FOR HOKIN

It was a strange place, and at first i looked around at it aprehensively. We took three cabs from the airport to the New Frontier bus terminal, passing building-wide tv screens that advertised products in mandarin. A herd of bulls roamed free across a wire-lined intersection, the high towers and skyscrapers looming above us all like ancient guardians from another age. Fluorescent movement and light was everywhere; in words scrolling across screens bolted into window frames; like fireworks stuck in a box on the back of the taxi-cabs. Everything seemed alive.
It was dusk when we arrived, and what little of the sky we could see through the jungle of steel and cement and machinery was a chalky brown, rain clouds whispering to each other in distant thunder-speech, plotting their takeover of the night.
The sidewalks were overflowing with bodies amd the blending of raincoats and business suits and the plaid green of supposedly local school uniforms twisted and weaved together into a blurry effect as our driver huffed and puffed us through the stop and go traffic.
My legs were sore and cramped. Hicks was asleep sitting next to me.
The New Frontiers was a city itself; a city inside a city inside a city. The locals referred to it as 'the suburbs', but to me it seemed like someone's massive, compact vision of downtown New Britain, or Troy Michigan, or Malden Massachussets. Outdoor alleyways and hallways encircled everything. Strange party lights cast eerie shadows over tiny crowds of smokers who stood outside of bustling cafes and bars. The buildings were old, white testaments to mans profound creativity, with many porches and blaconies and awkward roof angles that slanted down from towers remniscient of little castles. Everything seemed to be made from brick and stone; even the streets were caked with cracked and chipped cobblestone.
We found the Missions base after an hour or more of searching. Two abyssmally black doors stood between ceiling high stone walls, all of it in the center ofa tiny courtyard covered with other store fronts and small businesses. Laura knocked on the door.
We were made family among them, even though we were temporary guests. Hokin made us tea in the early mornings as the red sun peeked up its eager eye over the horizon, urging us to 'wake up, wake up and see the sunrise friends!'. Most of them stayed in their sleeping bags, nestled in their cots like insects in cocoons. But Hicks and I, we would rub the sleep from our faces and put on our jackets and boots and gloves and go up with Hokin to the roof, admiring what sections of the city we could see by the dawns light.
It was here that i fell in love with smoking; truly those mornings were more than a host to the places foreign beauty; I loved to sit on the roof with those two men, each of us from a different corner of the world, sipping hot tea, while i casually smoke a cigarette that i clutched in my glove-less fingers. Sometimes for more than an hour we would not speak, watching with wonderful awe as the city was reborn every morning.
A man who carried an uncanny resemblance to Jon Voight gave us lectures each morning in a small circular classroom two blocks from the Missions base, teaching us the modern culture and mannerisms of Mainland China. He presented to us maps of the cities we'd be working in, showing endless photos of infamously undecipherable subway maps and busroutes. We knew that if we were arrested or stopped, we were essentially on our own, and the day that the boxes of Mandarin translation Bibles were opened, we stood silently for a moment understanding the seriousness of what we were about to attempt.
We'd make a late breakfast together during the first break of lectures, listening to Damien Rice on cheap discman speakers while we cut onions and tomatoes. Alex scrambled eggs on a tiny portable stove in the body-thin pantry, occasionally massaging his face where the scars were from the day he was bottled in a bar fight years before.
Hokin would pray with me in the evenings those first two weeks. A polite knock on the door would reveal his face, beaming proudly the way a father does over his son whose just won a baseball game. In the base courtyard outside the different teams from around the world would eat dinner under beach umbrellas, sitting at long, foldout tables while the two resident wild dogs would lay around for scraps. Hokin always sat across from me in the cramped apartment as we bowed our heads and began to pray, the dinner sounds from outside a calm background. Sometimes he would place his hand on my shoulder as he prayed, squeezing occasionally for emphasis on certain words. One night I couldnt stop crying.
The day before we were scheduled to leave for Mainland China, Hicks and I went to our curry place for the last time. We had gone at least once a day, almost always after midnight while the others slept. The curry place was like a little hole in the wall nuclear bunker -- we had only found it based on the annoyingly detailed directions of one of the base staff -- but from first bite of that food we were addicted like nicotine lab rats. We sat with tired bags under our eyes, contemplating our future as we waited for the spicy food.
"Are you afraid," he said. I raised my eyes. Our topics of conversation up until that last night never strayed far from topics like Stephen King or the Terminator series.
"Are you?"
"Yes," he said, after a moment, as if he had to admit it to himself. "I'm very afraid we're not going to even get into the country."
"I'm afraid too. I almost would just rather stay here."
"Yeah ..." he trailed off. Then his head shot up, with a realization. "But then who would we be helping?"
The next morning we loaded our bags with the illegal bibles, wrapping them in t shirts and jeans as if it made a difference to the all-seeing eyes of the x-ray machines.
"Just be smart," said Jon Voight. "And you'll be alright."
Hokin was nowhere to be found; i never saw him again. When i returned to Hong Kong after months of being a slave to my own tyranical pessimism while in Mailand China, he had departed with a small prayer team for the outskirts of Mongolia, to work with Christian monks. There are times when i wonder if it was even real, all those mornings spent looking out, all those evenings spent praying for the souls of people i loved. I never saw him again.
We boarded a bus that would take us to Not Lo, where we would attempt to smuggle the dozens of bibles through customs for the underground Chinese Church. The roads started to spread out as we left New Frontiers, the office buildings and apartment blocks not so close together. When we arrived at the customs area we split up, finding seperate lines to stand in so the bag-readers wouldnt see 6 people in a row whose bags were stuffed with similar sized books. I found myself alone, surrounded by traveling strangers, about to do what was very possibly the most dangerous thing in my life. I glanced across the dozens of lines and found Hicks, about to be called forward. Beyond him, Kat stood in the next line pretending to look at her nails. Alex and Laura and Junebug where all in there somewhere too. The man at the customs desk for my line called for the next customer. I remembered Hokin's hand on my shoulder.