On the Road to Jhapa

    by Timothy Conklin

    When you have tears in your eyes everyone looks like an angel.

    He remembers the road to Jhapa. "Sir, we've always lived here. When I was young, we used to hunt peacocks in the fields, and we ate rats. We packed them in mud and baked them in the fire. When they were cooked, we'd pull the mud off and the hair and the skin came away, and we would eat them."

    The sweat that had soaked his shirt now was dry salt dust on his skin. The dirt road was baked hard, and a thick cushion of talcum powder dust bathed his bare feet with each soft step and came up between his toes as they walked on the road to Jhapa.

    They waded through verdant seas of rice. Barefoot falls were soundless in the khaki dust. The skim milk sky was heavy with rains to come. And sometimes they talked quietly as they walked on the road to Jhapa.

    "What will you write sir?" Assin asked. He told him he would write about his children, about the dancing and the drums and the peacocks.

    They stopped and drank water. He admired Assin's black curls and skin dark as earth, the fine wrinkles of hands and feet born of the plains of the Holy River. And they walked again along that long quiet road to Jhapa, the province of magic, and Assin asked him, "Sir, will you come back here again?" Assin's voice filled the universe.

    He said he didn't know but that it felt like home to him there. He knew he would never leave Assin and his soft gentle quietness, like dust. He gazed upon the dark skinned one and the tears in his eyes made him look like an angel.