The Thai people pride themselves in the purity of their language. Few English words have infiltrated the common lexicon. Dtam-ruaat is the word for police. The diphonic annunciation can confuse most farangs. I thought for years that For years I thought Dtam-ruaat meant ‘make blood’, however make blood is spelled Dtam-leuuat with a falling accent on the last syllable. Thai culture remains strong, however beer is beer and pizza remains pizza, so foreigners don’t starve to death in the hinterlands. 1150 is telephone number for Pizza. Pay the gas and the motorcycle delivery boy will drive to the most distant reaches of ban-nok ie the sticks.
Other commonly shared words are whiskey, taxi, sex, and WC for ‘water closet’, which along with pizza cover most human needs. This week I returned to New York from Bangkok via Narita Airport. 27 hours from Soi 12 in Jomtien to Fort Greene in Brooklyn. Most people would have taken several days to recover from such a trip. I needed money and showed up at work 10 hours after passing through customs at JFK.
I was exhausted from the trip, yet couldn’t sleep and tried to explain to my son’s mother why I couldn’t sleep. I explained over the phone to Mam about the time zone. My Thai is rudimentary and Mam was getting increasingly frustrated by my ignorance of the her native language.
The Thais are the French of the Orient.
Their love for their country’s traditions, food, and culture border on fanaticism and after residing in Thailand I have to admit that they aren’t half-wrong. The only problem is that I had to move back to America. New York to be exact. The other side of the world and this week my body clock is off by 12 hours.
Day is night and night is day.
“I can’t sleep,” I explained to Mam over Skype. There was very little echo over the line, but she didn’t understand the reason for my sleeplessness. “Last night I had a dream about our staying in a house with no walls. It was in the middle of a rice paddy. Very beautiful. Made out of wood. You were sleeping in bed and I was holding Fenway.”
Fenway is our two years old son. Every night his body spins on the bed like a clock. I slept like a stone with him.
“Good dream?” Mam was a firm believer in beauty sleep, however children steal sleep from their parents like professional kleptomaniacs. The theft gives them control. Fenway was no different from the rest of the young in their preparation to usurp the strength of their mothers and fathers.
“Not a good dream. I see men in the dark. They attack us. I wake up screaming.” I live alone in the top floor apartment of a Fort Greene brownstone. The walls are thick. No one heard my terror. “A nightmare.”
“Fan raai.” A nightmare is scary in every language.
“Yes.”
“Are you thuuk-phee-am?” Mam was horrified at the possibility that I had been possessed by an evil spiritor ‘phee’.
“Not at all.” I never scoffed the Thai belief in ghosts. I had been to the house of a ‘maih moht’. Magic existed in the heart and soul of her country, however my dream was the harvest of several sleepless nights. My next attempt to clarify the reason for my insomnia pierce the language barrier.
“You mean ‘jet lag’?”
“Yes, jet lag.” The word was the same for Mam as it was for me.
“Can not sleep?”
“No.”
“I understand now.” She had never traveled outside of Thailand, so the effects of jet lag were a mystery.
“I can’t sleep. Four nights now.” The CIA used sleep deprivation to persuade secret prisoners to tell the truth. I had slept maybe ten hours since Tuesday.
“‘Oht nawn’ not good for old man.” Mam was twewnty-six. I was more than twice her age. Youth had a mission to take over the world. No one lived forever.
“I’ll fall asleep soon.” I couldn’t say when, but Mam cared about my health.
“Nawn dee.” She wanted me to reach a hundred years old. Thais hated being alone.
And at the tender age of late mid-fifties, so do I.
We have a couple of words for wanting someone else to live forever. Neither does English.
“Never want to say good-bye.” Barry White sang those words.
And I feel the same way too.
Like a man born to finite immortality.