This Burns My Heart Read Online Free PDF Page A

bottle of makgeolli by my side.
    What a long week it has been! We have gone on several protests already, and each of them is a miracle of logistical planning and precision. Have you ever yelled the same words loudly with a group of a thousand people? Try it sometime; it sends quite a burst of oxygen to the brain. I have never felt so connected to people I feel such disdain for. When we demonstrate, the police stand at a barricade, blocking our way, and there’s always a tense moment when neither party knows whose turn it is to push forward. The trick is to have both strong lungs and legs; I’ve been hit more times now than I can count, but luckily always manage to get away.
    It’s hard not to come back for the next protest, however. The feeling is quite addictive. Afterward we go to secret meeting places. Yesterday we
met at a political science professor’s house for drinks. This is, of course, the part that keeps me here. The others begin a long litany of criticisms of the regime. I pay lip service to all that, waiting for the bottle of soju to make its way back to me. I have to say I’m a bit of an outcast here. The others do not entirely trust me.
    At times, I feel silly holding up some of the placards. They have such poetry as “Down with Fraudulent Elections!” and “Can Freedom Gained Through Blood Be Taken Away by Bayonets?” The other students have rejected some of my ideas for chants, as well as my suggestion that we simply wait for the President to die of old age. He is, after all, 85 years old. I cannot imagine he’ll live that long. If we’ve waited millenniums for democracy—as ours is such an old nation—I figure we can wait another year or two.
    Sometimes I wish to tell my friends here about you, but I fear they would not believe me. I think of your beautiful, silky long hair. Your porcelain complexion. Your high cheekbones. Your big, pendant-shaped eyes. Your long-bridged nose. Your gorgeous smile, warm and wicked all at once. Your face, shaped like those mysterious stone statues on the ground in Cheju Island. We do not know how they came to be there, or who carved them, but we can wonder, and I wonder, at you.
    Perhaps if you sent me a picture I could prove to everyone here that you are real—and prove to myself, too, that you weren’t just something I invented in my head. May your days be good, and they must be, if they’re filled with half the hope and joy you give me.
    Min Lee
    Soo-Ja sighed and closed her eyes. She was happy, but envious. She wanted to be the one far away, writing letters about her own adventures to some virginal bride who would ooh and aah at her courage. She wanted to be the one telling Min how much she was fighting to keep up her strength. If getting this letter was so sweet, imagine being able to be the one to write it.
    But maybe I should just be grateful for what I have
, Soo-Ja told herself. There was much to enjoy about living in Daegu. Yes, half the timeit was either raining or snowing, but during the glorious fall and spring, she’d lose herself in the hilltops behind her house. There, she’d race past the gingko, pine, maple, bamboo, and persimmon trees, and count constellations of lilacs, tiger lilies, moonflowers, cherry blossoms, and red peonies. She breathed in wisteria and walked on chestnut leaves. She traced trellised grapevines and caressed silkworms in the mulberry groves. Soo-Ja drew imaginary rings around the ubiquitous mountains in the distance, and pretended to be in the Scotland she’d read so much about. And when the monsoon rains came, for days at a time, creating miniature pools on the ground, Soo-Ja and her brothers splashed around, kicking water into one another’s faces.
    If Soo-Ja ever left Daegu, she knew she would miss its lavender skies and peach-colored sunsets; the fresh red bean cakes from the bakery, still warm from the wood-burning oven; the Saturday afternoons spent soaking with her mother at the bathhouse, the heat as comforting