Phạm Tín An Ninh
There was a time wherever I was, I could hear people singing “Francolin Bird”song,
Why not get married to someone living nearby
But instead you wed someone from far away
and another song My Elder Sister,
“Oh dear sister, there fall the Bombax ceiba *1/
People say Poetry and Music have their own language. As a man with a humble general knowledge, I would fail sometimes to grasp the nuances of a song I love. In My Elder Sister I kept wondering about the falling kapok flowers and the God given gift in poetry.
Still I admired someone’s flair to have set such very few verses into a lovely song. However, I was not sure whether I appreciated music the way it should be, or my emotions for it were evoked by empathy. Indeed, every time I listened to My Elder Sister, nostalgia reminded me of my youngest aunt Út.
As a toddler I grew up with the misfortune of someone who never had a chance to get a red-rose corsage on my shirt *2/. My mother deceased so early that I could never picture her gentle and kind face the way my father often described. Such unhappiness was even greater when I didn’t even have any elder sister to give me a hint of my mother’s looks. My father was teaching at a French-Vietnamese school when the Viet Minh sent him to the Inter-Zone 5 in the Illiteracy-Combat campaign. As my younger sister and I grew up in my paternal grandparents’ house, and as I became more mature and started to understand certain events around me, I realized that both of us were loved and protected by our youngest aunt Út whenever she rocked us to sleep with her lullabies.
My youngest aunt was twelve years older than I. We lived in a countryside, and she had a strange name: Phạm Thị Mẫu Đơn. It wasn’t until my first year of school that I found out about her name; everyone else called her Youngest girl—Út—or Miss Út. Later I asked my father about the name in her birth paper, and he explained: The truth is that the name in the acte de naissance (birth certificate during the French colonial period) of my Aunt Út is Phạm thị Mậu Dần; but when she grew up, now a comely girl, my grandparents started worrying about her potentially getting married late because of her Tiger zodiac sign. Thus when the government issed a decree having all the birth certificates in Vietnamese, my grandfather told my father to go to the district office and ask his cousin who was a local government chief clerk in charge of documents, to change her name Mậu Dần to Mẫu Đơn. Named after a flower, the Moutain peony, she never knew what such a flower was, but only heard that it was beautiful.
One thing is sure, she wasn’t born with a God given gift to be a poet; but her lifetime obsession with poetry was still very much like the essence of these verves:
“Entangled in Heaven’s silk thread
Love for myself I suppress, love for others I spread “.
Unfortunately, her nephew wasn’t born with a penchant for poetry or music; otherwise he could have composed a lovely song or written some verses in praise of her. In fact, to compare to the sister in all those songs My Elder Sister, my aunt was more saintly and worthy of empathy.
My Aunt nursed and loved my sister and me just like any perfect mother in this world. Her heart was always “as immense as the overflowing Pacific ocean,” her love always “as full as the gentle stream” that musician Y Vân had glorified and honored the mother. She was also our teacher in rudimentary reading and writing for children, teaching me the abecedarian scheme, bringing me proverbs and folk songs. Growing older, I had a chance to be closer to her while we sat side by side as she made me read the stories of Kiển Tiên The Rain-Frog, Thạch Sanh Lý Thông, Phạm Công Cúc Hoa to my grandmother every night. In the summer, as I was very fond of crickets, she took me to a lake full of lotus to find ebony crickets; for this, she didn’t take siestas, but sit listening to their chirping songs to find out where the sounds came from. Seeing the neighborhood kids flying kites, she tried her best to figure out how to make a kite and I got the biggest kite. I was very passionate about birds. She explored around looking for them and bought two velvety green Superb parrots*3/ and begged my uncle to make me a beautiful birdcage. Whenever I had fevers, I would wheedle my way into her favor, fussing and nagging. She would sit like a statue by my bed, putting a wet washcloth on my forehead, then going off to cook fish porridge flecked with lots of pepper so I could break out a sweat. I heard that she was also very eager to study, having asked her parents to let her finish her Primaire (elementary school) degree *4/–, so she could follow my uncle to teach at the village elementary school. But then my mother suddenly passed away, leaving behind my sister and me.
Auntie had to leave school and stay home to take care of two children, a nephew and a niece, one four-year-old and the other just two. Year after year she was hanging around the house, doing house chores and looking after my sister and me. During her unoccupied hours, she would ask my uncle to teach her more of the French language.
She had only one best friend—a cousin, my other aunt in the family. They were of the same age and in the same class at school. When Auntie Út left school, her cousin continued to attend school for several more years, then later was employed as a nurse and married to a Frenchman, who worked at Dr. Yersin’s Pasteur Institute in Nhatrang. She used to travel a lot and would occasionally return home for a few days for a visit. Upon her return, she would visit Auntie Út and they would chat all night long. She always looked so rich and well-dressed. Auntie Út loved her cousin’s expensive jewelry galore on display, especially the gold necklace with a jade pendant that she wore, a rare item at that time. And for me, I loved her travelling stories that she used to tell Auntie and us.
Since the day her cousin left and went with her husband, Auntied had seemed more lonely, having had no one to confide in, so she often confided in my sister and me about her love story. There was a teacher who worked at the same school as my uncle, who was a native of Bình Định, a handsome chap, two years older than Auntie. He was in love with her and did ask a matchmaker to arrange marriage for him. But Auntie was more concerned with her orphaned nephew and niece; and at the same time she was worried about the traditional belief in the zodiac compability—a Tiger who is bound to marry late should marry a Tiger —and it led her to decline the marriage. The teacher from Bình Định, languishing by his unhappy love story, asked to be transferred to a school far away, and Auntie was heartbroken at the time.
When I was seven years old, a great flood hit my hometown, the October flash flood. I remember having heard Auntie explain, “Because The God spare us, but the Goddess did not, unleashing on us the Flood of October on the twenty-third each year.” Sudden and destructive rush of water from nowhere overflowed the land, dragging away houses and lifestock. My grandfather’s house was very large, its grandiose pillars sculpted with animal shapes, and roofs made of cylinder and concave convex tiles * 5/ . It sat on a fairly high brick foundation, the house being surrounded by all kinds of fruit trees. But now all around it was nothing but water and water. Grandfather ordered Auntie to keep my sister and me on the wooden divan. Two days after the flood, looking through the crack of the door, my sister and I saw the floodwater still high in the courtyard, a cement square-shaped court fairly large fenced in by low walls. I asked Auntie to plug the holes in the surrounding walls of the courtyard, so the water wouldn’t drain, and for her to stay on the doorstep to watch over us while we went to swim, naked, in the yard.
Then something caught my eyes. I glimpsed fishes darting in the water. My sister and I were hollering as we waded through the water trying to catch those fishes. Hearing all the racket my grandfather ran out to see his two grandchildren flopping around in the floodwater. He didn’t scold us but admonish Auntie, then confined her and us to the altar quarter, the door of which always closed. I had never dared set foot here, because I was afraid of the solemn altar with those framed photographs of the deceased among ancestral tablets engraved with Chinese scripts, especially the two red-painted coffins trimmed with a phoenix on one side and a dragon on the other. Auntie said those coffins were made of rare wood and reserved for my grandparents when they time finally came..
Seeing that we were scared, Auntie reassured us by telling us sacred stories of our deceased grandparents and ancestors. The spirits of grandparents, she said, were always with us to protect their descendants. She also said that if we had any wishes, all we had to do was to burn incense and pray sincerely; our ancestors would make those wishes come true.
She asked me, “If you pray to them now, what will you wish for?” Remembering Auntie’s cousin with her travelling stories which I loved to hear, I replied quickly, “I wish when I grow up, I will be able to travel everywhere like your cousin.”
Then I asked Auntie the same question she asked me. She answered with a smile, “For me, I just wish I could have a necklace with a green jade pendant like hers, and on it are engraved two initials MĐ.”
I trusted her words, held her hand and went to the altar. She pleased me by kneeling down beside me as I lighted the incense. We both prayed, asking our ancestors to make our wishes come true. Auntie was quiet; but I spoke the words out loud. I thought that my ancestors were too old, hard of hearing, and they might not hear my prayers.
A few years later I bade farewell to Auntie and left my hometown for Nha Trang to pursue my study. She made some new clothes for me, and with her savings she bought me a bicycle with a U-shaped handlebar that I could only dream about. During my school years in Nha Trang, though I was already a teenager, I still missed her affectionate hugs as well as her tender words. Every summer vacation I stayed home all day with her, just like when I was a young boy. At that time, she was working as a seamstress from home, so that she could also take care of my grandparents, who were now aged and frail. She made school uniforms for me and my sister. In the summer night heat she would spread a rush mat by the lotus pond in front of the house. The breeze would come in from the pasture, and we could smell the nature as we lay on our backs, confiding in each other as the night flowed into morning.
One day when I told her I was enlisting in the army, she became very upset. She tried to dissuade me from it, then pled with me. “You don’t love Auntie, do you? The Army will keep you and I won’t ever see you again. All I want is for us to be together like the old time. Or I won’t have anyone else to open my heart to.” Remembering the year of the October flood when she told me to light incense to pray to my grandparents, I said softly to her, “The fact that I’ll be in the army testifies to what you’d assured me of, thanks to my ancestors who made my wish come true—now I could travel everywhere, just like you said so.”
Wiping her tears, she smiled.
When I was in the Army basic training center, the first two people I sent letters to were my father and Auntie. I enclosed a photo of me in military uniform and crew-cut hair. She wrote back: “My dear baby soldier looks really imposing.”
A few weeks after when I received the Alpha insignia pinned on my shoulder pad, she came with my father to the center to see me, bringing dozens of big mangoes and orange- colored sesame balls, deep-fried and glistening, all my childhood favorite treats.
When I finished my training period, before joining the division, I reserved all my fifteen days of vacation spending time with my Dad and my Aunt. At that time, my grandparents were already deceased, and she still by herself and taking care of the family house for worships, to make offerings to our ancestors. Every night she burnt incenses and whispered to pray in front of my grandparents and my Mom’s altar, and then told me to join hands to pray too. I listened to her and asked my ancestors to bless me, keep me away from the firing lines.
For more than ten years in the army, I had always been at the battle front. Many times, I experienced lots of narrow escapes from death, by the skin of my teeth. But I believed in my Aunt’s whispering prayers at night.
The first time I came home from a killing field at the battle front in the highlands, I had saved some money from my salary for a few months, and spent two days in Ban Mê Thuột city looking for a gold necklace with a heart-shaped marble pendant, the most expensive one. I stayed there to ask the workers to engrave two really nice letters MĐ of her name in the middle of it.
It was a surprise when I came back home. When I just stepped into the gate, I saw Her gathering the leaves under the mango tree. The dog was barking, it didn’t recognize me. She stopped to take a look. She didn’t realize that it was me until I got closer. She held my hand and tenderly reproached me:
– Bad you! I thought it was some teacher.
I was joking:
– Ah, I know, you think that it was the yesteryear Bình Định teacher coming, right?
In the evening, after dinner, I took her hand to the altar room to light incenses and prostate with me to pray to my grandparents. When we stood up, I told her to close her eyes for some miracle, and then I put the necklace I just bought around her neck. When she opened her eyes, she fondled the marble pendant and hold my hand emotionally:
-This pendant is really expensive. With your penniless salary in the army, how can you afford to buy this for me?
I was smiling:
– I didn’t buy it, Auntie, but it’s a gift from the grandparents according to Your wishes, you see? Just like me, now I can travel everywhere, thanks to them. Our prayers were miraculously granted, right Auntie?
During that period, my hometown was not secure. During daytime, I spent time with her. In the evening, she took me to my uncle ‘s house in the district to spend the night there. She hung out with me until nightfall.
At the end of my vacation, I had to be back to my division, my aunt washed and ironed my clothes and folded them, put them in my bag, including some bean sticky rice for my trip. When I was on the bus, and took out the rice container, I saw a small bag made of fabric, containing a well packed bundle of brand new cash. Thinking deeply about her, tears ran down my check.
I was always moving here and there with my division, so it was really difficult to receive letters from the military base mailbox in Ban Mê Thuột. We were at Quảng Đức, then down to Lâm Đồng and Phan Thiết. Half a year later I received five letters from my Aunt at the same time. I was really happy, when she narrated about a teacher, native of Huế, with the same Leo Zodiac sign as her, who was married once, and in same profession as her. But just after a few months of marriage, the young wife deceased with some of her students in a bombing. He was so desperate.Firstly, he didn’t want to be haunted by the image of his young wife just being killed, victim of an injustice. Secondly he didn’t want to see a city with lots of majestic royal tombs of a dynasty, but was leaving behind with too many religious litigations , covering every school, every dais with politic nebulosity . Some of his friends left the city for the marshlands *6/. He applied to move to my homeland, because his uncle’s family lived there; he was a train station manager in the past, was married and stayed there.
I wrote letters to Her, telling Her about the love theory, about “predestined fate for lovers, even if they are far away, still meet together”, and so on… “both of you are under the same Leo Zodiac sign, so in the future ” the harmonious married couple can achieve pretty much anything”.
A few months later, I received her response letter, and a teacher from Huế ‘s short letter was enclosed; it was a poem praising the soldier.
I saved my monthly salary, and was waiting for the wedding day. I went to an embroidery shop in PhanThiết city to order a picture with the scene of two tigers stroking lovingly in a forest full of purple myrtle flowers under the moonlight as a wedding gift for Her. After The General Offensive and Uprising of Tet Mậu Thân 1968, my division continued every day to live in armed conflicts. I didn’t get any letters from my Aunt. I think maybe She must have been married, but I don’t know if She followed her husband to visit Huế or not. I was worrying about Her, knowing that the whole city of Huế was overwhelmed in the white mourning veil.
A few months later, the war situation was quite calm, and as I was on leave for ten days, I went back to my countryside. My Aunt still lived calmly by herself in my grandfather’s house. The wedding didn’t occur, not because the teacher from Huế was unfaithful, like some of our relatives had warn Her since the period when they got acquainted with each other: “don’t trust the guys native of Huế”. It’s really unfair, poor guy! He was back to Huế for the Lunar New Year and asked permission to his parents to organize their wedding, but unfortunately, he suffered the same destiny as thousands of unfortunate and miserable persons there. He disappeared on the night of January the 2nd, Lunar New Year. It was as long as three months later that his family could find his corpse in an immense mass grave where many people were buried.
As a result, …my Aunt was “still not married!”. On the altar, a small picture of the Teacher from Huế took place at a humble corner.
In 1975, with the Fall of South Viet Nam happening very quickly, I became a prisoner, and was banished from the South to the North, to far Lào Cai, Yên Bái. My Dad and my uncle were incarcerated in a reeducation camp in the South. My wife and children had to suffer of such bitterness, hardship, being forsaken and forgotten. They weren’t old enough to be back to our homeland for their last days in life, but due to the situation, they had to help each other go back with my Aunt to our grandparents’ old house, now becoming really empty, desolate, probably very joyless and more peaceful than before. My wife had to work hard to make a living, some days they wouldn’t have any food. My Aunt sold everything in the house, and finally had to sell the marble necklace that she cherished like treasure for my kids ‘needs, and my wife and she had to put money aside to send me a kilogram of sugar and a few jars of mince lard when they had news that I just suffered a dysentery, lost weight, and was just skin and bones. Poor ladies! Unfortunately, I could only receive 200 grams of sugar and a jar of lard, the rest had to be given to the communal kitchen, because the amount of gifts ” exceeded the rules, not in accordance with the policies”.
On June, 1976, my Dad passed away in the reeducation Camp of Đá Bàn. But unfortunately, it was until five years later that I could know about it. I grieved over it, crying my eyes out endlessly…
Eight years later, finally I was released from prison. At that time, my wife didn’t live at my grandparent’s homeland any more, she couldn’t find any job, so she had to take our youngest kids to be back to Ninh-Hòa in my parents -in -law ‘s house, and tried to get a new government civil status certificate for all of them. My four grown up ones still were under my aunt’s surveillance in my grandparents homeland. Being reunited with them just about five days, not enough to be close to my kids, with whom I had to leave when the youngest was still in his Mom ‘s womb. I had to be present at the police of Ninh Hòa town who informed that the administration of the district didn’t allow me to stay provisionally there. I had to go back to prison, then I was assigned to be “under surveillance” at birth place. Finally, I was back under my Aunt ‘s care. The problem was now that my aunt had to take responsibility for me, her nephew who was half-way of his life, and suddenly homeless, and out of job. I was fed and housed, but I had to build dykes, improve irrigation systems for “The people”. My Aunt became weak, her eyes were sorrowful. After years of mourning for losses in the big family, she looked older than her age. More than that, she had to be in charge of my kids and me. My Aunt problem didn’t end there: my uncle, after finishing his prison period, had to take his wife and their two children to the new economic zone. His wife died of malaria two years before my release from prison. A few days during the week, he had to take his offspring, a child on one hand and one more on the other to ask for my Aunt’s help. Many times, looking at my Aunt’s back, ” hunched over in the face of adversity”, I had a choked voice- being about to cry, but it seems no tears would come out.
When we planned to escape out of Vietnam by sea as boat persons, I confided in my Aunt, telling her to go with us .”Even if we have to row anywhere, if you are with us, we will be really happy”. But she said She had aged now, and didn’t want to leave our homeland; moreover, she had to take care of our family house and ancestors ‘tombs, and not neglect to worship them. And she had to help my sick uncle to watch over his two kids as well.
A few days later, She cut all her hair, and got vegan meals. She knelt down at the altar every night. I knew she was praying for the safety of my adventure. On farewell day, She held my hand tightly: ” Let our ancestors and parents look after both of you and your children, please”, then she looked at me quietly, tears running down her face.
When our boat reached the international maritime boundary, a storm was coming. The weather was really unfavorable with rains and winds for days. We couldn’t base our sailing on moon or stars for orientation. All the women and kids stayed inside the hold of the boat. Only men confronted with storms on the deck. During the most dangerous moments, I thought about my Aunt and remembered Her prayers , it made me regain faith and courage. At last, an oil tanker from the Kingdom of Norway saved us before the major storm hit our boat violently. On the vessel, the captain helped to pass three telegrams on to relatives for each person. The first person I reported the good news to was my Aunt.
As soon as I became a resident, I sent letters to Her regularly, enclosed with money to help Her as well as my uncle’s family, and to rebuild our ancestors’ tombs. She was extremely happy. All her really long letters always encouraged me to strengthen our new life and teach our children to live with good morals and never forget our homeland, our origin.
She was thousands of miles far away from me, but I had the impression that She was still somewhere very close to me. Every time I have difficulties and sorrowfulness in this foreign country, I just have to think about Her, and it makes me full of enthusiasm. She was old now and probably weakened a lot. Yet just with her pictures, She was giving me so much energy.
Two years later, I received sad news again. My uncle, after many years of struggling with diseases gotten from the re-education camp and still suffering for them, had passed away, and left his two daughters to my aunt to bring up. My poor aunt, honestly, “was born under an unlucky star”, being aged and still had to look after offspring. This letter of sad news is her last diligent care handwriting that she sent me. The next ones were from my uncle’s daughters. I was worrying and asked about Her and I was told that her vision just became slightly blurred, but she suggested to me not to send medicines, because she could buy them there. She insisted on asking me to plan a trip back home with my children, She wished to see them.
More than ten years later, hearing that the new government had made some changes. In the past boat people were blamed for betraying the country, now they were cherished as far relatives in the same family; with my three older children, we were back to our homeland. In fact, this trip was to look for my father’s tomb buried on the mountains by the Đá Bàn reeducation camp and see my Aunt who had lavished attention on us during her whole life. Remembering our souvenirs in the old days, I asked my older daughter living in California, to come to Phước Lộc Thọ shopping center to order a golden necklace, with an onyx marble pendant, engraved with the letters MĐ in the middle. I thought this would be a significant gift, in compensation for the one I gave Her before, and She would feel young again like in the past.
I didn’t inform my Aunt about my return trip, as I wanted it to be a nice surprise for Her, and she would not have to go out to Saigon to greet us just as she had promised.
The village Phú Hội, my father’s homeland, once densely populated and rich like its name in the past, now became so infertile and devastated. When I just passed through the gate, everything looked so strange in such a way that I was really stunned. When I was a kid, the house used to be very large, and I was scared to get lost. Why was it so small now, so desolate, arid and sad? I froze there, standing in the middle of the brick yard where in the past, when it flooded, my sister and me could swim as much as we wanted like it was in a river. Now there was only the patchy platform remaining, covered with withered leaves of the old mango tree, which was the “heavenly shade” for my Aunt and us to sit under it and read stories to my grandmother in the summer afternoons. The lotus lake that had spread its pervasive fragrance in the old days, now was a shallow dried out pond, just full of weeds. And chirps of crickets deploring gently. I didn’t hear the dog barking. It was a loyal animal, it’s not like some people after April of that grievous year, did betray at decadence time but served the winning ones. Perhaps it was so sad that it died after its owners’ life changed. My three children and I were lost in the house where all of us grew up , with so many happy as well as sorrowful memories. There’s no one in the house, except our own shadows of the old days. Walking out the back door, I stood there, speechless, when I saw Aunt Út sitting, her back turned to the yard, spreading out food to a flock of chickens. Her hair was all white. My kids and I were standing behind Her, but She she didn’t realize our presence.
My kids giggled, She turned her head. I clasped Her, and was choked, speechless. I was quite surprised to hear Her asking: “who’s this?” It’s only been ten years, but now She she didn’t recognize me at all, was it true? Releasing her, I was about to scream, when I realized that Sshe was blind. I could just let out ” Auntie, it’s me, Ninh “, then began sobbing my heart out.
After a minute of silence, I heard Her laughing, then put her hands on my head, my face, then on my kids.
I helped Her to go inside. But she said she could go by herself. She said as she had spent her whole life here, every corner and everything in the house were engraved in her mind. I asked where all my cousins were, and why they left her alone. She said that with the money I sent her, she put some aside, allowing the elder one to work as seamstress now, she just got married, and opened a shop in the district. For the young one, She told her to take nursing class, and she was still living with Her.
At the news of our homecoming, the neighbors came to visit. Everyone reminded me of the time when my sister and I were children and exalted eloquently my Aunt’s virtue. I don’t know how they were informed, but my two cousins, who are my uncle’s daughters, as well as my brother-in-law ‘s cousin came to see us. It was till later that I discovered this new family member was actually the nephew of the teacher native of Huế, my Aunt’s lover in the past.
As we still got the taxi rent for all day, I invited Her and my cousins to go to the center of the town for lunch, but she didn’t accept, and told my two cousins to butcher some chickens for food, so She and all of us could talk and confide to each other.
And for a whole week, I took care of reburying my father’s bones from Đá Bàn to our family cemetery, next to my Mom and my grandparents’ graves. Aunt Út went with us to the cemetery, touched my father’s newly built tomb with her hands, and sniveled sadly.
Two weeks later, I was all day with my aunt, telling almost all the yesteryear stories, and our family’s life in foreign country. She said she had a dream about the teacher native of Huế coming back to visit Her, but his body was smeared with blood. She wiped it out with a towel, but blood still appeared.
Every night, before going to bed, my Aunt always told me and my kids to burn incenses and pray at the altar. And I remembered all our wishes that She and I had hoped in the past .
On the last night, standing in front of the altar, I finally decided to take out the gold necklace with the onyx marble pendant, and put it on Her neck. I held Her tightly and whispered: “Please let me give back to You all your yesteryear dreams”. My three children clapped and said in unisson: “Beautiful! Grandma, it’s really beautiful!”
My Aunt didn’t fondle the onyx marble pendant like last time, more than forty years ago, when I offered it to Her, she just stood there silently, motionless. I know, in those blind eyes, although She cannot see the blue marble pendant engraved with two letters of her own name anymore, She is still imagining a whole distant past, immense and deep like Her own heart.
Finally, came time to say farewell to my Aunt, leaving behind the remains of a whole lifetime, in which all the happiness as well as sadness had now become memories, lying deep in the bottom of my heart. I thought, maybe this was our last time together.
Taking my three children out of my Grandparents ‘s gate, I didn’t have the courage to turn my head to look back. A question suddenly popped into my mind: “In the future, I will continue to venture into foreign lands. Just like the necklace with onyx marble pendant I just gave my Aunt, I was wondering if my travelling adventures in foreign countries still remained as granted wishes that She and I we dreamed for a long time ago?”
Phạm Tín An Ninh
Translated to English by Thuy Messegee
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NOTES:
– *1/- Bombax ceiba : Just blossom on Mar, symbol of love, happiness, constant fidelity; when they fall, it’s a sign of no more love, but loneliness, no one is waiting for you.
-*2/- Vietnamese tradition: If your mother is still alive, you will get a red rose on the button hole on “Filial Piety Day”, Jul 15th (Lunar calendar); if not you’ll have a white one.
This is a Japanese tradition imported into VN in the 60s by the venerable
T.N.Hanh.
-*3/- Superb Parrot pic
-*4/-The Primaire French Degree was of great worth at that time, the holder can use it to work in French offices .
-*5/-For roofing: The concave tile is rectangular shape, slight curved in the middle creates a moderately soft depht. it will be upwards.
The convex one is in cylinder shape (Pic)
