A few years later, the bad men came and moved them again. Everyone in their village was given a week to gather their belongings, then taken to a clearing in the jungle. The British man read from a piece of paper and someone translated. He said the name of each family and the number of the plot they’d been given. The land had been allocated on a grid, probably by someone who’d only seen a map. Some lucky people were on level ground, others found themselves on a slope or in a swamp.

They were given a hundred dollars and told to build themselves a house. When Auntie Poh protested there was no man in their family, all the men had been killed, she was told to use the money to hire labour. It wasn’t enough, but the neighbours helped out. Their new home was a little smaller than before, neatly constructed out of wood. They hadn’t been able to find hinges so all the doors slid open along grooves.

In the meantime, the bad men put up a fence around the new village, then another one farther away. These were made of barbed wire, two and a half metres high, topped with three-cornered spikes. There was only one entrance, and anyone going in and out was searched. His mother was no longer allowed to bring any food with her when she went out to work, in case she gave it to the people in the jungle. She was often pale with hunger when she came back from the plantation.

He seldom left the enclosure, and nor did Auntie Poh. It would be too difficult to get a permit to travel, and in any case they had nowhere to go. For the very young and the old, the village was big enough—a field, a school, even a couple of shops. All their food was brought in by the officials, and cooked in big pots in the common kitchen. Everyone brought their bowls and ate together in the square.

His mother and Auntie Poh would end up staying here for the rest of their lives. They’d moved too often, and even after the fences came down they couldn’t bring themselves to go—like birds grown used to the cage, they found the world beyond the village too large and confusing, and were too tired to think of adapting to yet another place. They were glad they’d decided early on to spend the money on a sturdy house, rather than the jerry-rigged structures put up by people who’d thought they’d only be here a year or two.