The Flames of Freedom (short story)

This is a story of how western foreign policy affects the lives of distant people: it begins by the Poshur River at Mongla and ends at Teknaf in Bangladesh. The themes are an insatiable longing for peace and the inevitability of violence.

Excerpt:

    "Monsoon arrived.
    The rains cooled the hills and the trees. Steam rose from the hills. It lay like clouds on and between the hills on both sides, in Bangladesh and in Burma. The fireflies disappeared. But the frogs arrived. Every night the frogs took up some forgotten chorus that resounded from the hills. They sounded prodigious, as though they were donkeys braying."