Burnt Shadows--Kamila Shamsie

There was a section in this novel which struck me as a page from my own life. It occurred towards the end of the story when an American asks an Afghan—Have you ever read the Quran? To which the Afghan replies-- Of course I have. And the American retorts-- Have you read it in a language you understand? The Afghan states unequivocally-- I understand Islam.

I had similar arguments with a man who I once loved more than anything else in the world. For approximately three years I tried to understand him and Islam. He was a Thai Muslim and I was the all-knowing Westerner who tried to square my love with his religion. This literary exchange made me realize how foolish I was to think that my reading of the Quran in English translation meant anything compared to his life raised in the faith.

This novel brought so much back to me, opened so many ideas about my own past; places I have lived and histories that in some way intersected with my life although they were distant in time and space from my own experience.

The novel begins in Nagasaki, before the atomic bomb and after. My life has been touched by this history, in a round about way, as the lives of anyone with a connection to Japan since the bombs dropped has been affected by those few days before the end of the war in the pacific.

That war, the surrender of the empire, the resulting impact on the Japanese psyche, touched my life in the person I chose to father my children-- much as the impact of those last day touched the lives of children born to, or related to, characters in the novel, who had never walked under a Japanese sun.

The thread in the first half of the novel that tied the main characters, almost all who were in exile from their homeland, was very engaging and when the story shifted to the next generation I almost put the book down. But soon I was drawn into a Muslim world where, although there was war and death, there was also a hint of that acceptance and love that I had experienced in the Thai Muslim communities that had once been part of my every day life.

I have never felt more love from strangers than in those small rooms and cinder block houses on dirt tracks in the jungle or small housing projects on the outskirts of Bangkok; peace be with you-- said my new brothers and sisters. I miss waking up to the call to prayer and the feeling it gave me to see an old man, one of my traveling companions, unfurl his prayer mat at the break of dawn when we stopped at a roadside gas station.

When I read this book I thought of how many people would read it and miss this point-- although the writer shows you the love that exists, even in the heart of a tacit supporter of the Taliban in Kabul-- I predict very few westerners will be able to accept it. In general, westerners fail to see the humanity of jihadist. I think that only when we can see them as people, try to understand their motivation, will we be able to end the so-called war on terror.

Of all the themes in this novel, the most important one, in my reading, is the possibility to look beyond fear, hate, class, and religion and find a brother/sister.

Being part of a Muslim community was one of the most important events in my life. It taught me to see the most demonized people of my time as part of my heart. I am forever grateful.

It was the image of the burnt cranes that drew me into this novel. I expected to be disinterested in the portion that I knew was coming at the end of the tale; that section dealing with 9/11. I have hit the saturation point on that topic, but this was not what I expected. It reminded me of a part of my life I don't think about often enough and the people that taught me how a true believer really acts, lives and loves in the world.

I hope other readers will see this in the characters of Abdullah and Ismail and give them their full attention. There is the potential for greater understanding here; I encourage everyone to take the opportunity.

On the wrong side of Remembrance

Today when the girls were putting on their poppies to go to the Remembrance Day service Suki asked why we had to wear poppies. Hannah told her it was because soldiers fought for Canada. This is the simplistic view of what the poppy can and should stand for; a view that as she grows older she may find difficult to reconcile with her Japanese heritage.

 I explained that the poppy was for soldiers on all sides of the war. The soldiers who Canadians fought against were no more evil then our own soldiers; they didn't want to kill people, they didn't want to die. I told her that Japan was in the war—this is something that, in this country, we don't talk much about—the war in the Pacific. I told her that the war was started by rulers not by soldiers and that soldiers had to follow the instructions of the rulers or would be killed by their own people.

She wanted to know why the rulers wanted to go to war. I showed her a world map and described the wide spheres of influence both Germany and Japan had in the early 1940s and explained to her that they wanted all the land they could get and so sent their soldiers to invade other countries.

She wanted to know if Baba and Jiji (her grandparents in Japan) were in the war. They weren't but their fathers were as far as I know. Many Japanese don't talk much about the war but I did have some conversations with my in-laws about it while I was in Japan. They were young children during the war and were evacuated to the country-side where they were reduced to eating bugs and grass due to lack of supplies. They showed me pictures of their fathers who were in military uniform. I was too polite or cowardly to ask what had happened to those stern-faced men. Men that would be forever linked to my family. Men whose crimes or bravery would never known to me.

 It's odd to feel that some part of you is the enemy. That on Remembrance Day people are remembering their victory over your people. I hope that when people are remembering the sacrifices of their soldiers they also remember soldiers are commanded by their political masters.

Cracked Facade

I couldn't hold it together this morning when I heard the description on the radio of the earthquake, landslides and tsunamis affecting Japan. I cried.

I had an e-mail this morning from Tets that he and his parents are fine; I am not even sure if he is in Japan or not, but that some members of his mothers family are yet to be accounted for.

Hannah saw me crying and asked me why I was crying if, as I had told her, Daddy, Baba and Jiji were alright. How could I explain to her that this event had taken me back in time to the major earthquake I had experienced when living in Taiwan- 21, September, 1999. Over 2,000 lives were lost and we lived with aftershocks on a daily basis for about six month afterward.

It was thrilling in a horror movie sort of way, living in Taiwan at the time. You never knew when the ground would move, for how long or how strong the movement would be. Is the shopping centre your in about to collapse? Is this the last latte you'll ever have in Starbucks?

One weekend several months after the earthquake I was staying in a hotel in Taipei. I often traveled to Taipei from the smaller city of Hsin-chu to have a weekend where I could access western civilization; Starbucks, TGIFridays, English bookstores and English signs. That night in a 20 story highrise hotel I felt the gentle sway of the building like the proverbial baby in the tree top. My first thought was that no one knew where I was. I had not told anyone of my plans to go to Taipei that weekend. If the building went down, I would disappear forever. I turned on the TV and tried not to think about it.

In the Taiwan earthquake the epicenter was mid-island, but due to shoddy and prosecution-able construction practices, high rise buildings in Taipei, over 300 km from the epicenter, went down.

On another occasion I was meeting a friend in Taipei at a department store coffee shop/bookstore. As she was coming to meet me on the 10th floor, the lights started to sway and all the Chinese, usually a very loud bunch, became silent. In the midst of that silence I got a phone call; my friend was in the stairwell coming up to meet me and the lights had gone out. I answered the phone, and she said, “Earthquake?” I said, “Earthquake.”

She arrived at my table about 5 minutes later and after the Chinese all vacated the coffee shop in anticipation of more tremors, we decided to stay. It was the quietest place in all of Taiwan.

I guess I never really thought that this experience had an effect on me but today my facade has finally cracked from the stress fractures it sustained during that earthquake almost 12 years ago.

I was going to the hospital today for some blood work and decided that I would ask for a psyche consult while I was there. I got my family doctor, a lady who I really like, and felt better after having someone to talk to about how I was feeling.

During the discussion I also flashed back onto the Asian Tsunami. There are Tsunamis in Japan now too.

I was living in Bangkok at the time, December 26, 2004. It was a horrible time. The news was worse every day. Everybody knew someone affected. It was Christmas break and most foreigners who lived in Thailand, my friends and acquaintances, were taking their holidays in Southern Thailand. I was in Bangkok, at one of the Irish pubs in which my partnered played in a band. I remember watching the news break on the TV screens. There was silence and wonder as the death toll numbers started to come in.

As far as I know, I didn't know anyone directly involved in the disaster. In the days following the Tsunami my school started trying to call all the teachers, 90 plus, that worked at our school, to make sure they were all safe and accounted for. One teacher could not be reached. He was the biggest white man I had ever seen, he was over 6'6, had a shaved head and a gap toothed smile. If you didn't know him you would surely be scared by him but I often rode the skytrain with him after work and we had some nice chats as he ducked down to clear the ceiling of the train. He was a Brit and had come to our school to teach last year.

We, the teachers at Chulalongkorn Go International school, were all worried. Less than a year before another friend of ours had not come back from his beach holiday. That was Paul, I used to go for drinks with him and some of the other teachers from Go at Texas bar, on one of the small sois in Siam Square, Bangkok. Paul, had slipped in the bathroom of his rented beach bungalow, hit his head, and died. He was 28. Kimber, the teacher now missing, was 26.

The first week back at school after the earthquake was a relief. Kimber walked in for his scheduled classes and was surprised to see everyone's relieved faces. Over the holiday he had moved and when you move in such a transient world as Bangkok your phone number does not move with you.

Our school made it through without any losses to the Tsunami; no teachers, no students were lost but that was not the case at most other International Schools in Bangkok and the stories of loss spread through the teaching community. It was a grievous time. And now they will be searching for bodies in Japan, finding unrecognizable remains and living with death for many months to come.

It's been a hard morning, reliving all those terrifying moments, the months of grief and uncertainty and knowing it is all happening again and will continue to happen now and again in different places and different times. I felt bad when the earthquakes hit Haiti and Chile, but Asia is my second home. I have people there, I have lived through these things there and it ties my throat in knots. So I did the only thing I know how to do to fix this feeling; write.