(When I was a child, I was always hungry. We grew up not knowing that some people were never hungry. When I was a child, my parents taught me that our bodies are not ours, but our masters’, that we are put on earth to bend as near to the ground as we can, bound in the way seeds are bound to the earth. Our labors were our punishments; our bodies our punishments. We were always hungry, my parents, my brothers and sisters and I. After the harvest, when all we worked for during summer was taken away by our landlord, we ate bark and weeds and things even beasts would not eat. We ate less than three lap dogs that the rich woman in fur always carried around in her arms. The dogs all had jeweled collars, and the fingers of the rich woman in fur glittered in colors we did not think possible, colors we could not have ever imagined if we had not seen her. But now that we had seen her, these colors were the colors we dreamed at night which left our desires unfulfilled. When I was a child, I was always hungry, we grew up not knowing that some people were never hungry.)
(When I was a child, I was always hungry. I grew up knowing that there was a woman who never knew hunger, who always carried three dogs in her arms. She always wore the softest fur, even in autumn when it was not yet cold, and she never walked amongst us. Her small jewel-like shoes made in the city, clean and unused on her, glistened as she sat in her carriage, looking at us. I remember that even her dogs were forbidden to walk on the ground. She was above us, always, she was the woman who never came down to us, and we stayed near to the ground when we saw her, so our worlds never collided. She never talked to us; she never moved. Even our hunger did not touch her. When I was a child, there was a woman who never knew hunger, who always carried three dogs in her arms.)
(When I was a child, there was a rich woman in fur who always carried three dogs in her arms, and when we saw her, we knew that someone never went hungry. She never went to bed knowing what hunger meant. I was only a child, and I only saw her from far away, like all of us only allowed to gaze at her from a formal distance like beasts behind bars. Then she stopped coming down to the village, and the rumor went that she got sick of living in such a far away land from where she was from. Then some time after, rumor went that she died. Our Elder told us that the rich people were living in sin, thinking themselves above the land. God is merciful, he lowered his eyes, but God does not forgive sinners. That was the price they had to pay for forgetting about the land, about people’s suffering. But she died and we forgot all about her, and we went about our days the same, hungry, toiling the ground, toiling our bodies to live for another day. But this is a story from when I was a child, when there was a rich woman in fur who always carried three dogs in her arms, and when we saw her, we knew that someone never went hungry, never went to bed knowing what hunger meant.)
(When I was a child, there was a rich woman in fur who had three dogs and she taught us that someone went to bed hungry, went to bed knowing what hunger meant, that there are many kinds of hunger and ours was not the worst. She was the child-bride of the man whose dead wife had three dogs. She had to take care of these dogs that she hated, and no one took care of her. She used to go to bed alone, in a big room, in a big bed that could sleep four, no seven of us; I was there, I saw her go to bed by herself, her sighs collecting like husks at the end of the harvest, wind carrying them far, but not far enough, and piling up in the heap by the edge of the field. She would gather her three dogs, but dogs are not faithful; they scampered away and found their own corner to nestle in, and she would cry into her pillow and call them names. She used to make me sleep with her, holding me tight against her like I was a pillow or perhaps her husband who was never home. You can be hungry, my mother used to say, but there are far greater hungers than the one of the body; when your heart is hungry, it can turn you into a ghost, already dead though your blood may run, though you may move like the living, breathe like the living. You are dead when the heart is hungry. She used to cry herself to sleep as she held me tight, and she died soon after in sleep, her arms still around me. When I was a child, there was a rich woman in fur who had three dogs and she taught us that someone went to bed hungry, went to bed knowing what hunger meant, that there are many kinds of hunger and ours was not the worst.)
(When I was a child, I was in love with a woman with three dogs but she never knew me. I loved her, and it was love so read, but I am an old man now, I know that my life is full for having loved her. I was not a child but not old enough to be called a man yet. I was in love with her. She used to come down to our field with her three dogs, and would gaze at the land for a very long time. But I knew that she did not see anything; I knew that she was thinking of something far away. What was her name? I do not remember; it is such a long time ago, and I am a very old man, waiting out my last days in this feeble body. I loved her, though I was merely a boy, and I loved her for all the things people around me weren’t: regal, sad, beautiful, and clean. You might ask, is this going to be one of those happy ending stories, in which she loved me back, and we lived happily ever after? When you are as old as I am, you can tell your children that happy endings are for the privileged few; these are lies we tell ourselves to keep ourselves going in this life, to make this life bearable. No, she was married, had no children, and she died. On the day she was to be buried, I went to her funeral, stood behind everyone, waited until everyone was done with their formal partings, and I touched her cheek, just once, her cheek cold as stone, as cold as the coldest feet, and that day, I became a man, no longer a child, a touch awoke me into a manhood that should’ve come so long time ago. I married another. A good woman. I had many children, many died and some survived. I tried to provide for her because she was a good woman, and in some moments, she became as radiant as the woman with three dogs. And I blamed myself; if I were a better man, my wife would have been as beautiful as the woman with three dogs; my wife’s hands would have remained smooth and young. Now, she has died and I miss her more every day. When I was a child, I was in love with a woman with three dogs but she never knew me. I loved her, and it was love so real, but I am an old man now, I know that my life is full for having loved her.)
(When I was a child, I did not know that a happy life, a happy ending is a lifetime where a heart keeps breaking over and over, where we have too many partings. And out of partings come life itself. When I was a child, I was envious of the woman who came to watch us from her height with three lap dogs in her arms, I was envious of the dogs who never knew how to walk with their jeweled collars. I would close my eyes, lie under the tree and pretend that I was the woman lying on her bed with an arm over my eyes, her bed my carpet of leaves under the tree. I was envious for my parents whose lives were short, who could remain young in my memory, but memory fails me and my love for them, mythical in its heartache. But now that I am older than she ever was, I know that my mother would die of a broken heart if she could see me now. My mother was an old woman before her time. For each birth, she must’ve lost four teeth that by the time she was done giving birth to the youngest one, she had only one tooth left, but she said that having a tooth makes all the difference. I remember that she never laughed. I don’t remember her smiling, only grimacing, her mouth collapsing to one side. My father was the same. He never laughed; he was old like other men in our village and I always thought that people were never meant to look young in our village until I saw the husband of the rich woman. When my father said that they used to play together when they were younger, I looked at him and I looked at the husband, and saw an old man against the middle aged man. My mother and father were old before their time; by the time I became old enough to remember their faces, they were done aging and they died from a simple cold. They did not grow old enough to see me like this. This is my story and I can make them become young, always young, always happy because I am not. When I was a child, I did not know that happy life, happy ending is a lifetime where a heart keeps breaking over and over, where we have too many partings. But this is life.)