The Embassy of Cambodia Read Online Free Page A

all sin is wiped, you start again’: Andrew’s promise. She had never told Andrew of the sinprecisely, but she knew that he knew she was not a virgin. The day she finally became a Catholic, 6 February 2011, Andrew had taken her, hair still wet, to the Tunisian café and asked her how it felt.
    She was joyful! She said, ‘I feel like a new person!’
    But happiness like that is hard to hold on to. Back at work the next day, picking Julie’s dirty underwear up off the floor inches from the wicker basket, she had to keep reminding herself of her new relationship with Jesus and how it changed everything. Didn’t it change everything? The following Sunday she expressed some of her doubt, cautiously, to Andrew.
    ‘But did you think you’d never feel sad again? Never angry or tired or just pissed off – sorry about my language. Come on, Fatou! Wise up, man!’
    Was it wrong to hope to be happy?

0–17
    Lost to these watery thoughts, Fatou got home a little later than usual and was through the door only minutes before Mrs Derawal.
    ‘How is Asma?’ Fatou asked. She had heard the girl cry out in the night.
    ‘My goodness, it was just a little marble,’ Mrs Derawal said, and Fatou realized that it was not in her imagination: since Sunday night, neither of the adult Derawals had been able to look her in the eye. ‘What a fuss everybody is making. I have a list for you – it’s on the table.’

0–18
    Fatou watched Andrew pick his way through the tables in the Tunisian café, holding a tray with a pair of mochas on it and some croissants. He hit the elbow of one man with his backside and then trailed the belt of his long, silly leather coat through the lunch of another, apologizing as he went. You could not say he was an elegant man. But he was generous, he was thoughtful. She stood up to push a teetering croissant back on to its plate. They sat down at the same time, and smiled at each other.
    ‘A while ago you asked me about Cambodia,’ Andrew said. ‘Well, it’s a very interesting case.’He tapped the frame of his glasses. ‘If you even wore a pair of these? They would kill you. Glasses meant you thought too much. They had very primitive ideas. They were enemies of logic and progress. They wanted everybody to go back to the country and live like simple people.’
    ‘But sometimes it’s true that things are simpler in the country.’
    ‘In some ways. I don’t really know. I’ve never lived in the country.’
    I don’t really know.
It was good to hear him say that! It was a good sign. She smiled cheekily at him. ‘People are less sinful in the country,’ she said, but he did not seem to see she was flirting with him, and began upon another lecture.
    ‘That’s true. But you can’t force people to live in the country. That’s what I call a Big Man Policy. I invented this phrase for my dissertation. We know all about Big Man Policies in Nigeria.They come from the top and they crush you. There’s always somebody who wants to be the Big Man, and take everything for themselves, and tell everybody how to think and what to do. When, actually, it’s he who is weak. But if the Big Men see that
you
see that
they
are weak they have no choice but to destroy you. That is the real tragedy.’
    Fatou sighed. ‘I never met a man who didn’t want to tell everybody how to think and what to do,’ she said.
    Andrew laughed. ‘Fatou, you include me? Are you a feminist now, too?’
    Fatou brought her mug up to her lips and looked penetratingly at Andrew. There were good and bad kinds of weakness in men, and she had come to the conclusion that the key was to know which kind you were dealing with.
    ‘Andrew,’ she said, putting her hand on his, ‘would you like to come swimming with me?’

0–19
    Because Fatou believed that the Derawals’ neighbours had been instructed to spy on her, she would not let Andrew come to the house to pick her up on Monday, instead leaving as she always did, just before ten, carrying