Htoo Moo and Ta Mla were on the shirts team, the team that lost the first twenty-minute round. The second started without delay, and the guys were warm and revved up. A Burman boy, maybe eighteen, who worked on the land had sat down out of bounds, having put the cows away for the day. Now he was on his feet, watching the action, dancing around the sideline trying to get a better look, trying to contain himself from bursting into the play. He was too shy to ask if he could cut in, and there were enough alternates already. Four of them lined up next to the field as a fifth counted one, two, three, go and they took off in a race while they waited their turn.
The sun broke the clouds above a nearby fifty-foot pond. Golden light sliced the grounds as the BA boys, who were still in the game, played out the match. However docile he was in life, Ta Mla was not fucking around on this field. He attacked with painfully earnest concentration and determination, dodging the cattle dung, never taking his eye off the ball until he’d passed it or it’d been stolen from
him. He switched from offense to goalie midmatch and blocked the ball with his hands, his chest, his knees. No one scored on him. The shirts won.
At the end of the second round, the older guys and guys with wives or cooking duties or lack of stamina left, and the farm kid finally got his chance. He played barefoot, the loose white shirt that had earlier been exposing his washboard torso buttoned up so he could join Htoo Moo and Ta Mla’s team. He was fresher than everyone else, and grateful, too, and he charged around the field. But within minutes of the start, the opposing team’s ball rolled through the goalposts while the goalie was sauntering around one of them; he’d lost interest, he indicated by laughing, shrugging, and walking away, so the kid got relegated to the more sedentary position. He looked a bit dejected but guarded the goal hard, springing to action whenever the ball came anywhere near him, playing well out of his area and running it all the way to center sometimes. No one cared. Htoo Moo suffered from the same hotdogging, bringing the ball through the offensive lines even when he was playing defense, or booting the ball too hard, to places containing no people.
Three laborers sat near the farmhouse in the distance and watched for a bit. A woman, her face thick with
thanaka
, the cosmetic wood paste in swirls on her cheeks, glanced at the players as she walked past on her way back from the market holding a bottle of whiskey or oil in a paper bag. The skins scored. Soul Patch intercepted the ball with his head, then moaned and rubbed it, actually fixing his hair before carrying on. Htoo Moo took a hard ball to the gut and laughed hysterically. The sun sank, the time ran out, and it started to rain. The skins had won again. The players started toward their bikes. Ta Mla and Htoo Moo walked off the field, tired, panting, filthy, leaving nothing in their wake but two remarkably intact piles of shit.
“DO YOU
want to go to a bar?” I asked Htan Dah when we got home. I’d bounded up the stairs to my room as Htoo Moo and Ta Mla made
their way to the bathroom to splash the sweat and mud off. Shortly, Htan Dah had walked in. “Come on. We should go celebrate. Let me buy you a drink.”
“I would like to,” he said. “But I am afraid I will get arrested.”
“Okay. Will you drink beer with me if I go buy it?”
Abby and I went and picked up four big bottles of Chang and a bottle of the more expensive and better-tasting Singha for the occasion. We’d barely begun the toasting when in walked a blond, leggy French broad with a fantastic accent, two white guys, and a small bar’s worth of booze, more beer plus whiskey and soda water and ice. She’d been a volunteer for BA, then moved on to work for another NGO in Thailand, and was in town for a very drunken visit. We packed the dining room/garage with cigarette smoke and body heat. Eh Soe squeezed in next to me on one of the benches, and we shared the long cheroot he was smoking.
“Stay close to me,” he said. “I do not want to talk to these people.”
I laughed. “These white people?”
He said yes, and I started laughing harder.
“Why not? Did you know that I’m a white person?”
“I know, but you are different. Usually I do not talk to our volunteers because they don’t care about me.”
I clucked my tongue. “Eh Soe, I’m sure you’re wrong about that.”
“It means very much to us that volunteers come and spend their time and money on being with refugees. We appreciate it a lot. But usually they do not live with us and talk with us.”
“Has it ever occurred to you that they don’t talk to you so much because you’re avoiding them? I probably would have avoided you if I could have.”
“I am serious.” He squealed that last word a bit, and his face was full blush. He was plastered. “I do not want you to leave.”
“Aw, Eh Soe, are you going to cry?” I asked.
A lot of the conversation around us had happened to die down,
and it was quiet in the instant when Eh Soe said, “Yes, I will cry.” Then: “I cannot talk about this.”
“Aww,” everyone said, sincerely touched because it was sweet, so sweet that an awkward silence followed.
Lah Lah Htoo brought out a stringed Karen instrument, plucking out a twanging melody with a sad lilt. The French girl closed her eyes and stretched her arms out and dipped her fingers then her wrists in hippie-dippie waves as he sang. Htoo Moo grabbed a guitar and sang songs he’d written about revolution, unhurried numbers with the slow earnestness of a pop Chinese love ballad. John Denver was revisited. Someone went upstairs and dragged Eh Kaw up from where he was sleeping on the floor.
“You guys, leave him alone!” Abby said as the peaked, groggy roommate was pulled into the dining room/garage. “He has malaria!”
“He always gets malaria,” someone said, and everyone laughed. Eh Kaw smiled, and stuck around for a song or two. The ice melted. The slim and generally silent Gaw Say put his hand on my arm, suddenly brave about touching me and speaking English, and told me he just went poo. Htoo Moo fell asleep at the table. The French girl lost her keys. Htan Dah caught my eye as I exhaled a lungful of cheroot and asked me if I smoked.
“No, but I’m drunk.” I held the cigar I’d stolen from Eh Soe out to him. “Do you smoke?”
“No,” he said, “but I am living,” and took it from me and put it in his mouth.
It was past two in the morning by the time most of the guys had gone to bed. Anyone who was still awake was getting ready to do the same. Htoo Moo was standing on the balcony off my bedroom, looking at the mosquito net he slept under there, yelling, “Who is that?” at the passed-out body in his bed. Htan Dah and I were going opposite ways on the stairwell, and I caught his upper arm as I passed him. “I have a present for you,” I said. “Do you want it now?” He nodded.
I went upstairs and grabbed the thick brown envelope out of my bag, along with another little parcel. Before I’d left the States, my mother had given me a small, black, blank hardcover notebook that was, she’d read somewhere, like the ones Hemingway used. I hadn’t written in it yet, and decided to repurpose it as a gift to my journalism-school friend. I’d wrapped it in brown paper and spent half an hour practicing drawing the bow I sketched on the front of it with a black rollerball pen, concentrating so hard on the task that it didn’t occur to me that my rendition wouldn’t look perfect regardless, not to someone who’d never seen a bow in his life.
I met him in the darkness of the living room. People we couldn’t see slept on the floor. We walked outside to the small porch at the front of the house, and sat down on perpendicular benches. I gave him the book, which he opened, then turned over and over in his hands, thanking me, saying I’d already given him one book that day. I said it was no big deal, really, since I could get plenty of books in the United States and really wanted him to have these two. I made a short speech in as clear English as I could muster about how he’d been an invaluable friend to me, and had taught me, and fed me, and kept me so much company, and about how I was inspired by his devotion and strength and really believed he could make a difference in his cause, and then I handed him the envelope.
He opened it, and looked inside it, and said nothing. He pulled the cash out a bit, leafing through the edges of the stack, and said, after a moment, “Wow. That’s a lot.” He was just holding it, and looking at it, and seemed totally at a loss, so I told him it was eighty 1,000-baht bills, about $2,200 then, enough to buy his ID papers. He still didn’t say anything, so I grabbed hold of his hand and told him his well-being was important to me, that I was so proud of the opportunities he’d won in Chiang Mai and wanted to help him make it easier, and more possible, in any way I could. He just watched me, even when I’d finished speaking, so we sat there looking at each other.
“Are you excited?” I asked.
When he finally started talking, he formed his sentences slowly, and couldn’t catch his breath. “I can’t believe it.” He pulled the air into his lungs hard. “To me, it seems unbelievable. It is like . . . in a dream. It is a dream.” He gasped again. He seemed to be swallowing too thickly, too often, like someone who’s about to throw up. “This is the best thing. This is the best moment of my life. I always say to my wife I will get ID, but I never knew how. I cannot express how I appreciate it.” One fast, deep breath, short exhale. Another. Then suddenly, panic. “I cannot give you anything,” he said. “I would like to give you something. My wife, she can weave.”
“Htan Dah, please.”
“I can make her weave a traditional shirt. It won’t be done in time, because you will leave, but I can post it, I can post it to you for a present after you leave. I wish there was something I could give you. I want to give you something important, but I cannot.”
“Htan Dah, please accept this as a gift. You’ve given me lots of gifts. Do you remember the first thing you said to me?”
He was taken aback; his head drew back a couple of inches. “No.”
“You said, ‘Can I help you?’”
“I don’t remember. I cannot believe you remember.”
“You’ve always helped me here. And if you had money, and I needed it, you would give it to me. You don’t understand how little money this is in the course of the money I’ll have in my entire lifetime. It’s nothing. It’s really no problem. Also, I told other people in the United States about you and will get some money from them. It’s money. It’s not important. There’s nothing I could do with it in the United States that would be as important as your safety.”
I thought he was calming down, but he started panting harder, sucking in tight breaths. He seemed like he was going to cry, though I knew he didn’t cry. “I understand,” he said. “You want to help me because you love me. And I love you too. So much.” We hugged, ultimately, and this time, after a moment, he pressed in with the
arms he’d wrapped around me, and no matter how tightly I squeezed him, I couldn’t stop him from shaking.
I WOKE
up Saturday morning to a tight grip around my ankles. And giggling.
“Htoo Moo!” I yelled as he hoicked me half out from under my sheet. “Stop!”
He pulled again, laughing as I flew out from under my mosquito net and hit the floor. My head throbbed hard. I shut my eyes against the sunlight blaring in through the windows and hollered again. “I’m tired!”
“Ohhh,” he cooed. “Why?”
“I drank too much last night! Go away!”
“Ohhh. Was that hard?”
“Fuck off!” I yelled, laughing but trying not to.
I accomplished very little that day. Abby and I made pancakes in a wok, from a Bisquick box she found at the Hong Long Minimart. (“How did you make them round?” Htan Dah asked us. When we replied “What?” he clarified, “What bowl did you use to shape them?”) I accompanied Htan Dah to the market. Abby and I sliced okra and dipped it in a rice-flour-and-water batter and fried it. I was pretty excited about going back to bed before nightfall until Collin called from Office Two and invited me to what he kept calling his “dog-meat party.”
Dog meat, all the refugees assured me, was warm meat; eating it would heat you from your insides. The Blay was at Office Two already when Htan Dah and I arrived. He’d been simmering the dog pieces all day with a special combination of spices in a big pot over the gas range. Htan Dah and I joined the Office Two staff in a circle on their floor as we waited for them to make the final preparations to the meal.
“Thank you for coming to my dog-meat party,” Collin said to me.
“Thank you for inviting me. Where did you guys get this dog? Can you buy it at the market?”
At this, everyone looked at each other. Collin just smiled.
“Who killed this dog?” I asked.
Silence.
“Please take this drink,” Collin said. One of the other guys handed me a tall, thin glass with Thai whiskey mixed with dark herbal tonic. Everyone was taking a turn with the concoction.
I shook my head. “I’m like Saw Kaw today,” I said, pointing at him, because he didn’t drink, because he had hepatitis.
“Please,” Collin said, and so I took the glass.
“Okay. I’m going to drink this, even though I’m extremely hungover, because it’s my duty to the Karen people.” A round of cheers went up, and I took the mixture down.
The Blay put a big bowl of dog curry in front of me, dark, dark chunks of seasoned meat in a pile. It was a little tougher to chew than I might have liked, but the flavor was rich and layered. As we picked up the pieces with our fingers, The Blay brought out what everyone insisted was the best part. The dog’s face had been skinned and then boiled and long stewed. It sat on the white plate, its skull visible through the seasoned muscles and sinews, its teeth becoming increasingly exposed as the guys peeled meat from it. It was warming, indeed, whether the meat itself or the spices it was cooked in, and I washed away my sweat and hot cheeks with more whiskey.
Which was how I came to be hungover, again, on Htan Dah’s last day in town. We two got up early to get food from the market, where we passed a guy he said hi to—who, he told me when I asked, was his brother. We squeezed through the crowd and crowded piles of fish and vegetables on tables and mats on the ground while I said things like “I didn’t know you had a brother!” and “Where does he live(!)?” and “How often do you see him(!)?” and Htan Dah explained how
his brother lived in Mae Sot, worked just over at Dr. Cynthia’s,
58
and everyone in the house who had family spread around in camp and in Burma and even hiding in nearby villages tried to see them when they could, but it wasn’t so easy to travel. On the way back, we passed a Honda Civic on the road, and I pointed it out to Htan Dah, exclaiming that that was exactly what my car at home looked like. When he asked me how much it cost, I told him, then added, for context, that that was ten times the amount of money I’d given him, the amount I’d given him being, therefore, not a lot of money at all, especially considering how much more important he was than a car, obviously. This last bit seemed to genuinely surprise and move him, and he said thank you for saying that, for comparing him favorably to the importance of a car, which I found upsetting. After breakfast, we lay spread out all over my big bedroom floor, in the sunshine, talking and doing nothing in hungover inertia, like undergrads. Eh Soe joined us for a while. Abby and Ta Mla and Htoo Moo came and went as well. I came clean about my despair on the first night of the collapsing air mattress, and told Htan Dah, when he asked me, that I hadn’t asked for help because I hadn’t wanted to impose. He told me how he’d worried that night that I was going to cry, like their previous
volunteer, but that they’d all tried not to impose on me, also, because they knew that white people valued privacy. Eh Soe said that as far as he was concerned, I was a man. Both guys expressed how terrified they were of Mae Sot’s stray dogs, Htan Dah maintaining that he was more scared of them than of cops, which shocked Abby and me. (He had “a good relationship,” though, with the one on the corner of our street, so would consent to walk, rather than drive, to get ice cream at 7-Eleven with us that night.) Htoo Moo said that if he ever caught an SPDC soldier, he’d torture him, which got me pontificating about hypocrisy and perpetuating violence and so forth. Eh Soe and Htan Dah told me I’d be too busy to email them when I got home because I’d be working, and Americans work a lot. They asked me if I’d call. I insisted that I would. Then, somehow, the day had passed, and the light coming in the windows was turning richer than its pale daytime hue. We went downstairs and threw some dinner together, and Htan Dah said he wanted to take me to Huay Kaloke.