while the other three only got the rough shape. The three of them are sent with the rest of the candidates for plastic surgery, for, as our old men have said, there are things that are not allowed to exist in duplicate.
OUR YOUNG MAN becomes the sole face that represents the dictator in the nation, and thus start the most glorious years of his life. Movies about the dictator, starring our young man, are filmed by the government-run movie factories. Back in town, we cram into our only theater and watch the movies, secretly blaming our mothers or wives for not having given birth to a great face.
The marriage of the young man becomes our biggest concern. He is over thirty now, an age generally considered indecent for our young daughters. But who will care about the age of a great man? The old-style ones among us hire matchmakers for our daughters, and send with them expensive gifts to his mother. Others, more modern and aggressive, knock on his mother’s door with blushing daughters trailing behind. Dazed by the choices, his mother goes to the town center and makes long-distance calls to him every other day, reporting yet another suitable candidate. But he is no longer a man of our town. He has been flying all over the nation for celebrations and movies; he has seen more attractive women than our town can provide. Through his apologetic mother, he rejects all of our offers. Accepting that our town is too shallow a basin to contain a real dragon, most of us give up and marry our daughters off to local young men. Yet some among us cling to the nonexistent hope, waiting for the day when he will realize the incomparable beauty and virtue of our daughters. For a number of years, scores of girls in our town are kept untouched by their parents. Too much looking forward makes their necks grow longer each year. It is not an unfamiliar sight to see a girl with a crane-like neck walk past us in the street, guarded by her parents, who have grown to resemble giraffes.
The young man is too occupied with his new role to know such stories. He appears in the national celebrations for all the holidays. His most loyal audience, we sit all night long in front of the television and wait for his appearance. On the screen, men and women sing and dance with hearty smiles on their faces like well-trained kindergarteners. Children four or five years old flirt with one another, singing love songs like joyful parrots. At such moments, those of us who think a little more than others start to feel uneasy, haunted by a strange fear that our people are growing down, instead of growing up. But the worry vanishes when our young man, the dictator’s impersonator, shows up. People on the screen stand up in ovation and hold out their hands to be shaken. Young women with the prettiest faces rush to him with bouquets of flowers. Kids swarm around him and call him by the name of the dictator. Nostalgic tears fill everyone’s eyes. For a moment we believe time has stopped. The dictator is still alive among us, and we are happily living as his sons.
BUT TIME HAS sneaked by while we were mesmerized by our young man’s face. Now we have Sony and Panasonic; we have Procter & Gamble, Johnson & Johnson. We have imported movies in which men and women hold hands freely in the street, and they even kiss each other without a trace of fear in their eyes. Our life, we realize, is not as happy as we have been taught to think. People in those capitalist countries are not waiting for us to be their liberators. They never know of our love for them.
This must be a difficult period for our young man as well. Biographies and memoirs about the dictator appear overnight like spring grass. Unlike the books written collectively by the government-assigned writing groups, these books spell trouble the moment they appear. Soon they are decided to be illegal publications, and are confiscated and burned in great piles. Yet some of the words have spread out, bad words about the dictator.
OUR YOUNG MAN becomes the sole face that represents the dictator in the nation, and thus start the most glorious years of his life. Movies about the dictator, starring our young man, are filmed by the government-run movie factories. Back in town, we cram into our only theater and watch the movies, secretly blaming our mothers or wives for not having given birth to a great face.
The marriage of the young man becomes our biggest concern. He is over thirty now, an age generally considered indecent for our young daughters. But who will care about the age of a great man? The old-style ones among us hire matchmakers for our daughters, and send with them expensive gifts to his mother. Others, more modern and aggressive, knock on his mother’s door with blushing daughters trailing behind. Dazed by the choices, his mother goes to the town center and makes long-distance calls to him every other day, reporting yet another suitable candidate. But he is no longer a man of our town. He has been flying all over the nation for celebrations and movies; he has seen more attractive women than our town can provide. Through his apologetic mother, he rejects all of our offers. Accepting that our town is too shallow a basin to contain a real dragon, most of us give up and marry our daughters off to local young men. Yet some among us cling to the nonexistent hope, waiting for the day when he will realize the incomparable beauty and virtue of our daughters. For a number of years, scores of girls in our town are kept untouched by their parents. Too much looking forward makes their necks grow longer each year. It is not an unfamiliar sight to see a girl with a crane-like neck walk past us in the street, guarded by her parents, who have grown to resemble giraffes.
The young man is too occupied with his new role to know such stories. He appears in the national celebrations for all the holidays. His most loyal audience, we sit all night long in front of the television and wait for his appearance. On the screen, men and women sing and dance with hearty smiles on their faces like well-trained kindergarteners. Children four or five years old flirt with one another, singing love songs like joyful parrots. At such moments, those of us who think a little more than others start to feel uneasy, haunted by a strange fear that our people are growing down, instead of growing up. But the worry vanishes when our young man, the dictator’s impersonator, shows up. People on the screen stand up in ovation and hold out their hands to be shaken. Young women with the prettiest faces rush to him with bouquets of flowers. Kids swarm around him and call him by the name of the dictator. Nostalgic tears fill everyone’s eyes. For a moment we believe time has stopped. The dictator is still alive among us, and we are happily living as his sons.
BUT TIME HAS sneaked by while we were mesmerized by our young man’s face. Now we have Sony and Panasonic; we have Procter & Gamble, Johnson & Johnson. We have imported movies in which men and women hold hands freely in the street, and they even kiss each other without a trace of fear in their eyes. Our life, we realize, is not as happy as we have been taught to think. People in those capitalist countries are not waiting for us to be their liberators. They never know of our love for them.
This must be a difficult period for our young man as well. Biographies and memoirs about the dictator appear overnight like spring grass. Unlike the books written collectively by the government-assigned writing groups, these books spell trouble the moment they appear. Soon they are decided to be illegal publications, and are confiscated and burned in great piles. Yet some of the words have spread out, bad words about the dictator.
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