Green Island

by Shawna Yang Ryan

I thought of the man with amputated limbs who dragged himself through the market: he’d set his bowl before us and violently knock his head against the ground, as if only the most debased self was worthy of a spare coin. Dua Hyan too looked only at the ground and, like the beggar, he could not see the wincing face above him.

The loss of freedom isn’t a restriction of movement; it’s the unending feeling of being watched.”

The event had not even existed until I’d heard the story. It happened this way for each of us, one by one, across the island, a structure suddenly exploding onto the placid empty plain of our history.