“But you prostitute yourself for men. So you’re a slave to money.”
“When you say money, you give it farang meaning. When I say it, I give it Thai meaning.”
“What’s the Thai meaning?”
“Freedom. I turn trick lasts maybe an hour, two hours, if I want I can live on the money for the rest of the week. I’m not dominated by man, and I’m not dominated by system. I’m free.”
“You’re still prostituting yourself. You’re still working.”
“Ah, you see you contradict yourself. I’m working just the same as other women, you just said it.”
“But you sell your body. How’s that being a good Buddhist?”
“You don’t understand. I only prostitute part of the body that isn’t important, and nobody suffers except my karma a little bit. I don’t do big harm. You prostitute your mind. Mind is seat of Buddha.” Shaking her finger at him: “What you do is very very bad. You should not use your mind in that way.”
“What way? I use my brain for my work. That’s not prostitution.”
“Thanee told me many times Washington professionals like you don’t agree with the president, the way he’s doing things. He’s very dangerous, could have whole world hating America. You told me he has to divide the world into good and evil because he can only count up to two. But you work for him, let him use your brains for schemes that will bring trouble on whole world. That’s prostitution. Could be very very bad karma for you. Maybe you come back as cockroach.”
Mitch Turner bursts out laughing. He seems to admire the wacky ingenuity of her argument.
Chanya in a fix, don’t know what to do about this guy.
She thinks that probably the affair would have continued to deteriorate in the way of such affairs, they would have gone their separate paths, perhaps she would have had to leave Washington, perhaps she would have gone back to Thailand after a few more months, for she had really done exceptionally well and already had enough money to retire on. But the date of this last conversation was September 10, 2001.
Curiously, it is on this very day that Chanya, feeling depressed and exhausted from their argument, records one of those revelations that come to everyone who spends a long time in a foreign country. On the corner of Pennsylvania and Ninth she is overcome by nostalgia for her homeland. She is experiencing a revolution in attitude.
From the start something very specific has impressed her about Americans, even the humblest: it is the way they walk. Even bag people walk with purpose and energy and with total certainty about the direction they want to go in, which is a lot different to the way Thais walk in Bangkok or Surin, where the need for purpose and direction has not much penetrated the collective mind. Now she has seen quite a lot of the country, and in the process a germ of awareness has slowly grown.
They don’t know where they’re going, they just know how to look as if they do. They walk like that because they’re scared. Some demon is whipping them from inside. Chanya will never walk like that.
For a moment she feels she understands everything about Saharat Amerika; it coincides with a decision to go home to Thailand sooner rather than later. She doesn’t want to marry a frightened man who has perfected the art of going nowhere with such zeal and determination. To admit that you are lost seems closer to enlightenment and a lot more honest. More adult, even.
Mitch Turner calls her around three p.m. the next day, when the whole country is in turmoil. He is playing the impeccable, responsible professional, which is the character he uses for work.
“You’ll have to get out.” He knows, of course, that she is an illegal immigrant, has checked her out on the CIA database, perhaps even checked with his contacts in Thailand. “I don’t know where in hell this is going to lead, but you can bet everyone with a foreign passport from anywhere east of Berlin is going to come under scrutiny. They’re already talking of arrest without trial. You could get caught up in something that could take away years of your life.”
She doesn’t need to be told twice. As soon as the airlines are working again, she gets on a plane. She is back in her home village near Surin on the Cambodian border by the twenty-second of that month. The first luxury item she buys is a Sony flat-screen TV, on which the images of 747s crashing into the twin towers are replayed over and over again, no matter the channel.
That’s the end of Chanya’s diary, farang.
FIVE. Al Qaeda
27
It’s early afternoon by the time I reach Soi Cowboy and open the bar. I’m keen to check with Lek after his evening with Fatima, but first I need to discuss Chanya’s diary with Nong.
I wai the Buddha as soon as I’ve switched the lights on. The important thing, always, is to keep the beer and spirits replenished. Most customers drink Kloster or Singha or Heineken, and the girls of course make half their money through lady drinks, a fact which is never far from my mother’s mind. She has left a message telling me to order more Kloster and tequila from the wholesalers as soon as I get in. The tequila is not a problem, in the worst case we can always buy a few bottles retail, but the Kloster is dangerously low.
When I look up at the Buddha statue, I finally understand why I’m feeling so edgy. The little guy is fresh out of marigolds. Out in the street I find a flower vendor, from whom I buy as many garlands as I can carry. (Wherever you go in my country there will be a flower vendor, her stall laden with Buddha garlands: it’s a sure bet in a land populated by sixty-one million gamblers.) As soon as I’ve smothered him in flowers, I light a bunch of incense, which my mother keeps under the counter, wai him mindfully three times, and stick the incense in the little sand pit we keep for that purpose and beg him to switch the luck back on. The minute I’ve finished, my mother Nong arrives with her arms full of marigolds.
“I was so busy yesterday I forgot to feed him,” she explains from behind all the flowers. I don’t say anything, merely watch while she takes in the garlands I’ve just hung all over him. “Oh. Well, he’ll forgive us now.” A beam. “We should be in for some really good luck. How did you get on in Songai Kolok?”
I make a face and tell her to sit down at one of the tables. I tell her about the diary and the all-important fact that Chanya knew Mitch Turner in the United States. Had a passionate affair with him. Nong gets the point immediately. “There could be evidence linking her to him? If the Americans investigate, they’ll surely find out he was seeing a Thai girl in Washington. Even though she was traveling on someone else’s passport, they might find out who she really is?”