A DREAM OF LIGHTS

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Comrade Kim Jong Il!

We are unable to survive without you!”

“Yoora, stop it! Listen to me!” Father hissed.

I kept on chanting, but still I could hear his lies.

“There are places better than this in the world – people aren’t starving everywhere, people are happier. Feel that ache of hunger in your stomach, and the cold pulling at your face, and remember the last time you saw Kim Jong Il on television, a big, fat, round man, with clothes that look new, and a warm furry hat on his head.”

He put a hand gently over my mouth, and I stopped singing.

“You are my daughter, and I can feel the bones in your arms and legs. I can count your ribs, reach my hands round your waist. But I have no more food to give you. In the mornings while you sleep, I stare at your pale skin and your blue lips, and I rest my hand on your face and feel the cold of it, but I don’t have enough fuel to keep you warm. And I can’t get you a new coat or an extra blanket, or even a pair of socks with no holes. And it makes me want to cry. And it’s all because of that man.”

I stared at Father. At his eyes glistening as they filled with tears, at the love I could see in his face as moonlight filtered through the trees and dappled his skin.

So deluded.

“No,” I said, taking his hand away from my mouth and wriggling from his grip. “You’re wrong. It’s because of you. If you worked harder, were a better citizen, then He’d provide us with more food and vouchers to exchange for clothes. It’s not His fault the floods came and washed away so many crops.” I turned and marched towards home, the lamp swinging in my hand.

“What floods?” Father demanded, following me out of the trees.

“The floods in other parts of the country. And He told us about the American capitalists and the Japanese imperialists, how it’s their fault too that we’re hungry and cold and tired. All we need to do is what He tells us – eat two meals a day instead of three; work harder, longer hours; be better citizens.”

“What do you know about the Americans or Japanese apart from the lies you’ve been told at school? Do as He says, do as He tells you, believe what He speaks – it’s all you’ve ever lived by. It’s not your fault. But I’m trying to tell you it’s not right, it’s not true.”

I stopped again and turned to him. “If that place is real, then how did it get in my head?”

He stared at me for too long. Then, without a word, he shook his head.

“I should report you,” I hissed, and I stormed away from him and didn’t look back.

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I heard him come into the room that night as I lay under my blankets, but I didn’t turn round to say goodnight. My eyes were closed as I listened to him climb into his bed and pull the covers up around him, but sleep was far from me. I was tired and my head ached, but just as Kim Jong Il’s voice echoed round our house unbidden, so did my father’s in my head. There was no turning it off, no turning it down and no ignoring it.

My body trembled with cold, my stomach grumbled with hunger, and darkness swirled and moved around me, dancing in front of my eyes. And over the background of Father’s shocking words, my own came again and again – How could he even think that of our Dear Leader? How could he question Him?

And the loudest – I should report him.

I remembered, back at school, all the songs and poems, teachings and rhymes I had learnt by heart from nursery through to my last year, things that were unrecognisable to me as anything but truth: unquestionable and sacred.

“ Loyalty and devotion are the supreme qualities of a revolutionary.”

“ We have nothing to envy in this world.” But what about Father’s loyalty and devotion? And why would anyone question what we lived by? Why would anyone not believe?

But Father didn’t.

I should report him, I thought again. He should be taken away for re-education, to learn again how good our Dear Leader is, how to follow Him, to do what is right by Him.

And I remembered all the stories too, that we had been taught about our Dear Leader; how when He was born a bright star appeared in the sky, and a double rainbow, and a swallow flew down from heaven declaring the birth of a general who would rule all the world; that His mere presence could make flowers bloom and snow melt; that when His rule of our nation began it caused trees to grow and a rare albino sea cucumber to be caught.

How can Father not believe those stories? I thought.

For a second, just a second, my head was clear and I stopped.

I told myself the stories again, but this time I really listened and really heard the words, better than I had ever done before, and whether because of the stories or Father’s words or the images from my dream, I allowed the smallest grain of something to settle in my head. Not of doubt, or disbelief. No. It was more like curiosity, or a desire to understand, a continuation of something that had begun a year earlier, when I met Sook.

That, for me and for my family, was the beginning of the end.