The Jewel Trader of Pegu by Jeffrey Hantover

Author:Jeffrey Hantover
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: HarperCollins

Your cousin,

Abraham

In the mornings, Khaing and I go to the market. I carry the full basket home on my head, and she carries a stick to shoo away the crows. I help her cook his food and wash his clothes. I sweep the floor and ground in front of his house. I tend the garden—village girls are good at spotting weeds and making things bloom. Except for sharing his mat, Khaing jokes, we are his wives.

He is like a house whose door and windows are shut. When Uncle Win is not here, he nods more than he speaks. He doesn’t talk to himself or hum or sing a song. You can feel the silence, thick and heavy as afternoon air before the rain. Maybe his people were punished for speaking. Maybe his family spirits commanded him to be silent—his silence like offerings to keep them content. Win says he speaks many languages, even ours, but he says few words. He speaks a strange language that only his god understands. Who can know what a man thinks, especially a stranger?

He seems a good man, who wants to please his god. He prays to his god every morning and every night before he goes to bed. At least, I think he is praying—his eyes are closed, and he rocks gently back and forth. You can’t see his god—there are no statues of him in the house, no altar to offer him food and flowers. There is an amulet, nailed to the door frame, he kisses with his fingertips when he enters the house; but inside, the house is empty. He carries his god inside him all the time. I think this god is always telling him what to do, and that is why he is so somber, listening hard to everything his god says. Before and after he eats anything, he bows his head and talks to his god. I want to tell him not to be afraid—I would never poison his rice.

I know he can smile. I have seen him smile at Win. Uncle Win could make a dark cloud smile. At night I sit outside his room and watch him smile as he reads back to himself the words he has written. I know he isn’t writing his wife; Khaing, who asked Win, has told me he isn’t married. He must be writing someone he loves. Not a woman, though—how could he travel so far and stay away so long if he loved her enough to write her almost every day? Maybe it is his father who has sent him on this long journey or a brother whom he has seen every day of his life.

If I knew how to write and if my dog knew how to read, I would write her letters too. I miss her. She followed me like a shadow. No snake ever bit me in the fields, because she was my protector. She listened to everything I said, and never turned away, never barked for me to stop.

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