The Day the Immigre Left

<b>(Note: Madagascans from Tananarive - the capital of Madagascar, ringed around by seven hills - originally hailed from the Malay World (present-day Malaysia and Indonesia). Even the particular form of their popular poetry, “l’hein-teny” is a hand-down from the “pantun”, native to the Monde-Malay.) T. Wignesan

The Day the Immigré Left</b>

At first, emboldened by the presence of his friend and the newness of the situation in his drab and uneventful life, he crossed his legs and held high his proferred glass of cognac, enveloped in an air of nonchalance. Gradually, as the afternoon wore on and his possibilities of legally remaining in the country were being mercilessly stretched on the dissecting table of his particular situation, he uncrossed his legs and an air of being in unfamiliar surroundings overtook him.
"You have no choice, you know," declaimed the Conseiller d'Etat, speaking as though he had himself to eject the immigrant from the country, his coarse voice issuing from him in stultifying blasts, as though he had to assemble the words in his throat in groups of three before he forced them through his buccal cavity, giving his speech the effect of a man unwilling by nature to talk but happily found in a glass of cognac the means by which to loosen his vocal chords. "Either you leave by yourself, and that too immediately, or you let the authorities deport you." He eyed the middle-aged Madagascan from above the rim of his chunky glass as he drank down in gulps the remaining thinning cognac on the rocks. He smacked his lips and looked round at yet another of his forced "friends", a former asylum-seeker - I say forced because his highly-placed friends were somehow forced to send some friend of a friend to him for help - whom he had also tried to help get established in the country without much success. And all those he tried to help sooner or later invariably found themselves trekking forth and back to his place over months or years without in any way finding their situation improved. Some even complained of their plight worsening in his hands. In any case, an immigré's plight could not worsen beyond the degré zero of not having the right papers. The Conseiller d'Etat made it a point of sending his newly-acquired wards around to all sorts of people with letters and visiting cards neatly filled with his curiously steady hand, a gesture which inspired hope for one's deplorable situation and confidence in the man who willingly placed unsealed envelopes in their hands. Almost every letter or card was inscribed with the cryptic words: Et Dieu vous rendra...So, the asylum-seekers always came with their hands full - a bottle here, a bottle there and whatever went with it in gift-paper wrapping. Sooner or later, all became his friends, a virtue that needs to be stressed since he received them all, cordially, in his Parisian apartments in the eighth arrondissement within shouting distance of the Elysée Palace.
His friend, a forty-fivish brown man of medium height and medium build, sat apprehensively on the edge of the imitation-period chair and looked into his glass; the ice-cubes took time to melt even in the heat of the September afternoon. Outside the partially opened windows and the strictly drawn grey-golden velvety curtains, the grinding sound of the streams of traffic on the periférique was only now and then subdued by the high rounds of bursting declamations of the highly-placed administrative judge. His wife in a tartan skirt and beige pullover sat almost as if she was a part of the settee. From time to time, she got up to refill the glasses, or simply to go out of the room, the double-folding doors of the lounge opening into a long corridor on either side of which were various locked rooms.Whenever she reappeared, it was to make specific signs to her husband who obviously enjoyed receiving the weak and the forlorn foreigners who hoped to gain his favour and assistance.
"What else can I say? You know it all now. This country has been spoiled by you know whom since the war. Things were different before. I could have myself written to the president. Now, things are different. I feel like I'm living in a foreign country. My letter wouldn't even get mentioned to the President. All the key posts: les chefs de cabinet and les conseillers spéciaux are given to you know whom!" He took another gulp from his glass, got up and strode in his pink dressing gown to the mantel-shelf, and there stood with his back to the empty fireplace and surveyed the scene before him. Two foreigners, one in an irregular situation with his papers, and the other with only temporary papers, both of whom he could have helped if he really had wanted to. With him, things were never always straight. If you went to him for help, he would never refuse it, but he would drag things on until you would yourself wonder what he was doing about you. Sooner or later, you would begin to ask yourself if he wasn't after all cooking up something to cause your case to backfire. On the face of it, he would give you his card and over his name, he would inscribe the words: en cas d'appel par la police française, prière de contacter..., or he would after a few spaced-out visits to him with appropriate presents (though this was not an exigence, only a custom) write you a letter of recommendation, ending with the words: je me porte garant de Monsieur...
Tiana sat now with his knees together, his empty glass, except for some ice cubes, changing hands as though he was a spin bowler about to come curling down the turf. His eyeballs kept rolling under his lids, and he seemed to be concentrating on something a few feet away from where he was seated. It was only when the judge had asked him twice - with an interval in between when everybody present stared at Tiana in silence - whether he wanted another drink, that it became evident he wasn't quite there, altogether. The trouble was, one couldn't make out either whether he was straining under the influence of the alcohol he had consumed since the morning. True, he had had only an half a tumbler so far, but there was no saying when he might have already begun the day with some hidden bottle back in his aunt's place.
'Won't you have another drop,' urged the judge solicitously and added, 'for the road.' He wasn't quite prepared to continue the private audience, though every occasion for him to expound on the country's plight in front of foreigners were for him an opportunity not to be missed. Just at that moment, as though by some miracle, his wife came out of her wax-work pose, perspiration suddenly bursting on her forehead in beads, and exclaimed, glancing furtively at her husband:
'Don't you think it's time to give the place a coup de balai?'
She misjudged her husband. It must have been for the ten-thousandth time.
'Hold your damn tongue, you wench!' he cried out, the sides of his lined and craggy mouth trembling. 'Have you no consideration for our guests?' He flared at her, as she made to gather the stray glasses. 'Put them back...leave them where they are and serve our honoured guests another round of whatever they want.' Perspiration ran down her neck and wet her pullover tightly drawn over her breasts which were quite wobbly and blown. She dared only once look up at her husband, her beady buttonhole eyes growingly reddened, her cauliflower earlobes pulsing blue and red. Instantly, almost as if she was reacting from habit after innumerable tirades from her choleric husband, she lifted a decanter from the trolley, conveniently placed in front of the settee and held it tilted over Tiana's glass. The Madagascan whose papers, except for his passport, were long in "a state of irregularity", as the French were wont to put it for similar cases, snapped out of his reverie and brought his glass up to the mouth of the decanter. He watched dazed as the golden liquid cascaded into his glass.
'Some ice-cubes to go with it?' Tiana nodded, his face registering self-abasement and gratitude. The judge's wife reached into an aluminium-lined wooden bucketful of ice-cubes - still emitting a thin cloud of frozen fizz as she lifted the lid - and brought out two cubes with silver forceps and carefully let them slip into the half-filled glass of cognac. Tiana looked up and flashed his teeth at her, heaving a sigh at the same time. She caught a whiff of his breath and quickly withdrew to serve the other guest. The judge who was watching the proceedings with a straight face seemed satisfied that his wife had proffered appropriate excuses in his presence. He came up to her for a refill, and she seemed contented that his face affixed a rather clement look, but she couldn't avoid settling back into the settee with a morose and sulking mien, her eyes narrowing to the point of being invisible.
'As I was saying, my country since the war has gone to the dogs.' He took his position before the fireplace which commanded the entire lounge by its near-wall breadth and proceeded to declaim his thesis, though his voice seemed to be less aggressive. 'The war has made a difference. Before the war, everything was French, this, the capital, the Riviera, Deauville, Strasbourg and what have you.' He took yet another gulp and spat back a slice of ice into his glass. 'Suddenly, the war was over and you can't recognize the place any more. I don't mean, of course, the large Harkis and Maghrebin population and the blacks hailing from Afrique-francophone, and, of course, you the Tamils and the Madagascans, I mean, I mean... you know what I mean, all the best jobs have gone out of our hands. Paris is no more Gai Paris of the thirties and the twenties that Hemingway and Fitzgerald glorified or Picasso turned into a mythical world of artistes painting in Montmartre streets to the tune of accordions...' He took another gulp and let it sink down, his Adam's apple rose and fell visibly, pulling upward a fold of sore, wrinkled skin in the process. 'I'm not surprised any more that the French might even abandon the capital some day. I mean, only the other day a visiting dignitary announced rather dejectedly that walking around Paris he had the feeling he was in some parts of New York. Are you surprised by such a statement?' He took another gulp and jerked his head up in the direction of his visitors. Abashed, they assented by nodding. 'That's what I mean, we are foreigners in our own land, in our own homes. That's why more and more of us are buying up property in the provinces, and we transfer all our possessions there. Come weekend or a long weekend-pont, and we dash down to our country homes with all that we can stuff in our cars - cats, dogs and all, just to be away from all this stink, din and dust, and all the babel of lingos that one hears hurled down windows and the blaring radios and tvs and what-have-you parties all the year round. There's not a night there's not some sort of religious vigil or religious wedding ceremony ringing in our ears. We have to bear all that, day in, day out. Do you have to do the same in your places, from where you come from? Tell me, do you?' He stretched his empty glass hand out in front of him and stuck a forefinger out, first, in the direction of Tiana and, then, at his Tamil friend, Devadasan. Both of them appeared well and truly embarrassed. They hung their heads, after looking at each other, in the hope that the other would venture an answer. The judge didn't try to elicit a reply. He took it obviously for a point made rhetorically.
'And then, just think...' He took another gulp and lit an unfiltered cigarette. His wife appeared to want to calm him down and/or to warn him of smoking, but he bade her down with a flapping hand stuck halfway out. She obeyed, reassured and settled further into the settee. The two foreigners followed the gestures and movements with interest, and their eyes rested for a while on the demure and beat-looking wife. 'Just think' he resumed, clearing his throat rather raucously. 'Every asylum seeker eventually asks for nationality. Now, how easy all this is. You have a country and a people somewhere else. You owe allegiance to them. You come here because you say there back where you come from, your own people won't let you live. Then, we let you in and let you live. You take out citizenship papers, presumably because your refugee papers won't let you even go on a visit to your country. Then, as a citizen of my country, you go back to your country, you establish contacts, you make all sorts of deals, and soon enough, you bring a wife over, then, you are trading in goods coming from over there, then, you bring over parents, children, siblings and you produce all sorts of papers: diplomas, certificates, driving licences and, God only knows if they are authentic, and before anybody is in a position to verify the truth of things, you are voting us down and buying up our homes and businesses. And then, you need only listen to the talk of the representatives of the newly ordained four million-odd citizens - they all speak of home as somewhere else and rise up in anger and raise their voices as soon as we criticise the goings-on in your former countries. Who do you owe allegiance to?' The high civil-servant's face turned red and within a minute perspiration dripped from his temples and chin and nose. The two asylum-seekers hung their heads in despair. The judge's wife appeared to commiserate by the way she looked pityingly at the brown men. 'That's what I mean when I say the country has gone to the dogs: there are too many people over here who owe allegiance elsewhere. Am I not right?' He looked hard at Devadasan who was so unsettled by the tirade that he laid his glass down carefully on the table and clasped his hands together and kneaded his fingers until he felt cornered by the judge.
'I don't know, Monsieur le Conseiller d'Etat, I really don't know.'
'What do you mean, you don't know. Aren't things the way I'm putting them across?' Devadasan felt he was obliged to placate the judge.
'I don't know if the situation is the same for everybody coming over here seeking asylum, but...but I can assure you a good many of us feel very strong ties to the place while living here.'
'What ties? Explain, what ties?'
'I don't know...er...for instance, during the Tournoi des Cinq Nations or the European or World Cup football matches or...or... the Roland Garros, I mean, every time the French are playing, I can assure you, we are rooting for the French players and not for...'
'Hey, that's a good one. You know why you are cheering for us? That's because your countries never get into these matches. If they did, I wonder who you'd be yelling for? And as for Roland Garros, don't tell me you are not for the occasional Asiatiques or Blacks who make their fleeting appearance in the event?'
'Still, I must say we feel very disappointed when the French are defeated.'
'Well, that's nice to know, but it's not enough by a long shot.'
'Excuse me, Monsieur, when the French won the Davis Cup, we shed tears.'

'Of joy or sorrow.'
'What's that, Monsieur.'
'Were you happy or sorry?'
'Very happy, Sir.' Tiana also nodded his head vigorously in assent.
'If asked, would you go to war, would you take up arms against your own country or people.' The two brown men looked at each other and flinched.
'How, Sir. You mean kill my own people?'
'Kill, rape, massacre, torture, destroy, pillage, whether young or old, robust or infirm.'
'I don't know, Sir. I don't think my people will want to invade your country, Sir.'
'But, if they do, what will you do?'
'There's no chance that will happen, Sir.'
'Quelle connerie! You want me to swallow that! Here we are, already in a state of siege and you want me to believe that. Alright, go to the thirteenth arrondissement. You've been there, of course?' Devadasan nodded reluctantly, for he must have sensed what was coming next. 'What do you see there? A Chinatown, as though a Chinese city was lifted lock, stock and barrel and dropped there overnight. Early seventies, there were just a few shops, few welcome Chinese amenities; end of the decade and what have you: the whole circus, replete with triads, drugs and money-laundering. You call that what? Is that not an invasion. Now, it's the turn of your lot. Go, look around the Gare du Nord and Gare de l'Est environs. Whole streets, main boulevards - boulevard de la Chapelle - are yours already. And where is all the money earned or unearned going? If that's not invasion, what is? And then, think of all the H.L.M.s and the Sonocotras and mansions in the Riviera your people occupy and all the infighting, gang fights, murders and the infusion of drugs, etc., etc. I'd rather say there's no end to the hell this poor old country of mine has to put up with. And after all that, you say there's no invasion. You know, this chap, this extremist aristocrat who is crying out at every rally for an end to immigration, for mass deportation of clandestine immigrants, for giving back the country to the French, I wonder now whether he is not the only person who is telling the truth. There are after all too many politicians and highly-placed civil servants with divided loyalties - one leg here and one leg somewhere else. You see what I mean? Now, if something like this happens in your country of origin, what would you think?' The judge's face was growing less red now. He had struggled through his tirade in some obvious pain. He had to get it out, at least once and for all. All the previous visits of the asylum-seekers were taken up in necessary paper work and interrogations in an attempt to get down to the facts of their circumstances. Now, the time had arrived when there was hardly anything that could be done. Besides, the retired judge was getting too old, and his crony friends were no more like him in power or in a position of influence. There wasn't much he could do either, even while he was actively serving the State. So, the time was ripe for him to make his farewells. And he had made them without suffering a stroke himself. His paleness and trembling hands were a signal to him to be seated. He gained the comfort of his armchair, drew his feet under him, while his wife covered his legs with a tartan striped blanket. Soon, she busied herself with the emptying of ashtrays and the retrieving of empty glasses. The asylum-seekers took their leave in silence, their outstretched hands hardly being seized by the judge who regarded them from over his glasses. The wife accompanied them to the door and without much ceremony closed the door after them, while some members of the family entered without a word being exchanged.

The two brown men, dressed in their best clothes for the occasion: jackets, ironed-readymade trousers, polished leather shoes, borrowed ties hiding weary collars, made their way in beaten silence down the marble stairs, great big glass-doors, carefully laundered flowery gardens, and finally through huge black and gold-tinted spiky, heavy iron gates with trelliswork of symmetrical branch designs on either halves. When they were out in the boulevard, they breathed almost as if for the first time since the judge had begun his tirade.
'The damned connard!' Devadasan cursed as if to relieve himself of an unbearable burden on his shoulders and shook his body and stamped his feet. Tiana was taken aback. He had never seen his friend who was a good ten years older than him in such a state - aggressive and swearing. They, then, walked along in silence towards the Miromesnil tube station without uttering a word. There were policemen-and-women in black uniforms standing distractedly in the pavement in front of huge black or green painted doorways under Roman arches. Ash-gray coloured pigeons soared and fluttered up to gables and eaves of the five-storey buildings and down to the roads where an old lady with a shopping-wheel-cart was offering baguette crumbs. Now and then, black Citroens pulled up alongside the guarded doorways, accompanied by outsized, white-gloved and helmeted police escorts on black-painted motor-cycles. Some official cars entered the doorways which parted on sight. Pedestrians moved about the pavements, entering and leaving cafés and supermarkets, oblivious of the importance of the place. It looked such an harmless place, and yet the two of them knew that it would be from there - if ever it came to it - that papers would be signed for their expulsion. They knew that, right then, from behind any of the iron railings and white curtained, barricaded windows some high official of the Interior Ministry might be aimlessly following their movements, the same man or woman who could with a flourish of his or her pen put an end to their misery, a miserable plight that was to hound them for the rest of their lives. One who seeks asylum has first to go through hell, just waiting in limbo in penury and destabilising fear for about at least a year or two, and then, whether one is made a stateless person or refugee go through an anxiety-instilling period, and if one is successful or simply fortunate in receiving his papers begin a long climb up to a way of life in the most harrowing circumstances, and by the time one is relatively safe, one's life is at an end, bolstered only by the pills one has to take daily. There's hardly a moment one may spare to live one's life. And then, halfway through the process, the regrets set in: should one have done better to have stayed home? Too late to find out the truth of the alternatives.
They stood at the entrance to the tube station, for they were not going in the same direction. Gusts of wind swirled about them. They zipped their jackets close, but first Devadasan pulled his tie out in disgust and shoved it inside his trouser pocket. Tiana followed suit.
'Which way you going, man?'
'Donno, which way you going?'
'Me, I'm going to my A.N.P.E. See if I can get some temporary night work.'
'Which way that?'
'Have to take the direction Vincennes. What about you?'
'Donno. Donno what to do,' Tiana threw up his arms and heaved a sigh, expelling his breath with his mouth wide open. His teeth were in a bad way, yellow and broken in places and empty in others.
'What you going to do if things don't work out, man? Think of returning?'
'Donno,' said Tiana dejectedly, his eyes narrowing while he shook his head from side to side.
'You got the jinx, man. That's for sure. Me, at least, I got some help and I got this paper saying I'm a stateless person. So what, stateless, refugee, so what. Gives me time to think and reorganise.'
'Donno.' Tiana's face deadened and grew pale. 'I donno what to do. Just donno what to do. Stay, go back, what difference do it make.'
'You better go to your embassy and try to get your passport in order, at least,' urged Devadasan. 'Have you got any money left from your last job?'
Tiana smiled and backed out of an answer by smirking.
'Here's some, not much but it could take you through the week, and then, we'll see. Do you think your aunt can do something through her friend at the ministry?'
'No idea.' Tiana shook his head distractedly. The thought of his aunt obviously brought up other memories, other domestic incidents which weren't too pleasant and of which they had spoken very many times. 'No idea, Devan. I have no idea.'
They stood for a while looking at each other. Right at that moment, three school-girls in worn-out and punctured jeans passed them, giggling. They followed them with their eyes until they went out of their field of vision. One girl, before they disappeared, turned round to look at them. They fidgeted. It seemed their insides were burning up. They looked at each other again, and the hint of a smile edged itself on either face.
'Back home, I could just go up to a hotel and for a mere thirty francs have one like that.'
'Here, just free,' said Tiana despondantly.
'If you are willing to take the risk, that is.'
'Aaaah, donno,' another breath-expelling sigh escaped Tiana's open mouth. 'Donno what to do...donno what to do.'
There were not many people on the pavements. Some older men and women with frail-looking metal shopping handcarts and some well-dressed men striding to some appointment, it would seem. A few feet away from where they were standing, a Municipal garbage truck pulled up. Two Algerians and a Tamil hanging on the open rear of the truck jumped down and proceeded to grab a pile of discarded cartons full of rubbish and wooden crates crammed with rotting vegetables and fruit with their bare hands. Even before they could deposit the lot in the grinding back of the truck, it began to pull off. They ran after it, chucked the last cellophane bags of choice rubbish in and clung on to the railings. Within minutes, an Indian or Pakistani in a bright yellow and red overall appeared on the road and proceeded to sweep the discarded or accidentally dropped remains of the rubbish pile down the gutter which was running with slimy slushy water. Across the road, a middle-aged white in a clean greenish-yellow uniform was riding his huge motorised machine for sucking up dog-shit on the pavement. The two brown men watched the motor-cycle wonder stick out a brush from underneath its huge metallic shell and swipe up a lump of turds that some distinguished lady's manicured poodle elegantly deposited on the pavement while passersby had to check themselves in their hurry to catch a train.
'I must get along.' It seemed they were reluctant to part. Both of them were still fuming from being subjected to the tirade. A handsome Mediterranean-looking woman probably in her mid-twenties, in a muslin white long-sleeved fluffy blouse, sporting a purple-spotted thick sackcloth, folded and hooked by an oversized brassy safety-pin and a leather belt into a skirt, stopped a couple of yards away from them, lifted her left foot and crossed it on her right knee, showing sleek muscular calves. With her right hand she ran her forefingers and palm across the sole of her elegant black low-heeled shoe. Then she brought her palm up to her nose over her lips and sniffed at it several times in obvious doubt. Then, she brought her foot down, straightened up and descended the metro stairs, her tightly drawn chignon over her nape bobbing in unison to the twitch of her buttocks. The brown men looked at each other and shook their heads in unbelief. 'I'm taking the A line from Auber,' said Devadasan, suspecting that his friend wasn't too keen to be left alone. Tiana feared being checked for his papers in the metro.
They sat opposite each other on flapping seats in the centre of the coach, an easy place to survey a police checking team boarding on either end of the coach. Every time the doors opened, they looked out to check the platform as well. A stunning blond girl in her late twenties or early thirties stomped in and stood between them while caressing the sleek, steel bar in the centre. Within seconds, they had forgotten to keep an eye out for the police. The strapping lass, conscious of their ogling eyes, gave both of them a straight look in the eyes and then a conniving smile. They were both sizing her up, practically taking her apart for about two stations from Chatelet, when they heard someone saying, 'Tickets, please' down the aisle, along the cushion-backed seats. Tiana jumped, the small pad flapped against the back of the cushioned seat. Tiana's eyes rolled and he sweated profusely, all within a minute. Devadasan joined him quickly and asked if he had his ticket with him. Tiana searched his pockets. His state of frenzy increased his fumbling, and when the traffic inspectors approached the couple, Devadasan stuck his season ticket in front of them. They didn't even look at it, it seemed. One of them was in the process of checking the blond's ticket, and he went back with it to consult a colleague. The train pulled into a station. Devadasan grabbed Tiana by the arm and said: 'Here's where we get off,' and pulled him through the throng of passengers massing before the doors.
'What happened to your ticket? You had one with you. I saw you go past the turnpike with it.'
'Yeah, donno. I look in pockets. Donno. Must have dropped it.' Tiana kept digging his hands again and again in the same places and was beside himself with fear.
'Okay. Okay, let's get out quickly.' They rushed out. 'That was a close miss, man. Just imagine, just for a lost metro ticket you could have been deported like a common criminal.' They looked at each other and shook their heads in relief. The air became thinner and less depressive as they approached the Vincennes park.
Just before they took leave of each other, Devadasan could not help sermonising yet once again his Madagascan friend in order that he may feel disposed to accepting the idea of returning to his country.
'Don't feel too bad if you have to return to your island. I realise there's really nothing there for you to go back to, but, at least, there's the family, and besides you have to - I have to - all of us have to have a love life. If you don't have it now, when are you going to have it? When you are sixty-five or seventy? I know it's difficult, especially since you have royal blood in your veins, but, just think, if you are deported you'd have to be escorted to the plane handcuffed. Only the other day, a Sri Lankan suffered a heart attack on the plane just as the police thrust him into the plane against his wishes.' Devadasan studied the distinctively typical Mongoloid Dayak features of his tortured face. 'If only your ancestors didn't take it upon themselves to set sail from the East Indies some fifteen or twenty centuries ago, you would not be living the surreptitious life you are leading now. Even rats are better off than us. You can't even come out of your hovel whenever it pleases you.' Tiana heaved yet another open-mouthed sigh and hung his head. 'Take care, man. Let me know if you decide to go back. Okay?'
They shook hands standing under a tree by an artificial lake. Ducks moved on the water like toys. Children threw crumbs and other pieces of leftover vegetables into the water. Women sat on benches and knitted or talked or talked and knitted with prams at their sides. The sun shone more brightly in the park. Devadasan watched Tiana amble away, looking furtively around him all the time as he strode through the uncut grass, across the unmarked open macadam in front of the castle, past the swirling traffic into the first road on the left.

Some six months must have transpired before they met again, by chance in the street. It was four in the morning. Devadasan was returning from the Chinese restaurant where he was the all-purposes-man, even doing the cooking occasionally.
'I very hurry,' he said. 'Got job. Pay not good, but got job.'
'How much?'
'Just SMIC.'
'Doing what?'
'Doing everything. Soja factory. Bean sprouts. Dirty work. Excuse me, Devan, late already. Chinese boss sure scold me.'
'Okay, Tiana, call me Sunday.'
'Not possible, work Sunday also.' Tiana was already waving to him from some distance away.
'Call me when you can. Okay?' Tiana shook his forearm vigorously
as if to say "yes".

They saw each other again one such morning in April. A thunderstorm was pounding Paris. Lightning and thunder alternated almost every few seconds, and the downpour was intermittently sudden and copious. Curiously, birds continued to chirp and sing as though they heard nothing or saw nothing. Devadasan was standing in a doorway in Chinatown when he was joined by a hooded figure, obviously seeking shelter. They looked at each other but didn't recognise themselves.
'What terrific thunder,' volunteered Devadasan after a few minutes of listening in quiet.
'True, true,' rejoined Tiana.
'I wonder how long this is going to last.'
'What that?'
Just then there was a flash of lightning as Tiana turned to avoid the blinding light.
'Hey, Tiana, you here?'
'Ah, I think you here, but not sure, Devan. How nice.'
They slapped each other on the arms and looked up at the sky waiting the few seconds before the thunder rolled and broke some miles away.
'Hey, Tiana, what you doing now? Working still in soya factory?'
'Yeah. Hard work. Dirty work. Boss Chinese very, very hard, man. No sleep much. Get up three. Begin work four. Today, sure late. Boss cut pay.'
'Still you must be really rich now. I thought when I saw you first, you had difficulty walking. Your pockets must be loaded with two hundred franc or five hundred franc bills.' They laughed. 'So, how does it feel to be rich?'
'No, man, not rich. Money come, money go.'
'Why don't you save all of it, or nearly all of it?'
'Can't. Must pay Aunt Lal two thousand for house. Then, clothes, shoes, train, bus, very costly.'
'How much have you saved? Comeon, tell me, how much?'
'Not much. Just a few thousand.'
'You've been working for nearly a year and all you got is a few thousand?'
'Yeah.' Tiana had a way of avoiding taking stock of the situation if it hurt. He merely lowered his eyelids and kept silent.
'You've got to save more and give up the job soon. The longer you stay in it, the greater the chances of being caught. Seven days a week on buses and trains - you are bound to knock into a police patrol or something.'
Tiana merely looked down at his hands which were twitching.
'Got to keep working. Must save. Can't return country without money.'
'Then, don't waste money on clothes.'
'You no understand. Must buy clothes. Must have expensive clothes. Otherwise, can't return.'
'Why?'
Tiana merely looked at his friend.
'Okay, okay. I understand, but why do you have to pay your aunt?'
'She ask money.'
'Don't give it to her, the wench. You do all the work at home, I know. You clean, you wash, you cook, you repair, you look after the children - you know how much that would cost her? Next time, tell her to pay you. You understand?'
Tiana merely affixed a vacant look. Then, he smiled. He trusted his friend. He had no other friend.
'Must go. Late already.'
'Wait till it stops raining...' Before Devadasan could restrain him, Tiana had already dashed across the road, waving goodbye.

They didn't see each other for quite a while after that. Four or five months must have elapsed. As their paths never crossed again in the thirteenth arrondissement, Devadasan who was still employed in the Chinese restaurant - only this time as the assistant to the chef - went looking for him one Sunday afternoon. He called and they met downstairs in a vacant building chantier.
'No more work. Patron change workers. He take other worker.'
Devadasan felt bad, seeing his friend dejected, but Tiana had put on weight and was looking quite fit, perhaps like the athlete he was in his younger days.
'You know, Tiana, you must be careful nowadays. The Right here are making much menacing noise, now that the general elections are approaching. They don't want to be outdone by Le Pen. If they keep harping on the immigration issue, the people are bound to be disabused with the present setup. Not that the Left are any the kinder towards us. Only that if the Right gets into power, they are bound to enact some new law or introduce some new measures to curb immigration and make deportation of those without papers here a certainty...'
'I go back sure.' Devadasan's eyes lighted up.
'Good thing, man. When? When you going back?'
'Oh, donno, but go back, sure. Aunt Lal not happy with me. She sure kick me out.'
'Damn her. Damn the bitch. Now that you're not working anymore, of course, she must want you out. Good thing, you've decided to go back. Only hurry up, man. Get going quickly.'
After some small talk about women and girls in the neighbourhood and a few laughs, they parted feeling better. Devadasan knew how much Tiana liked to drink. Since they couldn't go into a café somewhere, he brought him a bottle of whisky. He knew he wasn't doing the right thing, for the bottle might only reawaken his addiction, but then he must have thought that, since Tiana had some money, he could also if he wanted to procure the same and excused himself for the thoughtless gesture.

The next time they met, the elections were over, and the Right had come in with an overwhelming majority. Devadasan was fuming when he heard that, for no reason at all - except perhaps for an extremely remote possibility of seeing the immigration laws eased - Tiana had not made a move to leave. It was obvious he was hitting the bottle with a vengeance or rather taking refuge in it.
'Donno. Donno, Devan, donno what to do!' was his classic reply. Devadasan wasn't sure any more if he really wanted to leave. His aunt was making life impossible for him and even threatened him a couple of times with having him denounced to the police. The police had received instructions, it seemed, from the new Interior Minister to have at least some three hundred and fifty thousand clandestins rounded up and deported without much ceremony. The hunt was on. Everywhere groups of uniformed policemen-and-women had their eyes peeled, or so it seemed. Around the building where Tiana was hiding out, there suddenly appeared police vans, and identity card checking ensued for all the darker-looking pedestrians and motorists. Cordons were sometimes set up and police proceeded to weed out clandestins like in a big-game hunt with beaters. Tiana was terrified. His brain just wouldn't function any more. Ever since he heard of the Sri Lankan's infarctus in the plane, he was nervous. He wasn't at all certain if he could leave without being spotted and arraigned or something like that. His aunt, too, became nervous ever since Devadasan told her on the phone that if Tiana got caught, she might be in for some trouble for having harboured an illegal immigrant.
'Donno. Donno what to do! Sais pas. J' sais pas quoi faire!' He shook his head dismally.
'First thing, stop drinking so much.'
'I try, but...Mostly one bottle rouge. That's all. I swear.'
'You don't have to swear and all that but concentrate on leaving. I told you before. I checked. If you have a valid passport and a plane ticket to your country, you can leave. Nobody is going to stop you. At least, that's what I think. If they don't let you leave, I'll write a letter to Le Pen and tell him what happens. He's sure to come himself to escort you to the plane.'
Tiana smiled.
'Honest, I checked. You don't need a visa de sortie. That's what they told me at the Prefecture.'
Tiana shook his head. It was obvious the image of being handcuffed and deported drove terror into him.
'When go back home must take plenty, plenty things...presents.'
'Oh, forget about presents. For whom?' He looked at Tiana who was trying to refuse the urging. His breath was short and his face strained. 'Okay. Okay, I understand. I'll see what I can do.'
Devadasan seemed to understand that the expensive clothes, the saved cash and the presents were a way of pretending that nothing was wrong when he returned. It was a way of saving face. It was a way of saying that he had been to Europe, the white man's country, had had a good happy life and was now back because the old country was beckoning to him. That was the only way he could make a fresh start, if that was at all possible, in his home territory. Handcuffs and deportation would destroy all that.
Some time had elapsed after the elections, and it was a fact that the new Rightist government was in earnest about weeding out the clandestins. The laws about illegal employment had already been tightened under the previous socialist majority: employers engaging clandestine labour were to come under severe punishment - confiscation of their property. It was difficult to tell what was really going on in Tiana's head. Devadasan worked on him, talked to him often on the phone, encouraged him to leave by warning him that all that he had in this country was the right to watch the tele. He kidded him with a rhyme: "Ici, on n'a pas d'idée, mais on a la télé!"
Gradually, it seemed Devadasan's chipping away at his final wall of resistances and the livid and terrifying - to Tiana - description of the process of deportation began to work some reaction in Tiana, especially since it became clear to him that his aunt who could not look forward to any more cash handouts from him was absolutely determined to put him out in the street. The real reason was that she had decided to take on a haus-gast, in the tradition of the Germans, that is, a man to sleep with without having to go out for it.
'Sure, I go back,' he said dismally once after being exhorted to by Devadasan.
'When?'
'Soon.'
'You mean after the World Cup Finals next year?'
Tiana merely eked out a smile.
'Listen, Tiana, you are not going to drag this on till you're an old man, I hope. Last time, you said, you couldn't go back empty-handed. Now that that is remedied, you can't say you don't want to go back in the middle of a television series.'
Tiana seemed to suspect that his only friend was getting annoyed with him.
'Don't worry, I go.' Devadasan didn't much like the expression, but he was willing to overlook small things so long as Tiana left without incident.

Some time elapsed. Weeks, months. Devadasan had been so very busy, he lost count. When he called, he was surprised to hear Tiana's aunt expound the new situation and the fresh developments.
'He can't just simply leave. They'll arrest him at the airport and then there'll be an investigation to ascertain why he didn't leave when he was asked to get out of French territory.'
'What good would that do?' exclaimed Devadasan.
'I agree, but, you know, the investigation could ricochet on me.'
Devadasan wasn't too keen on continuing the conversation. They were civil with each other, but the way she had treated Tiana, without gratitude for all that he had done for her - looking after the apartment and the kids for nearly a decade and that, too, without remuneration, excepting food and the occasional pocket money - made her his sworn enemy.
'I'll see what I can do. I'll see that official again about this airport problem.' After the usual civilities, he hung up.
He called back to say, the Conseiller d'Etat is willing to accompany Tiana to the airport and see that he gets through.
'Ah, that's wonderful,' she cried, but it didn't appear that she was reassured. 'When? When can he come?'
'He says to go ahead and book the ticket and inform him of the date of departure.'
She wasn't too reassured but she had no choice. She wanted Tiana out. He wasn't of any great use to her any more. The children had grown up and they spent much of their time with the father, not much liking the intrusion of a foreigner in the household. She had already set up house with a man of her choice.

'I don't much like going around to Devan's place,' she said in Malagasy, but Tiana was adamant. He had insisted, time and again, that if Devadasan didn't also come along, he wouldn't go. So she had no choice. She took the narrow roads to Fontenay-sous-Bois and from there, asked her way to Rosny-sous-Bois. 'We can take the A186 from there and branch off to Orly,' she said, as though consoling herself. Tiana was silent but apprehensive. He was well brushed and had his best clothes on: a daim jacket with a fur collar over a thick checkered shirt and flowery silk tie. A brand new leather belt held up a prominently factory-creased, dark-green grained and striped synthetic- material trousers. His new light-brown leather shoes shone in a tone to match his jacket. He looked affluent, maybe even like a playboy, or like a professional golf star. On both his third fingers, he sported heavy gold rings; one had a crest of a standing lion with a sword in one paw, embossed in a blue-black head-plate. On his left wrist, he had an expensive Rolex watch attached to a snakeskin strap, and slung on his shoulder, a leather multi-pocketed satchel obviously containing his papers and other expensive items like fountain pens, portable tape-recorder and disc-player, etc. He had mentioned to Devadasan that he had need of such material to give away as presents to friends and relatives. Not to do so would shed great doubt on his stay in Europe and might even earn him a most unsavoury reputation among his kind. They were his passport to acceptance in his community in the capital of the island. He had even made it a point of packaging with his luggage a pressure-cooker, an item that was bound, in his opinion, to elicit great interest and gratitude to the chosen recipient.
The day Tiana set out on the long trek home, the sun was high in the heavens raining hell on Paris. There was no breeze to lighten the livid Saturday midday in July. Everywhere the young were out in shorts and thin cotton covers. More frequent were the T-shirts with some American insignia and sandals, and jeans either cut through with ventilation holes or simply severed at the knees. The thin cirrus clouds high up in the sky seemed as though Matisse had reached up with his brush and placed them there as a joke. Unusually great streams of traffic plied the road.
'Weekenders perhaps on the way to the country or provincials on the way to a Saturday-night spree on the town,' ventured Devadasan as a means of breaking the torrid silence reigning in the old Renault 4 GTL. Tiana's aunt appeared tense and hunched over the wheel. Tiana himself affixed a vacant look. He looked at everything that his side of the window offered.
'Perhaps the holiday traffic for August has begun. Schools have closed in certain areas,' said Devadasan distractedly in a lame attempt to break the ice. Nothing doing. Neither responded. Just then the car overtook two lanky sun-tanned blond damsels, their thighs and buttocks and busts practically unconcealed, striding on the pavement. Both Tiana and Devadasan followed them voraciously and then their eyes met. A smile crept into them. Tiana heaved yet another of his breath-expelling sighs. Devadasan was thankful, it seemed, for the open windows and the rush of air the car ushered in.
'Hey, Tiana, you better undo your tie and take off your jacket. You'll be roasted by the time we get to the airport.' Tiana's aunt also stirred.
'I told him also. But he won't listen. He says he's got his wallet and keys and things in the jacket.' She cast a sidelong glance at him sitting beside her. Devadasan was huddled behind with two leather bags crammed to the full.
'I only hope he is there.' Tiana's aunt at last ventured out of her huddled silence.
'Who?' asked Devadasan.
'Him. Your Conseiller friend.'
'Oh, him. I hope so, too.' Tiana looked at Devadasan. He was certainly most apprehensive.
'Now, how do I get on to the autoroute?'
'Go through the Centre Commercial. That's right; take a left turn there and then the right leading to the centre. Then go round, take a left and you'll see all the signs. You'll have to take the Bagnolet autoroute first.'
'I'm already confused. You better direct me.'
When they got to the point where the signboards were posted, they were caught in a traffic jam. The police post at the junction of the entrance to the autoroute was busy with motorised traffic police. Just as the traffic pulled out to turn right into the autoroute, a police checkpoint was established, and they waved certain cars into the vacant space in front of the post. As soon as Tiana and his aunt saw what was happening, they got into a frenzy.
'I can't turn back. It's a one way lane. Don't know what to do. What shall I do? What?' Both Tiana and Devadasan looked all around frantically.
'Jump out Tiana. There's no other way,' urged Devadasan.
'He's got a plane to catch. He'll lose his ticket.'
'If he gets caught here, he's finished, don't you see.'
'Not just him, me too.'
'What d' you mean, you too?'
'My driving licence is not valid.'
'What the hell...look, say you have forgotten it at home, or say you lost it.'
'They are not going to believe that!'
'Of course, they will. They've got other things to do. Besides they'll only give you a fine and ask you to produce the licence some time later.' He paused and added, 'That's what I think they'll do. What choice have you got? If they find out you're driving around without a licence, not only you'll get it hot, Tiana here won't make it to the airport.'
'I got a licence. What do you mean, driving around without a licence?'
'Well, just now, you said you haven't got a licence.'
'I didn't say that. I said my licence is not valid.'
'Okay, then, there's no problem. What's the problem?'
'The problem is that my licence was issued in Madagascar and I didn't get it renewed here at the right time. Now they want me to take the test all over again.'
'Well, then, do what I tell you. If Tiana ran out of here, what's the guarantee he's going to make it to the airport in time? There's just as many a chance he could get into one or many police controls before he gets to the airport.'

'Let's see, what he says. It's his decision.'
Tiana looked at both and shook his head.
'So, you want to stay in the car and take a chance. Okay, but I'm not going to pay the fine with my money. You have to give it to me before you go. Err...er...what am I saying? I'll still have to produce the old licence, and I'll be in for it. No more driving and a police court sentence on top of it. Who knows what I have to pay there! Nothing doing, I say.'
Just then the lights turned green again, and she had to move ahead. The police let all the cars ahead of hers go by and waved the old Renault aside. You could almost hear their hearts beating. All three occupants looked so tense and wide-eyed; the policeman who approached the car had no difficulty spotting their discomfort. He was joined by two other plainclothesmen who bade them get out. The men were frisked and the car was inspected from boot to engine.
'Where's the carte grise? You don't have a technical inspection vignette stuck here.' The uniformed policeman pointed at the top righthand corner of the windshield.
'What vignette?' groaned Tiana's aunt.
Tiana produced his passport and the air-ticket.
'He has to catch a plane this afternoon,' coaxed Devadasan.
'Anybody asked you any questions?' One of the plainclothesmen seemed angry. He checked his papers and said: 'You can go. Your papers are in order. The other two, you and you, get inside the post, there,' he commanded in a gruff voice. Tiana looked at Devadasan, his eyes widening, his face already in a sweat. Tiana's aunt was whimpering and scolding Tiana in her mother tongue.
'Bring your luggage in,' ordered the plainclothesman.
Devadasan stood at the junction outside, his hands dug in his pockets and fidgeted as the two Madagascans were escorted inside the low white-washed prefabricated building. In the space that the front door opened into, there were a few tables overladen with files and papers at which sat a bespectacled white man and two white women; the younger of the two women was obviously a typist as she was in the process of typing. The other two were on the phone.
'Sit down there and give me the keys to the bags.' The plainclothesman was curt, the white of his eyes were completely bloodshot. Tiana handed him the keys mechanically. He followed every movement with livid eyes. The bags he had arranged and rearranged for weeks, all the items and clothes he had deftly placed in a way to accommodate them all were now ruffled or displaced. The plainclothesman, obviously an inspector or superior officer, had great difficulty zipping them back into place. Tiana volunteered to help but he waved him down. In any case, the contents were rumpled and that was enough to have Tiana in a state of desperation. He had obviously ran through his mind, for the upteenth time, the scene of the opening of his bags to a waiting crowd back home and the elegant and nonchalant way in which he would distribute his presents, or flap out and straighten his own clothes on hangers, followed by eager, admiring eyes.
'This fountain pen is for you, Shirley. That bottle of Black Label for your husband, Mina. Where is he? Not come back from work yet?'
'Ah, one and a half litres!'
'Yes, I couldn't possibly bring through the customs two of those. Here's some Havana cigars to go with it. I hope he likes the brand.'
'What expense! You're spoiling him. He won't go to work tomorrow.'
The inspector then took Tiana's aunt's statement about her licence and papers, typed it all down and asked for her signature. She broke into tears and recanted.
'I really forgot. I was so busy the first two years after my arrival, I just forgot.'
'That's some twenty-six years ago, and you've been driving around without the proper papers.'
She shed some more tears and held her head in her hands. Her lumpy and stocky body shook all over from time to time, and she burst out in her mother tongue in the direction of her nephew. Her manner alternated between sheer aggression when she spoke her mother tongue and pitiful pleading when she reverted to French. Tiana sat crouched on a bench against a wall.
'Now, your papers,' signalled the Inspector. Tiana jumped up, his face a sickly white. The pupils of his eyes turned from time to time upwards, revealing waxing moon-crescents beneath.
The inspector went through every page and posed one question after another to verify his identity. Then, he wanted to know when he came into the country.
'You mean, you came here some fifteen years ago and yet you don't have an identity card?'
Tiana studied, it seemed, his shoes, not daring to look the inspector in the eyes. He called the middle-aged woman, gave her the passport and air-ticket and whispered something to her. She looked at Tiana, and then at his aunt, in surprise, and she disappeared into another room. The inspector got on the phone and was busy with another matter. When the woman emerged from the room, she looked hard at Tiana and handed some perforated sheets of folding paper to the inspector. She pointed to some lines with her forefinger. The inspector looked up at Tiana.
'Where's the letter from the Prefecture requesting you to leave the country?'
Tiana looked totally crestfallen. He took out a soiled envelope and extracted a rumpled folio-size paper. He was reluctant to hand it over.
'Comeon, I haven't got all day to read just one letter.'
Tiana hesitated. The woman came forward and took the letter from his hands and handed it to the inspector.
'Please, Sir. Please, my nephew has to catch a plane this afternoon from Orly. He's going back for good. Please. Please let him go.' Nobody paid her any attention. She continued to whimper.
'Sit down,' said the inspector to the now broken Tiana. Tiana's aunt began crying again. 'And you, shut up or I'll...' She shut up, drying her tears
with a thin flowery hanky that she rolled up into a ball as it became completely drenched with her tears. 'So, you've been here for some seven years since this letter without...without papers.' He looked daggers at Tiana. He gave some instructions to the woman who quickly went out of the front door. She reemerged with a couple of uniformed policemen.
'Take this man into custody immediately,' yelled the inspector.
The armed policemen grabbed Tiana by the arms and shoulders, and the inspector rose to put him in handcuffs. Tiana's aunt wailed. The inspector yelled at her, and she shut up, though tears poured forth profusely. The two armed policemen sat on either side of Tiana on the bench. The inspector got on the phone and attempted to contact some official at the Prefecture in Paris. Then, he tried an Interior Ministry official. The officials on duty were apparently far too busy to take his call. He left in a hurry, saying he'd be back soon.
He was gone for a full two hours. When he came back, he looked fresher. Perhaps he had had his lunch, a snooze, a shower and certainly a change of clothes.
'Please, Monsieur l'Inspecteur, can he go now? If he doesn't leave immediately, there's absolutely no chance he can catch his plane.' Tiana's aunt who seemed less agitated begged the plainclothesman-chief of the post. He disregarded her appeals, though he didn't shout at her any more. The other employees and uniformed policemen ate their long baguette sandwiches, filled with ham or chorizo, cucumber slices and salad dressing, and drank a couple of chilled cans of beer or fruit juice each while the boss was away at home.
He grabbed the phone and dialled again the numbers for the Prefecture and the Ministry of the Interior, and he was told that the officials were still at lunch and could only be reached around three. The Inspector busied himself with some paperwork while the others suddenly - with his appearance - were absorbed in work of sorts. An electric fan swivelled and ruffled the papers on the tables, spilling a few now and then.
'Where are my paper-weights? Damn, I told you not to remove them,' the Inspector shouted. The middle-aged woman quickly rose and brought over to his table two cast-iron paper-weights which she placed on top of a pile of papers. He glanced at Tiana who sat immobile on the bench between the uniformed policemen, the sullen look on his face hardly betraying the turmoil he must have been going through inside. Whenever he lifted his head to heave a breath-expelling sigh, it was as if he hadn't eyes: only the whites of the eyes showed. Then, he would settle down, wrapped in an air of moroseness and sulkiness.
The inspector then decided to call the Commissioner for the commune. He didn't like doing that at all. The chief of the district was bound to yell at him. He was most likely having his siesta at one of his mistresses' places - one certain Spanish tart from Franco’s Spain. He called anyway and the call was rerouted round with firm instructions for him. “Arrest the Madagascan and hold him over under garde à vue till Monday.” The inspector put the phone down and bit his lips, screwing them up at the same time. The two policemen took their jackets off. Despite the swirling electric fan, the place was unbearably stifling. The inspector turned to his typewriter on a side table, fixed three pages of a printed form with carbon and began to type. From time to time, he shot a question at Tiana. The latter merely nodded in assent. When he had finished, he pulled the batch of papers from the old heavy typewriter in one go and sorted the carbon out and placed them in a trough.
'Alright, sign here,' he said. 'Take his cuffs out, but first empty his pockets' he ordered. Tiana sat still. They emptied his pockets and placed the contents one by one on the table: wallet, some change, a bunch of keys, two packets of chewing-gum. Then, one of the policemen said: 'What's this?' He felt something like a wad bulging under his shirt. He unbuttoned the shirt and tugged at a sewn piece of cloth slung over his naked torso and brought it out. The inspector ripped it open. What seemed some tens of thousands of francs in hundred and two hundred franc bills spilled from the carefully folded and sewn bandolier.
'What the hell is this?' cried the inspector. 'Black market money? Have you paid your taxes on this?' He looked hard at Tiana and appeared to be particularly pleased. 'Or is it the ill-gotten gains of le travail noir?'
The expression on Tiana's face was a total blank. As it was related later,
he never seemed calmer.
The two policemen rose. One of them proceeded to unlock the cuffs. When one hand - his right hand - came free, Tiana grabbed the handle of the revolver sticking out in the holster of the other standing policeman and in a fraction of a second unbuckled the weapon and pushed the policeman with the keys backwards onto the table where the inspector was seated. It happened so unexpectedly that neither had had time to react. Tiana pointed the gun at the policeman and bade everybody raise their hands. His aunt yelled something in Malagasy and then tried to soothe him, by saying in French:
'Things will arrange themselves. Don't worry. Put the gun down. Everything will be all right, no?' She looked at the inspector and the latter nodded assent.
All that Tiana said was: 'Excuse me, Aunt Lal', and he shot her in the face. Then, he turned the gun on the policemen and shot them in the chest. Both fell, crumbling to the floor. With his left hand, he extracted the other policeman's gun, and just as the inspector pointed his gun at him, Tiana quite coolly fired from both the guns. The inspector fell, splashing blood on the two screaming women. The middle-aged man at the table near the door made a dash for the door. Tiana turned on him and shot him in the thigh just as he got out and fell rolling in the motor-pool. Devadasan had not heard or could not quite distinguish the gunfire from the traffic noises outside. As soon as he saw Tiana emerging from the prefabricated building, he advanced towards him, and then stopped in his tracks. He couldn't believe what he saw: Tiana armed and striding towards him. When the latter reached him standing on the raised pavement of the road, Tiana stood some three yards away and said: 'Excuse me, Devan, my friend,' and shot him in the stomach. Then, he coolly, turned on the policemen across the road checking vehicles and gunned two of them down. He crossed over, picked their guns and proceeded to shoot the fleeing motorists: a whole family - father, mother and three children. More and more occupants of the cars fled. Some cars tried to turn around in the one-way lane. Others rolled over the mid-road raised divider and headed into the commercial centre.
A traffic-police car on patrol just then pulled into the entrance to the post. They got out, guns in hand and crouched around their car. One of them turned to the bleeding Devadasan and asked him if he was all right.
Devadasan had his hand over the gushing gunshot wound.
'Don't move. Lay still. What happened?'
Devadasan pointed his left hand in the direction Tiana had taken and said: 'AMOK!'
'What's that? What did you say?' asked the incredulous policeman, gun in hand.

<b>© T.Wignesan 1993 Paris
[from the collection: mere deaths and the mostly dead]

May 11, 1993
Notes

"Meng-âmok is to make a sudden, murderous attack, and though it is applied to the onslaught of a body of men in war time, or where plunder is the object and murder the means to arrive at it, the term is more commonly used to describe the action of an individual who, suddenly and without apparent cause, seizes a weapon and strikes out blindly, killing and wounding all who come in his way, regardless of age or sex, whether they be friends, strangers, or his own nearest relatives."

from Frank Athelstane SWETTENHAM. Malay Sketches. London: John Lane-The Bodley Head (New York:MacMillan & Co.), 1896, pp.38-39.</b>

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