The Mist-Eyed People-6: The Fog of War Novel |

And those words sometimes proved true. They succeeded in playing the angel of death, claiming human lives. Yet, they did so with such cruelty that death became more terrifying than a thousand deaths in a torture chamber. Who knows where they learned to devise such agonizing ways to die—methods perhaps unknown even to the most sadistic of demons.

I firmly believe that hatred and resentment solve nothing. I recall the words of the author Norman Vincent Peale, who noted that hatred and resentment do not harm the people we dislike; instead, day and night, they gnaw away at us.

That sentiment was written on a small sticker affixed to the pickup truck—the only vehicle connecting our village to the district town. Every time I traveled to and from town, I read those words over and over until I knew them by heart.

I actually wanted to spend the journey reading a book. However, the jolting ride over potholed, rocky roads caused the words to scatter like grains of rice in a winnowing tray. It took immense concentration to piece the words back into sentences and the sentences into paragraphs.

Whenever we hit a smooth stretch of road, I would often open my book. But then, other distractions would arise.

“Even on the road, playing politics…” remarked an old man whose teeth were stained black from the nicotine of nipa leaf cigarettes.

I pretended not to hear. "Playing politics," he said—when in reality, I was simply opening my math book to check how much homework I had to do. There were too many meddlesome people whenever I tried to use those rare stretches of smooth road to read, or even just to flip through the pages.

This happened partly because reading—whether in a vehicle or anywhere else—had not yet become part of our local culture. Another reason was that we were far too fond of meddling in other people's business, often forgetting our own responsibilities in the process.

In the end, I mostly kept quiet, lost in the jolting motion and the sound of the truck’s engine, which wheezed like a sickly old man. It is so wretched, yet no one cares.[]

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Continued in Part 7