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I will never go home.
Over the next few days this realization took such a hold that I thought I
was losing my sanity. It was a disaster, and I had not seen it coming. I’m
never going to see my mother or Min-ho again.
My mind’s eye endlessly reran the taxi ride along the river and that final
second when I’d seen my house through the trees. Why didn’t I ask the
driver to pull over and let me out? I couldn’t stop thinking of that last
phone call from my mother. How desperate she’d sounded, and we didn’t
even say goodbye.
I was trapped in a foreign country with no identity. My aunt and uncle
were being good to me, but our family connection was so distant it was
beginning to make me uncomfortable. I would not be able to trespass on
their kindness for ever. The day would come when they’d want me to go.
What if I were to go home now?
No, I couldn’t. I had come too far. It was too late.
My cousin had left a guitar behind when he moved away. I started
playing the songs I used to sing in North Korea. These would make me cry.
I cried every day, so much that it became impossible to conceal from my
uncle and aunt. They were sympathetic but I could sense they were getting
fed up with me. I didn’t blame them.
At about this time, I had the first nightmare. I dreamed that my mother
had been arrested by the Bowibu and sent to a labour camp, one of the
political zones of no return, and had died there. Min-ho was now an orphan
and a beggar. I saw him – so vividly in my dream – walking alone along a
desolate dirt track. He was in rags and barefoot. His features had turned
mean and he was obsessed with food, like a feral dog. I felt paralysed with
guilt. The dream changed scene. Before she died, my mother had written to
me. It began: My dear daughter, I’m so sorry that I went first and that I
couldn’t take care of Min-ho …
I woke up gasping for air. When I realized it was a dream I started to sob
and became hysterical. The noise woke my aunt. She ran in to see what was
wrong, and held me as I cried. It had been so lucid, this dream, that I was
convinced something very bad had happened. There was no way to know.
The next day I was subdued. I felt bereaved.
The following night I had the second nightmare. I had sneaked over the
frozen river and was walking alone through a deserted Hyesan. It was night-
time, and nothing was lit. It was like a city of the dead. I went to my house.
Through the window I could make out my mother and Min-ho huddled
together. My mother was weeping and Min-ho was comforting her. They
had no money and no food. It was all my fault. I could only watch. If I
entered the gate the neighbours would see me and inform on me. I walked
to the river to find Chang-ho. I felt guilty about him, too. I saw him
patrolling the bank but I couldn’t approach him, so I hid in some trees and
watched from a distance. Suddenly, Bowibu agents emerged from the
shadows all around me. I ran for my life back across the ice to China, with
the sounds of whistles and police dogs behind me. Then I woke up.
These two dreams would replay over and over again. The same scenes
played on a loop, hundreds of times, night after night.
Any feeling that I was living a liberated life of excitement and discovery in
Shenyang had vanished. From that summer of 1998, I had entered a long
lonely valley. I deserved my fate. I had brought this upon myself.
If the chance came now I would do it, I thought. I would go back.
By now I knew that North Korea was not the greatest country on earth.
Not one of the Korean-Chinese friends of my uncle and aunt had a good
word to say about the place, and the Chinese media seemed to regard it as a
relic, an embarrassment. Shenyang’s newspapers openly lampooned Kim
Jong-il.
I didn’t care about any of that. My country was wherever my mother and
Min-ho lived. It was where my memories were from. It was where I’d been
happy. The very things I’d regarded as symbols of our backwardness I now
missed the most. Burning yontan, kerosene lamps, even Korea Central
Television with its Pioneer ensembles playing accordions. The simplicity of
life. One thing was for sure – I’d never known true misery until now.
One morning when my uncle and aunt had gone to work I called Mr
Ahn’s number in Changbai, hoping he could pass a message to my mother.
His phone was no longer in service. I got a dead signal each time I tried. In
the end I called his next-door neighbour, Mr Chang, the other trader my
mother knew.
He was very angry to receive my call.
‘Why are you calling me?’
‘I want to send a message to my mother.’
‘What are you talking about? I don’t know you.’
‘Yes, you—’
‘Don’t ever call this number again,’ he shouted, and hung up. I thought
perhaps he’d been drunk and so I tried again the next day. This time, the
line was dead.
My lifelines to Hyesan had been cut.
Aunt Sang-hee became desperate to pull me out of my despair. I was
becoming a serious worry to her. I had no role in life, and she could see I
was becoming depressed. She began to hatch a plan that she thought would
be the solution to my situation.
I knew nothing about it until one evening when the doorbell rang. I was
in my bedroom, as usual, playing sad songs on the guitar. She knocked
softly on the door, and told me I had a visitor.
My heart leapt. My depressed mind was making all kinds of irrational
connections. I thought maybe it was someone from Hyesan.
I followed her into the living room.
A tall young man I did not recognize was standing on the rug, holding a
bunch of pink azaleas. He was in his mid-twenties and looking sweaty and
ill at ease in a jacket and tie.
My aunt beamed. ‘Mi-ran,’ she said, using my alias, ‘this is Geun-soo.’
‘It’s my pleasure to meet you,’ he said, using the honorific form of
address. He bowed, and presented me with the azaleas, but his eyes did not
meet mine.
Chapter 22
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