One Day the Soldiers Came - Charles London [45]
The border town of Mae Sot is a rough and tumble place. According to the Lonely Planet guidebook, there used to be a billboard in the center of town that read: “Have fun, but if you carry a gun, you go to jail.” The illegal gem trade flourishes. In a café where I liked to spend my afternoons sipping beer and pretending to be a tourist, I watched many packages of gold and jewels change hands. Men were always coming and going, drinking a beer or eating quickly while they juggled cell phone calls and exchanged glances at the street.
During the day, the town was charming. Twenty-foot-tall golden statues of the Buddha rose from the jungle, their heads jutting out above the tree line and glistening with beads of water. It rained every day in September. The white minarets of the Masjit noor-ul-Islam mosque rise behind the low buildings. Every day I would hear the muezzin issuing the call to prayers, which echoed through the streets, through the trees, and drifted to the hills in the distance.
Allah-u-Akbar Allah-u-Akbar! Hayya ‘alas salah Hayya ‘alas salah.
The municipal market sat behind one of the three mosques in the city. On my way into a narrow alley that opened into the market, a group of street kids surrounded me, poking and pulling at my clothes. I love markets because they tell you secrets about a new city, and they are always filled with eager children. This market was no exception.
Their faces were smeared with sandalwood powder, a traditional Burmese practice. The powder has many functions: it’s good for the skin, it keeps one cool, and it’s a fashionable thing to wear. It also expresses certain cultural affiliations. In Bangkok, the Burmese could not have worn it on the street, even if they spoke Thai. It would have been a dead giveaway and gotten them thrown right into jail or deported. In Mae Sot, I noticed the Burmese walked openly on the streets, speaking their language without fear. I gave the kids a little candy that I kept in my pocket, made a few faces that they didn’t think were very funny, and turned into the market. The kids were having a great time laughing at me as I walked away, though they quickly returned to the main street where they had more room to kick around the ball that one of them held under his arm.
In the market the smells were overwhelming. The tables overflowed with roasting meats, raw fish, fried fish, salted fish, raw chickens, live chickens squawking and pooping in baskets. Women shoved roti and chapati in my face, ladles full of curry, buckets of live eels. They offered T-shirts and cassettes and sandals. The street burst with shops, tables, stands, and carts. People squeezed between them, bikes dodged through the crowd. Everyone cleared the way for a passing police motorcycle, keeping his or her head down until the bike got through.
“Security service,” a boy selling T-shirts said to me in English, making a little gun with his hand and laughing. “Boom-boom,” he said for some reason. His T-shirts intrigued me. They bore hagiographic images of Thai and American pop stars and beatified pictures of Osama bin Laden. The boy behind the table wore one of the Bin Laden T-shirts, perhaps oblivious to its meaning to me. He made a peace sign. It happened to be September 11, 2002, exactly one year since the terrorist attacks. When I walked away, the boy shouted after me, still in English, “Have a nice day!”
Everyone I passed gave me a once-over. There were a few beggars, but mostly the shops bustled with loud commerce and peals of laughter. Over half the people I saw wore face powder. Discussions cascaded over each other. After Bangkok, I was shocked to see so many people living unafraid. It was not until nightfall when I saw the security services again that