There is not a soul in this city who doesn't know the divide between upper and lower class.
The city rings are a picture of this as clear as a mountain spring's water. There is unrest, of course. There is hunger and need, resentment and greed. All of which are simmering beneath the surface of that peaceful veneer that the Dai Li enforces.
It is hard to find a place to start forming a movement. It could be anywhere, but all walls have ears in Ba Sing Se. Within the impenetrable city every single building is penetrated by the Dai Li. The listeners. The ordinary citizens who have been conscripted into service. Hypnotised to protect the culture and tradition, which is basically code for keeping the power where it is: out of the hands of the people.
If any kind of change is to come from the people, as all meaningful, lasting change must, then the groundwork will have to be slow. Careful. And at the same time, the Dai Li must itself be infiltrated. At the very least it must be made vulnerable to precise attack at the right moment. The leader must be incapacitated at that moment. The most loyal as well. There must be procedures in place to break the hypnotisation. There must be procedures in place for a re-education. Of every single citizen. So that they may recognise and understand what a threat to freedom means. What solidarity is. What power is, when it is used to the benefit of human life in general, not a few, privileged, lucky ones.
Because there are so, so many refugees in this city who were never afforded the privilege of an education beyond that of cultivating the land and the world order of nobility that rules, peasants who are little better than mules. Where I see clear injustice, the structures and reasons for it, and a way to change things for the better, they have been taught all their lives that this is just the way it is.
This is how it's supposed to be.
There are people in this world who are worth more than others, is what they are taught. By right of birth.
That is as wrong a thought as the assumption that because I have blue eyes, I am superior to brown-eyed people in every way. Superiority or worthiness have nothing to do with colour or place of birth. Unfortunately, in a feudal system like this, which relies on capital to maintain current hierarchies, place of birth does matter. And you can tell what that is by people's skin and hands. By the way they carry themselves.
Values such as right and wrong have everything to do with how you value human life. Life in general, really.
I suspect that it is about control. Humans have the desire to control their lives, to feel as though they have power, as though there is something that makes them special, something meaningful. If your life form is better than others, then why should there not be something that also makes you better than others of your kind? If you are better than others, then is it not your right to do as you please and they must leave you to it, or even obey you?
That rests upon the faulty, unproven assumption that human life is more valuable than other kinds of life. And even if it were true, what could possibly be a criterion for making one person better than another? It has to be one that is true, that is always true, not just in some contexts or time periods.
Then there is the question of hierarchy. What is it that could determine the better-ness of any life form? In this world, there is life in every corner, an energy that lives within, another world that is connected with it within which there live creatures whose makeup and powers greatly differ from what is common in this world. Their existence cannot be doubted. They are as true as the stool I sit on, watching the people coming and going from the market.
I am waiting for news from Momo. She is the cousin of Hana, whose son is part of the school that I have integrated myself into. Momo has friends in the next quarter, which is controlled by another gang, who are also attempting to build something like a school there. While the schools will be rather obvious centres to watch for the Dai Li, they are necessary. They are also good places to establish trust with people who are still thinking within the boundaries that have been set for them. You have a place in society, a role to play: mother, father, husband, worker, wife, carer, merchant, peasant, underling. You are not to deviate from the norm, from what has already been done millions of times.
You are not to be extraordinary. You are not to be free. You are not to be just you. You are to play your role and play it well.
Do not bite the hand that feeds you. But what if you are the hand that does the feeding? What if you are the hand that has been bitten time and time again that it appears normal? That the scar tissue has become so dense that the bites no longer hurt, the infractions no longer sting, the chains sounding like chimes in the wind.
I have been part of the biters.
It is a truth. Even now, I live because others work on the fields. I live because there are people who provide the sustenance. People who deliver it. People who sell it. Recognising that that is a lot of work took me a while. Privilege.
Ah, there is Momo. She is not alone. Another woman is with her, older, with keen eyes. She walks with a cane. She has the look of someone who knows that they will be obeyed if they order something. While her clothing denotes her as another refugee, another soul who has lost home and family to this war, her posture is that of a person who believes that they are enough exactly as they are and always have been. It's the kind of confidence that comes from knowing your place and liking it all your life. It's like mine.
Now what is Momo doing with a woman like that? What does a woman like that want with me?
I stand to greet them.
"Good afternoon," I say, inclining my head, "Would you like to join me?"
The table is far enough from windows and doors that at least no earthbenders will hear. And in public I can hardly create a dome of ice to keep the conversation private, so this will have to do.
"Good afternoon, Kai. May I introduce Ranra?"
Ranra inclines her head with grace. And because such things do matter, I greet her with the gesture that I would use back at home, in the North, to meet a foreigner who is formally introduced. A touch to my own gut, palm up, sweeping it towards her gently in an elliptical motion. And the recognition in her eyes is clear. "I'm sure I will be pleased to have made your acquaintance," I add, letting them know of my curiosity as to her presence.
She laughs, more of a cackle, "You will be."
They sit.
"How have you been?" I ask Momo, as we wait for the waiter to take and serve our orders.
"It's been a few hard days, but nothing I can't handle," she replies. She is the kind of woman who is strong. Always strong and she could be breaking inside, but she is going on. Because if she stops, she will not recover her momentum. "And you? How are you finding your feet?"
"Ever steadier," is what I say, and what I mean is that the city is a maze of intricate loyalties, webs of information, and I am slowly but surely understanding how information is distributed even between gangs. I am understanding the truces and battle fronts drawn in the shingles of the districts as conflicts are carried out in the night, always quick, always with techniques of assassination because anything that lasted longer would bring the Dai Li to the scene and no one wants that. So it is meetings in broad daylight in shops like this, at market stalls, in bars, that represent the diplomatic overtures any group might make. And if negotiations fail, if there is a dispute about territory, there will be corpses, cleaned away in the night. Several nights, and then one side will have conceded defeat – until it has recovered.
The waiter, a young man with dark shadows beneath his eyes takes our orders, barely recognising us as people. A side-effect of serving others is that they often do not see a person, and so one begins to dissociate from the situation, the way one is treated, views others as puppet-automatons themselves, because if one does not, the soul withers. More than it already has.
"I've been invited to offer my account of the invasion of the Northern Watertribe a the university," I mention, curious to see Ranra's reaction. And her eyes sharpen even more.
"Now that is an interesting opportunity," she says. "To write history."
...
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