'The Revolution According Raymundo Mata'

by Gina Apostol

Vocabulary:

Zap – a sudden forceful blow

Ingrate – ungrateful person
Pummel – pound or beat
Reproach – a rebuke or disapproval
Heave – rise
Heedless- not paying careful attention
Cantankerous – often angry/annoyed
Whiplash – a blow from a whip
Gesticulate – making gestures while speaking angrily
Obstreperous – difficult to control and noisy
Chronology - a record of order in which a series of events happened
Spleen – feelings of anger
Injunction – an order from a court that needs/ needs not to be done
Constitute – make up for something
Raving – irrational incoherent wild extravagant declamation or utterance
Infidels – one who is not a Christian

The Revolution According to Raymundo Mata

(Excerpt)
By Gina Apostol

It was a bolt – a thunder bolt. A rain of bricks, a lightning zap. A pummeling of mountains, a heaving violent storm at sea – a
whiplash. A typhoon. An earthquake. The end of the world. And I was in ruins. It struck me dumb. It changed my life and the
world was new when I was done. And when I raised myself from bed two days later, I thought: It’s only a novel. If I ever
met him, what would my life be? I lay back in bed. But what a novel! And I cursed him, the writer – what was his name – for
doing what I hadn’t done, for putting my worlds into words before I even had the sense to know what the world was. That
was his triumph – he’d laid out a trail, and all we had to do is follow his wake. Even then, I already felt the bitter envy, the
acid retch of a latecomer artist, the one who will always be under the influence, by mere chronology always slightly
suspect, a borrower, never lender be. After him, all Filipinos are tardy ingrates. What is the definition of art? Art is reproach
to those who receive it. That was his curse upon all of us. I was weak, as if drugged. I realized: I hadn’t eaten in two days.
Then I got out of bed and boiled barako for me.

Later it was all the rage in the coffee shops, in the bazaars of Binondo. People did not even hide it – crowds of men, and not
just students, not just boys, some women even, with their violent fans – gesticulating in public, throwing up their hands,
putting up fists in debate. Put your knuckle where your mouth is. We were loud, obstreperous, heedless. We were literary
critics. We were cantankerous: rude raving. And no matter which side you were, with the crown or with the infidels, Spain
or Spolarium, all of us, each one, seemed revitalized by spleen, hatched by the woods of long, venomous silence. And yes,
suddenly the world opened up to me, after the novel, to which before I had been blind.

***

Still I rushed into other debates, for instance with Benigno and Agapito, who had now moved into my rooms.
Remembering Father Gaspar’s cryptic injunction - “throw it away to someone else,” so that in this manner the book
traveled rapidly in those dark days of its printing, now so nostalgically glorious, though then I had no clue that these were
historic acts, the act of reading, or that the book would be such a collector’s item, or otherwise I would have wrapped it in
parchment and sealed it for the highest bidder, what the hell, I only knew holding the book could very likely constitute a
glorious crime – in short, I lent it to Benigno.

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 Padre Faura Witnesses the Execution of Rizal
by Danton Remoto

1 I stand on the roof

2 Of the Ateneo Municipal,
3 Shivering
4 On this December morning,

5 Months ago,
6 Pepe came to me
7 In the Observatory.
8 I thought we would talk.

9 About the stars

10 That do not collide
11 In the sky:
12 Instead, he asked me about purgatory.

13 (His cheeks still ruddy

14 From the sudden sun
15 After the bitter winters
16 In Europe.)

17 And on this day

18 With the year beginning to turn,
19 Salt stings my eyes.
20 I see Pepe,

21 A blur
22 Between the soldiers
23 With their Mausers raised
24 And the early morning's

25 Star:
26 Still shimmering
27 Even if millions of miles away
28 The star itself

29 Is already dead.

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 APO ON THE WALL

1. There’s this man’s photo on the wall

2. Of my father’s office at home, you
3. Know, where father brings his work,
4. Where he doesn’t look strange
5. Still wearing his green uniform
6. And colored breast plates, where,
7. To prove that he works hard, he
8. Also brought a photo of his boss
9. Whom he calls Apo, so Apo could
10. You know, hang around on the wall
11. Behind him and look over his shoulders
12. To make sure he’s snappy and all.
13. Father snapped at me once, caught me
14. Sneaking around his office at home
15. Looking at the stuff on his wall- handguns,
16. Plaques, a sword, medals a rifle-
17. Told me that was no place for a boy
18. Only men, when he didn’t really
19. Have to tell me because, you know,
20. That photo of Apo on the wall was already
21. Looking at me around,
22. His eyes following me like he was
23. That scary Jesus in the hallway, saying
24. I know what you’re doing.

Reference: 21st Century Literature from the Philippines and the World by Marikit Tara Uychoco

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 Flicker Fade Gone
by Carljoe Javier

He brought the pistol up to shoulder level, let his right hand fingers wrap smoothly around it, put
the palm of his left hand on the butt for support. The gun was light in his hand as he swung it from left to
right, clearing the perimeter while he zoomed into the grocery store.
He’d been through this before, but he still tensed as he slid through the store’s shattered glass
door. He went over the mission’s specs in his head: at least 30 perps in the store, plus three employees
still inside.

Bang bang bang, three to the chest. Reload. One had jumped in front of him as he stepped
through the diaper aisle. Next aisle, canned goods, three perps, one holding a knife to a hostage. His arm
glided from left to right, bang bang, two in the chest, perp down. Bang, headshot. Reload. Last crook on
the right with the hostage: one to the leg, hostage runs, bang, headshot. Reload.
He went through the rest of the grocery in the same methodical manner. Bang bang bang, reload;
bang bang bang, reload; bang bang bang, reload; it was a rhythm that he’d developed over the years.
Cutting down the perps gave him a rush, but his adrenaline got pumping whenever there was a hostage
to save.
As he went through the cashier’s counters he could hear his heartbeat pounding in his ears and
feel the pistol getting slippery from his sweating palm. One more hostage, he thought.
Bang, ugh, he’d taken a hit. A thug had popped up from behind a counter with the hostage. While
the woman struggled against him the thug raised his arm to take aim again. Bang bang bang, reload.
ALL HOSTAGES SAVED. He smiled, put the pistol back in his holster and wiped his palms on his
pants. He watched onscreen as his statistics were tallied: Hits Taken: 1; Hostages Saved: 3; Shots
Taken: 105; Hits: 97; Accuracy: 92%. Not bad, he said to himself.
He left the machine and paced around the empty arcade trying to decide what enemies he’d face
next. He took the nylon string necklace that served as a key chain off. In his right hand he played with the
master key, sliding it through his fingers. With it he was the master of the arcade; with one turn of the key
he could become Spiderman or Cyclops, a World War II pilot, an F-1 racer; or he could take up a gun and
shoot down secret agents, terrorists, terminators, zombies, dinosaurs. He played almost all the games,
and the games where there were people to save drew him most.

He put the key into the slot, turned it, and put the key back around his neck. His hands slid onto
the keypad; right hand fingers crawling over the buttons, left hand wrapping around the joystick. Staring
into the screen he could see his reflection at first, but as the game started he felt his image fading,
replaced by the action onscreen.

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javier.html#more
 The Waiting
By Ron Darvin

Written as a springboard for discussion of how long-term separation impacts the lives of migrant
families, this short play was first performed at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada in
November 20'1,4. No set is required to stage this-play. The two characters-Isabel, a Filipino woman in her
early 40s, and Miguel, her 1S-year old son-face the audience as they recite their monologues.

Isabel: Mabuhay! My name is Isabel and I'm from the archipelago of 7,107 islands, high tide-2108
low tide-the Philippines! I'm 31. I’m just kidding! I'm 41. I just wanted to see if you'll believe me. Because
you know, my friends, they ask me "Isabel, what's your secret for looking so young?" And I tell them, "Hay
naku, lnday, it's all about moisturizing! That's why I use Dove. You know? 'Because you're more beautiful
than you think!"'

There are many Doves, but my favorite is Dove Pomegranate. Ay, it smells so good! You know in
Manila I didn't even know what a pomegranate was. The first time I saw one here in Canada I said, Oh
my! All those seeds! So hard to eat! That's why I just put it on my face.

So I've been living here in Vancouver for eight years now. First two years as live-in caregiver for
the Choi family. After staying with the Chois, I got an open work permit so I opened the door of my life. I
told myself, "This is it, Isabel! This is your chance to find new opportunities!" And you know, when I was
young, I always said "I want to be on Broadway!" $o I got a job here at Tim Horton's near the train
station... on Broadway!

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Turban Legend by R Zamora Linmark

By the time Vince arrives at the Philippine Airlines departures terminal, it is already bustling with restless
souls who, with their balikbayan boxes, have transformed the terminal into a warehouse, as if they're
returning to the motherland on a cargo ship rather than Asia's first airline carrier. Comedians use these
durable cardboard boxes as materials for their Filipino-flavored jokes. "How is the balikbayan box like
American Express to Filipinos? Because they never leave home without it."

Everywhere Vince turns are boxes, boxes, and. more boxes. Boxes secured by electrical tape and ropes.
Boxes with drawstring covers made from canvas or tarp. Boxes lined up like a fortified wall behind check-
in counters or convoying on squeaky conveyor belts of x-ray machines. Boxes blocking the Mabuhay
Express lane for first-and business-class passengers. Boxes stacked up on carts right beside coach
passengers standing in queues that are straight only at their starting points before branching out to form
more-or converge with other-lines, bottlenecking as they near the ticket counter.

Boxes that ought to be the Philippines' exhibit at the next World's Fai1, Vince tells himself as he navigates
his cartload of Louis Vuitton bags in and out of the maze. An exhibit that should take place none other
than here, at the Honolulu International Airport, he laughs, as he imagines an entire terminal buried in the
Filipinos' most popular-and preferred-pieces of luggage.

With a balikbayan boa Filipinos can pack cans of Hormel corned beef, Libby's Vienna sausage, Folgers,
and SPAM; perfume samples; new or hand-me-down designer jeans; travel-sized bottles of shampoo,
conditioner, and body lotion gleaned from Las Vegas hotels; and appliances marked with first-world labels
that, as anyone who's been to the Philippines knows, can easily be purchased at Duty Free right outside
the airport or from any of the crypt-like malls that are so gargantuan they're a metropolis unto themselves.

Filipinos will even throw themselves into these boxes, as was the case of the overseas contract worker in
Dubai. The man, an engineer was so homesick that, unable to afford the ticket-most of his earnings went
to cover his living expenses and the rest to his wife and children-he talked his roommate, who was
homebound for the holidays, into checking him in. He paid for the excess baggage fee, which still came
out cheaper than a round-trip airfare. En route to Manila, he died from hypothermia.

Vince, who had heard the story from his older sister Jing, didn't buy it. There were too many loopholes,
too many unanswered questions, like wouldn't an x-ray machine in the Middle East detect a Filipino man
curled up inside a box? He simply dismissed it as a "turban legend."

"You're missing the point brother," Jing said. "It's not the mechanics that matter. It's about drama. The
extremes a Filipino will go to just to be back home for Christmas with his family."

http://teachersnookrai.blogspot.com/2016/10/turban-legend-by-r-zamora-linmark.html

JUSTICE
by Ralph Semino Galdan

1 These are the accoutrements of her office:

2 the blindfold symbolizing impartiality;
3 a golden pair of scales measuring the validity

4 of evidence given both pro and con;

5 the double-edged sword that pierces through
6 the thick fabric of lies; Thoth's feather

7 of truth which ultimately determines whether

8 the defendant's life is worth saving.
9 In J. Elizalde Navarro's oil painting titled

10 Is this Philippine Justice? The figure

11 of the Roman goddess Justitia slowly fades
12 into thin air, swallowed by pigments

13 cloudy as doubts. In my uncertain country

14 where right and wrong are cards
15 that can be shuffled like a pile of money bills,

16 even the land's Chief Magistrate

17 is not immune from culpability; found guilty
18 he has to face the music of derision

http://teachersnookrai.blogspot.com/2016/10/justice-by-ralph-semino-galdan.html
 Preludes
By Daryll Delgado

A man died singing. He had sung a total of three songs before he heaved his last breath and collaps"d o.r u
chair. It happened at the Municipal Hall. The time was three in the afternoon-. The sun was high. Heat seeped
into people's bones. Tuba warned their blood even more. Someone's ninth death anniversary was being
celebrated. Another man's life in that party ended. It ended on a high note.

At that very moment, Nenit4 the wife, was at home, picking leaves for a medicinal brew. Earlier that day,
Nenita had been lying on the sofa, slipping in and out of an afternoon sleep she should not have heeded,
embracing Willy Revillame in her dreams. She had had n-o plans of taking a nap. She had just wanted to catch a
glimpse of Willy after she sent off her grandson for the city, just before she resumed her cooking.

At the sala, she opened the window to let some breeze in. But the air was so dry. Outside it was very quiet.
Everyone was at the Hall, to attend the ninth death anniversary of the juez. Most of them bore the judge a
grudge, but they were all there anyway, eager to see what kind of feast his children had prepared. The children
had all come home from America and Europe for this very important occasion in the dead man's journey.
Nenita herself did not mind the judge really, even if she had always found him rather severe. It was the wife
whom Nenita did not feel very comfortable with. There had been some very persistent rumors involving the
judge's wife that Nenita did not care so much for.

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Lengua Para Diablo (The Devil Ate My Words)

[Excerpt from Banana Heart Summer]
by Merlinda Bobis

I suspected that my father sold his tongue to the devil. He had little to say in our house. Whenever he felt
like disagreeing with my mother, he murmured. 'The devil ate my words'. This meant he forgot what he
was about to say and Mother was often appeased. There was more need for appeasement after he lost
his job.

The devil ate his words, the devil ate his capacity for words. The devil ate his tongue. But perhaps only
after prior negotiation with its owner what with Mother always complaining, I'm already taking a peek at
hell!' when it got too hot and stuffy in our tiny house. She seemed to sweat more that summer, and
miserably. She made it sound like Father's fault, so he cajoled her with kisses and promises of an electric
far; bigger windows, a bigger house, but she pushed him away, saying, 'Get off me, I'm hot, ay, this
hellish life!' Again he was ready to pledge relief, but something in my mother's eyes made him mutter only
the usual excuse, 'The devil ate my words,' before he shut his mouth. Then he ran to the tap to get more
water"

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The Safe House

by Sandra Nicole Roldan
From the street, it is one box among many. Beneath terracotta roof tiles baking uniformly in the sweltering
noon the building/s grey concrete face stares out impassively in straight lines and angles. Its walls are
high and wide, as good walls should be. A four-storey building with four units to a floor. At dusk, the
square glass windows glitter like the compound eyes of insects, revealing little of what happens inside.
There is not much else to see.

And so this house seems in every way identical to all the other houses in all the thirty-odd other buildings
nestled within the gates of this complex. It is the First Lady's pride and joy, a housing project designed for
genteel middle class living. There is a clubhouse, a swimming pool, a tennis court. A few residents drive
luxury cars. People walk purebred dogs in the morning. Trees shade the narrow paths and the flowering
hedges that border each building give the neighborhood a hushed, cozy feel. It is easy to get lost here.

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Silk [Excerpt]
by Alessandro Baricco
(Italy)

A rice-paper panel slid open, and Herve Joncour entered. Hara Kei was sitting cross-legged, on the floor,
in the farthest corner of the room. He had on a dark tunic, and wore no jewels. The only visible sign of his
power was a woman lying beside him, unmoving, her head resting on his lap, eyes closed, arms hidden
under a loose red robe that spread around her, like a flame, on the ash-colored mat. Slowly he ran one
hand through her hair: He seemed to be caressing the coat of a precious, sleeping animal.

Herve Joncour crossed the room, waited for a sign from his host, and sat down opposite him. A servant
arrived, imperceptibly, and placed before them two cups of tea. Then he vanished. Hara Kei began to
speak, in his own language, in a singsong voice that melted into a sort of irritating artifi cial falsetto. Herve
Joncour listened. He kept his eyes fi xed on those of Hara Kei and only for an instant, almost without
realizing it, lowered them to the face of the woman.

It was the face of a girl. He raised them again. Hara Kei paused, picked up one of the cups of tea,
brought it to his lips, let some moments pass and said,

“Try to tell me who you are.” He said it in French, drawing out the vowels, in a hoarse voice but true.
__________

To the most invincible man in Japan, the master of all the world might take away from that island, Herve
Joncour tried to explain who he was. He did it in his own language, speaking slowly, without knowing
precisely if Hara Kei was able to understand. Instinctively, he rejected prudence, reporting simply, without
inventions and without omissions, everything that was true. He set forth small details and crucial events in
the same tone, and with barely visible gestures, imitating the hypnotic pace, melancholy and neutral, of a
catalog of objects rescued from a fi re. Hara Kei listened, and not a shadow of an expression
discomposed the features of his face. He kept his eyes fixed on Herve Joncour’s lips, as if they were the
last lines of a farewell letter. The room was so silent and still that what happened unexpectedly seemed a
huge event and yet was nothing.

Suddenly, without moving at all, that girl opened her eyes.

Herve Joncour did not pause but instinctively lowered his gaze to her, and what he saw, without pausing,
was that those eyes did not have an Oriental shape, and that they were fixed, with a disconcerting
intensity, on him: as if from the start, from under the eyelids, they had done nothing else. Herve Joncour
turned his gaze elsewhere, as naturally as he could, trying to continue his story with no perceptible
difference in his voice. He stopped only when his eyes fell on the cup of tea, placed on the floor, in front
of him. He took it in one hand, brought it to hips lips, and drank slowly. He began to speak again as he set
it down in front of him.
__________

France, the ocean voyages, the scent of the mulberry trees in Lavilledieu, the steam trains, Helene’s
voice. Herve Joncour continued to tell the story, as he had never in his life done. The girl continued to
stare at him, with a violence that wrenched from every word the obligation to be memorable. The room
seemed to have slipped into an irreversible stillness when suddenly, and in utter silence, she stuck one
hand outside her robe and slid it along the mat in front of her. Herve Joncour saw that pale spot reach the
end of his field of vision, saw it touch Hara Kei’s cup of tea and then, absurdly, continue to slide until,
without hesitation, it grasped the other cup, which was inexorably the cup he had drunk from, raised it
lightly, and carried it away. Not for an instant had Hara Kei stopped staring expressionlessly at Herve
Joncour’s lips.

The girl lifted her head slightly. For the first time she took her eyes off Herve Joncour and rested them on
the cup.

Slowly, she rotated it until she had her lips at the exact point where he had drunk.

Half-closing her eyes, she took a sip of tea. She removed the cup from her lips.

She slid it back to where she had picked it up. Her hand vanished under her robe. She rested her head
again on Hara Kei’s lap. Eyes open, fixed on those of Herve Joncour.
__________

Herve Joncour spoke again at length. He stopped only when Hara Kei took his eyes off him and nodded
his head slightly.

Silence.

In French, drawing out the vowels, in a hoarse voice but true, Hara Kei said, “If you are willing, I would
like to see you return.”
For the fi rst time he smiled.

“The eggs you have with you are fish eggs. Worth little more than nothing.”

Herve Joncour lowered his gaze. There was his cup of tea, in front of him. He picked it up and began to
revolve it, and to observe it, as if he were searching for something on the painted line of the rim. When he
found what he was looking for, he placed his lips there and drank. Then he put the cup down in front of
him and said, “I know.”

Hara Kei laughed in amusement. “Is that why you paid in false gold? ”

“I paid for what I bought.” Hara Kei became serious again.

“When you leave here, you will have what you want.”

“When I leave this island, alive, you will receive the gold that is due you. You have my word.”

Herve Joncour did not expect an answer. He rose, took a few steps backward, and bowed.

The last thing he saw, before he left, was her eyes, staring into his, perfectly mute.
http://teachersnookrai.blogspot.com/2016/10/world-lit-excerpt-silk-by-alessandro.html

Coraline [Excerpt]
by Neil Gaiman (England)

It sounded like her mother. Coraline went into the kitchen, where the voice had come from. A woman
stood in the kitchen with her back to Coraline. She looked a little like Coraline’s mother. Only…

Only her skin was white as paper.

Only she was taller and thinner.

Only her fingers were too long, and they never stopped moving, and her dark red fingernails were
curved and sharp.

“Coraline?” the woman said. “Is that you?”

And then she turned around. Her eyes were big black buttons.

“Lunchtime, Coraline,” said the woman.

“Who are you?” asked Coraline.

“I’m your other mother,” said the woman. “Go and tell your other father that lunch is ready,” She
opened the door of the oven. Suddenly Coraline realized how hungry she was. It smelled wonderful. “Well, go
on.”

Coraline went down the hall, to where her father’s study was. She opened the door. There was a man
in there, sitting at the keyboard, with his back to her. “Hello,” said Coraline. “I – I mean, she said to say that
lunch is ready.”

The man turned around.

His eyes were buttons, big and black and shiny.

“Hello Coraline,” he said. “I’m starving.”

He got up and went with her into the kitchen. They sat at the kitchen table, and Coraline’s other
mother brought them lunch. A huge, golden-brown roasted chicken, fried potatoes, tiny green peas. Coraline
shoveled the food into her mouth. It tasted wonderful.

“We’ve been waiting for you for a long time,” said Coraline’s other father.

“For me?”

“Yes,” said the other mother. “It wasn’t the same here without you. But we knew you’d arrive one
day, and then we could be a proper family. Would you like some more chicken?”

It was the best chicken that Coraline had ever eaten. Her mother sometimes made chicken, but it was
always out of packets or frozen, and was very dry, and it never tasted of anything. When Coraline’s father
cooked chicken he bought real chicken, but he did strange things to it, like stewing it in wine, or stuffing it with
prunes, or baking it in pastry, and Coraline would always refuse to touch it on principle.
 She took some more chicken.

“I didn’t know I had another mother,” said Coraline, cautiously.

“Of course you do. Everyone does,” said the other mother, her black button eyes gleaming. “After
lunch I thought you might like to play in your room with the rats.”

“The rats?”

“From upstairs.”

Coraline had never seen a rat, except on television. She was quite looking forward to it. This
was turning out to be a very interesting day after all.

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The Folded Earth [Excerpt]

by Anuradha Roy (India)

My rival in love was not a woman but a mountain range. It was very soon after my wedding that I discovered this. We
had defied our families to be together, and those first few months we were exultant castaways who had fitted the universe into
two rented rooms and a narrow bed. Daytime was only waiting for evening, when we would be together. Nights were not for
sleeping. It took many good-byes before we could bear to walk off in different directions in the mornings. Not for long.

It began in little ways—silences, the poring over maps, the unearthing of boots and jackets stuffed in a suitcase under
our bed—and then the slow-burning restlessness in Michael became overpowering. He was with me, but not with me. His feet
walked on flat land but flexed themselves for inclines. He lay at night with his eyes open, dreaming. He studied weather reports for
places I had never heard of.

Michael was not a climber; he was a press photographer. Through a school friend whose father was an editor, he had
found a job with a newspaper when we got married. We could not afford more than an annual trek for him in the mountains and
that one trek was what he lived for all year.
Michael’s yearnings made me understand how it is that some people have the mountains in them while some have the
sea. The ocean exerts an inexorable pull over sea people wherever they are—in a bright-lit, inland city or the dead center of a
desert— and when they feel the tug there is no choice but somehow to reach it and stand at its immense, earth-dissolving edge,
straightaway calmed. Hill people, even if they are born in flatlands, cannot be parted for long from the mountains. Anywhere else
is exile. Anywhere else, the ground is too fl at, the air too dense, the trees too broad-leaved for beauty. The color of the light is all
wrong, the sounds nothing but noise.
I knew from our student days together that Michael trekked and climbed. What I had not known was that his need for
the mountains was as powerful as his need for me. We were far away from the high peaks: we lived in Hyderabad. The journey to
the foothills of the Himalaya took two nights on trains and cars and it took many more days to reach the peaks. No hills closer at
hand would do. Not the Nilgiris, nor the entire Western Ghats. It had to be the Himalaya—it would be impossible for e to
understand why until I experienced it, Michael told me, and one day I would. Meanwhile, each year, the rucksack and sleeping bag
came out and his body left in a trail of his mind, which was already nine thousand feet above sea level and climbing.
One year, Michael decided to go on a trek to Roopkund, a lake in the Himalaya at about sixteen thousand feet. It is
reached by a long, hard climb toward the Trishul, a snow peak that is more than twenty-two thousand feet high. For much of the
year, its water remains frozen. A park ranger stumbled upon the lake in 1942 and it has been an enigma ever since: it contains the
bones and skulls, preserved by the cold, of some six hundred people who died there in the ninth century, some say the sixth. Many
of the skeletons wore gold anklets, bracelets, necklaces, and bangles. Six hundred travelers at that altitude, in that stark
wilderness—where were they going? Impossible to tell: there was no known route from Roopkund to Tibet, or to anywhere else.
How did they die? Archeologists think they may have been caught in an avalanche or hit by large hailstones: there are tennis-ball-
sized dents on many of the skulls.
The bones were stripped of their jewelry and most of them were left where they were. And there they have remained,
although momento-seekers have carried off bits and pieces as trophies. Even now, each time the lake melts during the monsoon,
bones and skulls float in the water and wash up at its edges. Michael had tried to reach Roopkund once before and failed because
of bad weather and lack of experience. This time, he had better equipment, he said; he was timing it differently, he knew what to
expect. Even so, I felt a cloud of dread grow and darken as the day for his departure neared. I found myself looking at him with an
intensity I had forgotten over six years of being married to him. The smell of him, which I breathed in deep as if to store inside me;
the bump on his nose where it had been broken when he was a boy; the early lines of gray in his hair; the way he cleared his throat
mid-sentence and pulled at his earlobes when thinking hard.
He knew I was worrying, and the night before he left, as I lay on my stomach and his fingers wandered my tense back
and aching neck, he told me in a voice hardly more than a murmur about the route: the trek was not really difficult, he said, it only
sounded as if it was. His fingers went down my spine and up my neck while an iron ball of fear grew heavier inside me. Many had
done it before, he said. The rains and snow would have retreated from that altitude by the time they reached it; there would be
wildflowers all over the high meadows on their route. His hands worked their way from my legs to my shoulders, finding knotted
muscles, teasing them loose before he returned to my back. The boots, sleeping bag, tent, would be checked, every zip tried,
every rope tested. The bulbs and batteries in his headlamp were new, he would get himself better sunglasses in Delhi. It was as if
he was running through a list in his head.
Each item he mentioned reminded me of things that could go wrong. I did not want to know any more. I touched his
always fast-growing stubble and I think I said, “By the time you’re home you’ll have a beard again, like every other time.” My
fingers held the inch or two of fat he had recently grown at his waist. “And you’ll have lost this. You’ll be thin and starved.”
“Completely starved,” he said. “Lean and hungry.” His teeth tugged at my earlobes. He stretched over me to switch on
the shaded lamp by our bed and traced with his eyes every curve of my face and the dimple on my chin. “Why did he marry this
girl?” he said in a voice that imitated the stereotypical older relative. “Why did he marry this stick-thin girl, as dark as boot polish?
All you can see in her face are her big eyes.” He ran his fingers through the tangled mass of my hair. “Almost at your waist, Maya.
Where will it have grown to by the time I’m back?” I could smell onions frying although it was almost midnight. On our neighbor’s
radio, a prosaic voice reported floods, scams, train accidents, cricket scores. Michael’s hand wandered downward until it reached
my hips. He said, “Your hair will be here—or maybe longer? This far?

I switched the light off .

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The news came to me by way of my landlord, who had a telephone. They had found Michael’s body after three days of
searching. It was close to the lake, I was told, he had almost made it there when the landslides, rain, and snowstorms came and
separated Michael from the others with him. His body had a broken ankle, which was no doubt why he had not been able to move
to a less exposed place. And the face was unrecognizable, burned black by the cold.

http://teachersnookrai.blogspot.com/2016/10/the-folded-earth-by-anuradha-roy-india.html

The Valley of Amazement [Excerpt]

by Amy Tan (USA)

At the age of eight, I was determined to be true to My Self. Of course, that made it essential to know
what My Self consisted of. My manifesto began the day I discovered I had once possessed an extra finger in
each hand, twins to my pinkies. My grandmother had recommended that the surplus be amputated before
leaving the hospital, lest people think there was a familial tendency toward giving birth to octopuses.

Mother and Father were Freethinkers, whose opinions were based on reason, logic, deduction, and
their own opinions. Mother, who disagreed with any advice my grandmother had to give, said: “Should the
extra fingers be removed simply to enable her to wear gloves from a dry goods store?” They took me home
with all my fingers in place. But then an old family friend of my father’s, Mr. Maubert, who was also my piano
teacher, convinced them to turn my unusual hands into ordinary ones. He was a former concert pianist, who,
early in his promising career, lost his right arm during the siege of Paris by the Prussians. “There are only a few
piano compositions for one hand,” he said to my parents, “and none for six fingers. If you intend for her to
have musical training, it would be a pity if she had to take up the tambourine due to lack of suitable
instruments.” Mr. Maubert was the one who proudly informed me when I was eight that he had influenced the
decision.

Few can understand the shock of a little girl learning that part of her was considered undesirable and
thus needed to be completely removed. It made me fearful that people could change parts of me, without my
knowledge and permission. And thus began my quest to know which of my many attributes I needed to
protect, the whole of which I named scientifically “My Pure Self-Being.”

In the beginning, the complete list comprised my preferences and dislikes, my strong feelings for
animals, my animosity toward anyone who laughed at me, my aversion to stickiness, and several more things I
have now forgotten. I also collected secrets about myself, mostly what had wounded my heart, and the very
fact that they needed to be kept private was proof of My Pure Self-Being. I later added to my list my
intelligence, opinions of others, fears and revulsions, and certain nagging discomforts, which I later knew as
worries. A few years later, after I stained my undergarments, Mother explained to me “the biology that led to
your existence”—the gist of which was my beginning as an egg slipping down a fallopian tube. She made it
sound as if I had been a mindless blob and that upon entry into the world I took on a personality shaped
through my parents’ guidance.

http://teachersnookrai.blogspot.com/2016/10/world-lit-excerpt-valley-of-amazement.html

A Thousand Splendid Suns [Excerpt]

by Khaled Hosseini (Afghanistan)

Mariam had never before worn a burqa. Rasheed had to help her put it on. The padded headpiece felt
tight and heavy on her skull, and it was strange seeing the world through a mesh screen. She practiced walking
around her room in it and kept stepping on the hem and stumbling. The loss of peripheral vision was
unnerving, and she did not like the suffocating way the pleated cloth kept pressing against her mouth.

“You’ll get used to it,” Rasheed said. “With time, I bet you’ll even like it.” They took a bus to a place
Rasheed called the Shar-e-Nau Park, where children pushed each other on swings and slapped volleyballs over
ragged nets tied to tree trunks. They strolled together and watched boys fly kites, Mariam walking beside
Rasheed, tripping now and then on the burqa’s hem. For lunch, Rasheed took her to eat in a small kebab house
near a mosque he called the Haji Yaghoub. The floor was sticky and the air smoky. The walls smelled faintly of
raw meat and music, which Rasheed described to her as logari, was loud. The cooks were thin boys who
fanned skewers with one hand and swatted gnats with the other. Mariam, who had never been inside a
restaurant, found it odd at first to sit in a crowded room with so many strangers, to lift her burqa to put
morsels of food into her mouth. A hint of the same anxiety as the day at the tandoor stirred in her stomach,
but Rasheed’s presence was of some comfort, and, after a while, she did not mind so much the music, the
smoke, even the people. And the burqa, she learned to her surprise, was also comforting. It was like a one-way
window. Inside it, she was an observer, buffered from the scrutinizing eyes of strangers. She no longer worried
that people knew, with a single glance, all the shameful secrets of her past.

__________

The women in this part of Kabul were a different breed from the women in the poorer
neighborhoods—like the one where she and Rasheed lived, where so many of the women covered fully. These
women were—what was the word Rasheed had used?—“modern.” Yes, modern Afghan women married to
modern Afghan men who did not mind that their wives walked among strangers with makeup on their faces
and nothing of their heads. Mariam watched them cantering uninhibited down the street, sometimes with a
man, sometimes alone, sometimes with rosy-cheeked children who wore shiny shoes and watches with leather
bands, who walked bicycles with high-rise handlebars and gold-colored spokes—unlike the children in Deh-
Mazang, who bore sand-fl y scars on their cheeks and rolled old bicycle tires with sticks.

__________

The women were all swinging handbags and rustling skirts. Mariam even spotted one smoking behind
the wheel of a car. Their nails were long, polished pink or orange, their lips red as tulips. They walked in high
heels, and quickly, as if on perpetually urgent business. They wore dark sunglasses, and, when they breezed by,
Mariam caught a whiff of their perfume. She imagined that they all had university degrees, that they worked in
office buildings, behind desks of their own, where they typed and smoked and made important phone calls to
important people. These women mystified Mariam. They made her aware of her own lowliness, her plain looks,
her lack of aspirations, her ignorance of so many things.
http://teachersnookrai.blogspot.com/2016/10/a-thousand-splendid-suns-by-khaled.html

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time [Excerpt]

by Mark Haddon (England)

I find people confusing.

This is for two main reasons.

The first main reason is that people do a lot of talking without using any words. Siobhan says that if you
raise one eyebrow it can mean lots of different things. It can mean “I want to do sex with you” and it can
also mean “I think that what you said was very stupid.”

Siobhan also says that if you close your mouth and breathe out loudly through your nose, it can mean
that you are relaxed, or that you are bored, or that you are angry, and it all depends on how much air
comes out of your nose and how fast and what shape your mouth is when you do it and how you are
sitting and what you said just before and hundreds of other things which are too complicated to work out
in a few seconds.

The second main reason is that people often talk using metaphors. These are examples of metaphors:

I laughed my socks off.

He was the apple of her eye.
They had a skeleton in the cupboard.
We had a real pig of a day.
The dog was stone dead.

The word metaphor means carrying something from one place to another, and it comes from the Greek
words μετα (which means from one place to another) and φέρω (which means to carry), and it is when
you describe something by using a word for something that it isn’t. This means that the word metaphor is
a metaphor.

I think it should be called a lie because a pig is not like a day and people do not have skeletons in their
cupboards. And when I try and make a picture of the phrase in my head, it just confuses me because
imagining an apple in someone’s eye doesn’t have anything to do with liking someone a lot and it makes
you forget what the person was talking about.

My name is a metaphor. It means carrying Christ and it comes from the Greek words Χριστός (which
means Jesus Christ) and φέρειν and it was the name given to St. Christopher because he carried Jesus
Christ across a river.

This makes you wonder what he was called before he carried Christ across the river. But he wasn’t called
anything because this is an apocryphal12 story, which means that it is a lie, too.

Mother used to say that it meant Christopher was a nice name because it was a story about being kind
and helpful, but I do not want my name to mean a story about being kind and helpful. I want my name to
mean me.

http://teachersnookrai.blogspot.com/2016/10/world-lit-excerpt-curious-incident-of.html