Every night her father would sit in the cane chair on the balcony, light a cigarette and look out into the night. "It grows darker each day," he would say. She would finish her homework and, with her mother safely tucked away in bed, creep to the balcony and sit at her father's feet, her back to the railings. This way she could see the night reflected in his thick, soda-water-bottle- glasses. Then, he would start telling her stories.
In all her father's stories about the land he came from, there was always water.
"There was incessant rain for a week at a stretch and the whole village almost drowned. I remember running away every afternoon to catch catfish in the channels of water next to our paddy fields," he would say, absentmindedly tapping ash next to the ashtray.
Or he would tell the story of crossing the river in a rice-boat to visit the neighbouring village where his cousins lived, and then staying up all night to watch the water shine and shimmer in the moonlight.