For Us Surrender Is Out of the Question Read Online Free

face suggested he was lying.
    I turned to Ta Mla, who was watching us with severely creased eyebrows. “Have you ever taken a hot shower?” I asked him.
    He hesitated. “Hot?”
    “Yeah, hot. Like, you take a shower, but the water is warm.”

    He hesitated again. “Hot shower?” he asked.
    “Yeah. In America, we take showers with hot water. Have you heard of that?”
    He looked between Htan Dah and me, still making that face. Finally, he shook his head. “No, I do not know it.” 1
    “Oh, man, you guys should take a hot shower sometime,” I said. “It’s great. We could heat up water in the teakettle and fill up a bucket or something.”
    Htan Dah immediately said that he would like to try. But Ta Mla considered for a moment, just to imagine the novel repugnance of it. “I think cold is better,” he said.
    Having finished cooking and seen that someone was keeping me company, Htan Dah excused himself and left me at the table with Ta Mla. We sat in silence for a bit, smiling often at each other.
    “What do you do?” he asked finally.
    “I’m a teacher.”
    “Oah? A teacher! That is ... very ... wonderful.”
    “Yes, I like it.”
    “In Norway?”
    “No.”
     
    IT WAS sweltering in Bangkok. During the dry season, it’s hot up in Mae Sot, too, dry air crawling across the continent toward the sea. But in the summer, when wet air blows in off the water, a cool wind rushes through the mist shrouding the tree-covered hills, softening the temperature up west beyond the central plains. Often, it rains for days, hard, persistent downpours from leaden skies, or light showers tinkling in sunlight. Today the air came warm and calm through the windows above a wide wooden bench in my room. I was falling asleep with a book when Htan Dah appeared in the doorway.

    “I think you are hungry,” he said.
    He was right. I’d chewed through only a few pieces of the hard fried pork nuggets he’d made for breakfast and hadn’t finished my rice, which I’d wetted down with salty stick soup. Htan Dah explained that The Guy, whose name turned out to be The Blay, was busy today. “I can take you to market,” he said. “Maybe you want to buy some food.”
    I sat up. “Okay. And a towel?”
    “Okay. Yes, after. I think it will be okay if you go with me.”
    I couldn’t see any reason to think otherwise; he seemed as capable of running an errand as The Blay. “Okay. ...”
    However brave I was on plane, boat, or foot, when it came to motorbikes I was a pragmatist—which is to say alarmist. Reportedly, dozens of people died in Thai motorcycle accidents every day, and hundreds more were injured, many of them permanently, horribly, disfiguringly, I imagined. I panicked quietly in the driveway while Htan Dah backed his bike out of the dining room/garage. He stopped next to me and looked up expectantly. He didn’t offer me a helmet.
    Passengers in Asia don’t hold on to their drivers as do girlfriends in American music videos and ’80s movies, so I gripped the seat under my ass as Htan Dah pulled out onto our street, slow and sure. Most of the houses were behind gates and greenery, though the structures varied from more two-story spreads to one-room stilted huts, most of those made at least partially of tattered wood. We drove on the four-lane boulevard that led to the freeway, past a water buffalo grazing in the grassy median, then turned down an alley before reaching the narrow, busy sois , or streets, of downtown. People and stalls with banana roti, whole grilled chicken, grilled chicken parts on a stick packed the fronts of the stores. Among them was the big bright Hong Long Minimart, in front of which we parked tight in a long row of other motorbikes.
    Htan Dah kept his head down, lost his grins and volume as we walked through the store, as if we were in church. “What are you looking for?” he practically whispered.

    “I don’t know.”
    I didn’t. Though the Hong Long had the look of a shimmering American