GUEST LITERATURE – KOREA

. . . Father snatched up the kitchen knife but the gun barrel hit his forehead red first. Blood. As if it had been dyed with hollyhock. Mother cried: “Let her dress at least before you take her.” Swoon and hollyhock. Choking up. And torn. The brocade jacket smeared with red dye. Dragged out in my black skirt, I was fourteen . . .

Busan. Shimonoseki. Hiroshima . . . The military police turned us over to the army and left and then . . .

. . . and there was the day the actors came on tour for the troops with the smell of face powder coming off them in waves and they twirled their umbrellas and sang, they did, like a dream that didn’t end, and those little rounded umbrellas were so pretty, I dreamt that night of twirling umbrellas, I did, in the cremation tent filled with the smell of burning flesh like a thick white fog. A dream of twirling little round umbrellas jumping from one cadaver’s chest cavity to another . . .

At the base they gave the women names, they did, and mine was Muja [which means dancer] they pronounced it Maiko,

though up till then I’d never danced.

And in Hiroshima I picked clementines and figs all day. When the soldiers poked at our backs with the ends of their guns, the yellow of the clementines dangled in my cravings for meat, and I’d retch . . .

. . . the ship came, they said. We were going as nurses and the name of the ship was Midomaru. The ship was very big and on it we even learned army songs from a white-whiskered grandpa of an officer. Like we were riding the waves with our hands on our hips, we shook the waves and sang, we did.

Parao of the South Pacific islands. Off to Parao, like the inside of the mouth of a burning animal. That child she was fourteen.

BANIPAL 43 – SPRING 2012 155