We couldn’t tell if he understood. He did, however, let us into his home eventually.
The cottage we entered was a dismal sight and stripped down within. Its clay walls were caked with soot, doubtless from the fire that was burning in its hearth.
A filament lamp hung from the ceiling, the sort that farming villages would have used decades ago. The lamp burned dimly at a bare fifty watts, probably to save on electricity costs. Shadows filled the entire cottage.
There were some bowls and utensils in a neat stack in a corner. The roof of the cottage was, in fact, a tent stitched together out of gunny sacks. There was dust everywhere. It turned to grime at damp spots where rainwater had seeped in.
The small heaps of blackened dirt that covered the tent looked sure to be full of pests.
The man took out two bowls from a cabinet and placed them before us.
Due to the language barrier, the man continued to gesture furiously. He seemed to be inviting us to eat.
We peered at the bowls in front of us. The food was steeped in chili. Nora recoiled ever so slightly, asking, “What dish is this?”
“It’s pickled onions. I think it’s supposed to be a starting dish. Shall we try it?” Tabitha exclaimed rather adventurously. She had more of an appetite than the rest of us for more exotic and unusual delicacies.
Having endured hunger for a whole day, we dug in rather gratefully. The flavor of the pickled onions, spicy with a hint of sourness, was quite refreshing.
It had been a few days since we’d really tasted anything. The pickled onions thus thoroughly satisfied our tastebuds.
As we ate, the man and his daughter squatted in a corner. They gazed at us with curiosity and awe, mixed with a tinge of fear.
Sensing their uneasiness, Nora persisted in her attempts to communicate with them. Along with her hand signals, she deliberately spoke a few basic words, emphasizing each syllable slowly.
It worked. Somehow, both father and daughter came to understand that we were here to borrow a device to contact home.
They were stumped, however, by what exactly a phone was.
We’d run into another roadblock. We could only wait until the next day for the man to seek help from his fellow villagers. Until then, we’d have to take shelter in this battered cottage. Compared to spending a night out in the open mountains, however, this was considered a win.
When we blearily woke the next morning, the man was already up in the tree in his yard plucking fruits.
His daughter stood beneath the tree with a basket, picking up the soft fruits he’d accidentally let tumble onto the ground.
Every time she bent over to pick up some fruit, she’d beam a smile in our direction. It was as if she was eagerly trying to transmit her simple joy to us.
“Really makes you rethink the link between happiness and wealth, doesn’t it?” Tabitha mused, looking rather wistful. She looked almost like a child with her slender frame.
Nora crossed her arms, leaning against the door frame. “Why? Are you thinking of something sad?” she quizzed, raising an eyebrow.
Tabitha shrugged. “Not really. I was reflecting on this whole turn of events, and I feel as if I’ve been enlightened. How we live our lives should be entirely up to us. It doesn’t matter what other people think.”
“It’s all been destined!” Tessa quipped. This discussion aligned with the philosophical tendencies she’d been harboring all this way. We’d finally managed to pique her interest.
Nora massaged her temple, groaning, “Can we take a break from philosophy for once?”
Tessa ignored Nora. She marched straight out into the yard and began picking up fruits with the young girl.
They still couldn’t communicate with words but smiles and gestures seemed to suffice for now.
In our desperation to head home, Nora hauled me along into the village in our hunt for a phone.
It’s the twenty-first century! Surely someone must have a phone around here! we thought. When we knocked on the door of the next cottage, however, Nora’s hand signals asking for a phone only met with baffled looks.
Our best efforts at miming remained futile. We departed after a good while, empty-handed.
Tabitha and Laurel hadn’t fared much better. We returned to find them sitting side by side, disconsolate. Laurel was the first to speak. “If we can’t get any results here, we should try moving further in. Perhaps we’ll get to the city. We may even meet some fellow countrymen!”
“The probability of that will be really low though. We don’t know how much longer the road up ahead is. If we aren’t careful, we may be mistaken for thieves and locked up,” Nora countered. She plopped down onto the floor with a sigh, looking defeated.
“What’s so bad about getting locked up?” Tessa asked thoughtfully. “Surely, the local policeman knows a little more than the average villager. If we manage to explain our situation to them, it might be our ticket home.”
“That’s right!” Laurel leaped to her feet in excitement. “If we get in touch with the local police, they may be able to send us home. We won’t have to wander around so aimlessly either.”
We all agreed that this was the most promising idea we’d had. We cheered up instantly at the thought and launching into a feverish discussion of what we should do to capture the attention of the local police.
We were in a village on the mountain. Who knows if there’s even a functional police station around here? I wondered to myself.
Tessa remained steadfast in her conviction that she shouldn’t participate in any criminal act, regardless of its motive. She slipped off before our discussion even began.
Nora and Tabitha, however, were enthusiastic. “Leave it to us!” they cried delightedly.
That evening, Nora and Tabitha walked boldly up to one of the villager’s yards under the pretense of borrowing something. They then grabbed a bundle of items and sprinted off.
Both of them returned with their arms laden with fruit, fully expecting the police to be hot on their heels.
However, neither Nora nor Tabitha had counted on the kindness of the villager. The owner of the house had been enraged at the two girls’ theft. However, on account of Nora and Tabitha being foreigners, the villager had assumed that both girls were foraging for food and ultimately sympathized.
He thus hadn’t reported the incident to anyone, least of all the police. Nora and Tabitha were rather taken aback by this outcome and returned the stolen goods rather sheepishly.
A short while later, the villager returned bearing the same fruits that Nora and Tabitha had returned. Embarrassed and slightly frustrated, Nora and Tabitha decided to turn to other means of crime.
However, they repeated this at several other homes only to be met with the same result. Some villagers even gave us additional food items from their own hoard out of pity.
Rice was a staple in the diets of these villagers. All they knew of the world was confined to the boundaries of their farm. They remained largely oblivious to the wider modern society beyond their fences.
The villagers thus viewed Nora and Tabitha’s acts with almost naive simplicity, assuming that the two girls had been starving or poor. They’d done what they did selflessly, out of pity.
When we realized this, we were resolved not to pursue our thoughtless ways any further. However, news of our presence here in the village had already spread amongst its people.
Over the next couple of days, practically the whole village came to visit us bearing gifts of food.
Through the most rudimentary of phrases and lots of guessing, we discovered that our host was named Troy Laander. His daughter was Yvette.
Among all of us, Tabitha was the quickest to pick up the villagers’ language, having been exposed to other similar foreign tongues before.
Gradually, she was able to converse with the Laanders.
When Troy finally comprehended the rationale behind our rather peculiar acts of theft, he said ruefully, “There was no need for you to behave this way! We could have found someone for you to borrow a phone from.”
Tabitha cradled her head in both hands. She’d long ago realized the foolishness of our plan. It was our utter hopelessness that had compelled and continued it.
Trying to comfort her, Troy promised to seek out a phone for us the following morning.
It was late, and it was apparently a taboo to present oneself uninvited at another person’s house at that timing.
We saw no reason not to but acquiesced as the dutiful guests that we were.
The thought that home was very possibly within reach made us almost delirious with joy. We thus played delightedly with Yvette the whole night.
New Book: Back Home to Marry Off Myself
Loredana’s father left the family for his mistress, leaving them to fend for themselves abroad. When life was at its toughest, her father showed up with “good news” after 8 years of absence: To marry off Loredana to a paralyzed son of the wealthy Mendelsohn family.
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