The Embassy of Cambodia

Andrew and Fatou met a year earlier when he gave her a religious leaflet while she was eating a sandwich in a park. Without being invited, he sat next to her and began discussing his leaflet, beginning the first of many theological and religious conversations between them. Fatou realizes that while many people have tried to convert her to Christianity, Andrew was successful because of his response to one of her stories. She tells him about a time when she was working at the resort in Carib Beach, and nine children’s dead bodies washed up on shore. While people looked upset, no one did anything. The next year, Fatou was living in Rome and saw a boy die in a bike accident. However, the responses of passersby were drastically different: People were crying and screaming, and the death was in the paper the next day. Andrew tells her, “A tap runs fast the first time you switch it on” (48).

As Fatou swims, she thinks about the last time she cried. When she was working in Rome, she cleaned bathrooms at a Catholic school. On her lunch break, she went outside to a garden across from the school.