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.‘Tell me,’ Aunty Clara said, pulling me aside and whispering under her breath.‘Does your mother always spend money like this?’ She tsked disapprovingly.‘She reminds me of my sister, always buying this and that.So many things, isn’t it?’Driving back to their house in Ipoh, I decided that I didn’t much like Aunty Clara anymore.When Mum and I were left to ourselves, I started telling Mum about Aunty Clara’s bitchiness, hoping she’d finally see her for what she was.To my surprise, Mum defended her.‘You don’t know anything about this woman.She might not be perfect, but what friend is?’ I blinked at her, not knowing what to say, then immediately felt like a brat.Who was I to criticise this couple who had invited us into their home and driven us halfway across the country? What was I doing, running down one of Mum’s few good friends? What did I hope to achieve?When they drove us to the airport, Aunty Clara and Uncle Wayne compounded my shame by forcing each of us to take a traditional red money-packet stuffed with cash.As we waited for the traffic to subside, Aunty Clara said out of nowhere, ‘I have so many friends, you know.So, so many good friends.It doesn’t matter who you are, if you’re rich or poor, what race you are.Anyone with a good personality, who has a nice heart, Aunty Clara will be your friend.So many friends.’ She turned in her seat and smiled at Mum, showing all her teeth.‘As long as you are a Christian, I’ll be your friend.’Christmas was only a few weeks away, and I noticed that none of the shopping centres or restaurants we’d visited had decorated their interiors for the season.I had almost forgotten we were in a Muslim country.Maybe we’d been living with Aunty Clara and Uncle Wayne for too long.As we drove towards the airport, I wondered how many Christmas cards each of us would receive that year, and from whom.God CampAt seven years old, I already knew I was headed straight for hell.None of my primary-school teachers ever said so directly – never pointed an accusatory finger at me and said, ‘You’re going to hell, Benjamin’ – but all our Bible lessons pointed to the same conclusion.If you hadn’t been baptised, if you didn’t take Holy Communion, if you didn’t go to church on Sunday, it was simple: you’d end up burning in Satan’s furnaces for the rest of eternity.Eternity.It seemed like a pretty long time.At school, we had celebrated Baptism Certificate Day, when all the Year 3 students were asked to bring copies of their christening documents; our teacher hung them around the room, like tinsel.I was the only student who didn’t have one.The other kids looked at me, concerned.‘Mum,’ I said after school.‘I need to get baptised or I’m going to hell.We all are.’‘You don’t need to be baptised,’ she said.‘You’re not listening to me.We all need to be baptised.We all need to go to church.Because it won’t be nice when I’m the only one in heaven and I have to think about the rest of you burning in hell’s fiery lakes forever.’She told me to wait until I was twelve years old; then I would be in a better position to make up my own mind about religion.‘But what if I die before then? Have you thought of that?What if I’m eleven years old and get run over by a car and end up rotting in hell because you didn’t baptise me?’‘Well, you wouldn’t go to hell.You’re only a kid,’ she said.Then, sensing my worry, she added, ‘And even if you did, I’m sure they would treat you better down there.Because you’re so cute!’Every morning before class, we filed into our daily worship session.Devotions covered a broad range of topics: forgiveness; receiving compliments gracefully; documented Satanic possessions.Music came courtesy of the school band, a misfit hodge-podge of whichever musically inclined students were available that week: recorder, baritone clarinet, piccolo, French horn, bongos.One of my favourite songs was ‘The Blind Man,’ a participation-based hymn made up of verses featuring men suffering various afflictions – blindness, deafness, paralysis – searching for Christ to show them the way.‘The blind man sat by the road and he cried!’ we sang.‘The blind man sat by the road and he cried!’ The final verse simply involved shouting ‘The Blind Man!’ followed by frenzied, rhythmic clapping to fill in the gaps.Years later, singing the same song in high school, it struck me as undignified and mean, implying the blind man was not only vision-impaired, but also had some form of palsy that made him clap in a wild, uncontrollable fashion.But as a Christian-hearted seven-year-old, I dug the clapping as much as I dug Jesus.*Our school prided itself on its discipline and tradition, and like all Christian schools, it was built on the fundamental tenet of original sin.Young people could not be trusted, and had to be reformed.The centrepiece of this was the Year 10 camping program, in which students were shipped out into the bush for a month.They called it ‘survival camp’; returning to your parents alive was the goal.It was located in a cluster of cabins owned by the school and christened Mount Kilmore, set in the ominously named region of Blackbutt, a winding two-hour bus ride away from the school.People vomited going up that mountain.Parts of the incline were so steep that buses and cars snaked around the roads in sickening U-turns, dangerously close to the lip of the cliffs.I was still a devout ten-year-old when my eldest sister, Candy, went to Mount Kilmore.We visited her on Parents’ Day, the halfway point of the camp, when family members were invited to check up on their children.It was the only time campers were allowed junk food, brought in by family members.When our red Ford Cortina finally found the campground gate, we searched the horizon for Candy.Fourteen-year-olds in flannelette and denim cut-offs slouched towards the car in slow motion, arms stretched out in front of them, gaunt.‘Do you have anything to eat?’ they droned.‘Did you bring snacks?’ We wound up our windows, slowly and carefully, until they walked away weakly, their arms still outstretched and their eyes vacant.When we finally found Candy, she was two shades darker, suntanned and dirt-stained.Although she seemed happy enough, some things about the camp horrified us.‘So,’ she said.‘Do you want to see the furnace where we incinerate our used pads?’My faith was shaken when she showed us the thing.Between the starving youth and half-charred tampons – all black and red like badly burnt steak chunks – there clearly wasn’t any god.*By the time I was in Year 10, there were roughly 150 of us, and we went to camp in four groups.As I was in the last group to leave, I’d accumulated a lot of correspondence from friends who’d gone first [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]