at sea
She was a small woman with an anxious air. The shine in her eyes dulled as worry sunk in between the grooves of her well-worn face. She hovered nearby and wrung her hands together, then unclasped to pull at the sides of her pants and placed them back together again. Words streamed from her lips softly like bubbles in a language that I could not understand. A continuous hum and tiny valleys of intonations, as she slipped between barely-disguised alarm and unfeigned ignorance. There was an aroma of fried garlic and the sizzle of peeled prawns in the wok. We had interrupted lunch. I glanced at the kitchen: the ladle was abandoned, the vegetables washed but unattended to, and the bottle of soy sauce uncapped, with a grand slick of black glistening down its side. There were plates laid out on the dining table, plastic ones with a floral design that one sees at home or humble coffee-shops, and haphazardly arranged utensils. The tenants came one by one, sulking and glowering at our presence in the centre of the living room. When we took a step forward, they recoiled a little further into the sofa, the armchair, trying to find shadowed recesses in a room lit by warm afternoon sun, and steadfastly averted our eyes. It became increasingly clear that we were unwelcome, and yet, beneath their subtle resentment was an uncertain acquiescence. It was their home, their sacred space, and only my second day, yet somehow, they couldn’t chase me out even if their body language indicated so.
We were four people standing in a living room that did not belong to any of us. Earlier, we had knocked on her door, and she opened it a crack, and upon seeing the white cards we extended, she swung the door away hurriedly and gestured at us to come in. She stared at the ground hesitantly, but shook away any comments with her head and began murmuring. We stood at the corridor, grabbing at the gate, leaning over and contorting ourselves to fit between thin grilles. Our words bounded out, firmer than we had been, longer, more official, and much stiffer. The authority cards lent us an un-bendable armour that we could button into. Her hands flew through the air in dizzying circles, and we realized that it was Vietnamese she was speaking, but that did not help us understand her better. We demanded to see every form of identification, but that fell on un-listening ears as she looked at us, stricken with distress. There was an impasse. The two seniors who came with me were growing impatient as they raked the house with searching eyes. She folded her lips and tried another method. Hesitant fragments of Mandarin fell out. I looked at her intently and nodded, as the foreign words left her pharynx, stretched their vowels, and joggled off their disuse.
"I have been staying here for a year already. My friend gave me this house- he is overseas a lot. He told me to take care of the place.""
"That one is my daughter's husband."
"These are my daughter's friends. They are only staying here for two weeks, and then, they will be going back to Vietnam."
"You have to believe me."
"This is my other daughter. She stays somewhere else, but she fell sick, so she stayed over and I made soup for her."
"I don't have any written contracts. We are family. We don't pay rent."
Haltingly, I attempted to translate for the other two, piecing sentences together as she interjected, slowly swelling with hope at being heard. They listened with a darkened brow and moved around the house. They knocked on a bedroom door and asked for employment passes. They ran through the standard questions and proceeded to another door. Brusquer now, and sharper, as they clipped questions to the essentials. A silent syllable of disbelief crept in between the pauses after the third bedroom. I followed them with keen eyes, noticing how their eye-line traveled from the ceiling to the floor and took in the living arrangements, how their knuckles brushed against the peeling paint, or how they traced the wireless cables from one room to another. It was evident that they had done this hundreds of times before. They knew exactly what to look for, where, and how, and even, why.
"Did you tell them? Do they understand?"
I jumped at her voice. She was standing next to me at shoulder height and slightly deflated now. I gave her an encouraging smile that I had hoped for her to construe as empathetic. She did not see it and instead, stared past me at the other two who were pointing at the beds and the tenants, with frowns on their faces. We went out to the living room again. The other people in the apartment were reclining on the couch, heads bent and lasering the floor. A woman was slouching in a makeshift hammock, strung between two cabinets, partially blocking the television set. Her body shuddered weakly to expel a coughing fit. A hand tumbled out at the side, and the other wrist was corked upon her forehead. She must be the one who had fallen ill. My seniors circled the room, taking the visas and permits extended. They pored over the documents, seized up the limp faces, and photographed the cards before handing them back to be stuffed roughly into back pockets. She tried to stagger upright when it was her turn, but was quickly stopped. That much courtesy, we could accord.
After the checks were done, we resumed the previous configuration in the hallway. The other two prodded me to ask her some questions in Mandarin. She could not hear me well and struggled to understand them, in the same manner that she had floundering to comprehend us, the nature of our work, and our symbolic position in a political hierarchy that was foreign to her. We are not big bad guys, but we were unknowns with a potential to figure largely in her immediate life, which was bad. There is a maze of bureaucracy and an entanglement of laws waiting to ensnare her, and she sensed their consuming presence, perhaps even more so in a country that speaks a different language, the forced insertion to a different rhyme and reason.
"I have stayed in Singapore for ten years already. You must believe me."
"Did you tell them? Translate to them please. Do they understand? Do you understand? Ten years..."
Her statements trailed off with a beseeching ellipsis. She touched my arm, as she looked back and forth between my stone-faced companions, who knew better, and me, who would have to learn the ways of 'knowing better' over time. Her eyes were wide and imploring and despairing. I translated what she had said to them, and they remained impassive as they turned their backs to leave.
"Believe me, I didn't tell any lies."
Nothing I could say could placate her, especially not words in an exotic tongue that only served to remind her that here is not her home. And especially since she could discern that I was essentially absent of power, despite being garbed to resemble its entity. It rings and recedes in my ears over the weeks, the peculiar mixture of helplessness and harmlessness. How do I begin to navigate this, now that I have entered the labyrinth?
We were four people standing in a living room that did not belong to any of us. Earlier, we had knocked on her door, and she opened it a crack, and upon seeing the white cards we extended, she swung the door away hurriedly and gestured at us to come in. She stared at the ground hesitantly, but shook away any comments with her head and began murmuring. We stood at the corridor, grabbing at the gate, leaning over and contorting ourselves to fit between thin grilles. Our words bounded out, firmer than we had been, longer, more official, and much stiffer. The authority cards lent us an un-bendable armour that we could button into. Her hands flew through the air in dizzying circles, and we realized that it was Vietnamese she was speaking, but that did not help us understand her better. We demanded to see every form of identification, but that fell on un-listening ears as she looked at us, stricken with distress. There was an impasse. The two seniors who came with me were growing impatient as they raked the house with searching eyes. She folded her lips and tried another method. Hesitant fragments of Mandarin fell out. I looked at her intently and nodded, as the foreign words left her pharynx, stretched their vowels, and joggled off their disuse.
"I have been staying here for a year already. My friend gave me this house- he is overseas a lot. He told me to take care of the place.""
"That one is my daughter's husband."
"These are my daughter's friends. They are only staying here for two weeks, and then, they will be going back to Vietnam."
"You have to believe me."
"This is my other daughter. She stays somewhere else, but she fell sick, so she stayed over and I made soup for her."
"I don't have any written contracts. We are family. We don't pay rent."
Haltingly, I attempted to translate for the other two, piecing sentences together as she interjected, slowly swelling with hope at being heard. They listened with a darkened brow and moved around the house. They knocked on a bedroom door and asked for employment passes. They ran through the standard questions and proceeded to another door. Brusquer now, and sharper, as they clipped questions to the essentials. A silent syllable of disbelief crept in between the pauses after the third bedroom. I followed them with keen eyes, noticing how their eye-line traveled from the ceiling to the floor and took in the living arrangements, how their knuckles brushed against the peeling paint, or how they traced the wireless cables from one room to another. It was evident that they had done this hundreds of times before. They knew exactly what to look for, where, and how, and even, why.
"Did you tell them? Do they understand?"
I jumped at her voice. She was standing next to me at shoulder height and slightly deflated now. I gave her an encouraging smile that I had hoped for her to construe as empathetic. She did not see it and instead, stared past me at the other two who were pointing at the beds and the tenants, with frowns on their faces. We went out to the living room again. The other people in the apartment were reclining on the couch, heads bent and lasering the floor. A woman was slouching in a makeshift hammock, strung between two cabinets, partially blocking the television set. Her body shuddered weakly to expel a coughing fit. A hand tumbled out at the side, and the other wrist was corked upon her forehead. She must be the one who had fallen ill. My seniors circled the room, taking the visas and permits extended. They pored over the documents, seized up the limp faces, and photographed the cards before handing them back to be stuffed roughly into back pockets. She tried to stagger upright when it was her turn, but was quickly stopped. That much courtesy, we could accord.
After the checks were done, we resumed the previous configuration in the hallway. The other two prodded me to ask her some questions in Mandarin. She could not hear me well and struggled to understand them, in the same manner that she had floundering to comprehend us, the nature of our work, and our symbolic position in a political hierarchy that was foreign to her. We are not big bad guys, but we were unknowns with a potential to figure largely in her immediate life, which was bad. There is a maze of bureaucracy and an entanglement of laws waiting to ensnare her, and she sensed their consuming presence, perhaps even more so in a country that speaks a different language, the forced insertion to a different rhyme and reason.
"I have stayed in Singapore for ten years already. You must believe me."
"Did you tell them? Translate to them please. Do they understand? Do you understand? Ten years..."
Her statements trailed off with a beseeching ellipsis. She touched my arm, as she looked back and forth between my stone-faced companions, who knew better, and me, who would have to learn the ways of 'knowing better' over time. Her eyes were wide and imploring and despairing. I translated what she had said to them, and they remained impassive as they turned their backs to leave.
"Believe me, I didn't tell any lies."
Nothing I could say could placate her, especially not words in an exotic tongue that only served to remind her that here is not her home. And especially since she could discern that I was essentially absent of power, despite being garbed to resemble its entity. It rings and recedes in my ears over the weeks, the peculiar mixture of helplessness and harmlessness. How do I begin to navigate this, now that I have entered the labyrinth?