terminal, through the half-used suburb of Mangere. Thought of the flight approaching New Zealand, when the stewardess re-emerged into his life by waking him – waking him by the unusual method of gently closing his snoring mouth with two incredibly white fingers – and pointing out to him the picture on the screen, a long white cloud lit from above by the newest risen sun of all time. Ah, New Zealand, he said. As they flew down the ridge of the land, cloud would break and there would be lit bays and green hills and the stolen lands that made up the young state shone like a reclaimed duvet of innocence. But when the plane came under the cloud, the grey engaged him like a furious reality and he would not eat his breakfast. Now he looked ahead through the video screen – land scooped into view – and now he looked out his window, and land passed him by, and the light outside was paler than the light withinthe last jet of his ten-year exile.
Mangere, an airport set in rural land like Narita. Only there were no Japanese farmers to fight the slow reclamation of harbour mudflats, the nationalisation of surrounding pasture, and the flightpath was over the peripheries of poverty that marked Auckland, as an unknowing schizophrenic is marked by his own ignorance. That moment as you reel from one state to another, enter the state of comfort, and wonder what you had just left behind. Mangere could be passed through like that, and speedily forgotten. One day, coming to the planes again, it would grin at you like a true land recovered. Only the Patient Heart was not thinking of a return to the terminal depressions and outrage of his past, but of a step towards requiting them, and he asked the driver to not leap through Mangere but, in the shadow of the squat green Mangere Mountain, to stop at what was called a lawn cemetery. It was acres larger now, but he knew the spot from a map in his mind and, as the taxi waited, some part of him was there long before his body ambled over, and – he remembered afterwards – his body was wearing an olive trenchcoat and his arms were huddling the cold body and the wind blew his matted hair, and he was the criminal from the outer reaches come at last to visit the grave of his grandparents, of the Dragon Lady who had died largely unmourned in his absence, and her long-suffering husband who had taken his exit some years before. Together now, and the grave wore photographs of the two when they were young and almost settled refugees, confronting a future forever on a strange half-used periphery.
He bowed three times. He had refused to do this after his grandfather’s death. Some antique ceremony from the outlands his young, modernising mind sought to leave behind. Now he bowed, and it was a gesture, not a belief – he had gone beyond the refugee culture that claimed to know it was Chinese – but the words he heard himself speak were heart-true, though bleak as the sky.
Grandparents, thank you for inviting me to visit you despite all the years that have passed. And you, grandmother, thank you, forI boycotted even the sight of you for years before my departure, anxious to live in the new world and repudiate those who drew me close to the old. Thank you, for I knew it was you both who mobilised ancestors to watch over me at every roadblock of every warlord rebel in every part of Africa. Ah, how I felt the charred descendant of that antique Chinese admiral who sailed to Africa and stayed, taking his Ming dinner set with him, and scattering the cups along the shores of Dar es Salaam as he watched his junks sail away forever. You drew me close, but not close enough. Couldn’t reach out at all in New Zealand and, from Africa, could reach only as far as Okinawa – part Japanese, part native, part Chinese. If we’re lucky we discover, do we not, half our past – and we need to reinvent the rest.
He bowed again, repeating the gesture like good manners. Went back along the boulevard of graves to
Mangere, an airport set in rural land like Narita. Only there were no Japanese farmers to fight the slow reclamation of harbour mudflats, the nationalisation of surrounding pasture, and the flightpath was over the peripheries of poverty that marked Auckland, as an unknowing schizophrenic is marked by his own ignorance. That moment as you reel from one state to another, enter the state of comfort, and wonder what you had just left behind. Mangere could be passed through like that, and speedily forgotten. One day, coming to the planes again, it would grin at you like a true land recovered. Only the Patient Heart was not thinking of a return to the terminal depressions and outrage of his past, but of a step towards requiting them, and he asked the driver to not leap through Mangere but, in the shadow of the squat green Mangere Mountain, to stop at what was called a lawn cemetery. It was acres larger now, but he knew the spot from a map in his mind and, as the taxi waited, some part of him was there long before his body ambled over, and – he remembered afterwards – his body was wearing an olive trenchcoat and his arms were huddling the cold body and the wind blew his matted hair, and he was the criminal from the outer reaches come at last to visit the grave of his grandparents, of the Dragon Lady who had died largely unmourned in his absence, and her long-suffering husband who had taken his exit some years before. Together now, and the grave wore photographs of the two when they were young and almost settled refugees, confronting a future forever on a strange half-used periphery.
He bowed three times. He had refused to do this after his grandfather’s death. Some antique ceremony from the outlands his young, modernising mind sought to leave behind. Now he bowed, and it was a gesture, not a belief – he had gone beyond the refugee culture that claimed to know it was Chinese – but the words he heard himself speak were heart-true, though bleak as the sky.
Grandparents, thank you for inviting me to visit you despite all the years that have passed. And you, grandmother, thank you, forI boycotted even the sight of you for years before my departure, anxious to live in the new world and repudiate those who drew me close to the old. Thank you, for I knew it was you both who mobilised ancestors to watch over me at every roadblock of every warlord rebel in every part of Africa. Ah, how I felt the charred descendant of that antique Chinese admiral who sailed to Africa and stayed, taking his Ming dinner set with him, and scattering the cups along the shores of Dar es Salaam as he watched his junks sail away forever. You drew me close, but not close enough. Couldn’t reach out at all in New Zealand and, from Africa, could reach only as far as Okinawa – part Japanese, part native, part Chinese. If we’re lucky we discover, do we not, half our past – and we need to reinvent the rest.
He bowed again, repeating the gesture like good manners. Went back along the boulevard of graves to
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