...It was located in Kampung Sungai Beruk, the "village of the river of apes". Well, better than a river of piss, at least. There was a lot of jungle around there, but strangely no discernible river, and I’d not seen many monkeys in the trees behind the house either, so I often wondered where the name could have come from. I could have said the same for many other places in Brunei actually; names here tend to have rather random meanings.
...My face felt hot, and the slap still stung. Pa rose and gave me an odd look, as though he suddenly didn’t recognise who I was. He looked at the palm he had used to slap me and, briefly, I almost thought I saw his head turn away from it, like he was flinching from his own hand....
...Blue was a weak ink. Black ink on white paper, now that looked like the perfect representation of truth absolute.
..But while those false smiles usually annoyed me, Mohidin’s only made me feel sorry for him. His upturned lips made a very poor cover for all the loneliness I could see written over the rest of his face.
...I wondered why these people had used their most recent photos to represent themselves on their tombstones; I’d have figured that they’d want themselves remembered as they had looked in their prime, young and full of life.
...My feet placed close to the edge, I crouched and peered at the coffin inside for one last look. Covered in the earth we’d just pelted at it, it lay nestled in there like a book at the bottom of an old trunk, the story over and never to be read again.
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