Inez of course is still in Kuala Lumpur.
She writes once a week to Jessie, somewhat less often to Adlai, and scarcely at all now to Harry. She sends an occasional postcard to Billy Dillon, and the odd clipping to me. One evening a week she teaches a course in American literature at the University of Malaysia and has dinner afterwards at the Lake Club, but most of her evenings as well as her days are spent on the administration of what are by now the dozen refugee camps around Kuala Lumpur.
A year ago when I was in London the Guardian ran a piece about Southeast Asian refugees, and Inez was quoted.
She said that although she still considered herself an American national (an odd locution, but there it was) she would be in Kuala Lumpur until the last refugee was dispatched.
Since Kuala Lumpur is not likely to dispatch its last refugee in Inez’s or my lifetime I would guess she means to stay on, but I have been surprised before. When I read this piece in London I had a sudden sense of Inez and of the office in the camp and of how it feels to fly into that part of the world, of the dense greens and translucent blues and the shallows where islands once were, but so far I have not been back.
About the Author
Joan Didion was born in California and lives in New York City. She is the author of five novels and seven previous books of nonfiction, including The Year of Magical Thinking. Her collected nonfiction, We Tell Ourselves Stories in Order to Live, was published by Everyman’s Library in September 2006.