Hong Kong Young Writers Anthologies Fiction Group 3 | Page 262

marine explorer of China who ruled the seas? He sighed. “Every possible way except the way that I’d like
to. To be remembered as one that serves Allah with all his heart .” The treasure on the ships and the glory
he had brought to the dynasty and himself never mattered. The journeys at sea had taught him that all
temptations of the mortal world were as hollow as sea foam. The places he explored and discovered did
matter, but they didn’t mean much. Someone was bound to find them. Yet devoting oneself to a deity was
different. It was something eternal. And it was his father’s dream, that meant everything to him. By not
fulfilling that dream, he felt as if he had betrayed his late father, the worst sin one could commit. His
devotion to Buddhism had been implicitly forced by the Ming emperor. He gritted his teeth. “Why can’t
this world go the way I like?” Zheng He thought. “Why is my life being constantly shaped by others and
diverted from my dreams?”
With a sudden rage he stood up against the storm, his delicate body no longer bowing to the wrath of
the winds. “Take me if you dare!” He bellowed at the empty sea. “I will stand, even if this is the only time I
can stand up, strong and confident, against the gale that blew my life apart!” Then with determination, he
strode toward his cabin, shaking the ocean with every step. Through wind and rain, through pain and sweat,
he arrived at his cozy door. Zheng He was just about to turn the doorknob.
A ring of light fell on the door.
Zheng He turned around with a start and gasped. He was the most handsome human he had ever seen,
shining brightly in contrast to the deep, stormy night. He was beyond his imagination, and too much for his
tiny brain to register. He carried with him an aura of authority, love, understanding, and divinity. Zheng He
wasn’t even sure if he was a ‘he’. Maybe something else. More holy and spiritual.
“Allah?”
“Zheng He, you have done well in your voyages. You have helped many countries flourish with the
treasure you gave out and with the knowledge you bestowed. And by helping others, you’ve already
devoted yourself to me. So, tell me, why are you guilty?”
“Allah…” Zheng He faltered, searching for words…
*****
Zheng He had been sick for days now, on the seventh journey of the Ming Treasure Fleet. The doctor
left his cabin and spoke to the government officials outside with deep concern. “Sir,” the doctor was saying,
“It appears that Mr. Zheng’s illness has now become incurable. Apart from staying constantly unconscious,
he is now hallucinating, too. Last night, he was burbling about an ‘eighth voyage’ and something called
‘Allah’.”
A collective gasp spread among the officials, “So he really can’t be cured?”
“I believe so,” said the doctor solemnly.
*****
They waited until he died, in the city of Calicut, springtime 1433. What they didn’t know, was that the
fatal disease and the hallucination, was Zheng He’s final liberation, from this world, and from his broken
dreams.
That day they cast his body into the depths, even the seagulls were quiet. The racket of the city calmed
itself down. The sky was clear, the sea was still. They wrapped his body in silk, adorned with sea waves. The
same warm, salty sea air came to pay farewell to the dead.
Slowly, with grief, they mourned for him and buried him in the waves where he’d belong. The silk, so
weightless, so free, dancing with the shadows of light and dark in the waters of life, as it slowly drifted
toward the bottom of the sea.
Chase the waves, Zheng He. Chase them to wherever they shall take your soul to.