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My Sentimental Grandfather’s Love Letters From His Whirlwind World Tour

Agon, date unknown.

My grandfather, who I called Agon, was a sentimental man. When he went on a whirlwind tour around the world in 1964, he sent Ama ten letters and postcards. Even though I haven’t found all of them, I know that he’s visited Greece, Switzerland, Spain, Germany, Argentina, the United States, Thailand, and Japan. He filled blue aerogram letters with his observations of the places he saw, his thoughts, and his affections for Ama and their children.

I couldn’t read the letters—Agon wrote in Japanese in his messy doctor scrawl, barely legible even to my aunt, who spent most of her adult life in Japan. I enlisted Aunt Lily’s help because she speaks and reads Japanese. Another reason I had chosen her to share my Agon’s letter is because her family came from Guangdong Province, specifically from Chaozhou— like Ama’s family. Her grandfather and father knew my Great Grandfather. When I showed her the letter, she was charmed by Agon’s long letters that travelled around the world to reach his love over half a century ago. We picked a random letter—the one from Switzerland.

Agon’s letter from Switzerland, 1964

Agon started the letter by describing his travel in the Alps as he enjoyed the views of red-roofed houses and the verdant mountains. He said he was cold—Agon left Taiwan in the summer, and by the time he arrived in the Alps in the autumn, he was still wearing a short-sleeved shirt when it was only one degree Celsius. He also mentioned leaving a book he purchased in Hong Kong in a car in Geneva. Then, he contemplated whether or not he should fly or hire a car to Frankfurt— should he get there as quickly as possible or enjoy the slow ride through the Alps? I assumed he took the car since he wrote about the scenery at the beginning of the letter. Then, he asked about my uncle, my dad’s younger brother, who had just been born before Agon’s around-the-world trip. Agon also mentioned that he felt mentally drained. He said even though it was common for westerners to take their wives on vacations, he felt ill at ease. He didn’t clearly state that he was travelling with his wife, though I assumed he was. It was an implicit way to tell Ama that he missed her.

The following letter Aunt Lily and I looked at together was from Spain. Agon said that it was hot there, like in Taiwan. “I left Taiwan for one month now. I am heading to Argentina tomorrow,” he wrote. “It’s nine p.m. here, which is the afternoon in your time zone.”

There is a mystery in the letter that Aunt Lily and I tried to figure out. Agon asked Ama to reach out to an uncle (舅舅) in Hong Kong (Aunt Lily and I assumed it was Ama’s oldest brother he was referring to since he was the only person we knew for sure that lived in Hong Kong). Agon wanted Ama to contact this uncle so he could visit Ada Ng, who was studying in California—he included Ada’s address in the letter. Agon provided explicit instructions on how to write on the envelope correctly. I don’t know who Ada Ng was, but “Ng” is the Cantonese pronunciation of “Wu” (吳), and so I assumed that it’s most likely Ama’s cousin since they share the same family name. Perhaps it’s Ama’s brother’s daughter—maybe I need to ask my father. Agon closed the letter by telling Ama about the beautiful ladies who looked oriental. “But seeing beautiful Spanish girls made me think of you,” he wrote.

Letter from Argentina

From Argentina, Agon wrote about the best steaks in the world and noted that since Ama didn’t eat beef, she probably wouldn’t be envious, but their children would be excited. He also discussed the Asian stock market and when Ama should sell her stocks. Then, he inquired about the house they were building together, which is the house I’m living in almost sixty years later. Agon said he would like to live on the second floor of the new house but deferred all other decisions to Ama. Finally, towards the end of the letter, Agon wrote about an event he was attending in which he represented the ROC—it’s unclear if it was a medical conference in Argentina or the Tokyo Winter Olympics.


In the letter from California, he talked about how the city was hot but cooler by the sea. He told Ama that he had prepared a gift for Ada—a watch purchased in Switzerland. However, he didn’t mention the visit with Ada, which I found curious. He also talked about women in this letter and said that the Californian girls were the prettiest ones in America. Agon said he would fly to Tokyo the next day to attend the Olympics and return to Taichung in late October. He asked Ama to be patient. He closed the letter by indicating that he had grown weary that airports and hotels had become his home.

Agon and Ama, date unknown.

Aunt Lily and I only looked at a few letters that day and not in chronological order. Agon was so warm and affectionate in his letters. He wanted her to see what he saw and document his thoughts. I imagine him stealing a moment away from his wife as he had a nightcap at the hotel bar, where he revealed his true feelings to Ama.


In understanding some of the content in my grandfather’s letters, I know there was genuine love between my grandparents even though they weren’t married. Even though Agon was married to another woman, and it was his wife that he took on this tour around the world, Ama had his heart. I wish I knew how Ama felt and what she thought—she was taking care of a newborn and building her new house while her man was on the other side of the planet with another woman. Why had he left Ama for so many months shortly after she gave birth to my uncle? I wonder if Ama was bitter and resentful and, at the same time, felt lonely and missed Agon desperately, even though she would never admit it to anyone, not even to herself. I suppose I may never find the answers to my questions though it’s fun and at times overwhelming to imagine the romance that took place two generations ago.

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My Journey With Unreliable Yet Fascinating Old Taiwanese Records

The Chang Family cemetery.

For the longest time, I considered myself a multi-generational Taiwanese person. We have a six-meter granite plaque in the Chang family cemetery that outlines how my ancestors left Fujian and crossed the strait in 1742, making me the twenty-second generation in Taiwan. My mother’s family, the Lins, have also been in Taiwan for hundreds of years. However, I learned recently that not all sides of my family have been in Taiwan for hundreds of years.

Since moving back to Taiwan in 2021, I’ve lived in my paternal grandmother’s house. She’s ninety-four years old and her house is in desperate need of repairs. While my husband Derek does the majority of the renovation, I’ve been organizing and maintaining her personal belongings and documents.

Ama’s documents are fascinating. They consist of photographs and various types of documents, which gave me clues to her early years. Ama’s passport from 1965 claimed that she was born in “Kwangtung” (廣東—more commonly spelled “Guangdong” ). Yet, her passport from 1996 claimed that she was born in Taiwan. When I asked my father, he was confident that Ama was born in Taiwan. Back then, people listed their “ancestral home” (籍貫) on their identification documents, but it wasn’t necessarily where they were born. Also, during Kuomintang (KMT) rule, Chiang Kai-shek believed that his government was China’s legitimate government, and therefore, it’s not unreasonable to list someone’s birthplace as “China.” So, with all this conflicting information, where was my paternal grandmother born?

Ama’s passport from 1965 indicates that her birthplace was “Kwangtung.”
Ama’s passport from 1996 indicates that she was born in Taiwan.
Ama’s passport from 1969 claims that she was born in China.

To learn more about Ama, I decided to dig deeper by looking into her father, Wu Fu-ke. My Granduncle, born to my Great Grandfather’s second wife, said his father was born in Guangdong province and came to Taiwan when he was about thirteen. He eventually married my Great Grandmother, who was Taiwanese. They had two sons and seven daughters. When Great Grandfather was about fifty years old, he moved his wife and some of his children to Vietnam. Granduncle gave me approximate years, which prompted me to the household registration office to locate the earliest records on my Great Grandfather to establish his timeline. 

The clerk at the office handed me two documents: one from 1914 and another from 1947. The 1914 form indicated Wu Fu-ke, approximately twenty-four at the time, was registered with a different family (due to privacy laws, the record doesn’t show who he was staying with). The document from 1947 showed that his wife (my Great Grandmother) had died in Vietnam in 1950. Furthermore, Ama also deregistered herself from her adoptive mother‘s house and into her father’s house in 1947. She would have been nineteen at the time.

My Great Grandfather’s Household Registration from 1914.
My Great Grandfather’s Household Registration from 1947. Ama was also listed in this document as an occupant of the household.

The household registration forms muddled my investigation because they didn’t match what I thought I knew about Ama or her family. What’s crazy is that my Great Grandfather’s birthdates weren’t the same in the two documents. One claimed that he was born twenty-two years before the Republic of China (ROC); the other claimed that he was born twenty-three years before the ROC. This would put my Great Grandfather’s birth year to 1889 or 1890.

I also asked for Ama’s earliest records at the Household registration office. According to the clerk, the earliest one was from 1947, when Ama was nineteen. That was roughly the time her father moved back to Taiwan from Vietnam. I was hoping to find out when she was registered at her adoptive mother’s house to ascertain when her family left for Vietnam, but I haven’t yet to find this record.

Physical records, especially ones from previous generations, are unreliable—the Household Registration clerk told me that records were created based on what people had reported. And until the last half century, most people gave birth at home, and it wasn’t common to register one’s child immediately. My mother, born in 1954, wasn’t registered until she was three months old because her family wasn’t sure if she would survive. As a result, the birthdate on her official identification differs from her actual birthdate.

Ama and her adoptive grandmother. Perhaps Ama was given away even before her family moved to Vietnam.

I may never know for sure if Ama was born in Taiwan or when she was adopted. However, based on photographs and what Granduncle told me, perhaps Ama was given away even before her birth family moved away to Vietnam—I may never know for certain. It’s unlikely that I could define the exact timeline of Ama and her family through official records. There’s a part of me that wants to solve this puzzle, but I may never know the specifics of Ama’s early years or the dates of my Great Grandfather’s migration—from China to Taiwan, then from Taiwan to Vietnam, and back to Taiwan again. I could only go by what my father, my Greatuncle, and Grandaunt, told me—the family members who have known Ama and my Great Grandfather—and create a narrative based on their reliable memories. Ultimately, it doesn’t matter when my Great Grandfather came to Taiwan or where Ama was born. It doesn’t take away who I am as a Taiwanese Canadian woman on a journey to learn more about her family and history. 

Even though my project is about my family, it is also about Taiwan, its history and politics. The idea of “Taiwanese-ness” is nuanced, and even my idea about Taiwanese identity has evolved over the years. I used to identify as Chinese ethnically but culturally and politically Taiwanese. Now, I strictly identify as Taiwanese, and yet, ironically, I found out that my Great Grandfather was born in China, and my paternal grandmother may have been born there too. However, my discovery hasn’t challenged my Taiwanese identity, but it only deepens my conviction that Taiwan and China have an intimate and intertwined history.

I love Chinese culture and China as a place—after all, my ancestors came from there. Due to escalating tensions, we often forget that Taiwan and China share so much commonality, from languages to food to customs. I’m not opposed to China, but what I reject is the Communist Party of China (CPC). I denounce the CPC’s authoritarian politics to snuff out diversity in religion, ethnicities, and languages. I condemn the Beijing government’s treatment of the ethnic Uyghurs in Xinjiang and the violent suppression of Hong Kong’s democracy movement in 2019. In China, to be patriotic is to love one’s country and its government. For many of us in Taiwan, there is a clear distinction—we could love our country but also criticize our government. We could vote and choose who governs us. However, China has not reached that point yet. There is no separation between the country and the party. Maybe one day, when they can separate the two, there will be a new China, perhaps one that Taiwan wouldn’t mind joining. Despite Xi’s one China rhetoric, I’m a firm believer that the fate of Taiwan should be decided by the Taiwanese people.

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Were My Great Grandparents Bad Parents For Leaving Their Daughters Behind?

A Portrait of Ama’s adopted mother hanging in the gods’ room, by Wei-chen Li

It’s no secret that my Ama was adopted. For as long as I can remember, there’s been a black and white portrait of my adopted Great Grandmother hanging in the gods’ room. In the picture, she wore a Buddhist robe and held rosaries. Her face was kind, but her expression was stern, with a hint of a smirk like she was pretending to be serious just for the photoshoot. Though I don’t remember meeting her, her face is familiar—I’ve been looking at her portrait my whole life. Yet I know almost nothing about her, except that she was a devout Buddhist whose husband died young, she was friends with my Great Grandmother and was childless until Ama came into her life. Other than that, I learned that she was born in 1903 and that she was illiterate—information I gleaned from a 1950-era household registration within Ama’s archives.

Sometimes I feel like I recall memories that are not mine. They’re my Ama’s, so I have to imagine what she went through and try to see the events of her life from her point of view and in the context of Taiwanese history. I will probably never know precisely what happened to my grandmother and how she felt about her life, but I can use reimagined memories to try to understand my Ama as a woman of her time.

I don’t know how old Ama was when her parents gave her away. I asked my father, but he didn’t know. “Didn’t you ask Ama?” I asked.

“Of course I did!” my father said. “But she’d just yell at me and told me not to bother with the past.”

Ama (bottom row, far left) and her adopted family, 1930s. I believe her adopted mother was the first woman on the left in the second row.

I know almost nothing about Ama’s adopted family except the snippet I learned about my adopted Great Grandmother from Ama’s archives. From how fondly my father spoke of her, Ama loved her adopted mother very much. Allegedly, one of the reasons Ama chose Agon, my grandfather, was that Ama wanted to have the means to take care of her widowed adopted mother and live with her. Agon was a handsome and successful obstetrician who was thirteen years her senior and already married. Perhaps Ama believed that she couldn’t live with her adopted mother and care for her if she had married because it was standard Taiwanese practice for a wife to move into her husband’s ancestral home and care for his parents. Perhaps Ama feared that no husband would allow her to bring her adopted mother into their marital home, so she chose a married man instead.

I will never have the answer to my burning questions about her birth or adopted family and why she chose a life of a mistress instead of a wife. I wish I had asked her more questions when she could answer them. However, I am thankful that in a rare moment when Ama still had her mental faculties, she brought down her box of photographs. This is the only reason I know what Ama looked like as a child—it was the only reason I could identify her in these almost-a-century-old photos.

Ama (far right) and her siblings, 1930s. I’m unsure if this picture was taken before or after the family uprooted to Vietnam.

My Great Grandfather and Great Grandmother share seven daughters and two sons. The firstborn, a daughter, died as a child. When my Great Grandparents moved to Vietnam, they took both sons and some of the daughters, leaving behind the second sister, who was probably married off, the fourth sister, and Ama, the fifth sister. Ama’s fourth sister was two years older, and the two girls were given away to be raised by different families. I don’t know if Ama was the youngest at the time of my Great Grandparents’ departure—I don’t know if the sixth and seventh sisters were born in Taiwan or Vietnam. However, I know that the youngest two children, a son and a daughter, are born to my Great Grandfather’s second wife after my Great Grandmother’s death. They also adopted another son.

In the 1930, my Great Grandparents moved to Vietnam at the height of Japanese colonialism as it tried to expand its territories across Asia. My father guessed that her family probably left Taiwan when Ama was old enough to be out of diapers but still young enough to be moulded into someone else’s daughter. I understand why Ama’s parents took the boys—sons carry the family name in a patriarchal society. But I can only guess why they gave away the three daughters. Perhaps there were just too many children, so my Great Grandfather gave away some of his daughters to whoever would take them. Regardless of the reasons, Ama must feel abandoned or traumatized knowing that her parents didn’t want her or couldn’t take her to their new home.

Ama and her sisters as adults, 1950s. From left to right: Second Sister, Fourth Sister, Daughter of the Fourth Sister, Ama, and the Seventh Sister.

My Great Grandfather did eventually return to Taiwan in the late 1940s or early 1950s. It was a turbulent time in Taiwan. World War II ended with the Japanese surrendering, and they lost control of Taiwan and all its colonies. The United States negotiated with the Republic of China (ROC) and gave control of Taiwan to its ruling party, the Kuomingtang (KMT). My Great Grandfather and his new life moved back to Taiwan as it was going through massive changes in governance and a shift in allegiance.

As far as I could tell from Ama’s records, the only ones that returned to Taiwan with my Great Grandfather were the second and third son, the adopted son and possibly Ama’s cousin. None of the daughters came back to live in Taiwan. I also found some records that indicated that Great Grandfather came back as Ama finished nursing school and was working at a hospital where she contracted a serious illness. Great Grandfather took care of her, provided her with Chinese medicine, and nursed her to health.

When Saigon fell in 1975, the remaining Wu family fled Vietnam—some to France and others to the U.S. I don’t know precisely where the Third and Sixth sisters relocated to, but the Seventh sister, who moved to France, visited Taiwan regularly. Her sons, who are about my father’s age, studied in Taiwan. She was the only one of the sisters who grew up in Vietnam who showed up in Ama’s photos.

Sometimes I wonder if my great-grandparents were terrible parents for leaving their daughters behind. If they hadn’t left Ama as a child, perhaps she would have married and led a more conventional life—but I wouldn’t have existed. So the point of this exercise isn’t to judge my ancestors or scrutinize their decisions—instead, I try to see them as people through a compassionate lens—I try to see them as people from different eras and try to learn about them in the context of Taiwanese history.

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The Astonishing Discovery of Chiang Kai-shek in my Family Archives

Chiang Kei-shek and his supporters. My Granduncle is on the far left.

“Hey! That’s Chiang Kai-shek!” Wei-chen exclaimed.

“You’re right!” I inspected the black and white photograph. “What the hell is he doing in my Ama’s photos?”

Wei-chen is a Taichung-based photographer who I have befriended this year. After several hang-out sessions, we figured out our families are connected by marriage, which makes us distant relatives. We were excited and started a quest to understand our families and ancestry better. Since I am living in my paternal grandmother’s house in Taichung, we began our research with Ama’s archives and belongings.

How many people have a picture of the infamous Generalissimo in their family’s archive? I had no idea why we had this picture. I showed my father the photograph and asked him why Ama had a picture of Chiang Kai-shek in her possession.

It turns out that the man on the very far left was my Granduncle, my Ama’s oldest brother. He, like his father, was also a successful Chinese medicine merchant. He was an overseas Chinese merchant in Vietnam, and I supposed he donated to the Kuomintang (KMT). I guess this is why he had the “honour” of having his picture taken with the leader of the party and the then-president of Taiwan.

I was shocked. I had no idea that we had family members who supported the KMT. Both my parents and I are supporters of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), which advocates human rights and promotes Taiwanese nationalism and identity.

“What about Ama?” I asked.

“Ama supported the KMT,” my father said.

“Why? They killed thousands of people during the 228 Incident and tens and thousands more during the White Terror!”

“Well, your Ama thought the KMT people are decorous and cultured,” my father said.

“But they were terrorits!”

“Ama didn’t think so. She admired Soong Mei-ling,” my father said, his attention already drifted toward the television.

Soong Mei-ling was Chiang Kai-shek’s third wife. Chiang was technically still married when he pursued her. Besides partnering with a much older man who was already married, my Ama and Soong Mei-ling didn’t seem to have much in common. I looked up Soong to figure out why Ama had admired her. In the 1937, Soong and Chiang Kai-Shek shared the hounour of Time‘s Man and Woman of the Year. By 1943, Soong had appeared on the cover of Time three times, and she was the first Chinese national and the second woman to address both houses of the U.S. Congress. Perhaps Ama idolized Soong because she was elegant and eloquent, well dressed and spoke English fluently. She also helped her husband promote his image and built relationships in the U.S.

While I was wondering about why Ama was a fan of the KMT, it occurred to me that I didn’t know my grandmother at all. I didn’t know who she looked up to and why. I didn’t know which political party she supported. I didn’t even know her favourite food, colour, or books. All my life, I just knew her as my Ama, my paternal grandmother. But who was she as a woman of her time?

Ama, 1950’s

Since September 2021, I’ve moved back to Taiwan and into Ama’s house in Taichung. Ama is now ninety-four years old and in poor health; her house requires repairs. While my husband Derek began the repairs, I started organizing her belongings and archives. As a result, I’ve found a wealth of information, from black and white photographs to half a century old, onion paper thin documents.

I have so many questions. However, Ama is no longer verbal, so she can’t answer my questions. As a result, I can only make educated guesses about her life based on the information in her archive and photos. I’ve also been reaching out to relatives and associates who had known her.

Wu Qiao Qing (born 1928) was the fifth daughter of Mr. Wu Fu-ke and Mrs. Wu Zhan Zu. Ama came into the world at the height of Japanese colonialism to a Chinese father from Chaozhou, Guangdong province. He is the only one of my great grandparents who wasn’t born in Taiwan.

My Great Grandfather, date unknown.

I learned a bit about my Great Grandfather, Wu Fu-ke, from my Grandaunt, Ama’s youngest sister—she is the eighth and youngest daughter born from my Great Grandfather’s second wife. She said that my Great Grandfather came to Taiwan as a youth probably around the early 1900’s or 1910’s— I haven’t found any records about when he arrived. According to my Grandaunt, Fu-ke’s family had means but a fortune teller claimed that he would curse his parents. So, his family sent the young man away. My Great Grandfather didn’t have any means to support himself when he first came to Taiwan. One day, a cousin of his, a Chinese medicine merchant who also hailed from Chaozhou, gave him some second rate ginseng for him to sell. This was how my Great Grandfather started his career as a Chinese medicine merchant.

He eventually left Taiwan and moved to Vietnam for better opportunities. He left Ama and two other daughters in Taiwan and took his wife and the rest of the children to his new home. In Vietnam, he became prosperous.

My Great Grandfather, 1959

Fu-ke eventually returned to Taiwan sometime in the 1940s, when Japanese colonialism ended, and the Kuomintang retreated to Taiwan after losing the Chinese civil war. He eventually died in Taichung, Taiwan, before I was born.

The photographs of my Granduncle and my Great Grandfather are only the beginning of my quest to understand my Ama as a woman in the context of Taiwanese history. Through this project, I want to understand Ama as a person and, simultaneously, learn about Taiwan— my ancestral homeland that, until last year, I had only lived from the ages of six to ten.

Wei-chen and I have been uncovering her belongings and documenting them through text and photographs. We will be working together on a book. He will be in charge of the visual element of this project and creating new images to complement my family history.

This is the first post of a series called “You Can Have it When You Grow Up.” It’s where I will document my process and research in learning about my Ama, Taiwan, and myself.

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Colombo 101

“Roads? Where we are going, we don’t need roads.” Photo by Derek Black.

Derek and I love our new country of Sri Lanka. A gem of an island, Sri Lanka is full of natural beauty and an abundance of resources. Having said that, moving to a new place is always challenging, no matter how beautiful the land and how kind its people. Below are three mottos that describe our experience in our new home.

If something makes too much sense, it’s probably wrong.

Derek and I thought it would be nice to take a train down to the historic Galle Fort for a mini getaway. We love the idea of travelling by train, and since we live close to Mount Lavinia station, we walked to the station to buy tickets for the next day. When we got there, the man behind the counter told us that we could only purchase tickets on the day we were travelling.

The following day, we arrived at the station at 7:50 am for a train departing at 8:35 am. With two pink second-class tickets in hand, we sat down on a bench near the platform. We watched many trains went by, and each time the conductor shook his head no; it wasn’t our train. At almost 9:00 am, the conductor shouted, go go go as a train was nearing the station. We picked up our bag and ran. As the train pulled into the station, our mouths dropped–the train was jam-packed. Not only were the cars full, but there were also more passengers hanging off the railings at the entrances of every car. Defeated, we walked back to the station. The conductor looked at us, “Why didn’t you get on the train?”

“It was full, and we couldn’t get on,” Derek said.

The conductor smiled and gave us the sideway nod as he took away our pink tickets.

We thought that it made sense for us to get on the train since we had tickets, but that wasn’t the case. Lesson learned: If something makes too much sense, it’s probably wrong. We did eventually make it to Galle. We found a man who offered us a ride. After negotiating down from USD 100 to USD 50, we got a car. The car wasn’t fast enough for the highway, so we stuck to the local roads and three bumpy hours later, we finally made it.

Beautiful sunset in Galle.

If something seems too easy, you will probably need to go back. 

After eating out for weeks, Derek wanted to start cooking again. He went to the gas station one day and bought a tank of gas. Since the attached store was closed, he couldn’t get the tubing that would connect the tank to the stove. The following weekend, he went back and bought the attachment we needed. He realized when he got home that before he can start cooking, we still needed to source a metal fitting to connect the tubing to the stove. He searched the hardware stores in our neighbourhood, walked up and down in the heat for a whole afternoon, and found none. The next day, I enlisted the help of the local people working in our building. While Derek was still at work, I showed the man a picture of the fitting. He took me to two hardware shops nearby, and neither had what I was looking for. Derek happened to get home when I got back. The man got in the tuk tuk with Derek to continue the hunt. After travelling to the next neighbourhood and stopping in many stores, Derek finally found the right accessory.

That day, we learned another valuable lesson: If something seems too easy, you’ll probably need to go back. This applies to many situations, like opening a bank account (which we haven’t) and getting a resident visa (which I still don’t have).

Time is relative, but not related to the clock.

On a Friday morning, our relocation agent told Derek to go to the customs office at 11:30 am to inspect our shipment from Hong Kong and pay the duty. Derek showed up on time and sat in a waiting room. After waiting for an hour or so, he asked when he would meet the customs agent. The man at reception answered 1:00 pm. When Derek asked again an hour later, he was told 2:30 pm. Then, 3:30 pm came and went, and Derek still sat in the same room. At one point, the relocation agent appeared and told Derek to discreetly bribe the guys unloading the boxes, which he did. At 4:30, Derek was finally summoned into a room. After seeing our wine fridge (and being disappointed that it was a small one) and opening some boxes (he puzzled over our SodaStream), the customs agent demanded a USD 800 duty. Derek managed to persuade him to let us have our things for USD 400. After the negotiation, Derek finally left the customs office and made it home at 7:30 pm. Our boxes arrived at 10:00 pm. 

Dewey Punk Pickles is inspecting our shipment from Hong Kong.

The workings of the “Island Time” is mysterious–it could be one hour after the agreed-upon time or five hours–we just never know. We tell ourselves, time is relative, but not related to the clock as soothsaying any time we are waiting for anything. For instance, our new fridge was supposed to be delivered before noon the next day. It wasn’t. We called the store around 12:30 pm, and the shopkeeper said that it would arrive before 4:00 pm. It showed up at 6:30 pm. Hey, at least we have our stuff and a fridge now, which makes our new life in Sri Lanka more comfortable.

Derek and I love Sri Lanka, but some days, the country does kick our butts. The three mottos help us understand the workings of our new city. When things don’t go our way, they help us realize our misaligned expectations. At least we can laugh over our amusingly confusing misadventures over a bottle of Rockland Dry Gin.

Edited by Mohini Khadaria.

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Ama’s Aurora Borealis Bead Necklace

This is a picture of Ama, my paternal grandmother. Undated. (I suspect she was probably in her early 30’s)

One of my favourite things to do as a child was nosing around Ama’s drawers in her massive bedroom. I was about 8 or 9, living in Taichung, Taiwan. My parents and my brother lived on the fourth storey of a low-rise building Ama owned, and she occupied the third floor. This is the same building my Ama had raised her children–my Baba and his older sister and younger brother. On the weekends, I headed downstairs to spend time with my Ama, who was my favourite person at the time. While she watched the television, I opened all her drawers and boxes, digging for treasure. There was one object that held my attention: an aurora borealis bead necklace made of sparkling, multi-faceted Austrian glass. When Ama wore it with one of her pretty floral dresses, the necklace glistened in a spectrum of light, radiating rays of pinks, yellows, and blues. I thought it was the most glorious thing in the world. When I pulled it out of one of her jewellery boxes, I held it up to her. “Ama, can I have this?”


“You can have it when you grow up,” she said as she took the necklace from me.


Three decades later, I found myself in Ama’s room. It was late at night, and I snooped around her drawers, as I had done when I was a little girl. Since the autumn of 2019, Ama has been living in a nursing home where she can receive full-time care. When Derek and I visited for Chinese New Year’s, we stayed in her room. It felt surreal to be in the place I had spent so much time. So much has changed–I am no longer a child, and my relationship with Ama had hardened over the years. As a little girl, I idolized Ama. Even after we left Taiwan, I was still close to her–Baba had found a stack of letters I had written to Ama from my first couple of years living in Canada. However, the physical distance had taken a toll. As I became more westernized in my behaviour and thinking, Ama ceased to be important in my life. Then, in my 20’s, our relationship took a turn for the worse.

The top picture was taken in Canada, the bottom one was in Taichung.

As a young adult, every time I’d visited Taiwan, Ama was critical of me. The minute she laid her eyes on me, she tsked. “How did you get so fat?“


I was already subconscious about my body, and though I am sure she didn’t mean to hurt my feelings, she did. She was also unkind to Mama, which upset me. I witnessed many times when Ama belittled her cooking, commented on her appearance, and said unflattering things about her family. For many years, I was angry at Ama. Despite my animosity, I made annual pilgrimages to Taichung during Chinese New Year’s. Each year, I bore Ama’s verbal lashings and thought that I was doing it out of my love for Baba. Lately, I am starting to think that maybe it wasn’t just for Baba, after all.


As Derek snored in Ama’s queen-sized bed, I opened one of the drawers. It was jam-packed with stacks of papers–electricity bills from the ’80s, old bank statements, receipts from a doctor’s visit. I opened another drawer and found a round, plastic orange box commonly given away by jewellery stores in Taiwan. Inside, glistening beautiful vintage rings of jades and pearls with unique settings that are no longer in production. Then I found a bottle of Rémy Martin XO Cognac, a pair of diamond studs, a red envelope filled with 10,000 NT (about $330 USD). I had forsaken sleep and was driven by an obsession to open more drawers and cupboards. I peered at old letters and photographs, flipped through ancient address books and notebooks, and found many old fashioned brass keys that no longer open any doors. The more I discovered, the more insatiable I felt–subconsciously, I was looking for one thing–the aurora borealis bead necklace. As dawn drew near, I gave up my search, laid down next to Derek and slept.

The next day, I poured over the letters and the photographs. Old love letters she wrote my grandfather that she probably never sent. Black and white photos of relatives that I never met. Through her things, I got to know a side of Ama that I had always known but forgotten. Perhaps I am not so different from her after all–my obsessive need to hang on to memories is not too different than Ama’s. Instead of keeping every scrap of paper, I store my thoughts and sentimental objects in my notebooks, which I have done since I was 13. Ama and I are both hoarders in our own right. Unlike her, I don’t have a house to put away my memories. However, I do keep a box of bound journals that I lug around the world–my life in words and images for the past 25 years.


My resentment towards Ama has thawed, exposing the tender feelings underneath. Though I was embittered for how Ama treated Mama and me, deep down, I was always looking for Ama’s aurora borealis bead necklace. A few years ago, I found something similar when I was living in Savannah, GA. I bought the necklace without thinking twice. Now, I know that I have always wanted to be close to Ama, whether or not I wanted to admit it. During my last visit to Taichung, I visited Ama in the nursing home. I held her hand and spoke to her, even though I knew she couldn’t hear me. I was sorry for the wasted time, all the years I could have asked her about her youth, what her dreams and aspirations were, and why she chose to be with a married man for all of her adult life. But I didn’t. Now, I can only get glimpses of who she was–filtered through her pictures, words, and possessions. I suppose that is better than nothing.

Edited by Mohini Khadaria

Posted on

The Nikah

Hello dear reader,

Today, I am sharing “The Nikah” which was originally published and featured in the March 2019 issue of Sunspot Literary Journal. I hope you’ll enjoy it.

Tears rolled down my powdered face, dampening my makeshift lavender headscarf. I bit my lower lip and cried without making a sound. I could have said no to Gökhan and walked away from the nikah, the Islamic wedding ceremony—but my conditioning would not allow it. Growing up in a Taiwanese family, the concept of “losing face” was ingrained in me. I understood how unforgivable it was to humiliate someone in public. I felt compelled to submit to the conditioning that I have willfully fought against my whole life, to maintain my future husband’s honor in front of his entire clan. But the obligation to compromise my integrity, whether it was real or imaginary, was crushing me. I hated having to pretend to believe in something to please my future mother-in-law.

Gökhan’s mother was a gregarious Turkish woman. Short and squat in stature, she was the matriarch of the family. She had moved to Denmark with her husband in the ’70s, and all her children had been born and raised there. However, she held onto the customs from the old country and behaved very much like a traditional Turkish wife and mother. I never saw her without her headscarf, even in the middle of summer. Gökhan’s father, on the other hand, had adapted to Denmark. He was a quiet man with a handsome, honest face. He owned a grocery store in the neighborhood, and when he found out that I loved strawberries, he’d bring some back from his store every day during my visit. He was the type who would go with the flow and let his wife take care of all the traditions and rituals.

I had just arrived in Denmark a week earlier and had met Gökhan’s family for the first time. We slept in separate beds because his mother thought it was improper for us sleep together until we perform the nikah.

            That summer, Gökhan and I were in-between places—we had just left Dubai and in the autumn moved to Bahrain where I would start a new job. My new employers instructed me to move to Bahrain alone, or marry Gökhan so I could sponsor his dependent visa. Since we did not want to break up, we decided to elope in Canada. We made a pitstop in Copenhagen on our way to Vancouver to see his parents before we legalized our union.

Even though Gökhan’s mother and I did not speak the same language, I wanted her to like me. I understood that the nikah was pivotal to his pious mother. I was not against it, but I also did not want to give her the impression that I was willing to convert to Islam. I am proudly secular, which caused major friction when Gökhan and I first started dating.

“If you want to be with me, and be accepted by my family, you will need to convert,” he said—it was the only time I remember Gökhan being adamant about anything.

“No.” I stared at him as if he had warped into a goat. Converting to Islam was unthinkable. Being secular is my mode in life, and I was not willing to change it.

He explained that all I had to do was to pretend, to do it for a show, which was what he had done his whole life. I still refused. He called me spoiled, stubborn and selfish. I cried but persisted. It was a battle of wills that lasted the whole day.

“If you love me, you will accept me for who I am,” I argued, my eyes blazing. “You wouldn’t ask me to compromise my integrity.”

Eventually, I broke him down with a combination of persistence and tears. “You won’t need to convert,” he said, hugging me. “I will talk to my mother.”  

It was no surprise that Gökhan yielded—I was the girl who always had her way. “Don’t smoke in the mall,” Mama used to glare at me when I was on my way out of the house when I was in high school, “someone might see you.”

You don’t want me smoking in the mall? I did just that with abandon. Don’t want me dating white guys? I did, just to make you cringe. Oh, you would disown me if I got a tattoo? I did, just to test you.

Gökhan was right: I was spoiled. Mama relented, and Gökhan did too.

My initial experience with Islam was when I moved to Dubai for my first job as a librarian, about ten months before meeting Gökhan. My first impression was that it was strict and conservative. I had to abandon wearing skirts to work because it was indecent to show my knees. The religion forbade many things that I enjoyed, such as alcohol and pork. During Ramadan, even non-Muslims could not have a sip of water in public. However, I kept an open mind. I wanted to be involved with my future husband’s traditions.

When Gökhan told me about nikah, I knew nothing about it. He described it as an engagement to tell Allah that he, Gökhan, had chosen me, Kayo, to be his wife. That did not sound awful—it seemed like a symbolic ceremony. I agreed that I was willing to take part in the nikah, as long as I did not have to convert to Islam. He talked to his mother who agreed that I would not have to. Overjoyed that her son would no longer live in sin, she invited the whole extended family, prepared an elaborate spread, and summoned the prestigious imam, a religious leader, who would officiate the ceremony.

I had no idea what I signed up for.

On the day of the nikah, I was in the center of the room wearing an ivory, ankle-length, cotton maxi dress with grey embroidered flowers at the hem. I’d bought the dress a few days before because it was long and covered my legs. However, the top portion was too revealing for Islamic taste, so I wore a grey cardigan, buttoned-up all the way, which hid my tattooed arm and immodest cleavage.

Gökhan’s three aunts were fussing around me, trying to pin a lavender pashmina over my head as a temporary headscarf. His little sisters, aged 11 and 13, whose room had turned into a bridal dressing room, stole curious glances at me. When I returned their stares with grins, they gasped, turned their heads and looked away. His boisterous aunts laughed and chatted in a combination of Turkish and Danish. They clamored and made animated gestures with their hands and clapped as they giggled over some anecdote I couldn’t understand. I stood amid this commotion with a dumb smile on my face and nodded my head as Gökhan’s only English-speaking aunt asked me if I was doing okay. Despite the chaos in the room, a part of me was having fun, soaking up his aunts’ contagious excitement. I felt euphoric and found myself smiling more as time passed. I was putting the finishing touches on my makeup when Gökhan poked his head in the room, “Hey, can I talk to you for a minute in the next room?” he asked in a quiet voice, avoiding my eyes, his thick, dark brows furrowed.

“Is something wrong?” I asked.

***

How did I, my mother’s rebellious and stubborn daughter, ended up participating in nikah with a Danish-Turkish guy she had only dated for less than a year? The truth was that the defiant teenager who continually stretched boundaries and pushed her mother’s buttons found herself a lost and scared 26-year-old woman in the Middle East.

I was born in Japan to Taiwanese parents and grew up just outside of Vancouver, British Columbia. I always prided myself on being an adaptable third-culture kid—I was fearless and foolish. Fresh out of graduate school, I moved to Dubai to start my first job as a librarian, even though I would not have been able to find the city on an atlas. 

When I first got on the transport bus to the terminal of the Dubai International Airport, I burst into tears—the warm and humid air tinged with dust reminded me how far away I was from home. Homesickness was only one of the many challenges I faced in Dubai. For the first month, I tried to get an internet connection in my apartment to stay in touch with my faraway family and friends. I spent all my free time going to Etisalat, the national internet provider. Each time, I spoke to an indifferent woman at the counter who wore a black headscarf and emitted an intense frankincense perfume. Each time, she told me, “two weeks, in’shallah.” Each time, I left the building defeated and depressed. Before I knew any better, I was convinced that ‘in’shallah’ meant ‘go away.’ It took over two months for me to have an internet connection at home.

On the weekends, I would roam around the city wide-eyed, trying to absorb this strange, desert landscape filled with glitzy shopping malls and imposing skyscrapers surrounded by endless construction sites. As I walked by in my short-sleeve t-shirt and knee-length skirt, South Asian workers gawked at me with their unblinking, saucer eyes. I ran away to divert their gaze. I was confused, misunderstood, and isolated from everything and everyone I knew.

Within days of arriving in Dubai, I cried on the phone to Mama. After three days of crying, Mama broke down and came for a visit. She cooked for me, helped me settle into my new apartment, and we explored the city together. We shopped in the souk, went dune bashing in the desert, and had afternoon tea at the Burj Al Arab. However, after she left, I was even more homesick and lonely, which drove me to go out to meet new people. Eventually, I made friends with other expatriates, young women close to my age who had also moved to Dubai for their careers. But they did not ease my sense of alone-ness. What I wanted was someone to come home to and wake up next to every morning. Someone who would understand me, someone to go on adventures with, someone who would take me away from this loneliness and despair. After dating Gökhan for a few months, I thought he could be that person.

The truth is, my definition of a good relationship was simplistic and naive. I did not know a thing about a healthy relationship—as a teenager, I watched my parents struggle with their marriage. At the tender age of fifteen, I found out that Baba, my father, had been cheating on Mama.

Baba was a travel guide and was often away from home. At this time, Mama was in her mid-30’s, but she dressed and acted like a much older woman— a dedicated mother whose husband was away for long periods. Since Mama spent her days cleaning and cooking, she paid little attention to her appearance. Her clothing of choice consisted of dowdy, faded sweatsuits. Her world revolved around Baba, my younger brother Davis, and me.

Before school one morning, I was eating my eggs sitting on the high stool next to the kitchen counter when I heard Mama scream Baba’s name. I am not sure what business Mama had poking around Baba’s black nylon side bag— maybe she was putting something in there, or perhaps she was looking for something for him— either way, she pulled out a love letter in Baba’s handwriting, addressed to another woman. 

Mama lost her mind with this discovery. She wanted answers. She needed reassurance. She demanded Baba to explain himself. He could not. He ran out of the door with his luggage to catch a flight and left behind Mama who had turned into a wailing mess. I do not remember how I got to school that day.

After school, I found Mama standing disheveled in the middle of the kitchen, wearing her frumpy, pale pink cotton nightgown even though it was three o’clock in the afternoon. With tears streaming down her face, she wailed and screamed that she wanted to die. She clutched a crumpled-up letter in one hand and with her other hand, made slashing gestures with a kitchen knife as if she was going to slit her wrist. I was terrified.

Several days later, I came home, and the house was silent. Before this whole fiasco, Mama always had a snack ready by the time I came back from school, like a brothy bowl of Taiwanese-style beef brisket noodle soup, savory braised pork with rice, or flavorful soy-sauce marinated chicken wings. But that day, when I wandered into the kitchen, she wasn’t there. She was not at her usual station in front of the stove, engulfed in tantalizing steam coming out of a bubbling pot that she was stirring, telling me that my snack would be ready soon.

The eerie stillness was a stark contrast to what had happened in the kitchen only a few days before. I began to search the house to make sure Mama had not hurt herself. At the entrance to my parents’ room, I held my breath, turned the doorknob, pushed open the door and tip-toed inside. I entered the room inundated with the stale, feminine odor of unwashed hair—the scent of desperate sadness. Mama was asleep and snoring loudly even though it was the middle of the afternoon. Her jet-black hair matted on the cream-colored pillowcase. Her usually smooth forehead crinkled with despair—even in her sleep, she was in agony. On the nightstand, I saw bottles of pills. Sleeping pills, seductive, secret sleeping pills that promised peace and a pain-free slumber. I picked up a bottle and rattled it—it was almost empty. I gathered every bottle in sight and took them. I rushed into my bedroom and threw them in the bottom drawer of my nightstand where I had stashed all the knives in the house a few days earlier.

At an impressionable age, I learned that my parents were not gods—they are flawed human beings. Watching my mother’s meltdown caused by my father’s infidelity, I discovered the dire consequences of being emotionally dependent on a spouse. I told myself back then that I would never want to be in her position. I would never allow my love for a man to turn into ammunition that he could use to maim me. I also learned the importance for a woman to be financially independent—with no economic means, Mama could not leave Baba even if she wanted to. She was an old-school, conventional Asian housewife who had never worked a day outside of her home.

During this dark time, I was overwhelmed and did not know how to process my conflicting emotions. On the one hand, I was angry. How could Baba betray Mama when she dedicated her whole life to us? At the same time, as a Daddy’s Girl, I was confused. Baba was indulgent, showering me with his affection and bringing me trinkets from his trips. When I needed help with my chemistry homework, he was attentive and patient. He was also a fun-loving father who took me and Davis snowboarding on the weekends. I knew he loved Davis and me, but his affair broke Mama’s heart and spirit. I did not understand how such an amazing father could be such a shitty husband.

I developed unhealthy relationship patterns around this time—I worried about men cheating on me or leaving me, but I also desperately dreaded being alone. My strategy was to become infatuated with a person and charm him with attention—the goal was to have him fall hopelessly in love with me, so he would not cheat or leave. At the same time, because I never wanted to be dependent on a man for my financial well-being, I moved around for my education and career. I never stuck around for anybody.

On the surface, I seemed accomplished and strong, but underneath, I was insecure and lonely. The tough girl who smoked and defied her mother was just a façade. Since having my first boyfriend at seventeen, I had not been single for more than a few months at a time. Like a rabbit chased by an unknown assailant, I dashed from one man to the next, looking for someone to validate me, to calm the nagging, neurotic voice inside my head: I would never find someone who would love me because I am always “too” something. I am too fat. I am too emotional but also too ambitious. I am too crazy, too free-spirited. I talk too fast, think too much, and has too many feelings. I am too strong-willed, and at the same time, too needy. Over and over again, this voice whispered to me throughout my relationships. With every failed relationship, it confirmed that I was unlovable.

When I met Gökhan, the nagging voice subsided. We connected on OkCupid and hit it off. He was living in Copenhagen and seemed like a reliable and attentive man. He was cute too, with wavy, dark brown hair, deep-set mahogany eyes, a straight nose, and a thoughtful demeanor. He quieted my anxiety with his patient, soothing voice. We fell asleep talking to each other on Skype many nights. I felt safe having him in my life.

The start of our relationship was a sweet and romantic internet fairy tale that spanned continents. After chatting online for three months, we met in person in Istanbul. On our second night together, Gökhan and I climbed several flights of creaky stairs to reach the rooftop of one of the budget hotels in the Old City. Opening the door to the terrace, the twilight before sunrise greeted us. Gökhan draped a blanket around me when he saw me shivering in the chilly, pre-dawn gust. Then, groping his way in the darkness, he led me to the shabby lounge on the far side of the terrace. We shuffled in our flip-flops, trying to suppress our giddiness. I looked up, enchanted by the constellation above me. As my gaze followed the horizon, I saw the flickering white lights from the boats and ferries dotting the Bosphorus, the strait that functions as a border between Asia and Europe. The twilight was misty, making it hard to see where the sky ended and the Bosphorus began. Over the railing of the terrace were the muted shadows of the shops, homes, and hotels of Old City, peacefully asleep. All around us, the shutters were drawn, the lights dimmed, and it was quiet. We sat bundled up on the lounge in the blanket. I was snuggling up next to a man whom, days before, I had only seen on a computer screen. He bent down and planted a kiss on my lips.

“Allahu akbar, Allahu akbar, Allahu akbar, Allahu akbar, Ash hadu an la ilaha illal lah…” the muezzin called out the first stanza of the haunting and melodic adhan at the crack of dawn to remind all Muslims it was time for the opening prayer of the day. My eyes flew open. To my surprise, my surroundings had transformed. Twilight had receded, and in its place, the sun emerged. The first pink and orange rays illuminated the sky, chasing away the stars. I rubbed my eyes as the sunshine warmed my face inviting me to crawl out of the warmth of Gökhan’s arms. At dawn, the Bosphorus was no longer shrouded in a mysterious mist– it was bustling with ferries and ships moving back and forth between Asia and Europe. The city below was no longer sleeping; it was buzzing with horns and chatter as people arose from their beds to begin a new day. I was in awe of Istanbul’s transformations between night and day. Looking at Gökhan’s handsome face on this brand-new day, I kissed him before we headed back to our room. I was happy and in love.

***

Less than a year later, we faced a conundrum.

I followed Gökhan out of the room and closed the door as his aunts and sisters giggled behind us. We entered the next room, which was his parents’ bedroom and he sat me down on the edge of the bed. Averting my quizzical eyes, Gökhan said, “When the imam asked me what your religion was, I couldn’t tell him that you didn’t have one. So, I told him that you were a Buddhist. He said since you are of the Book—neither Christian nor Jewish, you would need to convert.”

             His words took a few moments to sink in. Once I understood the gravity of the situation, I started to panic. Did he know this was going to happen before talking me into the nikah?

“This is not part of the deal,” I shouted, shaking my head. The pins keeping my lavender headscarf in place pricked my scalp. “You promised that I didn’t have to convert if I go through the nikah!” I glared at him; my gaze was accusatory.

“I’m sorry I didn’t know,” he muttered, “You don’t need to go through with it if you don’t want to. It’s completely up to you.”

Is it up to me? No, it’s not up to me! I started to cry. Gökhan looked at me with his thoughtful eyes. He handed me a tissue. I dabbed my eyes, blew my nose, and shed more tears. I looked up and saw myself in his mother’s vanity mirror. The rebellious teenager inside me mocked my puffy face and smeared make-up—but I could not stop crying. Gökhan fidgeted next to me, occasionally patting me on the shoulder and repeating the phrase, “You don’t have to do this if you don’t want to.”

Don’t you fucking understand? I shouted inside my head. From now on, we can never be truly happy together. If I don’t convert, your mother is going to hate me forever, and I am going to feel lousy making you choose between her and me. If I do convert, I will resent you for as long as I live. I kept my head bowed because I could not stand looking at the helpless expression on his face. I could not utter a word because if I tried verbalized my feelings, I would start wailing. The teenaged me would have walked out of the door without looking back. She was, however, overpowered by the decent Taiwanese daughter who did not want her future husband to lose face.

Looking back, I realized that I put myself in this messy situation on an impulse and deeply rooted fear. I was in love with the idea of being in love. I also loved having an exotic boyfriend who had grown up in a set of cultures that were vastly unlike mine. I bragged to friends that between the two of us, we had four passports. At the same time, it was my fear of being alone that drove me to this irrational decision to go through with nikah. Knowing what I know now, I should have walked away—coercion and compromised integrity are not a good foundation for marriage. However, as a third culture kid, I have been crossing borders and adapting to different cultures my whole life. I thought I was ready to cross a new one with Gökhan.

I was wrong.

I wept for an eternity, shed enough tears to fill the Bosphorous. The girl with a cigarette dangling between her fingers, dated white boys and covered herself in tattoos had turned into Gökhan’s bewildered bride. On the other side of the door, the imam was waiting for me to change my wicked, wayward ways and Gökhan’s entire clan was expecting us to profess our undying love and commitment to each other. I cried and cried like a lost child. I did not know how to get out of this mess.

Out of nowhere, Gökhan’s father walked into the room. He was smiling. He closed the door behind him and started laughing. I gave him a look of bafflement as he spoke rapidly in Turkish. He paused and nodded his head. Gökhan looked at me and interpreted what his father had said, “My dad said you are taking this whole thing way too seriously.” 

His father grinned at me, said a few more words and nodded again. Gökhan translated, “He said it’s totally fine if you don’t want to go through with it. But you could also put on a show by pretending to convert, which would make everybody happy.”

I stared at his father, shocked that he had just asked me to go out there and tell a lie in front of the whole family. He chuckled, nodded at Gökhan again and left without saying another word. What his father wanted me to do was what he had done, and what Gökhan had done his whole life: pretend and go through the motions to make peace. I felt defeated and exhausted. I forced my gaze back to Gökhan. Oh, what I would do just to make this awful situation go away!

 After taking a couple of deep breaths, I asked Gökhan to fetch my makeup bag from the next room. I cleaned my face with fresh tissue and wiped away the black smudge under my eyes. When Gökhan returned, I smeared a thick layer of foundation and powdered my face. Then, I applied a sparkly lilac eyeshadow that matched my lavender headscarf. Staring at my reflection in the mirror, I grinned. My eyes were still puffy; my smile looked pathetic but convincing enough to those who did not know me. I smiled again and knew that my mask was secure. I reached for Gökhan’s hand and led him out of the room.

Sadly, Mama’s rebellious Canadian daughter did not have big enough guns to fight the rebellion in Denmark. After all, I was only one young woman trying to keep my integrity abreast in the face of a conservative, cultural tidal wave.

I followed the imam, who told me to repeat the Shahada, the Arabic script that would declare me a Muslim. “La ilaha illa Allah wa-Muhammad rasul Allah,” which translates to “I testify that there is no other God but Allah, and Muhammad is God’s messenger.” The imam said it slowly, pausing after every few syllables to allow time for me to mimic the foreign sounds. Afterward, I signed a piece of paper that the imam had prepared. Shortly after, he declared us husband and wife. 

From that day, I resented Gökhan. I never forgave him for putting me through a conversion.

Our union did not last long. Four months after we arrived in Bahrain, the Arab Spring broke out. A series of protests swept across the Arab world. In Bahrain, the government cracked down on the demonstrations, which created an environment of fear and uncertainty. The turmoil made it difficult for Gökhan to find work. A year and a half later, when he finally secured a job in Dubai, our marriage crumbled. Instead of following him, I got a job in Hong Kong to be closer to my parents in Taiwan. We broke up.

Many years later, I found the lavender headscarf in my wardrobe. I am still in Hong Kong, but now married to a wonderful man who loves and accepts me just the way I am. Though painful, I learned so much from wearing the headscarf that day, like communicating expectations, and accepting the people I love for who they are, instead of trying to change them.  Even though going through nikah and living in Bahrain was challenging, I would not trade that experience for anything else. Without it, I would not have learned how to be in a loving and equal partnership. Taking one last look at the headscarf, I put it in the trash bin. I have come a long way— the girl who smoked in the mall has grown up and learned how to love herself. I now know that I am strong enough to be the person that I have become.