, scattered fishing boats were strung together along the tidal lines. His eyes winced in the strong light, and he noticed that the stacks of withered grass had been removed. Melons were quietly sprouting on the sand, like so many chubby deformed babies, their bodies and vines growing madly on this first day after the war. He left the square and walked into the village. The stone pavement was damp, and house gates were wide open, as if it was washing day. The women were busy with their work, diligently beating either their rugs or their children. At least one person from every household acknowledged him from a distance with an innocent smile, the simple smile they reserved for the rare visitor. A figure was waving and rushing toward him with large steps: it was the village head. The old man gave him the most innocent smile yet, the big smile that could only belonged to the head of an innocent village. Walking with appropriately powerful strides, his feet making appropriately brusque noises on the stone slabs, the old man came to a stop before my father, rested an appropriate hand on his shoulder, and invited him to sit down with him for a light dinner.
My father rubbed his neck, and his throat felt tight. The village head seemed so hospitable that my father became clumsy with his words, not knowing how to refuse, unable to utter anything in the local language he had long since absorbed. The village head smiled, a simple smile that meant, ‘I’m not quite sure what you mean, but I know why I don’t understand what you’re saying.’ The smile reminded him that he was, after all, a foreigner. And so he began speaking to the old man in his mother tongue. The village head continued to smile, revealing a simple expression that meant, ‘I’m honestly not sure what you mean, but I think you know why I don’t understand what you’re saying.’ This new expression irked my father, but the old man maintained his innocent smile. My father fell silent and began to feel anxious. He turned, desperate to escape the village and hide himself in a secluded corner of the island, should there remain a corner yet unfilled with smiling faces. He wanted to return to his cage. He went back on the village square, only to discover that the cage had disappeared. That was it: the dog cage was gone. He turned again and began walking. He had no choice but to head toward the shore. Because really, everything on the island, dead or alive, was smiling at him – even the wild flowers by the path were smiling so happily that their leaves trembled. He did not dare raise his head. He trudged through the windbreak and sat down on the beach, where the sun was finishing its descent beneath the sea.
Image © W FF
