You might have never heard about my place, a quite big city in the middle of nowhere – according to you. Your people might spread rumors that all cities in that nowhere are primitive and uncivilized; places that need more wisdom and knowledge from your place. Well, an intellectual exchange would be exhilarating, but I must assure you that we are not less civilized and modern as your people. We just have different ways of coping with life.

One of them is wearing masks to protect our identities. Yes, privacy really matters here, just like with your people. We are not as communal as we let outsiders think. The world is cruel in each corner of the world, and the world just has infinitely many corners. Different people would take advantage of different aspects of us, so we wear masks to hide those vulnerable aspects accordingly. We can’t depend on our kings and princes to protect us, as they too like to exploit our vulnerabilities. We usually protect the weakest parts of our faces as they are usually gates to hurt us and bring out things we would rather keep to ourselves.

Because there are many sides of evil, each of us has several masks, depending on how many exploits they are at risk in and in which intensity the dangers come. One usually has about three masks; one for malicious tribe members, one for suspicious companions, and one for the ones who hold power – but it’s hard to wear masks. It’s common to have your mask fall off occasionally, because they don’t always fit your face. But it is alright as long as you are not in a dangerous situation. People are trained to handle with exceptional care when their masks fall off. Some are more adept and comfortable with their masks, while some struggle to keep even one up.

I am one of those people who are untalented in wearing masks. People called me out because I just went around bare-faced and they tried to tell me how to carve a mask out of coconut shells. I did try picking up the kind of wood I feel most comfortable in – which are not from palm trees -, but the mask I made from it kept falling of because it was too heavy; on another occasion I tried to make one out of banana leaves – only to have them fully blown away when I put them on during a storm. Inventing my own mask turned out harder as I thought because I was too unmotivated and unimaginative for it. In the end I decided to observe masks from people around me and copy the things I thought suited me best. Then I finally got one mask I can rely on – when everyone has at least two…

Being unskilled with masks is really humiliating, especially if you can see with your own eyes how a friend constantly changes one mask to another. Well, as I am also not really good with masks, once I figure out a person’s real face, I ignore their masks completely. This friend of mine was somehow easy to figure out. Although he was said to have a thousand masks he interchanged frequently, they are quite like one and another.  The disadvantage of wearing too many masks is that people who are by your side when you change them notice the things you choose to show and cover. This friend, for example, likes to cover his mouth and let his ear open. He invented a device to change his voice too, so no one really knows his real voice if they don’t pay close attention to it. He has a mask that exploits his mouth and covers his eyes, which he uses seldomly.

People warned me about him because of the many masks he has. Sure, you need some masks in order to protect yourself, but what he got was too excessive. I thought, since I already knew his true face on an occasion where he let it fall off, he trusted me enough for me to trust him. I ignored the warnings and held on to my trust. I let our friendship grow to something more, as I thought I already knew what I needed to know to take the next step.

Others always praised my eyes but said I should better protect my mouth as it is weak and can be used against me. Better to cover my ears too, as I was overly sensitive to sound, which could also be used to attack me. So, the one mask I went for is a simple half-face which I can just let hang on my ears. I ended up using coconut shells after all because it was solid but not too heavy. The texture also let out a less menacing look than my previous masks.

But who thought that a trusted person would attack the things you got praised the most? My strength to see things as they are was turned to weakness when the dear friend who I thought I could trust and love said that my vision was distorted. One day, I was pretty sure that the blueprint he drew for our future home was disproportional and pointed it out to him.

“Tell me, what do you know about blueprints?” He liked to challenge me, so I didn’t mind his endeavor to protect his ego.

“Well, I don’t need to know anything about blueprints to say that the bathroom is disturbingly larger than the living room.”

“No, it isn’t. See, your vision hasn’t recovered since the bamboo leaves hurt your eyes.”

“But –,” There came the stabbing feeling. The bamboo leaves did blur my vision badly back then, but things had become clearer to the point that the blurriness does not contribute to the perception of space.

“You don’t trust me, do you? The blueprint is just as good as it can be. Why can’t you just leave things to me when you know that you still need time to recover?”

“It’s not – That’s why I was trying so hard to treat and rest my eyes properly, so that I can help you build the blueprint – at least give you some input.”

“How long do you want to keep up that treatment? You said your eyes would get better soon, but it has been too long. Can’t you just accept that this is just how you are?”

My vision only became blurrier. The stabbing feeling hurt even more, so I retreated to my current home to sort things out in my mind. It is a little far off from the others and rather suits the description of a nest than a house. But it is where I can think the clearest, away from all the pressure of having to wear a mask and being monitored by a thousand eyes to ensure I act accordingly and appropriately to each encounter.

Then came flashes of memories into my mind. A suspicion rose. I thought that the bare face of my then-lover was his true face. But isn’t our own skin also a kind of mask? To protect our muscles from the dangers of nature? Or is it there to protect something else?

The realization shocked me, so I secluded myself and let myself time to go about exploring other places. That was when we met, and I started to learn about your people. I got even more shocked by another realization: Your people don’t need masks, because you don’t have to worry about other people exploiting parts of your face to their advantage. Hurting others is not a norm: People with sensitive ears have places where they don’t have to worry about hearing screeching noises and other sounds that may make them bleed, people with a weak mouth get supported and are let live because it doesn’t really bother anyone. It is relatively safer to the point that wearing masks is just not necessary.

Yet it is mistaken to say that your place is totally void of masks. Your people might not need to carve masks from coconut shells or collect banana and papaya leaves to weave one, but the need to protect oneself is still there. People from my place are so busy protecting their faces – their body – that they neglect their souls and those of others. Your people don’t have that need or even obsession, but evil lurks in every corner of the world, and in your place, it sees no other option than to hurt the soul. It is global wisdom that the body is a vessel of one’s soul, so you also use said vessel to protect it. In your place, your face is already your mask.

Does it mean that my then-lover not only tried to mask his face, but also his soul? Does it mean that although I knew his face, he never let me know his soul? Where I came from, once you know one’s face it is easy to know their souls, but he really was a tricky one – if I may be honest. A mask may fall off occasionally, does it mean that his rudeness about my vision was a moment where his soul leaked out? If yes, then I am glad that I went. I can’t imagine going back and being ashamed of my unskillfulness with masks and expecting to see other people who use them excessively. A man with a million carved masks is desperate in the place I used to live in, but a man who in addition masks his soul with his face is a pathetic person in both worlds, yours and mine.