Story of Mr. Yan
Culture | January 17, 2024By Amy Saeki-Zhai
A Lincoln is driving up the avenue alongside the Metasequoia trees.
The gate is open now.
After two minutes, the car arrived at the front door of the mansion
Gardeners are carefully trimming the bushes.
A chauffeur opened the car door, and a man came out.
Height around 160cm, thin, dresses always very neat.
The humidity in Bangladesh is 70 percent today.
But he never forgets to wear a tie and suit.
“It’s so hot today, something to drink,” he ordered.
While his wife hung his jacket, a maid brought iced tea.
After sipping the tea, he said, “Coke, please.”
“Coke is the best fit for me!”
He sat on a couch and started preparing envelopes.
“Patel, this is for you this month”
Patel kneels and opens the envelope.
“Are you sure? Am I good enough?”
“Sure, you work hard for us, so take it.”
“Thank you so much, Master. I can’t wait to show it to my wife.”
“I can have a great New Year holiday with my children.”
Patel politely bowed to the master.
“I feel great to be nice, you know,” he said to his wife.
He had a boasting habit of exaggerating things a little bit.
But other than that, all maids would agree that he was a kind and generous master.
They could never imagine how their master would live in the States.
Everything was upside down.
A fairy tale is over.
You are no longer the Cinderella.
It’s nothing special, he murmured to himself.
he just went back to the everyday routine that he used to be.
Yep, I’m taking a bus to go to work.
Next is “Tuscaloosa,” the bus driver shouted.
“I am getting off,” a tiny man with a tie shouted.
The driver pointed to the bus’s rear door when Mr. Yan tried to walk to the front.
Frowning his face, Mr. Yan reluctantly got off the bus from the rear door.
“Jesus!”
“I used to get off from the front door with whites.”
“Didn’t I? How come?”
Mr. Yan forgot about his sun tan in Bangladesh.
I wrote this short story based on my interview with Mr. Yan and his wife.
They lived in Alabama, in the U.S., during the height of racial segregation. He is originally from Taiwan and studied in Illinois to earn a Ph.D. in agriculture. He got a job in a fertilizer company in Alabama. So, he moved by bus from the North to the Deep South by crossing the Mason-Dixie Line, an imaginary border line dividing the North and South of the United States.
Before the Civil Rights Movement, the Jim Crow laws in the Southern states enforced strict racial segregation in public transportation, restaurants, schools, etc. Mr. Yan shared his experience of taking a bus. He also told me about his ‘golden memories’ in Bangladesh after his company transferred him there. I combined all his scattered memories into one short story here for remembrance.
