Read For Us Surrender Is Out of the Question for Free Online Page A

divorced?” I started laughing. “Yes, actually, they are. Most people’s parents are divorced in the United States.”
    He nodded steadily. Yes, he’d heard of this. “You are very lucky!” he said with his eye on the TV. I wasn’t sure what to say to that. “You have democracy! You want divorce, you get. You want go, you leave. How did you get here?”
    “I flew here. On a plane.”
    More nodding. “How much it costs?”
    “One thousand three hundred sixty-six dollars,” I said. “That’s ...” I did some math in the top margin of my notebook, above TIPS FOR WRITING A MEMO. “Fifty-four thousand six hundred forty baht.”
    “Fifty ...” He narrowed his eyes.
    “Fifty-four thousand six hundred forty. Here.” I turned my paper toward him and pointed at the number.
    His face didn’t unfurl, and he just shook his head, then shrugged before saying, “A lot.”
    “How much money do you make?” I asked Htan Dah at dinner. For the past three meals, he had come to get me from my room when he was done cooking, and then he and Ta Mla had sat at the table with me. The others trickled in or came and went while I ate.
    “Five hundred baht per month.” About $13. Ta Mla was smashing fish paste and rice into neat little cones between his vertical thumb and four fingers before scooping it up to his face. Htan Dah shoveled a huge spoonful of rice into his mouth. I had a spoon, too, which he always set out for me. Tonight, he’d also set a plate
piled with finger-thick, footlong branches topped with comely green leaves in front of my place.
    “What is this?” I asked.
    Htan Dah and Ta Mla both scowled at the little woodpile as if they’d never seen it before, though they’d each just put an end of one of the limbs between their teeth and then quickly chomp-chompchomped it into smaller pieces before swallowing. “I don’t know(!),” Htan Dah said. Each word was a note higher than the last, a singsong in ascending tones. His exclamations, I realized, made him sound like Yogi Bear. He laughed and shook his head. “You want to try?”
    “No, I’m good.”
    “What about fish paste?” he asked, nodding at the ever-present bowl of sedimentary oil on the table. His eyes sparkled fiercely. “You don’t like fish paste?” That morning, when he saw me turn my head to escape the smell as Ta Mla splashed the sauce onto his plate, he’d opted to describe how thoroughly you had to let the fish rot before you mixed it with chilies and oil while I tried to eat.
    “Shut up,” I said.
    The Blay walked in singing. “Say it together. ...”
    “What is this?” I asked him, pointing at the branches.
    “Morning glory?” he guessed. He laughed. “No. I don’t know.” Another unfamiliar face joined him in the dining room/garage, and together, they left.
    “How many people live here?” I asked Htan Dah.
    “Maybe . . . ten.”
    I’d seen a lot more dudes than that milling around the house. Many of them were dudes in Che Guevara T-shirts. “Who lives here? You, Ta Mla, The Blay, Htoo Moo”—he of a silent h and the constant smiling and the never talking to me and the stupefyingly round and hard-looking ass—“Ta Eh Thaw. ...” That latter was the girl, whose name I knew now that Ta Mla had written it down for me. “Who else?”
    “Gaw Sayyy,” Htan Dah began, drawing out the final syllables of
the names, “Eh Soooe, Georgieee, Eh Kawww 5 . ... They are inside. In Burma.”
    “Doing what?”
    “Doing interviewww, taking videooo, taking picturrre. . . . They go to the village, and they tell about what is going on in Burma, and about how to unite for democracy. Also, they ask, ‘Have you seen Burma army? Have they raped you, or shot you, or burned your village?’” This explained the “Human Rights Vocabulary” translation cheat sheet I’d seen my first night. I’d gotten a better look at it that afternoon while organizing my class, studying the fifteen most used phrases. One side listed words in