Dada 147

After I left that house the evening hour would come when I generally felt so well and would look forward with contentment to sharing a bowl of rice noodles with my Dada and to listen to his stories. I would go to my bed with the sounds and smell of ships and what might have been in my dreams when my kinfolk the pirates paraded, long haired and laughing beneath the moon. This was the same hour but it was different now. Dada was dead and I was going back to a cell. What awaited me was a night full of foreboding of the coming day and of Mo and the manner in which he was led down the path by those questions to make my betrayal complete. I traced the main features of all these islands with my fingers across the cell wall then extended them upwards, north and west to the Philippines and down again through the territories of this land as far south as Java and the spice islands. Borneo, a paradise disguised as hell, a hell disguised as paradise whether it is driven like a sailor across the sea or to die on some rubber plantation with its poisonous fronds and white beaches. It is not only the northern hemisphere that reaches its soul to the stars but for prisoners like me to trace their fingers around their own freedoms and suffer their own confinements. These islands are as much a prison cell to the innocent as a carefree sleep to a tourist beneath the sky.