Sapae Nok Village
Kolinggar Mountains
The 17 and 19-year-old boys harassed the younger maiden by playing tug-of-war with her skirt, until the skirt came off and she fell half-naked onto the roadway. Incapable of restraining his misogyny, the younger boy topped off the escapade by kicking mud into the innocent girl's face.
Sabriya watched it all unfold.
“DON’T!” Sister Alma snapped at Sabriya. “It’s none of our concern.”
But Sabriya ignored the elder nun and catapulted herself at the boys.
It was an unsettling moment in what was usually a casual and enjoyable day. Sabriya enjoyed organizing the monastery’s stall on market days in nearby Sapae Nok, a modest village settled among the terraced mountainside. But today was different.
Earlier, Sabriya had watched the 18 and 19-year-old boys, dressed in Western jeans and faded American football T-shirts, swagger through the market, talking rudely to vendors, tapping their cigarette ashes onto vendors’ products, and flicking hot cigarette butts at vendors who objected. But the boys avoided the nuns’ booth, perhaps because of Sister Alma’s omniscient glare, who, although in full Carmelite nun regalia—brown habit, cap, and white wimple—appeared more like a Sumo Wrestler complete with a three-pound crucifix at the end of her heavy-metal rosary that she swung menacingly from her belt.
Monthly, in a designated market area, the town provided stacks of wooden pallets and crates on which commercial vendors and villagers spread fabric to create tabletops for their wares, crafts, and foodstuffs. Tourists were frequent during the summer months, since Sapae Nok was accessible by motorcar. Sabriya and Sister Alma would cart monastery goods a half-mile down the mountain path and sell them to supplement the monastery’s income. Among their goods were medicinal herbs such as dried roots and leaves; honey; fruit preserves; balms or salves for joints, muscles, skin rashes, and headaches; herbal oils, incense, and candles; hand-woven, wood-beaded rosaries; hand-scribed and colored prayer cards; and hand-carved wooden crucifixes.
St. Mary Elias items were always modestly priced, and never was there any haggling, bartering, or a hawking spiel by the sisters. Thus, potential buyers were always drawn to the sisters’ stall for the quality of their products and the nuns’ gentle honesty. Many would come to the market just to talk or counsel with the sisters. Some buyers would ask for prayers, telling the sister to “keep the change.” For Sabriya, it was a joyful occasion, one she enjoyed leading. And, of course, although she and Sister Alma were in charge of the stall, a dozen other sisters, and often Mother Superior, would come in groups throughout the day to shop for the monastery’s needs, as well as remake acquaintances with the villagers.
Generally, villagers were gentle and courteous. But once in a while, and on this particular day, there was trouble. Usually, a constable was present to mitigate such occasions. Still, with multiple duties and a large market footprint, the constable wasn’t always nearby when needed, which was the case when Sabriya was forced to take action.
The teens had evidently found the harassment of vendors monotonous and so the young bucks had turned their attention to a peasant girl, perhaps 15, pretty as she was shy, and she was pretty shy. The boys walked menacingly close to the girl and sandwiched her thin body between their bulks, all the while taunting her. Although Sabriya could not hear exactly what the boys said, their taunts and gestures had been clearly sexual. The young girl turned beet-red, quite a feat given her dark complexion. She wore a plain bonnet, the sides of which hid her eyes from seeing their faces as long as she kept her head straight ahead, which also prevented the perverts from seeing her face unless they got directly in front of her and walked backwards, which they eventually did. The girl tried to outwalk the boys or head off in another direction, her arms folded tightly across her well-developed chest. But the boys didn’t give up.
Sabriya saw all this, elbowed Sister Alma, who crossed herself and whispered a Hail Mary.
But when the boys started grabbing at the girl’s arms and tugging at her threadbare skirt, Sabriya put down the prayer card she was admiring and stepped away from the table.
“DON’T!” Sister Alma snapped at Sabriya. “It’s none of our concern.”
But Sabriya’s attention was entirely on the boys and the girl about 30 meters away. At first, she was upset at the boys’ harassment, but grew enraged when the men and women tending stalls near the confrontation turned and backed away. That was reprehensible.
Knocking the vulnerable girl to the ground and kicking sand in her face was the last straw. Kicking off her sandals, Sabriya ran on bare but calloused feet. At first, the boys didn’t notice her quick advance until she darted between them and the girl, faced the boys, and put the girl at her back.
In mock shock, the boys, who were taller than Sabriya, laughed.
“Apologize to her, and leave, both of you,” steamed Sabriya, “or I’ll make sure that when you do leave, you won’t be walking.”
“Oooo. Scary woman with brain sickness,” said the younger wanna-be bully.
“She crazy,” said the older. “She need to learn place of woman.” Whereupon both advanced on Sabriya, fists raised and clenched like amateur boxers.
At that moment, Sabriya realized several things. These boys were not fighters, and there was indeed going to be a fight—one woman against two towering fools. But even after five years of training and earning a third-degree Wing Chun black-belt, Sabriya had never been in a real fight. Not good, she thought, but never too late to start.
She centered herself, faced the boys directly, extended her arms halfway toward their center, and rotated her wrists, elbows in, hands open. Her left hand invited them to their attack, while her right hand guarded her center.
“Oooo! Watch out, Shin,” the younger one said mockingly. “She know kung fu.”
“We see,” said the older as he thrust his left foot forward and launched his right fist at Sabriya’s head.
Sabriya barely flinched. Instinctually and instantly, her left arm rotated out counterclockwise, deflecting the boy’s punch, and at the same time, her right open hand closed to a vertical fist and blasted the boy’s solar plexus, doubling him over. Simultaneously, Sabriya’s right knee came up sharply and struck the boy’s falling chin. Then, a split second later, her deflecting hand came down hard on the boy’s exposed neck. The combination was over in the blink of an eye.
With the older boy crumpled on the ground, trying to regain his breath, Sabriya rotated and squared off against the younger, who took one look at his friend, a second at the relaxed and poised nun (or so he thought), and suddenly, aggression took over. He was there to fight. One step back and three forward, he launched himself at great speed through the air at the otherwise diminutive woman. Nuns aren’t allowed to fight, he was thinking. But Sabriya was not a nun. His outstretched fist came quickly for her throat, but at the last second, his body rotated, his fist pulled in to increase his rotational velocity, and the heel of his left foot swung rapidly in front, aimed directly at her temple. But Sabriya was ready, and rotated her guard hand outward, grasped the boy’s flailing pant leg, and jerked it out of the air, forcing the boy to land hard on his back with a THUD and a CRACK. The wanna-be bully was stunned and temporarily paralyzed. Sabriya dropped her guard, left both boys in agony on the ground, walked over to the young girl, and helped her up. “Come with me, my dear. Is that your mother over there?”
Cowering near a stall was a short peasant woman, about 35 years old, her face scarred with fright and her arms weakly reaching for the girl.
“Yes, ma’am. She crippled.”
“And your father?”
“He be gone long time.”
Sabriya put her arms under the girl’s and helped her walk to her mother, who could hardly walk herself. At the same time, she gestured for Sister Alma. When Sister arrived, Sabriya whispered, “Please give this girl’s mother some Yuan from our earnings. Be generous. God will reward us. I have more to do.”
Sister Alma was quick to oblige. She comforted the poor girl and her mother, took money from her habit’s pocket, and gave it to the surprised and grateful mother.
Meanwhile, Sabriya walked back and stood over the boys, who were still lying on the ground nursing their wounds and egos. “Get up, fools. Walk or crawl away. Now! Or, I’ll make sure you wish you had.”
The boys struggled to get up. Sabriya stood back, on guard, in case either was tempted to be more foolish than before.
As they stumbled away, a final warning: “Never come back to this market. Redeem your ways, or hell will open its gates in greeting.”
Sabriya watched him stumble down the road away from the market. She then turned to face Sister Alma, who was returning from ministering to the girl and her mother. But what Sabriya saw was more than a dozen adult stall owners, both men and women, still cowering behind their crates, apparently now afraid of the lay sister from the monastery as if they were guilty and worthy of rebuke, which they were.
As Sabriya rode along in the back of the rocking Nissan with Hannah, she thought back to that fateful day in the Sapae Nok market. She could still picture everything in her mind so clearly: the makeshift stalls and crates, the colorful villagers, the poor peasant woman and her daughter, the two boys. She would never forget their mocking and later terrified faces. She was humbled by her actions and praised by the nearby stall keepers, whom the boys had harassed. She also clearly remembered Sister Alma praising her in front of Mother Superior and Sister Sensei Linsim, who spent time with Sabriya to help calm her nerves. The fight, although short, had frightened Sabriya for hours after it was over, and she found her body shaking from some automatic bodily function, evidently preparing her to continue the fight, although there was no need. Sister Linsim said the emotions were natural and her body would return to normal by the next day. Sabriya sought no praise for what she did. It was something she seemingly could not control. It reminded her too much of her past.
But there was a mystery. David Kensington was visiting the market that day and, from a short distance, evidently witnessed everything. As much as she searched her memory, she did not recall ever seeing the tall, handsome Brit at the market. Where was he standing and watching, she wondered. She had never asked him. During their courtship, David told her that, after the brief fight and while she had withdrawn to calm down, he had visited her stall and spoken with Sister Alma to learn the monastery’s name and location. Tragedy has a way of redeeming itself, she thought, although she wondered whether that was true in every situation.
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