Scream like a Man

I cried the first day that I met Mr. Singh, the person that taught me how to scream like a man. I was eight years old.

Mr. Singh dominated a one-hundred-foot stretch of back-market street, gouged from a hill of dilapidated huts that huddled together for support. Within this one-hundred-foot empire, he operated a single shop with a roll up garage door front that he lashed between two poles with twine. He sold produce that no one bought, and I think he preferred it that way. The remainder of his tiny kingdom was fitted with shop fronts of similar style, but no other sellers dared to occupy them. This, I am certain, he truly preferred.

He wore something like a robe, usually white, and a turban covered his head. Plain slippers adorned his feet, when he chose to wear them, and he stowed a wicked looking dagger in his belt. A long white beard extended from his chin, easily long enough to assume that he had never cut it.

No one liked Mr. Singh. He was a foreigner and he was unkind, at least to our eyes. Moreover, Mr. Singh did not provide a reason to like him. This too, he must have preferred.

Of some additional importance in this affair is the small-minded idea that I, a girl, was expected to abandon education. When I was seven, I asked my father to enroll me in a local school. He responded with anger, but I was not dissuaded. When I pressured him, over many days, presenting the best arguments a seven-year-old child could muster, he eventually beat me so severely that my eye swelled shut. To this day, my eyelid droops on that side. When he finished, my mother scolded me for angering him. In his own unkind way, my father taught me a great deal about the cruelty of life and the power of social pressure. I have since experienced countless similar lessons, but those are not the lessons of this story.

That morning, when I met Mr. Singh, my mother was sick, and so she dispatched me on her behalf to purchase food for dinner. I, an eight-year-old girl, sent to traverse a sprawling slum, entirely alone. I was warned to avoid certain streets, because of the men that controlled them. Men notorious for their brutality towards unprotected little girls—the type of weak men that would throw acid on my face for daring to seek an education or choose my own husband—but again, that is not a part of this story.

Before I departed, my mother specified that I travel the road of Mr. Singh. I knew the route, having walked it many times with my father for various reasons. I had seen Mr. Singh at those times, but never spoke to him. Always, he sat in a rocking chair beside a desolate crate of fruits that lay at his feet. A forlorn sign, made of chalk scrawled on cardboard, labeled the crate as ‘fruit’. It indicated no price, but one must assume that he sold the fruit, not that it was on display, unless he was engaged in a half-hearted attempt at contemporary living art.

I never witnessed Mr. Singh reading or whittling, or even smoking. Nor did I ever see him in possession of a drink or a meal, excepting his crate of fruit, of course. In a way, I never saw him being human. For all I know, he could have been a mannequin, except that sometimes he stroked his beard. No, he simply stared angrily at passersby, conveying an exceptional sense that one should hurry past, or risk his ire, and that was all.

You might have wondered, by now, how it is that Mr. Singh, with no income, no allies, and no significant capacity for the local language, succeeded in carving a private nation from a stretch of road in an otherwise crowded slum. The answer is that he did what all men of an expansionist mindset are wont to do. He conquered it, but I will come to that later.

The final actor that I must introduce, before conveying the events of that day, are the monkeys. That’s not slang for a gang, or anything like that. I mean literal screeching, biting, hair-pulling, feces-flinging, monkeys. Just in case you’re unaware, monkeys are assholes, if you’ll pardon my language.

That fateful morning, the weather was pleasant; fluffy cotton clouds seasoned the otherwise bald blue skies, and only a light breeze dashed between the buildings. I carried with me a plastic bag that contained some fruit to fuel my journey, along with a small allotment of cash. As I turned onto Mr. Singh’s road, I remember well the scent of the blooming trees blowing in down the hill, a rare event in the slums. I also recall the sounds of the monkeys; those awful, shrieking, sacks of malice and disease.

The monkeys, upon seeing me with my bag, sought to make it their own. It is not uncommon for them to steal from travelers, simply because they have learned that food is sometimes the prize. I was perhaps a quarter of the way up street, on only the border of Mr. Singh’s empire, when they embarked upon their gambit. Wasting no time, they piled onto me from the roof tops, ripping at my hair and yanking on my bag. One of them bit me in the calf.

I started to scream and run, refusing to simply throw the bag to the side, as it contained my mother’s money. The monkeys chased me, of course, scratching and biting, and as comical as this might sound, it was not comical at the time. A swarm of monkeys is more than capable of killing a child, and they do not suffer from the consequences of morality.

This is when I met Mr. Singh, while I was heaped upon with furry spite machines and screaming for my life.

I can tell you now that Mr. Singh came to save me. At the time, I did not see it that way.

Take a moment to imagine how you would rescue someone that is under attack by monkeys. There are many of them. They are small, and latched on with clawed little fists as strong as vices. A weapon, of course, seems natural—even just a stick, perhaps—but could you strike the monkey and not the person? Mr. Singh carried a dagger, but if you were the victim, could you stand still while monkeys bit your flesh and a man lunged at you with a blade? So just your hands, then, would you grab the monkeys by the tail and yank them off? Kick at them? I must warn you, they are surprisingly fast and their teeth are sharp.

It’s a conundrum, no doubt, but not for Mr. Singh. I remember well the sight of him rising from his chair as I rounded the corner in approach. He leaped to his feet, standing bowlegged and squat. His arms flew overhead, circle-like, while the sagging ligaments of age left his gut swinging beneath his sway-back stance.

Then he screamed, but when I say scream, do not envision a shriek of the sort that one emits when scared. Do not let your mind go to the sounds of women in distress, as portrayed in film and theatre. Imagine a powerful great ape, a silvered elder the size of a small vehicle, roaring at the impudence of any onlooker that dares to challenge their reign. A booming cadence of howls, emitted in rapid bursts of the kind that rattle teeth and thunder through concrete. That is how he screamed.

All together, the monkeys screamed, I screamed, and Mr. Singh screamed. There was a lot of screaming, but in very different forms. In the follow up, the monkeys fled, I burst into tears, and Mr. Singh, well, he only laughed. He laughed so heinously that his eyes watered, his belly jiggled, and he began to wheeze. In retrospect, it was a very human moment for him, but not for me. I never completed my errand that day. Instead, I ran home, crying all the way.

It should come as no surprise that my father punished me violently. In my exchange with Mr. Singh and the monkeys, I dropped the bag and thus lost the money. My mother took his side, and I ate nothing for three days.

I had nightmares for months, after that, but not because of my mother and father. Rather, I saw the howling, screaming face of Mr. Singh as the focus. His teeth bared and gnashing and his eyes wide and piercing, fixated upon me and charging fast as I struggled to move through the sluggish miasma of a dream.

Although I vowed to never trespass upon Mr. Singh’s empire ever again, I did continue to travel alone. As I grew older, I went to work wherever I could. For a girl at my age, my opportunities were limited to selling my body or scavenging for scrap metal. I chose the scrap, which I sold for meager profits, all of which went to my father. If I am truly honest, I believe that my mother did not care how I spent my days, providing that I earned money, and that unlike my two older brothers, she saw me as a burden rather than a boon. Thankfully, to my mind, my brothers and father worked together as fishermen, away from me. It kept us fed, but little else. Therefore, my income became our discretionary budget. If I did not earn enough during the day, my father denied me dinner, as was my customary punishment. He never saw reason in the argument that it was much easier for him and my brothers to earn significantly more than me.

To reach the garbage dumps where I scavenged, I chose long routes that avoided Mr. Singh. I went down the hill and across a bridge, and then around through the markets and back up the hill. This was a highly public route, and so safe for me to travel, but significantly longer than necessary. For three years, I walked this route, until one day the waters flooded and the bridge washed out.

I thought, upon hearing the news of the bridge, that surely Mr. Singh had changed by now. Surely, I am stronger, and I will be able to face the demon in my dreams. At the very least, if the gods are kind, perhaps he has died and I never heard of it.

That first day without the bridge, like my first day alone upon his road, was clear and breezy. Nervously, I stood at the gates of his lands and peered down the misshapen passage, to see if I could detect Mr. Singh on his throne. If he was not present, I would feel more comfortable with intruding. Unfortunately, I could not see his shop due to the ragged mess of buildings and their dangling detritus that stood in my way, formed haphazardly, as all slums must be. Given that my only other choice was to enter the territory of dangerous men, I put my foot forward and stepped towards the border of the forbidden empire.

Mr. Singh sat in his usual place, slightly forward from his shop, such that he could easily observe his entire swath of slum. His eyes came to a rest upon me, and I shivered. I steeled my mind and hurried past him. He remained reclined in his seat, with his hands in his lap and his gaze transfixed. As I went by, he did not track my progress by moving his eyes, but instead, he looked forward and swiveled his head, like an owl observing its prey, until I was out of sight.

I did particularly well at the dumps that day, having found a spool of wire, and I felt that I deserved a treat. On my way home, I purchased six sugared candies which I savored by suckling them until all the sugar was gone and they broke into pieces, but even then, I did not chew the remnants. Rather, I continued to press the shards into my cheeks, slowly extracting every second of sweetness.

Upon reaching Mr. Singh’s road, I crushed the memory of a candy between my teeth, lingering before entering his passage. Overhead, a battalion of monkeys gathered on the eaves. I clutched my profits close to my chest and went forth, and I clearly remember hastening my stride as the monkeys dashed along the roof tops and across the awnings in pursuit. Maybe they remembered me and my delicious fruit, or perhaps, as I am inclined to believe, they are simply malicious little rats-with-hands hellbent on ruination.

Regardless, upon sensing their inevitable ambush, I clutched my earnings to my chest and attempted to retreat. I merely needed to reach a more crowded street, and then they would leave me alone. Recognizing my plan, the should-be-rugs attacked. In reflex, I shrieked at them, swinging my fists wildly as I reciprocated their obnoxious sounds. Surprisingly, they backed away, but only slightly. I attempted the noise a second time, but it was even less effective, and they were soon clinging to my skirt and hair, ripping as viciously as ever.

I did what I could to preserve my income and my gift to myself, but ultimately, I lost. They pried open my hands by biting my knuckles and stole what I held. When I dropped my money and my candies, they quickly pilfered all of it. Thankfully, I was big enough now that they could not pose a serious physical threat, so they escaped with their spoils and were gone.

When I turned back to my path, mentally preparing for an evening of hunger and abuse, I discovered myself under the observant eye of Mr. Singh, although some distance away. He had risen from his seat and now stood in the street, but upon seeing me return to my travels, he sat back down.

I resolved to walk past him, undeterred. As I did, he idled in his chair in the shade of his steel awning, with his still-life crate of fruit beside him. My skin crawled at the sight of him, while anxiety chilled my guts, and so I quickened my steps with the intent to flee.

“Fruit,” he said, just before I passed.

I stopped, curious. As far as I knew, Mr. Singh never spoke to anyone, ever. I turned to face him. He remained in his chair, but briefly nodded at the fruit-labeled fruit, as if to draw my attention to its presence. The dusty empty shack behind him contained only a rug, so his gesture served no purpose. When I did not reply, he moved one foot to the side of the crate and pushed it over to me, forcing him to rock back in his chair, thanks to reciprocal physics.

“Fruit,” he said again.

I approached and peered into the crate. The fruit looked quite delicious, as it was both ripe and washed. It was the quality of fruit that ordinarily would require arriving at the market exceptionally early to acquire. The sight of it felt torturous considering my recent losses. If nothing else could be said of Mr. Singh, he understood a business opportunity when it presented itself.

After such a long day of heavy lifting, the idea of going hungry carried very little appeal, and so I reached into his crate and chose two mangos. “How much?” I asked.

I honestly cannot explain why I asked for a price. The monkeys stole all my money. Perhaps I simply wished to experience the scent and sensation of holding the fruit in my hand, or to uphold the fading illusion of my windfall from the day.

“No,” he replied, after I asked. For extra emphasis, he lifted both hands, palms forward, and shook his head.

“Thank you,” I said, unable to restrain my smile. I assumed that he felt sorry for me, and thus shared his wealth.

Mr. Singh did not reply. He returned to his usual position, with his hands in his lap and his eyes fixated upon me, straightforward in his skull. I said thank you one more time, and then went to leave, but he called me back. “You scream like a child,” he said, but slowly, and with an overt accent that I didn’t recognize.

I looked at him once more, uncertain of how to reply to an obvious observation. Of course, I scream like a child. I am a child.

Then he spoke again and glanced down the street towards the location of the recent incident with the monkeys. “Scream like a man,” he insisted.

I wasn’t quite sure how to respond, and so I didn’t. I stood confused and bewildered, questioning the ongoing need for my presence.

“Watch,” he said, and a mischievous flicker of joy ran across his face.

Mr. Singh stood from his chair and chose a beautifully red pomegranate from his crate. He lumbered slowly to the center of his empire, in the gait of an elderly man, and placed the fruit on the ground. Then he backed away and waited.

Very soon, the monkeys gathered. They crowded the nearest edges of the roofs and awnings, yearning to snatch his fruit for themselves. Each time he twitched, they dashed away a foot or two, but never so far that their prize left their sight.

After posturing and squabbling for perhaps a minute, the bravest of the lot descended to the street. Their obvious apprehension showed in their skittish movements, and the nervous way that they looked over their shoulders. I had never seen such human behaviour from an animal. These monkeys were not the same brazen lunch thieves that robbed me of my money and tore out my hair. These monkeys were terrified, and as I soon discovered, for good reason.

A mad dash occurred. From about ten feet away, the most daring of them all rushed the pomegranate. Mr. Singh responded quickly, flinging his hands over his head and once again performing the bellowing ape-howl that rattled the stones. He heaved himself forward at the same time, sending the monkeys shrieking for cover as he came to a stop over his pomegranate.

My nightmares reasserted their might, manifesting in front of my waking eyes. However, after the monkeys fled, Mr. Singh resumed his quiet demeanour, retrieved his fruit, and turned around. He smiled broadly, revealing a jagged maw of yellow teeth, while tears streamed from his eyes as he laughed that wheezing laugh that stained my dreams.

“See,” he said, still grinning. “Scream like a man.”

It was then that I realized, this laughing man that howled at monkeys, this was the real Mr. Singh. Not a dangerous foreigner or a cruel old man. He was not the wicked curmudgeon that we all believed. He was simply a person that preferred his isolation, and that enjoyed scaring monkeys absolutely witless. In consideration of that interest—a unified hatred of those tree-bound vermin—we shared a common bond.

On my way to the dump the next morning, I smiled at Mr. Singh and he replied with a subtle, almost imperceptible nod. If not for the way that his beard crumpled against his chest, it might have been truly unseen. In response to his kindness from the day before—a kindness almost unheard of in that place—I felt compelled to repay him in force. That evening, I went to Mr. Singh to buy his fruit. I held out the entirety of my money from that day, not caring in the slightest that I would be punished for it.

“No,” he said, once again holding up his palms.

To this point in my life, nothing had prepared me to accept kindness. It wasn’t just a scholarly education that I lacked, but a social one, as well. In the sense that mathematics and history can be taught, gratitude, too, must be learned.

My stomach turned queasy and my throat seized. Tears trickled down my cheeks, despite my efforts to wipe them away. I moved to quietly place my money beside his fruit, intending to leave it there, but it never left my hand.

Mr. Singh lunged. Without provocation or warning, he jumped from his seat and howled monstrously at me, sending me scrambling for cover. When I was clear of his crate, still in possession of my money, he reached down and retrieved a mango from his stash. Then he approached me slowly, as one might approach a nervous animal, and he pressed the mango into my shaking palm.

“No,” he insisted, and as he did he glowered powerfully at me for daring to deny his command.

I took his mango and ate it guiltily on the way home. Unlike the candy, I devoured it in seconds, in a filthy ugly way, unable to prevent myself from craving the unfamiliar sensation of compassion that accompanied its flesh.

The next morning, I found Mr. Singh where expected. However, instead of traveling to the dump to scavenge, I entered his hut and sat down on his carpet. At the time, I certainly could not have expressed my emotions, but now I can say that it was because I sought to repay him and because I was drawn to the unfamiliar—the idea of giving without receiving. If he would not accept money, then I would wait until I found another way to pay him, even if that meant starving.

Against my wishes, Mr. Singh fed me fruit that day, and when he offered I did not dare to refuse. I let the debt grow, further resolved to repay him. At the end of the day, when the sun had set, he handed me a small pouch of money, which I later realized contained the precise amount that I lost on that first day, years ago, as the monkeys attacked me. I took that money home to my parents, but I did not stay with them. I repaid that lost debt, and immediately felt that I owed them nothing further of my life. Instead, I went back to the shop of Mr. Singh. He was gone, and it was empty. I shook out the rug and sealed the front, securing myself inside.

The next morning, Mr. Singh arrived with his crate and sat in his chair. He said nothing, greeting me with only a polite nod. All that day, I lay in wait for the moment that I could repay my debt. I did not know what the opportunity would look like, but I was not going to overlook it by being absent. However, no opportunity arrived, not that day or any other.

I slept in that shop, and on that rug, for almost a decade. Over time, the bridge was repaired and life resumed, but I remained with Mr. Singh. Initially, we rarely conversed, as Mr. Singh spoke only brokenly and with great concentration. No, we did not converse until much later, but we certainly enjoyed our time together. Every day, we sat in his art-project of a shop, him in his chair, and me reclined on the rug, and we glowered silently at passersby. When the street was vacant, and all the trespassers were gone, we took his fruit and left it in the street, awaiting the filthy pilfering hands of the monkeys. Then, when they appeared, it was our turn to ambush them.

At first, I could not properly scare the monkeys away. Often, they stole the fruit that I was attempting to bait them with. This dismayed me greatly, and I felt awash with guilt and the dread expectation of a severe reprimand; I had cost Mr. Singh some of his income. It felt wasteful and negligent. However, he never mirrored my negativity. Each time the monkeys succeeded, he only appeared enthused by my failure.

“It gives them hope,” he said one day, probably after researching how to say what he wanted to say.

The longer this went on, the better I became at mimicking the howl that he could produce. Never as loud, and never as powerful, but my voice slowly lost its youthful timbre and my posture transformed into a weapon of fear. I reveled in the power of it and the joy of gaining control over a seemingly uncontrollable situation. I found in Mr. Singh an appreciation for the simplest aspects of life, and a willingness to laugh with ease at frustration.

“From here,” he would say, pressing his palm against my diaphragm. Then he would demonstrate, and I would cover my ears in pain. “Like this,” he would say, flinging his arms over his head and leaning forward, mouth gaping and snarling, and I would flinch and back away. Without fail, whenever I flinched and whenever I shied, he would laugh, and it inspired me to find the resolve that would stifle that laugh. To my delight, I eventually succeeded, and I no longer found him terrifying.

Often during these times, I felt insulted by the idea that he saw femininity as a weakness and extolled masculinity as a strength. Later, when I learned much of his native tongue—as was required, since Mr. Singh never showed any interest in further adopting the local language—I discovered that he merely lacked the means to express it any differently. When he said man, he did not mean male, he meant adult. Man, as in an adult human, as in all of mankind. He should have said scream like a human.

More importantly, however, he taught me equality through education. As I mastered his language, he brought books from his home to share with me. Books about history and mathematics, or villains and heroes, all of which he left for me to read. He only explained their contents when I asked questions. Through them, he taught me to read and write—in his language, not mine—and he taught me philosophy, biology, science, medicine, ethics, and much more. I enjoyed the books, because I could consume them at my own pace, and I believe that he preferred them because he did not need to speak.

In that regard, Mr. Singh taught me a great deal about life. When described in his language, society was not about who is weak and who is strong, but about how to outgrow the weakness of childhood and develop a strength that is inherent in us all. Human strength.

During this time, I did what I could to pay my own way by making myself useful. I replaced the twine that held his door with wire that I scavenged, and I replaced that wire with bolts and brackets. I had dismantled enough machinery in search of lightweight components that I could reassemble them with some degree of proficiency—at the dumps, I sought nuts, bolts, and springs because I could conceal them, otherwise my competitors would steal my find as proficiently and violently as biting monkeys. Over time, I used my talents to reinforce the integrity of his shop, and he seemed pleased.

Each day, he brought food for me to eat, and each night, he left me in his shop. I also performed cooking, cleaning, and errands on his behalf, but Mr. Singh once punished me for spending too much time away from my studies. However, he never struck me or admonished me verbally. As with everything else, Mr. Singh conveyed his displeasure through his posture and demeanour alone. In later years, I came to suspect that in truth he desired my company and disliked it when I was extensively absent.

Sometimes, another person attempted to open a shop on the street where Mr. Singh lived. Perhaps they saw me in his shop and thought that he had softened. They were wrong, of course, and discovered this fact when Mr. Singh would employ his tactics of terror against them.

When the interlopers appeared, he would silently stand in their presence, near their stall, staring intensely at anyone that dared to approach the goods of his adversary. It was not physically violent behaviour, but he emanated an almost palpable aura of unease; a sort of forced empathy. When he transfixed his attention upon you, it felt as though he could reach you from anywhere on his street and throttle you from a distance.

If this was not enough, or if the shop owner accosted Mr. Singh for driving away customers, Mr. Singh unleashed his howl. He would fling his arms, hurl stones and debris, and overturn their stands, screaming and thrashing, but unlike with the monkeys and myself, he never laughed. He sustained the image of mental instability that he desired, and thus, the idea of a threat. I truly wish that I could better convey the sheer might and horror that he embodied, but perhaps it is enough to say that few people remained longer than a week upon his lane.

So, you see, Mr. Singh conquered his territory with intimidation, and by screaming like a man.

I never told anyone what I knew about Mr. Singh until many years later, because I felt that it would be a deep betrayal of his trust to reveal his true personality. Like a delicious fruit with a tough exterior, he carefully cultivated his appearance to ward away those he saw as unworthy of his sweet interior. To this day, I do not know where Mr. Singh lived, how he acquired his fruit, or how he earned any income at all, but I prefer it this way. He was, and still is, a mysterious man. If my father taught me the many unfair cruelties of the word, Mr. Singh taught me unfair kindnesses.

Sometimes, my father or brothers would pass the shop. The first time they approached, I hid my face in shame and refused to look at them. Mr. Singh, however, rose from his seat and stepped into their path. He assumed a position of authority in front of his stall and glared intensely at my family.

Even though they outnumbered him, and even though they were younger and taller and stronger, my father and two brothers eased away from Mr. Singh. They shifted into a single file line, leaning away and nearly pressing their shoulders against the far wall, to avoid passing too close. Once they were gone, Mr. Singh sat back down and resumed his watch. He said nothing to me, choosing instead to let his actions speak on his behalf.

Although it spanned several incidents, I eventually developed the resolve to keep my chin lifted and my eyes forward. As my family went by, I did not look away. Even though my heart raced and my head felt light, I, like Mr. Singh, gazed as intently as a predator tracking its prey.

One day, as I approached adulthood, Mr. Singh arrived with a second rocking chair in his arms. He came late to the shop, waddling with the furniture in two hands and the crate of fruit upon it, wheezing lightly as he placed it in the opposite forward corner of my tiny world. It was new and finished with stain, and almost precisely the same as that of Mr. Singh’s, but only slightly smaller. I think, perhaps, he constructed it himself, but I never asked. Mr. Singh gestured at it, and then sat down in his customary throne. I thanked him by sitting down in mine. To have thanked him aloud would have been to offend his preference for the absence of conversation.

Only later did I recognize how much that chair represented, not to me, but to him. You see, to invite me to sit beside him, not on the dusty rug in the back, meant that he saw me as not just a friend, but as a partner and an equal.

Now, I wish I could tell you that our lives remained as blissful as that time, but I cannot. We shared nearly a decade of contentment, until the violent men of the slums decided that they needed to expand their territory. I will not describe the events that transpired, but I will say that Mr. Singh fell in defence of his empire, and much of my innocence went with him. I think, to Mr. Singh, their greatest crime was that they shattered his beloved chair, and my heart ached unreasonably at the sight of the splinters.

In the years after his death, I perfected my screaming technique, and I have since used it sparingly, but effectively. I no longer chase monkeys, but I once fended off muggers by bellowing and flailing. Sometimes, I am asked to startle children as a party trick, and I enjoy obliging, because it startles adults, too. The truth is, a wild and unpredictable animal, screaming with primal rage and transfixing an unbroken stare, carries a profound power that we have lost in the refinement of our human societies.

In fact, I found a career of importance and escaped the slums by screaming so violently.

I was in my early twenties, and striving to stay alive, as we all did in that place. While traversing the roads, I came upon a tourist under assault by monkeys. He had wandered off the usual trails and found himself ambushed. Being that he was quite large, a foreigner, and there were several other people around, I considered leaving him to manage the situation on his own. Ultimately, I recalled the kindness of Mr. Singh, and I chose to intervene.

I rushed the monkeys and the man, screaming and flailing. Stones quaked. Teeth rattled. People stared and shirked away, including the man under attack. I basked in the glory of it, watching those flea-riddled garbage bags scamper for their lives.

The tourist, too, brought his arms up in defense. Easily twice my weight and vastly superior in physical might, he cowered at the sight of my fury. That was the first time that I ever used my talents on a person. I instantly discovered that it’s one thing to intimidate something smaller than you, but it is something else entirely when the thing that fears you could in fact kill you with little effort. The rush I felt surged through me. In that moment, I understood Mr. Singh far better than ever before, and I began to laugh until tears streamed down my cheeks.

When he saw that I was not a threat, the tourist began to laugh with me. My thrill vanished and I hated it, so I screamed again and bounded towards him.

“Holy cotton balls,” he muttered, stumbling away. “That’s terrifying,” he said, clutching his heart.

I slowed, gripped by anxiety. The tourist did not speak in my language. Rather, he spoke the language of Mr. Singh, and that is why I halted my display. I smiled at him warmly, for his words reminded me of someone that I cherished, and it is difficult to describe the heartfelt bond that accompanies a familiar language that you have not heard in years. “Are you lost?” I asked.

His face bloomed with joy. “You understand me?” he blurted.

I nodded.

“Thank you!” he said, mimicking a prayer to the sky. “Will you be my guide?” he asked.

I said no, and that I was busy, which I was. Busy surviving.

“Please,” he begged. “I can pay.”

I never had the chance to refuse a second time. Before I spoke, he thrust a wad of paper money in my direction. If I had taken even half of his offer, I could have lived comfortably in the slum for over a year, at least until someone robbed or murdered me for it. So, of course I accepted, with the intent to stow it safely and spend it smartly over time, extending the benefits for a decade or more.

However, that day proved to be almost as fateful as the day I met Mr. Singh when I was eight years old. I became a guide and a translator. I accepted a position in an embassy. I traveled the world.

I now live comfortably abroad with a family I love, all because of Mr. Singh, and all because of what he taught me about strength. Although it’s not quite so proper, I still like to phrase it the way that he phrased it, and to teach the lesson that he taught me.

Find your strength, and scream like a man.