hell was going on. Poor foreigner.
They led me to a van, which I realised was a military jeep. In the back seat there was a terrified woman clutching a small curly-haired dog. She looked pretty harmless, and so did the dog. The jeep took off with its sirens blaring and lights flashing. Heavenly Bastard in the Sky, it was just like in the movies. I asked the woman with her dog why she was there.
'You wouldn't believe it if I tell you the whole story. Me and my husband don't have children so we raise a few dogs at home, but we only have a certificate for one dog. We couldn't afford it for the others. So now they want to take this one away. I said to them this dog is my life, and if you're going to take him, you'll have to take me too. So the officer said fine, then you come down to the station with us. You know, a citizen like me has never known where the police station is, let alone been to it. I can't believe this is happening. Can you?'
No, I couldn't. I felt very sorry for her.
We arrived at the police station. I kept thinking about Ben, wondering if he was still in my bathroom. I prayed that he was okay.
Then I was sitting in the police station waiting for someone to question me. I wasn't alone. The criminal pet owner was there, still holding her poor little curly dog. There was also a small skinny man with bleached hair. He was from Guangdong and hadn't been able to get a temporary resident's permit since he arrived in Beijing. His criminal name was Illegal Resident. There was also a fat, middle-aged woman with long, wild hair like a wolf. She wouldn't sit down and kept yelling the whole time. She claimed she was innocent, that she hadn't stolen anything. As far as we were concerned, the police thinking she was a criminal – it was her fault. She screamed so much we ended up hoping they would kill her immediately.
The policemen had separated us with rickety tables and chairs. There was nothing else in the room – no calendar, no evening newspapers, nothing to distract us from our fate. All we could see was the office across the hallway. A policeman sat facing in our direction and watching the news. We couldn't see the TV, we could only hear its vague, tinny sound. Another policeman went in to pour himself some tea. An hour passed. And another. If these guys were so powerful, why couldn't they just fucking get on with it?
It was ten o'clock at night and still no interrogation. So I started my own self-examination. But the crimes I remembered didn't seem that bad. There was that one time in a term exam at middle school when I'd used a crib sheet. There was that time at the cinema when I'd found a gold ring under a seat, which, I admit, I kept. I kept the English dictionary too, but didn't feel that really counted since I perpetrated this deed in order to reeducate myself. And then there was the mobile phone I'd found. I'd definitely handed that to the boss, I was sure. And yes, I had boyfriends, but it wasn't like I was breaking up marriages. So what other mistakes had I made, I wondered, what other sins had I committed? Heavenly Bastard in the Sky, how the fuck had I ended up in a police station?
Our endless and seemingly hopeless wait dragged on. By now, the bleached-blond man from Guangdong without a Beijing permit had lost patience. It was obvious the owner of the hair salon where he worked wasn't going to turn up and bail him out. He started murmuring that he would just go back home – 'home' being 'home town' for peasant people. He meant he would give up Beijing and go back to planting rice in the fields after getting out of here. The fat woman had stopped screaming and passed out in the most uncomfortable-looking position. She was like a beached whale, her wild hair spread around her like a fishing net. The dog without legitimate ID had been put into a cage. He whined and scratched at the bars, yapping helplessly. The woman had begged and pleaded the policeman to let it out. But to no effect.
It was around midnight when a policeman called me. He wrote down all my