In the Shadow of the Banyan

“Decency, justice, integrity…I believed in these and always will. Not only for myself but for our children. All this”—he looked around the courtyard—“will come and go, Aana. Privileges, wealth, our titles and names are transient. But these ideals are timeless, the core of our humanity. I want our girls to grow up in a world that allows them, if nothing else, these. A world without such ideals is madness.”

“There will remain only so many of us as rest in the shadow of a banyan tree,” again Grandmother Queen murmured, and I didn’t understand why crazy people always feel the need to say the same thing twice. “The fighting will continue. The only safe place is here…under the banyan.”

I had pored over the words countless times now, and this last bit—bodies of men and monkeys and deities alike—still unsettled me. I imagined a scene of such carnage that you couldn’t tell who was who among the dead. […] One entity could manifest as another, and if you didn’t know who was who to begin with, then how were you to recognize the devas from the demons?

“Ayuravann”—Big Uncle adopted a tone that sounded like he was reprimanding his elder brother—“they’re not the same men you studied philosophy and history and literature with in France.” He looked at Papa until Papa returned his gaze. “Nor are they people whose daily struggles and aspirations you’ve tried to capture and convey in your poetry. They are children who’ve been given guns—power beyond their years.”

“Can one not be sympathetic to their cause?” Papa said, his voice tentative. “To the ideals they’re fighting for?”

“And what’s they’re cause? We don’t know, do we? And I’m quite certain neither do these children. As for ideals, I don’t think they even know what the word means.”

“I don’t think he cares,” Papa replied, appearing more uncertain each minute. “I’m nobody to him.”

Again, Auntie India, turned to me and hissed through her sobs, “You shouldn’t—”

“Leave her out of this!” Papa thundered. “Leave her out!” He punched the wall, then left the room, the earth trembling under his footsteps.

I shook from the reverberation. He was my god, peaceful and self-contained. Not even an earthquake could disturb him. Why would he let an argument over his name upset him like this?

“Yes, I am a prince, a minor prince, but still a prince…Sisowath. This name matters. It matters to the Revolutionary soldiers and the Kamaphibal. It has always mattered. I should’ve been able to do more with it.”

It was just a name, I thought, no more meaningful than the nonsensical appellation the Kamaphibal had concocted for themselves, and, as far as Papa was concerned, I didn’t care what name or title he answered to. Sisowath, Ayuravann, the Tiger Prince, His Highness…Even if he were to bear a hundred more names, he would still be my father, and there was no one, neither prince nor god, gentler than he.

It was clear the old sweeper was a version of Sambath, and just as I saw a manifestation of my father in everything that was noble and good, he saw a manifestation of his friend everywhere, in every poverty-stricken person he met, and tried to do for each what he hadn’t been able to do for his friend.

“We are all echoes of one another, Raami.”

“I told you stories to give you wings, Raami, so that you would never be trapped by anything—your name, your title, the limits of your body, this world’s suffering. […] I’m telling you this now—this story, for it is a story—so that you will live. When I lie buried beneath this earth, you will fly. For me, Raami. For your papa, you will soar.”

“But you’re my papa,” I cried, unable to say what I felt, what I understood—that in a world where everything real could disappear without a trace, where one’s home and garden and city could evaporate like mists in a single morning, he was my one constancy. That he was my father and I his child, that he had incarnated first, from whatever previous existence he had lived, to lead the way, to love and care for me, was proof enough of some logic in this universe. The rest, however senseless and confounding, was allowable, even pardonable. But now I was to be without him?

The following weeks passed in a blur as the Kamaphibal fervently sought to destroy our old world in order to create a new one, as they sent soldiers to unmask people’s backgrounds—their education, jobs, social milieu—and decided who was good and who was bad, who would merit induction and who elimination. I didn’t understand the reason for all the coming and going, the endless summoning and separation. No one did. No one saw through the coded rhetoric of solidarity and brotherly love to a deeply indoctrinated belief that anyone could be an enemy.

“Remember, Raami,” again and again she would tell me, amidst the clamorous directives of the Revolutionary soldiers and Kamaphibal: Forget the old world! Rid yourselves of feudal habits and imperialist leaning! Forget the past!

“Remember who you are.”

Let go of the memories that make you weak! For memory is sickness!

“You are your father’s daughter.”

Whenever she said this, guilt gripped me. I wanted to tell her I was sorry I’d revealed Papa’s name. […] But “sorry” seemed too small a word, and whenever Mama reminded me that I was Papa’s daughter, it felt more like a rebuke, as if I had failed to keep him close, to cherish him. She never said she blamed me, but once she came close—“However you loved your papa, Raami, you must learn to keep his memory to yourself.”

“Countless times I ask myself, Raami, what I could’ve done to stop your papa from leaving. There was nothing. Nothing I could’ve done, or that you shouldn’t have done. I know you think I blame you. Maybe a part of me wanted you to believe it was your fault, because, knowing why your papa did what he did—to save us—I couldn’t be angry with him. But the truth is no one, none of us could’ve stopped him. He was who he was—he did what he believed was right. He stuck to his convictions.” She gave an ironic laugh. “Your papa’s poetry took him to great heights, Raami. But he didn’t see that up there he was fully exposed. They would eventually spot him, even if you hadn’t said his name. […] Words, they are our rise and our fall, Raami. Perhaps this is why I prefer not to say too much.”

Finally, when the last of the townsfolk were gone and it was just our group again, the soldier with the scar said, “Those of you with any family members missing, tell us your family history and background. Give us complete and accurate details—your real names, your relatives’ real names. Tell us how you got separated from them, when, and why—the real story. We’ll help you find them. But we can do that only if you tell us the truth.”

“My husband says there is a struggle between those who adhere to the Cause and those who are loyal to the Party. The district leader is probably among the few who still cling to the Cause, ideals that drew them to the Revolution in the first place.”

To keep you is no gain, to kill you is no loss. Under the rules of the Organization we were reduced to this dictum. How was I to live by such words? With so many carted away on the tiniest pretense, how could any child believe she would live beyond this day, this moment? How could she hope for tomorrow? In a world of senseless death, I didn’t see the purpose, couldn’t grasp the meaning. If this was our collective karma, then why was I still alive? If anything, I was as guilty as those who survived and as innocent as those who died. What name then can I give to the force that carried me on? With each life taken away, a part of it passed on to me. I didn’t know its name. All I could grasp was the call to remember. Remember. I lived by this word.