Feng kept blowing the whistle as he ran closer to the clearing. Suddenly, the electric storm illuminated his face with a flash of light and blinded him. When his sight returned, he could see figures. The Ancestors. Feng wasn’t running anymore. Nothing moved except the northern lights around him.

In the glowing clouds, Feng saw his parents. Their features took shape in the luminescent shroud: his mother’s loving eyes, the very eyes he’d first stared into as a newborn; his father’s rugged, smiling face. He remembered how the stubble tickled him when they used to hug so long ago. As the light cascaded around him, he drew closer to their embrace. He felt something release within himself.

“Mother,” Feng said. “Father.”

“Farouq.” His mother said. Feng’s chest expanded. The apparition of his mother had spoken his birth name. His heart beat faster at hearing it again. He’d been called Farouq until he’d been taken from his home. He could still remember the exact moment at the re-education center when they’d renamed him “Feng.” He was overcome, but he managed to ask the question that had tormented him for years.

“Why did you let them take me away from you?” The lump in Feng’s throat made it difficult for him to speak. “It was so hard without you.”

“We had no choice, Farouq,” his mother said.

“They took us to the prison camp, my boy,” the vision of his father spoke. “The same day, the authorities came to our house and told the rest of the family we’d abandoned you. That’s when they took you away.”

Feng’s mother cried now at the memory, her tears refracting the northern lights in an infinite number of directions. “We never stopped looking for you. We never stopped thinking of you. We never stopped praying for you. We never forgot about you, not even for one minute.”

Finally, the tears fell down Feng’s cheek.

“I know it was hard on you, my son. It was hard on us too. Our only child, taken from us. The two of us imprisoned, neither one of us able to protect you.” Feng’s father shook his head, dispersing some of the green and purple waves around him. He grimaced.

“But why didn’t you just give up? Why didn’t you just tell them what they wanted to hear? You could’ve just said you didn’t believe in Allah. You could’ve just said you’d learn Mandarin. They would’ve let you go and I could’ve come home…” Feng was having more and more difficulty speaking.

“Baby, Farouq. Don’t you think if it were that simple, we would’ve done it?” His mother’s pleading face left Feng feeling anguished. “We would’ve said anything to see you again.”