‘Have you ever been to a desert like the one we’re going to?’ Yona asked him.
‘I have—a few times, actually. Take care getting dressed before we go out. When you’re in the desert, the sand is so fine that it sticks to bare skin and makes you feel like you’re a steak marinating in salt and pepper. That’s what you’ll feel like if you don’t cover yourself.’
The writer polished off a second plate of omelette as he said this. He seemed to be living life in fast-forward, whether he was eating or walking or talking. The teacher and her daughter arrived as Yona and the writer stood up to leave. Lou and the college student ate last. Yona didn’t see any other guests at the resort.
The desert was in the northern part of the island. The group of travellers divided in two, and each group boarded a different SUV. They weren’t the only ones traversing the road that circled Mui. Local children ran around in huge groups as they waved their arms, several of them chasing the cars, and a herd of cattle ambled across the road, their large bodies undulating like ridges of sand from the dunes far off in the distance. And then the desert rushed into view.
Sunglasses came in handy with the sandstorms swirling in the air, but Yona wanted to experience the desert’s true colours, so she took hers off. The white sands and neighbouring forest, of dark blue palm trees, were as distinctly delineated as the stripes in a two-colour flag. As the azure sea rose into view, the flag became tricoloured. Soon it consisted of countless shades beyond the original three. The desert seemed to be dividing itself into innumerable patches of subtly unique hues. Yona realised for the first time how many colours were needed to describe the appearance of a desert, and how its saturation and brightness varied. As deviations appeared in the sand, the colour of the desert changed, as did the desert’s name. There was the white sand desert and the red sand desert. Even if you stood in one spot, the sand’s shade varied depending on how many clouds hung overhead, and whether or not sunlight was beating through the clouds. Yona couldn’t pull her eyes away from the sight. She wondered how a place ravaged by disaster could look so peaceful.
‘Right now, we’re at the white sand desert,’ the guide explained to the group. ‘It’s been the home to two Mui tribes, the Kanu people and the Unda people, for centuries, and they’ve fought frequently throughout history. In 1963, in this very desert, the Kanu used farming tools to massacre the Unda. It was revenge for the Unda taking their land. By the end of the bloodshed, it’s said there were about three hundred Unda heads scattered across the desert. Their heads were removed from their dead bodies as part of a practice called head hunting. On the first night of the massacre, an enormous rainstorm hit the area, and four days later, on Sunday morning, another incident occurred. A circle-shaped portion of the white desert collapsed, like an enormous crater had been drilled into the earth.’
‘At the time,’ the guide continued, ‘everyone thought it was a curse from the gods, but nowadays people know that it was a sinkhole, a natural phenomenon that can occur in deserts. Anyhow, the heads littered throughout the area rolled into the sinkhole, which was apparently one hundred and eighty metres deep. In the meantime, the Kanu started a second massacre, killing people throughout the village. Now this area is beautiful, but it’s the site of tragedy, too.’
The teacher’s daughter listened diligently to the guide’s explanation, her eyes sparkling. To think that there had once been a hole filled with heads, right here. But the girl couldn’t actually see the hole occupying her imagination. That was because the sinkhole had filled up with water and was now a wide lake. People called this place the head lake, but now instead of heads, lotuses were floating on its surface. Even after she was told that the hole was now a body of water, the child kept asking where the cut-off heads were. The guide showed the group pictures of the 1963 tragedy, but the hazy black-and-white photos didn’t hold her interest. Other than the girl, everyone’s expressions were serious.
‘Isn’t this the reason we’re on this trip?’ the teacher asked. ‘To avoid repeating history?’ The writer nodded his head.
They sat down at a rest stop with a view of the lake and cooled their sweaty bodies. Wide-eyed children approached and attempted to sell them knick-knacks: bracelets, pipes and dolls. Some of the children carried younger siblings on their backs, and others shielded the travellers from the hot sun with large parasols. A few of the vendors broke into the crowd of foreigners before almost instantly running away in surprise. The owner of the rest stop glared sternly at the children; then, even though they had run into a corner dejectedly, they returned, shouting, ‘One dollar! One dollar!’
‘What’s that?’ Yona asked, about a building in the distance.
The guide explained that the building Yona was looking at actually stood in the red sand desert. She said that a tower was under construction there. It was supposed to house an observatory where visitors could look down at both the desert and the sea, but there was no way the tower would be finished. Yona had heard about this project: apparently, construction was suspended and the company erecting the structure had given up. In several ways, Mui was frozen like this.
Yona’s first reaction to the desert was a sudden urge to touch. But even if she reached her arms out in the hope of grasping some scenic silhouette, the only thing that would remain in her hand afterwards was a fistful of sand. Yona climbed up on to a slope of the fine material as if trying to quench her thirst for touch. The group had followed an experienced-looking elderly woman who’d joined them at some point, and now they were all standing at the top of the sand hill. The woman stood behind Yona and held a sled out to her. It looked like a repurposed plastic board. The teacher’s daughter rode the sled down the dunes several times.
The guide introduced the elderly woman. ‘This person is the relative of a head-hunting victim from 1963. She says that she makes a living working with tourists.’
Yona wanted to take a picture of the wrinkled woman, with eyes too deep-set to read. As soon as Yona pointed her camera at her, the woman said, ‘One dollar.’ All of a sudden, she began to pose zealously like a model, and as a result, the picture didn’t come out well. Yona finally managed to snap a picture of the woman walking away after she’d stopped trying to entertain.
The teacher’s daughter was squatting on the beach in front of the bungalows. After briefly fiddling with something, she ran back several metres. In the place where the child had been crouched, firecrackers resembling sticks of dynamite exploded with a lightning-like flash and a thunderous clap. Her mother ran up, pulled the girl away, and smacked her on the bottom. When asked where she’d got firecrackers, the girl answered that another child at the rest stop had given them to her.
Yona went to the spot that the child had fled. The tips of the extinguished fireworks were blackened, and ants swarmed nearby. The explosives seemed to have been dropped on an anthill. Other beach-dwelling insects scurried around as well. Yona threw the remains into a bin and then paced around the area for a while, until the girl sprinted back over without her mother. Like a criminal returning to the scene of the crime, she was scanning the ground to find where the firecracker had detonated. But Yona had already removed it, and as the waves neared the resort in footstep-length increments, the hole where the firecracker had been lodged was also filling with water.