Stranger in a foreign place.

This was my english narrative essay and may i say i really was very proud of it.

Mrs Yang took a wary step forward. As the long queue snaked towards the immigration desk, Mrs Yang hastily smoothed down the fly away strands of hair, once jet black, but now peppered with strands of grey, that had escaped her tight bun during the tedious nineteen hour long flight. Dwarfed by the robust bulks of the Americans surrounding her, their pale white skin burgeoning out of their pin striped suits and their voices loud and brazen, Mrs Yang felt her confidence shrink equitably. Swallowing nervously, she glanced round, biting her lip in disappointment when she realised, not for the first time during her trip, that she was the only Asian in sight. American after American breezed through the counter, many of them rugged veterans of air travel, well used to the endless checking and re-checking one was forced to submit to in order to enter a country. Mrs Yang had none of that experience, getting flustered and jittery as she approached the front of the queue.

“Next, Please,” came the call from the crisp, well-versed immigration officer, beckoning towards Mrs Yang authoritatively.

Mrs Yang stepped nervously toward the immigration desk of the airport. Clutching her rugged back pack to her chest, she cleared her throat, tiptoeing so that her fine-boned face was visible above the clean, clinical surface of the desk.

“Passport,” drawled the bored voice of the immigration officer, stretching out her hand imperiously in a gesture that could not be mistaken as an order. Mrs yang, recognising the universal hand signal for ‘give’ rummaged in her pockets for the cardinal red passport identifying her as a Singaporean national, making apologetic whimper at the impatient frown on the other women’s face. Sighing with relief as she found the worn, red book, Mrs Yang tentatively slid it across to the immigration officer.

“Please stand behind the white line,” said the women, already mechanically checking and stamping Mrs Yang’s passport. Mrs Yang hesitated, confused at the foreign command. Looking up from the passport and rolling her eyes in annoyance, the officer repeated in the loud, slow voice reserved for the aurally impaired “Please could you stand behind that line,” pausing after each word and adding exaggerated hand gestures akin to a busy parent shooing away a particularly pesky child. Mrs Yang felt her cheeks flaming as she stumbled backwards hastily. She hunched her shoulders defensively, as if making herself physically smaller could make her less conspicuous to the passengers behind her, some of who were smothering giggles, while others shook their heads and tapped their feet in irritation at the bumbling, scatty Asian woman.

Staring at the smirking woman behind the desk, Mrs Yang felt hostility and frustration build up within her. She had taken a last minute decision to visit her son, who was studying in an American university, putting aside her fear of that vast unknown country and drumming up her courage to finally buy her air ticket. Her fear of entering a country full of unknown people and places, to a woman who had never set foot outside Singaporean soil, and who avoided travelling further from her home than she could help, the terror she had confronted when deciding whether or not to take the plunge and visit her only son as well as the constant distress that had plagued her on her trip had bordered on xenophobia.

It had not helped that the flight had been a sequential series of catastrophes. First, she had trouble finding her gate, the strange English characters seeming alien and unwelcome to an illiterate woman who only understood her native dialect. Then, the Chinese herbal medicine she had carefully packed away for her son had been confiscated at the security scan, and only after a brief struggle with the security guard attempting to throw away the precious bundle of ginseng and other traditional medicine she had carefully selected from her store was she told by a helpful, Asian, security guard that Traditional Chinese medicine was not allowed on the plane without a doctor’s prescription. On the plane, the air hostesses quickly learnt to steer clear of the dishevelled oriental woman whose requests in her native hokkien language, however polite, had no way of being understood by the English speaking hostesses.

Now, faced with an inhospitable immigration woman, Mrs Yang was sick and tired of being treated like a second class being, whether the derogatory treatment was intentional or not. The confusion and distress she had been feeling throughout her journey seemed to culminate within her, and from the maelstrom of fear and anger came a righteous sense of injustice.

She did not fear the immigration woman, she had experienced too much in her grim life, now reaching a span of four score years. Fear was seeing your father marched away with countless other fathers, brothers and uncles, herded into steel trucks by Japanese soldiers who barked and screamed. Fear was watching your mother keen silently in the agony of losing a husband, and realising that your father would never return, but you could not weep or wail in grief for fear of being overheard and reported to the very men who caused his disappearance. Fear was being married to a man you had never seen till your wedding day, having to learn quickly the art of being a good wife, despite never having been taught by a mother so ravaged with sorrow that she lost the will to provide for her children, who had to rely on the good will of neighbours to scrape by. Fear was watching as your firstborn child sickened and died in your arms, wailing and crying, tormented by a fever that you neither had the medicine nor the means to allay. Fear was watching as your only son left to a new land, and cursing yourself for the myriad of things unsaid, the deeds undone.

So Mrs Yang did not feel fear, yet she knew that it would take a monumental amount of courage to take the discrimination she was facing, the subtle digs and incivility that seemed omnipresent in this professed country of equality.

Throughout her life, spent in deference to the people around her, she had never contested the natural assertion of superiority many people seemed to assume over such a meek woman, from her husband, to her son, and even the lowly hawkers on the street. However, the authority they had assumed had been the respectful firmness fitting to a lady of her seniority and rank. The base, malicious jibe of this woman had hit her deep. Her spiteful mockery of Mrs Yang in public had caused Mrs Yang to lose face, something Mrs Yang’s strong sense of pride could not live down.

Yet, the ancient value of courage that had been drummed into her since young stopped her from bursting into tears or lacerating the insensitive woman with her tongue. Her devout buddhist faith had not stopped her from exploring other religions, and she vaguely remembered that “If your enemy is hungry, give him food to eat; if he is thirsty, give him water to drink. In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head”.  True courage came from within, and the trials of her life had cultivated a steely courage within this wisp of a woman, a vein of strength masked within her docile actions and delicate features.  The true test of one’s inner steel were at situations such as these, and courage did not require one to brazenly declare one’s own superiority, but rather to accept the very same actions from those who did so. It was a matter of defying the age old adage “and eye for and eye, a tooth for a tooth”, and being gracious in the face of adversary.

Mrs Yang breathed deeply, trying to regain her composure, making a small gasping sound akin to that of a diver coming up for life sustaining air. The immigration officer looked up with a cruel smile playing on her lips. “Come,” she intoned, making elaborate gestures with her hands. Mrs Yang straightened her back, and walked to the counter, feeling that with every step she took she was ascending the steps of a guillotine.

“Here’s your passport,” the woman said, a self-satisfied smirk playing on her lips as she sensed Mrs Yang’s discomfort. Mrs Yang took her passport without a word, but before leaving the counter, she uttered the two English words that she had learnt in the course of the trip.

“Thank you,”

Those two words, said with the gentle lilt of an Asian accent, yet encompassing a hint of steel that was impossible to miss. Mrs Yang fixed a resolute stare onto the immigration woman who had taken such malevolent pleasure in demeaning her previously, and repeated her words, “Thank you,” she said, and then again. Three times she said those two words, each time her voice strengthened, mounting in intensity till it seemed she was addressing not just the woman gazing shame facedly at her desk in front of her, but at the room of people who had seen no wrong in joining in taunting the clumsy, dull Asian oddity.

Ashamed at her bigotry, and cowed by the sheer force of courage Mrs Yang projected, the woman behind the counter looked down shiftily, ashamed. Sliding the red passport back along the counter, she whispered in a cracked, dry voice, “I apologise,” before looking up, the moment gone, her brisk, business-like veneer once again cast upon her face and the brash cry of “Next, please,” escaping from her parted lips.

Mrs Yang picked up her pass port, and left, taking her courage with her.