It was best, as Uncle Chachi often reminded me, if they did not look too often or too closely. These complications make our family a handy emblem of Singapore-not that anyone looks to us this way. But the family history descended of Sultan Hussein Shah of Jahore is more complicated than most. The oldest Singaporean families are mixed up mutt-style like ours, with extended families living together for generations, even now in the 1920s. But it was also true-realists are rare in our lineage. I was only Agnes, an ordinary seventeen-year-old girl, the last of her line. He said it with satisfaction, as if noting some rare form of genius within the family. “This is a sign you are a realist,” said my Uncle Chachi. But never have I risen above the level of the palace ceiling, not even in my dreams. I see the patterned carpets, the wooden floorboards worn to the smoothness of satin. Unlike friends and schoolmates, who share exciting flying dreams, where they sail away over the tiled rooftops through surging gray clouds beyond tiny Singapore, in my own dreams I skim low through the rooms of the palace, barely above the ground. Even my nighttime dreams are always set inside the palace compound. It has always been falling apart, as long as I have known it. Because it is white, with rounded arches in a row, it has the look of an ancient wedding cake. I have always lived in the crumbling Kampong Glam Palace. SEVEN Unclean Hands: What One Man Will Do to Another TWO In Which I Relate the Family History, Making Some of It Up as I Go “There is nothing more whole than a broken heart.” Library of Congress Control Number: 2014935284 Published by Lake Union Publishing, SeattleĪmazon, the Amazon logo, and Lake Union Publishing are trademarks of, Inc., or its affiliates. No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author. The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious.

House of dreams liz rosenberg