Undaunted by Zoya Phan

Author:Zoya Phan
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Free Press
Published: 2010-10-20T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

THE NEW VILLAGE

Uncle Joe took us directly to my father’s house. The dirt road passed through the village marketplace and petered out at the edge of a beautiful lake. We unloaded our bags and followed a path along the water’s edge to the far side. There my father had built a small bamboo-framed house on a vantage point overlooking the waters.

On three sides, the beautiful expanse of the lake was fringed with houses, while the rest was thick forest. The lake was fed by freshwater springs, and one bubbled out next to our house to form a tiny stream. I felt so relaxed and relieved—free, and able to breathe fresh air. For the first time in months I felt more positive about the future.

The lake was the hub of village life. It was where the village elephants would come to bathe and where the village children would swim. From the house we could watch the elephants lumbering in, guided by their mahouts. They’d suck up gallons of water in their trunks and spray it all over themselves. After the elephants had been in the lake it looked like a muddy soup, and it would take an hour before the mud settled and the water was clear again.

At the front of our little bamboo house, running down to the lakeside, my father had planted a flower garden with tiny roses, big purple lily flowers, and bright yellow bushes that he had cut into neat borders. The flower garden was reflected in the placid waters of the lake, and it was magical. My father truly had an eye for what was beautiful and uplifting for the soul. Planting a flower garden wasn’t perhaps the most practical way to prepare for our arrival in the village, but it was such a generous expression of his love for us and for his desire to give us a home that reminded us of our happy village life—a home that was more than a shelter—an expression of our spirit and his. My mother had always been the more pragmatic of my parents, and the day after our arrival she set about clearing land above the house, where she could plant her vegetables. She also wanted a duck house and a place to keep pigs. Both the ducks and pigs would love it there, she declared. They could go down to the lake to dabble about in the muddy shallows.

A new energy seemed to come to my mother. It was so good to see her making plans and laughing.

Uncle Joe and Nightingale helped us move in. With its one room, the house was even smaller than what we had been living in at Mae Ra Moh camp, but we didn’t mind. It was where my father had lived for the past year, and it instantly felt like home. There, we all felt free and secure. We could go for a walk whenever we wanted, not like in the camp, where we were surrounded by barbed wire.

A

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.