18. Eyes Tainted With Dust

Eyes Tainted With Dust

            Do you want to go and look at the cars with me?" a friend of mine asked while staring at me from top to bottom.

“How can I go with you? I don’t have money", I replied to him half-jokingly. But in the end, I had to get into my friend’s luxury sedan and drove out with him to Thadeua to look at cars at Thanaleng.

That day, the weather in Vientiane was especially hot. Along the road, you could see steaming vapors shooting up to the sky, which made you feel dizzy.

Less than twenty minutes later, we arrived at Thanaleng.  Somphone disappeared into the office while Saysamonh and I wandered around the parking lot where almost all types of cars are up for sale.

“This one is worth $3,000 US, that one, $5,000 USD, and the ones over there, $6,000”, Saysamonh told me, pointing to each individual car. In response, I nodded my head as usual.

            To buy a nice car when you only have 10,000 kips in your pocket could be a problem. The fact that the cars had to be paid in US dollars and that my salary was fairly low made it extremely difficult for me to swallow. While my good friend and I were walking around the car lot, the phone rang. I grabbed my cell phone and said,

"Hello my friend, how are you?"

"I am Ok."

"Can I help you with anything?"

"Yes!  Today my friend brought a pheasant from Khamkeuth district. I would like you to come and see me, is that possible? I would like to introduce you to him so he knows how you and I are related to each other."

"OK! I will do that.  I should go back in a few minutes. "

After he was done, my friend started the engine and turned the wheels back to Bane Phonetong Chommany. When we arrived at the appointment site, we were offered a glass of cold water, which greatly pleased me. Although I have lived in this village for many years, this was the first time that I had a chance to come to this place. I didn’t know how long I was sitting there, sipping cold water, when somebody brought a dish with fried squid and placed it in front of me, along with two bottles of Lao beer.

“Fresh water is not good enough; fresh beer is better", said a woman in her thirties who came and sat beside me, laughing with pride after making that introductory comment.

After a few glasses of beer, I started feeling a little bit dizzy. My face was getting numb. The hostess told the cook,

"Let’s serve lunch, it’s getting late!"

Lunch was then promptly served.  By then, the dish of fried squid was already empty. My buddy looked at me several times, but I didn’t know what he was trying to tell me. The time was 1:30 p.m., which was way past the usual lunch-hour accordingly to local standards. I felt hungry and didn’t pay attention to my friend’s signals. As I was squeezing the vaporizing sticky rice in my hand and about to dig into the pheasant salad bowl, my friend said,

"I will definitely defame you! I am pretty sure I will do it!" 

My friend looked at me again as I was about to hit the bowl to get some food for my empty stomach. I was hungry, my face was pale, and my heart was beating stronger than normal.  I put the sticky rice in my mouth and started chewing.  The hostess looked at me with a sweet smile and said,

"Bon appétit!  Please eat! Or, maybe, you don’t eat pheasant?”

“I know you are one of the government officials who urge people not to hunt wild animals.  If you eat pheasant, I will slander you," my close friend repeated.

"You can eat it. There is nothing wrong; the pheasant was already dead," my hostess commented.

"If you eat it, I will know all your hidden secrets," my close friend warned.

"If we do not eat it, other people will because it was dead," my hostess added.

"If you eat it, that means you are lying to yourself and to others. You wanted people to stop eating wild animals and stop killing them, but you yourself eat those animals," my close friend repeated.

I kept squeezing and squeezing the sticky rice that I had in my hand until it was as sticky as the glue. I swallowed the rice wad with great effort like someone pulling a fallen tree by its branches.  My saliva was dry like the forest in May, before the onset of summer. My face was so numb that I would not have felt any pain when hit by a 5-kilogram hammer.

"Do it, my friend! Eat the wild animal’s meat. It was 100 percent dead”, my hostess chimed in.

"Is that because you don’t you eat wild animal’s meat, or is that because of your official duties?” asked a man in his forties who sat close by.

"No! No!" I replied with trembling voice.

"If it is not because of your duty, then you can eat it," said the thirty years old woman.

"My friend is one of the workers who preach wild animals preservation," my buddy clarified.

"Duty is duty; eating is eating," my hostess concluded.

I did not know what to do; but my hand mechanically reached out for a spoon on the lunch basket. I used the spoon to pick a piece of pheasant’s meat and put it in my mouth. People were looking at me all at once, including my hostess and everybody else present in the room. Everything happened very quietly and very quickly…