Life is both a long and short series of transitions, which beckons us into the eye of harmony and chaos. This unique journey consists of changes that live their duration until the next one comes into being. In the span of a lifetime, a human being falls in and out of love, embodies countless of roles, lives through a spectrum of emotions, accomplishes and fails in every way possible.
It was an early afternoon in a French city about fifty kilometers south of Lyon. As the custom called for a break between midday and two o’clock, the young man went home to eat lunch, take a sieste, and then it was back to work again. Rice Boy had been working for the local Asian supermarket for a year now and had become accustomed to the hard work expected of him from Mr. Lee: arranging heavy rice bags, attending to the customers’ needs, unloading the new merchandise, and most importantly, following the boss’ orders. Although in his late twenties, Rice Boy appeared small and frail and looked like an awkward teenager. Mr. Lee had hired him out of necessity rather than skill, for the old employee’s contract had expired, and he desperately needed to find another pair of hands to do the strenuous labor.
The debut of spring brought sunshine and blue skies. Fresh, rose-colored buds shot out on all the trees by the roadside. Young leaves reflected a tender green, with some still unfolding, exposed naked for the first time. The sparrows and pigeons flew about announcing this newfound joy. Unfortunately, in the fast-paced urban life, few cared or were too occupied to be concerned about the coming of a new season. It was another day in St. Etienne where time directed people, and people were forced to obey time—their schedule of making a living, moving up the social ladder, receiving an education, or just rebelling against the system.
Life’s daily repetition gave them a sense of monotonous comfort from experiencing the same feelings to reliving the same events: waking up, rushing to work, hurrying back home, finally doing the things that they yearned to but couldn’t during their hectic day, going to sleep, and doing it all over again the next morning. Once in a blue moon, Rice Boy would accidentally step out of this torrid stream and encounter a totally different scenario.
One day, a huge order of rice arrived in a sixteen-wheeler truck. Five hundred sacks of imported grain waited to be unloaded. Mr. Lee went out to help Rice Boy, but the young man insisted on doing the work himself. He quickly proved to his boss that Mr. Lee shouldn’t underestimate size. The Chinese-Cambodian store owner had never seen anyone move in such a frenzied manner. Rice Boy’s fingers bled and left stain marks on the twenty-five kilo bags. Sweat drenched his entire body, and his muscles trembled with every effort. The skinny Asian worked like a madman pressed by time and accomplished a day’s worth of labor in only three hours. From that day on, Mr. Lee gave him a bonus each month and didn’t watch over him again. He was impressed by the young man’s inner strength and sheer determination.
The beginning had been quite different. His first few months at the supermarket was a trial period and Mr. Lee watched over him like a prison guard to remind him not to waste precious money and time: “Hurry up and work! Never stand and wait for orders. There’s always a task to handle. Besides that, I’m paying you by the hour, and you’re earning money doing nothing!” Rice Boy would nod his head, quickly grab a fruit can to arrange, and look to see if anything else needed to be restocked. Mr. Lee continued rambling, “You know, when I was your age, I did twelve-hour work shifts. Never in my life have I been out of a job. In those days, no work, no eat!”
Before being employed with Mr. Lee, Rice Boy had gone to some of the Asian restaurants almost begging for a job. Sadly, he was rejected by all of them. His mince and tiny stature gave people the impression that he wasn’t born for hard work. The owners doubted his capabilities, and because he was only a foreigner without any work experience, no one risked giving him a break. Being an illegal immigrant didn’t help either. He realized starting from scratch was frustrating because his life depended on the decision-making of others.
Like Rice Boy, Mr. Lee had immigrated to France as a young adult. Now, as a divorced man in his late forties, he married a woman from Vietnam. The wedding was suddenly and meticulously arranged by his parents and took place in Saigon. Shortly after, he shipped his new wife to France to help run the store. The new culture frightened and attracted her all at the same time: People greeted each other with kisses, the cuisine was strange, and the language was alien to her. As weeks became months, she realized how much Vietnam was a living part of her. The new Mrs. Lee secretly wished to return to familiar, old stomping grounds and sink back into comfortable habits. Unfortunately, a year down the line, at the age of forty, she gave birth to a baby girl.
Parenthood could either be an imprisonment or a blessing. It was the former for Mrs. Lee because she had dreams to realize and desires to fulfill. With the baby, her wish to return to her homeland was shattered. She had unwillingly committed herself to decades of repression and responsibility. Alas, one day when the child grew up and fled the family nest, all the years of holding back would come flushing out of her mind. Her midlife crisis would appear later than that of the average person. The latter happened because sometimes a couple was ripe to have a child. They didn’t carry so much personal suffering to resolve and their careers had already been established. Like most sane people, they wanted a certain financial and emotional security before raising children.
Mr. Lee came to the country of liberté, égalité, et fraternité literally with a shirt on his back and duffle bag in his hand. The work ethic he displayed immediately frightened and intimidated all his former employees, who often watched him with astonishment. The Chinese-Cambodian laughed at the thirty-five-hour week law implemented by the Chirac-Jospin government. He declared it the most stupid law ever made. It didn’t make any sense to him, compared to the sixty-hour week he had done before in Thailand.
There wasn’t one single day when Mr. Lee didn’t dirty his hands. Taking a break was sacrilegious for him. His obsession for work could be closely compared to that of a religious fanatic, absorbed researcher, or self-worshipping artist; it made him lose touch with the world around him. As a dire consequence, he automatically thought and dreamt of future tasks whenever he was idle or sleeping. He became oblivious to other appointments. He even forgot his own wedding anniversary. The tragedy of it all was that he missed his child’s birth. This compulsion and his mind were tightly welded together. It was so much a part of him that if it were not present, he would consider himself as good as dead.
A widow of a famous spiritual teacher was once asked if her husband was a good spouse. She answered without remorse, “Good husband, no! Great teacher, yes!” Mr. Lee and the spiritual master had one thing in common: they were both prisoners of their own vices. These two men were incapable of living life as a whole, of dividing their energy to other spectrums of interest and duty, instead of being lost in a single ideal.
When he was twenty-one, Mr. Lee’s father had insisted he leave the house. “Son, go your way now. I have too many kids to raise, and you should try to make a living on your own.” The family lived in Cambodia at that time and the closest and most prosperous city for job opportunities was in Bangkok, Thailand. Mr. Lee spent four years there, beginning as a rice farmer. Eventually, he was granted residency in France, so off he went to Paris. After eight years of unloading cargo shipments at Charles de Gaulle Airport, he finally saved up enough money to start up his own business.
The Chinese-Cambodian migrated further south to St. Etienne, thinking a smaller city would be more appropriate to open his first supermarket, which was no bigger than a one-bedroom apartment. The town was neither too small nor too big and had the potential to attract the local Asian community. Known for its old coal mines and infamous soccer team, St. Etienne now thrived on transforming its industrial, rustic appearance into a more modernized one, which made it a perpetual construction site.
Mr. Lee sold whatever exotic food products and produce he could get his hands on; shark fin soup, bamboo, dried shrimp, shitake mushrooms and so on filled the store. Shelves of noodles—instant, egg, rice, and soy—were lined up against the wall. Every product the Asian clients needed, he had. As any witty Chinese owner would do, Mr. Lee made the most of the space in his store. He also had an array of other goods made in Asia that he thought had sales potential. He crammed them in the display window or behind the cashier. These items included teapots and Buddha statues, lanterns and vases, toys and dolls, balm and herbal medicine. It was a perfect haven for the local Asian who ached for a taste of home.
Mr. Lee was a man of many tongues. He spoke very easily to the customers in whichever language was more convenient for them. Rice Boy was very impressed by Mr. Lee’s culture. One minute he would turn to a man and speak in Thai or Cambodian to take an order; another moment he would tell a woman in Vietnamese or French where the soy sauce or frozen egg rolls were. He made it an obligation for Rice Boy to learn how to say hello in all the languages in order to please his customers.
Within a few years, as more and more Asian flocked into the city, a wave of restaurants were erected to cater to their gastronomical needs. Mr. Lee was the only source for the new owners to buy their special ingredients for making pad thai or pho. Business began to prosper. Little by little, bit by bit, he rose to the echelon of popularity and wealth. Pai Son became a household mantra in every Asian home. The name of the store was particularly poignant, coming from his Cambodian roots—Pai Son was one of the highest mountain in this country. His deepest aspiration was to match his level of success with the height of its snow-capped peak and grandeur.
Understandably, Mr. Lee didn’t have any choice; the endless work eventually merged with his personality and way of being and became one and the same. He was thrown into a situation unexpectedly by his father. Either he swam or he drowned. Even if he didn’t know how to doggy paddle, he would have to learn and very quickly—virtually while every fear and doubt appeared uninvitingly before him. It gave him no time to think, which was good and bad. Good because in thinking there was anxiety, bad because every action had its consequences. In life, most people reacted before thinking or they thought too long and never acted.
Mr. Dubois was a Frenchman who lived near Pai Son. He would occasionally pass by half-drunk on early afternoons to do a short tour of the store. Mrs. Lee suspected he was a shoplifter because, strangely, he never bought a single product, even though he seemed quite curious. He always scrutinized the items marked in Chinese, Vietnamese, or English and asked Rice Boy what they meant. The young Asian usually pointed at the pictures printed on the label to show the man that mi goi meant instant noodles, and ghà was chicken. If all else failed, he simply showed him the label written in French. The drunkard’s last stop was usually the cash register. There he lingered, dazed and captivated, admiring Mr. Lee’s wife.
“Doc, noi ong ta di ve di,” she would command Rice Boy to ask the man to leave. Mrs. Lee called Rice Boy “Doc,” which wasn’t even his real name. When they had first met, he introduced himself coyly. She naturally misheard him because he spoke too softly. So every time after that, she told all the customers his name was “Doc.” Rice Boy didn’t seem to mind though and never corrected her. He thought that names were quite necessary if people wished to communicate to each other, label an object, plant, or animal. But outside this realm of practicality, a name basically had no other function. He imagined that long after his death, his name would be carried on as an image that varied according to people to people. A few generations down the line, and it would be sadly forgotten.
He understood how the world was usually perceived with filtered words and concepts. People labeled things beautiful or ugly and good or bad without realizing that clear vision would manifest as soon as the naming was dropped. This deep insight meant that when he admired a sunset, it wasn’t only the attractive colors and past identifications that defined and shaped the elegance of it but also the birds, trees, stars, air, lungs, eyes, and mind. Each phenomenon played an essential role for beauty to manifest. Therefore, in his mind, it was everything and nothing, but beautiful. This was his justification for never correcting Mrs. Lee. After a while, he even got used to his new name, which made him crack a smile.
Mr. Dubois purposely came at a specific hour, for he knew Mr. Lee was gone on errands and wouldn’t be back until later. He liked losing himself in Mrs. Lee’s face because she had a mysterious aura and exotic grace that wasn’t covered in French perfume and powder. A certain simplicity expressed itself in the way she moved and the way she dressed that completely mesmerized him. He found it neither complicated nor sophisticated but simple, like an open breeze or a tulip wavering in the field.
Mrs. Lee never hesitated to share openly to Rice Boy her notion of beauty, “Doc, I been here for three years now and you know what the difference is between occidental and oriental women?”
He listened to her discourse without saying a word, as she continued, “Oriental women have respect for their body. They never go ‘round flaunting their beauty and wealth. But these western women walking in store are not like us. They wear expensive clothes and smelly perfume. Their faces are smeared with makeup to hide their old age. On top of all that, they show off and drive luxurious cars. It’s far better to hide your money in the bank and live discretely. All that goes away and what’d you got left at the end of your life?”
Here she would pause waiting for Rice Boy to reply or at least try to. This was his favourite part as his voice would echo triumphantly in unison with hers, “A miserable illusion!”
Mr. Dubois revered Mrs. Lee’s well-defined face and slender body, but always from a distance. Although in her forties, she looked unexplainably years younger. When he saw beauty, he wanted to touch, grab, and hold it. If it brought him great pleasure, he would want to possess it, like imprisoning a bird in a cage or the wind in a box.
“You know what I like about Asian women?” he said with a loud and proud voice.
“Who’s he talking to?” wondered Rice Boy and Mrs. Lee to themselves, looking at each other bewilderedly.
It was as if he had burst into a monologue on an empty stage. Luckily, no customers were around to witness this.
“Asian women, I’m telling you, are the best. You know why don’t you? Because they obey their man. They never say a damn word—always silent and looking innocent,” Mr. Dubois continued ranting with his arms high up in the air.
Mrs. Lee asked Rice Boy what the poor man was saying. She couldn’t understand long and complicated French. She only knew the basics, such as Bonjour, Comment allez-vous? or Passez une bonne journée,
“Uh—he asked how much the noodles were.”
“It takes two minutes to say that?” she questioned with a perplexed tone.
Mr. Dubois rambled on, “You know what I do with a woman like you?” as Mrs. Lee flexed her ears, confused and concentrated, trying her best to pick up what he had said.
“I take her home and give her a French lesson,” he slithered with a thirsty voice.
Right at that moment, Mr. Lee walked through the door and the other three people leaned their attention in his direction. He immediately stared down Mr. Dubois with an intense violence and lashed out unpleasant words in Chinese to his wife. Next, he turned to Rice Boy and said, “What’s going on?”
“Nothing,” Mrs. Lee answered for him.
“Vous voulez quoi?” Mr. Lee demanded Mr. Dubois what he wanted.
“Your products are too damn expensive.”
A short pause highlighted the moment, while the men circled each other like two male lions in a brutal fight for territory. They were trying to intimidate each other with their unblinking eyes and bulging chest.
“You immigrants think you can come here and tell us what to do?” Mr. Dubois said suddenly, making his way toward the exit.
Before Mr. Lee could react, the Frenchman walked out the door like an angry customer.
“Bastard! I been here for twenty-five years. What d’you know about me? You freakin’ racist,” Mr. Lee yelled at the top of his lungs, then went immediately back to work; he had just wasted precious time that could have been devoted to Pai Son.
“And what do you know about him?” Rice Boy’s judgment burnt like a rash in his head.
“The next time he brings himself around here, I’ll show him what’s on my mind,” Mr. Lee said, stacking some rice bags across from the counter. “How often does this loser come here anyway?”
“It’s the third time this week and he’s really creeping me out,” Mrs. Lee answered.
“If he doesn’t buy anything next time, kick him out, Doc,” he ordered Rice Boy.
The workday finally came to an end. Rice Boy was at his usual point of exhaustion. He yearned to return home, take a hot shower, eat a nice meal, and rest his weary head on a soft pillow, cuddled underneath a cozy blanket. Happiness was quite simple for him. It was a matter of appreciating the everyday, bare necessities.
On the way home, the sun was a luminous crimson color, the sky fired in pink, and the evening’s violet blanket began to embrace the horizon as stars started to sparkle one by one. Rice Boy hopped on the tram and plunged devotedly into a seat with great relief. He looked around; tired faces reflected his own dull state: a teenage girl sat in naive content on her boyfriend’s lap, an old lady was angry at two young Arab men. They were smoking to publicly show their angst for society, and perhaps unknowingly, to express generations of inequality and discrimination.
Rice Boy remained indifferent to his surroundings and closed his eyes, effortlessly returning to a quiet space within him that had been calling him back the whole day. His breathing slowed down to a gentle rhythm, and a deep calm possessed his being. No longer bothered by the chatter of voices and machines, his face relaxed as he inhaled deeply and naturally.
He felt intimately the scattered words, laughter, and restlessness that accompanied the ride. Slowly the judgments running through his head about the Arabs, Mr. Lee, and the drunkard—“These young boys don’t respect anything. Lee, that penny-pinching workaholic. Dubois, what a pervert, he needs to get laid!”—dissolved away. In that sacred hearth, somewhere in the depth of his being, noise suddenly became silence and silence became noise. His breath seemed to have suspended and stopped as he heard the sound of the electric doors cracking. Rice Boy opened his eyes, got up, exhaled, and walked out into the young night. In that moment which ushered him into eternity, he had dwelled peacefully between the space of two breaths. The air smelled fresh, and the streetlights guided his way home.
Mr. Dubois had been born and raised in St. Etienne and spoke with a heavy Stephanois accent. His father had toiled in the coal mines and died from lung cancer at the age of fifty. At that time, Mr. Dubois was still a teenager. After his decease, he went through a period of questioning. He asked his mother and the local priest about death. They thought he was too young to understand, or perhaps didn’t have a clear answer themselves, so they gave him the typical lines: “You’re father is on the right hand of God” or “He’s in heaven with your ancestors.”
He thought about animals, insects, and people who didn’t believe in God. Did they go to the same place? Why did one have to be a Christian to go to heaven? Did Buddhist, Muslims, and Hindus have their own paradise? Did he just have to believe? It seemed all so suspiciously divided and not very different from the world he was living in. Everyone seemed to have an answer for everything.
With all his spiritual inquiries, he had no clue as to whom or what to have faith in anymore. He went to Sunday mass only to accompany his mother, who was a deeply religious woman. With her husband gone, she seemed to have voluntarily closed the door on the world and devoted herself whole heartedly to studying the Bible and listening to the pope’s discourse.
Even though he had never shared his true sentiments to her, this disturbed Mr. Dubois because she lost interest and concern for him, and her life slowly transformed into an uninteresting routine of darkness and prayer. She no longer lived in the present. Instead, she was always thinking about an ultimate future where pain didn’t exist. The idea of eternal happiness, thought Mr. Dubois, made her a foreverly sad woman.
At the church, the priest also seemed rather unhappy. His weekly sermons consisted of reciting from the New and Old Testaments like a tape recorder, giving advice to suffering people without genuine care, and walking in his robe like a midnight zombie. Mr. Dubois declared the religious zealot no different from a parrot saying the same trite lines over and over again to the devotees: “Confess your sins! Don’t lose faith! Do this and God will reward you with eternal happiness. Do that and you’ll be damned forever in hell!”
His mother rarely smiled because she had too much of her own pain and burden to reconcile. In fact, she slowly sank into depression with the repetition of her daily life, and the memories of her late husband haunted her in wake and dream. The loneliness in her desired to relive the moments of security, comfort, and love she had felt for her late husband. She had been with him for such a long time that she experienced an unwanted emptiness when he died, because she had completely but unconsciously identified herself with him. Losing certain ideologies, talents, and possessions had the same effect. She sought identification outwardly to fill an inner void.
Mr. Dubois ended up being a bartender. At the beginning, he wasn’t even a drinker. He would have an occasional glass of wine, as nearly all French people did. But outside of that context, he never took a sip. Unfortunately, he was in an environment where drinking was the norm. The first trace of Mr. Dubois’ habit started one evening at work when he thought about his parents. Every time he felt the sadness of his mother or the missing presence of his father, he turned to Jack Daniels for comfort. Thinking became less complicated. After another glass, there was lightness and clarity. Thinking fell into the background of pure sensation; then came a period of regression and regret, and thinking came back with a vengeance. The only thing that left a lasting impression on his mind was the relief the alcohol brought, and how it vanished away all his problems. At the end, he ultimately became what he was exposed to. Psychologists call this social conditioning; the Darwinists define it as environmental adaptation.
Mr. Dubois used it as an excuse for succumbing to his darker side. He no longer wanted to deal with all his unanswered, existential questions. He reached the breaking point where he pathetically drank in the mornings. What was once café sans sucre became Johnny Walker on the rocks. He eventually lost his job because he was downing glasses more than he was serving them. His confusion and loneliness made him seek out the misunderstood poisons of society: sex, drugs, and alcohol. Mr. Dubois chose drinking with a sprinkle of women but stayed away from the drugs.
The Lee household was only a couple of minutes away from the store. They had the convenience of walking to work every day, a pleasure few had living in the city. Mr. Lee had bought and renovated two apartments next door to each other—one for his family and the other for his aging parents.
Late evening arrived and dinner had just begun. On this night, fish soup was served with Chinese herbs, and fried pork marinated with hoy sin sauce (accompanied with the usual hot and steamy white rice). Mr. Lee’s mother was an exceptional cook. The French pedestrians had the honor of smelling her fragrant dishes as they walked by the Lee’s kitchen window. She always made sure to leave it slightly open for extra ventilation, which was also a subtle and conscious gesture of her own pride.
The family ate without saying a word. It was one of those rare moments when nobody spoke. After the long day of customer service and work, everybody’s stomach growled of hunger. In that silence, they all concentrated pointedly on their meal, not savoring the taste but devouring it down like animals.
“Meimei, finish your rice!” ordered Mrs. Lee to her six-year-old daughter (Meimei, Celine’s nickname, means “little one” in Chinese).
“I’m not hungry anymore, Mom! Can I go watch cartoons!” Celine pleaded.
“If you don’t eat, you’ll become skinny and disappear,” Mrs. Lee said, trying to scare her.
“I’ve had enough and I’m not hungry!”
“For every grain of rice you leave in your bowl, I’m gonna slap you on the hands with this chopstick!”
Celine stood up and ran off into her room. Mrs. Lee followed closely behind and grabbed her daughter by the wrist, forcing the child’s palm open. She whipped Celine with the utensil that had once been used for eating but was now a deadly weapon. The sudden blow stung Celine’s hand, making it bright red, and she yelled at the top of her lungs. She didn’t want it to happen again, but then another slap came, and yet another scream—this time louder, with more tears rolling down her face.
“That was just for half of what’s left in your bowl. You want more?” Mrs. Lee threatened.
Celine was a stubborn yet wise child. She could easily distinguish between threats and bluffs.
“If my hand falls off, it’ll be all you fault! I’m gonna tell my teacher at school and they’ll send you off to prison for child abuse!” she said.
“You are hard-headed like your dad. One day, you’ll get into big trouble,” Mrs. Lee lectured her daughter.
Her husband heard what had been said and chuckled with a crazy, high-toned laugh, “It’s okay. What’s the big deal? She can eat the rest tomorrow.”
“Your daughter will grow up spoiled if you let that happen each time. Nobody can blame me because I’ve tried,” Mrs. Lee said, going into the kitchen.
Celine was a small and skinny girl for her age. She loved grapes and bean sprouts. Unfortunately, anything else her mother offered, she refused or pretended to like it. Mr. Lee came to the conclusion that if she ate a lot of grapes and bean sprouts, she would get sick and tired of them. Each time he came home from the store, he brought some for her. Once, they even tried to make her eat only grapes instead of dinner, hoping she would feel left out and give in. To their surprise, Celine filled her tummy with delight. She never wondered why she was eating something different from the rest of the family. Contrary to their hopes, she almost felt as if she were receiving special treatment.
The most captivating side of Celine, like almost all children, was her interest and curiosity for things adults either perceived as normal or didn’t perceive at all because they were too lost in thought about future ambitions or past memories. One time, she spent half an hour following an ant on the sidewalk to find out where it lived. Another time, she spoke to a frozen fish and asked it where its parents were. Her world was divided by a very thin line between reality and imagination. She enjoyed playing with Rice Boy whenever her grandmother would take her to the store. They often went in the storage room to climb the rice bags or play cat and mouse in the aisles. Those were the days Celine cherished the most.
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