For weeks my grandmother Popo had told us that we were not to worry, that the Japanese would never capture Singapore, the British would turn back the invaders. ‘Life will carry on as normal,' she said. But there were soldiers on every street and in the shops and in the cinema. Every rickshaw had a soldier inside. There were air raid drills, and people digging in their gardens, building makeshift bomb shelters.

I was eight and no one really explained anything to me. One day I was brave and I asked Popo who the invaders were and why they wanted to attack Singapore. She went to a cupboard and pushed aside the piles of paper and the tiny red purses embroidered with names in which she kept the dried umbilical cords of her children and grandchildren. She pulled from the cupboard a great map of the world that was yellow with age and had been folded and unfolded so many times it had almost broken into pieces, and she spread it on the table in front of her.

"Listen," she said, lowering herself into her favorite armchair. "This story was told to me by my mother when I was a child. The mulberry tree is covered with rich and delicious leaves, and it is the tree the silk worm likes. And this is China," she said, pointing to a huge pink country on the map. "It is plentiful like the mulberry tree, but plagued by starving Japanese silk worms from across the sea." She rapped her knuckles on the string of islands of Japan, crawling across the blue sea towards China. "The silk worms have hardly any food and always have their greedy eyes on China where we have plenty. That is why they attack. To devour us."