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Kindle Notes & Highlights
For many people in the world, learning more than one language is a necessity, either because of migration or simply because the place they live in is a global one and survival dictates it. It is a skill that requires an ability to adapt and challenge oneself, and for many immigrants, it’s one of the most difficult, humbling, and uneasy parts of coming to a new country. If you, the reader, find yourself confused, I hope instead of giving up, you might take a moment to imagine what it must be like for those who have to navigate this on a daily basis, and then forge onward.
He will leave his violin here: he sees himself setting it down, laying it against the chipped paint as tenderly as he imagines a mother abandons a beloved baby.
Soon, he promises her, the plum rains are almost here.
“We must always be brave and meet what scares us head-on, even if it is hard. But still, you must not forget who you are. You must always remain proud.”
When once Suchi told Apa she was sick of hearing about politics, his voice had grown low with disappointment. “I’ve shielded you from too much,” he said. “You haven’t known real suffering. Most people don’t have the luxury of turning their face from this.”
“How do you know that’s not propaganda too?” Apa frowned at her. “I don’t. That’s why I read all kinds of papers, to see what each one says. So I can compare. I consider not just what they’re saying but how they’re saying it. And I measure what they’re saying against what I know of the world, what I’ve seen and experienced with my own eyes, what I’ve learned about human nature and history. I don’t ingest words like I’m a hollow gourd.”
He loved them both, but this rift was not his to repair.
“But aren’t you afraid of forgetting?” “No,” she said, shaking her head. “I’m afraid of a lifetime of remembering the things I want to forget.”
Still others who knew of her origin might assume, the way her own mother-in-law did, that she had trapped Lam Saikeung into this marriage by purposely getting pregnant. If only they knew.
‘It is better to kill a thousand innocent men than to let one guilty man live.’ ”[14]
