Another Quiet American

by Brett Dakin

  ___

  Eventually it came time for me to make a trip back to America, a place about which, it strikes me now, I thought of far more intensely and critically while living Laos than I ever had back home. What Ying had said about her and China held true for me and the States, as well: it was from afar that I had the best view of the place that, according to my passport, at least, was home.

  As I waited for my flight in the departure lounge at the Vientiane International Airport, I gazed out the window and onto the runway below. The familiar sight of a man ambling across the strip, shielded by a large straw hat and pushing his bicycle, came into view. Inside, a teenage boy stood in the middle of the room, surrounded by his family. His feet shifted back and forth, and he looked at the floor. This boy’s features were clearly Lao, but the way he carried himself gave it away: he was an American. I hadn’t seen this typical Western teenage behavior—the awkwardness of adolescence combined with an intense pride—since I’d arrived in Vientiane. The boy was decked out in baggy pants and a baseball hat slung back to front. Head shaved, he sported two loop earrings. He was heading home to America on his own after a visit with his relatives in Vientiane. He seemed out of place: what did he have in common with these people anymore? He barely knew the language, and probably missed his friends in the US. When it came time for him to go, the family gave the boy a cheerful send-off.

  One person in the group, however, wasn’t smiling. The boy’s elder sister, I noticed, was fighting the urge to cry. She held back tears as he made his way through the customs checkpoint. Finally, she couldn’t take it any longer, and, looking back just as I stepped out into the scorching heat and onto the runway, I noticed a teardrop rolling down her cheek. No amount of foreign currency arriving in the mail from the US each month could compensate for a lost brother.

  Part II

  Amarillo

  __________

  You should not dream of the ten pieces of gold on the other side of the lake,

  but rather appreciate the five pieces in your hands.

  Lao Proverb

  During the summer between my two years in Laos, I went home. I decided to return not so much because I missed the trappings of American life; to be sure, the thought of fresh bagels and chocolate-chip ice-cream crossed my mind every now and then, but never for long. I went home because I felt the need to get away from Laos. By the end of my first year in Vientiane, I was comfortable there—almost too comfortable, I thought. Laos’ isolation had gradually led me to feel disconnected from the rest of the world. The goings-on of a capital city of only a few hundred thousand—a large village, really—in a country most people never thought about, had suddenly become the center of my universe. Current events in the US and Europe, even in neighboring Thailand, seemed far away indeed. What did they have to do with my life in Vientiane? I had seen other expats, seduced by the ease of living in Laos, turn their backs on the outside world as well, only to find themselves stuck in Vientiane, unable to leave. I wanted to avoid such a fate.

  Of course, there were more basic needs driving my desire to return. I hadn’t seen a movie or a concert in nearly a year, and I was ready for some real entertainment. When you find yourself singing along to the hits of barely pubescent pop groups during rare glimpses of MTV Southeast Asia, you know it’s time. When you start to think that the Backstreet Boys really deserved the devotion they received from teenage girls the world over, it’s time to go home.

  After arriving in the States, I spent a few days in bed, recovering from jet lag. Once fully awake, I decided to drive across the country, from my parents’ home outside Washington, D.C. to San Francisco. Along the way, I stopped to see virtually every film released in America that summer. I caught as many live music and theater performances I possibly could, from New York to Columbia, South Carolina, and from Santa Barbara to Chicago. I walked under the Spanish moss in Savannah and over the Brooklyn Bridge. I sat at the foot of Mount Rushmore and on the beaches of Rhode Island. And, just to make sure they knew I hadn’t fallen off the face of the earth, I visited old friends, wherever they were.

  But the most important stop I made during my drive across the country was a visit to some folks I’d never met before. They lived in Amarillo, Texas.

  ___

  Back in Vientiane, the most dedicated student in any of my English classes was, without a doubt, Kham. Most of my colleagues I had to cajole into coming to class, but not Kham. Every day, without fail, he showed up—worn, black leather briefcase in hand, ready to learn—ten minutes before class had even begun. If they came, many of his classmates would arrive ten minutes before the end of class. And Kham didn’t even work at the NTA. During the day, he worked for the government as a tour guide at Laos’ National Ethnic Culture Park, just outside Vientiane. Twice a week, he dutifully drove his motorbike twenty kilometers into town, through rice fields and past the gigantic steel vats of the Beer Lao brewery, for his English lessons at the NTA.

  After class, he would head home for a nap and dinner before he set out again for his night job: singing at the Paradise Nightclub downtown. The Paradise was a dive. The seats were sticky, the clientele seedy. But Kham was quite a crooner, and he delighted guests until late into the evening with his effortless performances of traditional Lao ballads. He always performed in a spotless white suit and pink shirt, and shared the stage with an aging beauty stuffed into a sequined skirt and stilettos. Every thirty minutes or so, the singers would take a break, the Thai pop songs would come on, and Kham and I would share a beer.

  If ever Kham was unable to make it to English class, he would call me at home to let me know. In return, if I was unable to teach, I’d call him at the Culture Park—or stop by the Paradise Nightclub—to make sure he knew. In the Lao PDR, that kind of co-operation was something truly revolutionary.

  Kham often came to class dressed in the latest American fashions. He wore brand new T-shirts with “USA” splashed across the back, faded Bugle Boy jeans, and Nike cross-trainers. One afternoon, I asked him how he possibly found such gear in Laos. He explained that almost every month a package from the States arrived in his mailbox. Sometimes it contained US dollars, sometimes a few items of new clothing. They were sent by his elder brother, who had left Laos more than twenty years before to make a life for himself in America. Kham hadn’t seen him since.

  When his brother had left in 1978, Kham decided to stay behind. “It’s good for a family to have sons,” he told me. “They can help the parents.” But over the years, Kham had diligently kept in touch with his brother. The letter he planned to send to the US later that afternoon contained some important news. It read, in English, “I have a son now. Like you, the first child is a son, the same as our family forever.”

  As I checked his letter for grammatical errors, Kham explained that his wife had recently given birth to a baby boy. Only a few months before, his brother’s wife had had the same good fortune. In every generation of his family, in fact, for as long as Kham could remember, the first-born child had been a boy. He was hopeful that one day he would meet his nephew—or at least have the chance to see his photograph.

  On my last day at work before the summer, Kham brought his brother’s address and phone number to class. The information on the small yellow Post-it note was minimal: Robert Thipaphay, Emily Street, Amarillo, Texas. “‘Thipaphay’ means ‘apologize to mother,’” Kham said. “He took it before he left for America.” Just before the end of class, I made a promise to Kham: during my trip home, I’d pay a visit to his brother, and I’d return to Vientiane with a photograph of his nephew.

  ___

  The Big Texan Steak Ranch & Opry is located at Exit 16 off Route 40 West, an interstate that leads directly from Dallas to the small city of Amarillo in the Texas panhandle. The Big Texan is “world famous” (I learned only after I’d arrived, having pulled off the highway to use the facilities) for its truly Texas-sized challenge: eat a 72-ounce steak and “all the trimmings”—salad, bread, potato, and shrimp c
ocktail—in an hour or less, and you get the meal for free. Over the years, 35,000 customers have accepted the challenge; only 5,500 have succeeded. Posted on the wall near the hostess’ counter was a roster of recent successful contenders. The previous night’s winner? “Jan,” from Copenhagen. When I’d first learned that Robert lived in Amarillo, the notion of a Lao man and his family residing in the Texas panhandle had struck me as absurd. This brief visit to the Big Texan made it seem no more likely.

  But as I continued through Western Texas, the images that flew past my windshield began to remind me of the landscape I’d seen during my travels in Laos. The cattle fields on either side of Route 40 leading into Amarillo were dry and harsh—much like the earth lining the route from Vientiane to Pakse in Southern Laos. Both places seemed barren and arid, even scarred. A recent Lao immigrant might feel at home, I thought, in this empty land of absent cowboys, retired ranchers, and die-hard Republicans.

  When I pulled up in front of the house on Emily Street on an early Saturday evening in July, the neighborhood was deserted and a strange calm pervaded the air. I rang the doorbell, but as no one was home, I decided to take a walk down the street. Robert lived in a neighborhood of identical one-story houses, neatly lined up in rows. Each came with a garage and modest front yard where the grass struggled to survive the Texas heat. His was a community on the edge of nowhere: a development of modest brick homes where only a few years before there had been a sprawling cattle ranch. Amarillo had a population of only 170,000, but it was growing fast; 76% was white, 14% was Hispanic, and less than 2% was Asian. Suddenly the silence of the neighborhood was broken when a group of Spanish-speaking Americans drove past in a beat-up Chevy Citation, blasting the joyous music of their ascendant Latino culture into the balmy evening air.

  As I made my way back to Robert’s house, I saw a second-hand BMW sedan pull into the driveway. An Asian man in his late fifties emerged from the driver’s seat. He wore faded blue jeans, a belt with a large silver buckle, and clean white sneakers. Could this be him?

  “Sabaidee!” I called, using the greeting that crossed my lips countless times a day in Vientiane, but which I hadn’t uttered in weeks. What in Laos had come so naturally, just the sort of thing you’d say to an acquaintance on the street, seemed out of place here in Amarillo.

  “Sabaidee,” the man replied, his hand outstretched. “You must be Brett.” Soon, a woman, evidently his wife, joined us. She was demure, soft-spoken, and, clutching her handbag, always remained just a step behind her husband. Her smile as she greeted me was disarming. These two, I soon learned, were Dan and Sally, Robert’s parents-in-law.

  Inside, Sally sat me down on the sofa in the living room, offered a glass of sweet iced tea, and nearly buried me under an avalanche of photos. Album upon album of pictures helped me to identify the three couples living together in this small house: Dan and Sally; their first daughter and her husband; and their second daughter, and her husband, Robert. The star of the most recent albums, however, was by far the youngest member of the household: Robert’s newborn son, Billy.

  “This is Billy,” gushed Sally. “He’s so smart.”

  The child was beautiful, smiling broadly in every photograph, always the center of everyone’s attention. As Sally tidied up, Dan collapsed on the sofa next to me and switched on the television. The photo albums guided me through the family’s early years in America, starry-eyed first visits to Las Vegas and Disneyland, car purchases and high school graduations, all the way back to the early days in Laos. When I began to examine the black-and-white prints of Pakse before the Indochina War, Dan’s attention drifted away from the screen and he began to tell me his story.

  Dan was a close relative of Prince Boun Oum of Champassak, the leader of the southernmost of Laos’ three major pre-independence kingdoms. After World War II, Laos was declared a constitutional monarchy within the French union, and King Sisavangvong of Luang Prabang was appointed head of state. As a result, the kingdom of Champassak was rendered virtually powerless. Prince Boun Oum never officially succeeded his father as king of Champassak, but he did become the region’s most important single spiritual force. He also remained an influential right-wing political leader in Laos until the communist victory in 1975.

  Thought by the Lao to be saksit—or holy, sacred—Boun Oum was said to have the power to change form at will—into a bird to fly, say, or a fish to swim under water—and to expel evil spirits from the kingdom. He played a key religious role as the high priest of all major festivals in the south, particularly the annual celebration held in February at the glorious Wat Phu in Champassak, a decaying Khmer temple complex that pre-dates even Cambodia’s Angkor Wat.

  Before the revolution, Dan’s family was one of the most powerful in Laos. As its leader, Boun Oum was a major player in Laos’ wartime politics, and he ultimately served as the nation’s prime minister in the early 1960s. He retired officially from politics in 1962, but continued to exert tremendous influence behind the scenes until the end of the war. He opened a casino in Pakse, Champassak’s capital, and spent his last years in Laos working to complete a grand palace, the fifty-odd rooms of which were built to accommodate his many girlfriends. Unfinished when he escaped to Paris—where he ultimately died in exile in 1980—the building today houses the Thai-owned and operated Champassak Palace Hotel, where I had once stayed during an office trip down south.

  Dan, now in his late fifties, grew up in Pakse. A bright student, he was able to attend military schools under the Americans and the French, both in Laos and in Paris. He eventually rose to become an officer in the Royal Lao Army. A page in one of the family albums is dedicated to pictures of him and his brother in uniform, seated on military motorcycles and visibly proud of their role in defending the nation against the communist “rebels.” As Dan pointed to one photograph, I noticed that the bulky ring on his index finger bore the familiar seal of the pre-war Royal Lao Government, a three-headed elephant. Each head signified one of the three ancient kingdoms: Luang Prabang, Vientiane, and Champassak.

  Sally spent her childhood in Pakse as well. She studied nursing in Paris and, upon her return to Laos, began working in an American-built hospital in Pakse. During the war, Dan was treated for combat wounds in the same hospital, and it was there that he first met Sally. “She took care of me in the hospital, just like she takes care of us today.” They fell in love, married, and soon had two daughters and a son. The son, the youngest, would not meet his father until he was a sophomore in a Texas high school.

  In 1975, Dan was sent to a re-education camp in Northern Huapanh, one of the least accessible of Laos’ provinces. Facing a bleak future as the wife of an official in the former regime, Sally decided to take the children across the border into Thailand. With the help of a Catholic sponsor, they moved on to America, where they were able to join Sally’s brother in Houston. She moved the family up to Amarillo after finding a job there with the city government as a refugee healthcare adviser. Among other things, she helped immigrants—from Laos and Vietnam, and more recently from places like Bosnia and Kosovo—navigate through the maze of paperwork required to obtain employment, education, and healthcare in the US. When Sally and the family had first arrived in Amarillo, they had been among only a handful of Lao residents. By the time I visited, the Lao community had expanded enough to support a Lao food market and Wat Lao Buddharam, a temple just off Fritch Highway.

  Even without a father at home, the three children moved smoothly through the American public school system. Sally was a demanding mother, setting high standards and enforcing strict rules. Beth’s official graduation portrait from Amarillo High—a vast concrete and brick structure I had driven by on my way to Emily Street—hung on the living room wall. Adorned with bright red ribbons and a National Honor Society certificate, the framed portrait was a testament to Sally’s remarkable success in single-handedly raising her children in a foreign land.

  ___

  “They tried to wash my brain. That’s why I�
��m crazy sometimes.”

  Driving along the multi-lane highways of Amarillo to a Thai restaurant for dinner, Dan apologized for taking a wrong turn. He rarely talked about the seven years he spent in the samana in Huapanh. When he did, it was often as an aside, or in a blasé, joking manner. At the camp, Dan had performed menial and often meaningless physical tasks, attended endless seminars about socialist ideology and, as he put it, did his best to resist the daily anti-capitalist indoctrination. Eventually, he worked as a bus driver and interpreter for army supply runs between Northern Laos and Vietnam. He spoke French, Vietnamese, and even a little Russian, which was helpful—the newly arrived Soviet advisers certainly hadn’t learned to speak any Lao.

  Only after he was released from the camp and sent back to Vientiane did Dan learn that Sally had left for the States years before. He wasn’t surprised or disappointed, but simply anxious to rejoin his wife and children. “I had to follow my family,” he explained, “so I crossed the Mekong.” He lived in a refugee camp in Northern Thailand for another two years before receiving his own visa to enter the US. By the time Dan arrived in Texas, able to speak only a few words of English, his wife was comfortably settled into life in Amarillo. His children had long left their past in Laos behind and embraced America. After so many years apart, Dan barely recognized his own family. The family reunion was awkward, and Dan’s belated transition to American life far from smooth, but in the end things worked out. In a way.

  “We eat out almost every night these days—no time to cook,” Dan told me. I could see why. To make ends meet, he and Sally worked extremely long hours; the chance to spend a Saturday evening together with them both was rare indeed. Until the week before my visit, Dan had been working Monday through Sunday, days and nights. He was a guard for a local security corporation, and, just as he had in the old days in Laos, he wore a uniform and carried a firearm to work every day. “The priest comes to my house sometimes; asks why we don’t go to the church,” said Dan. “No time, I speak him. No time. And look, too many people go to church every week, but leave their husbands, run around. The most important thing is to stay together.”