Nuralam often sits awake for hours at night when a lukewarm wind blows through the hut, carrying with it the smell of the sea. He peers over at his sister lying next to him on the mat. He sees his brother at his feet and his mother, both of whom are sleeping. If he were to run to the sea as he once did and surrender himself to it facing in the direction of Malaysia, as he once did, then he would have to leave them all alone here, in a refugee camp in western Burma.
Of course they would miss him. But wouldn't this provide his siblings with more room in the hut? And couldn't Nuralam -- a 23-year-old diminutive young man with a quiet voice and an ankle-length cloth wrapped around his waist -- finally become a real person? "A person with work," he says. "And with rights."
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