Babel

by R.F. Kuang

he felt also a thrum of excitement at the thought that perhaps his unbelonging did not doom him to existing forever on the margins, that perhaps, instead, it made him special.

He did not know that impressing a white man could be as dangerous as provoking one.

He could have written a thesis on white pride, on white curiosity. He knew how to make himself an object of fascination while neutralizing himself as a threat. He fine-tuned the greatest of all tricks, which was to swindle an Englishman into looking at him with respect.

‘But this is war,’ said Letty. ‘Surely that’s different, surely that’ll provoke outrage—’ ‘What you don’t understand,’ said Ramy, ‘is how much people like you will excuse if it just means they can get tea and coffee on their breakfast tables. They don’t care, Letty. They just don’t care.’

I have never met an Englishman I trusted to do the right thing out of sympathy.’

He hoped until hope became its own form of torture.