Generally, time spent in the classroom is time spent laughing myself absurdly into stitches. I come in ready for whatever antics my students might devise for the day. For example, in a high-stakes, fast-paced, do-or-die competitive vocab race, hearing one student shout breathlessly, a tantivy hand shooting up with dizzying speed : “Obsessed! I am insomniac when I stay up late nights because I am obsessed watching porn!” With quizzical stares, outright giggles, and ten points to his team, the game winds on. (Oh, the things I didn’t need to know about my students…)
But there are other times when it really hits me that I’m carrying on this life in a land not my own, struggling to impart even an ounce of my own vastly limited wisdom on a brood of youth on the precious brink of adulthood in Asia. In southeast Asia. In Thailand.
Times when I ask students their opinions of the materials we dissect in class, eager to hear the revolutionary self-reflection Glass Menagerie has inspired or the eye-opening experience a thorough perusal of A Raisin in the Sun has afforded them, only to hear groans, whines, and lamentations on the “seriousness” of the material, how “stressed” the characters all are, and just how unnecessarily “dramatic” these dramas read to them, these are the times that get me. Glimpses of troubled American lives, of troubled lives in general ,phase them not in the least, try though I might to expose them to the myriad misconceptions of mental illness (Sylvia Plath’s “Lady Lazarus” and Joyce Carol Oates’ “Aiding and Abetting,” my aids), to introduce them to the dynamics of family life in dysfunctional households (Glass and Raisin to the rescue), the prism of faces in the minority spectrum of the West (hats off to Jhumpa Lahiri and Sandra Cisneros), even the captivating lure of a good piece of mind-bending sci fi (courtesy of none other than Ray Bradbury). But I know all this I say. I accepted it long ago. Get over it. Move on. Teach the material and just let it go.
But I still can’t let it go. I can’t just accept that my kids are unfamiliar with the Holocaust, so: we must read The Diary of Anne Frank. I can’t ignore the reality that my students yawn at the Cambodian genocide, so: we must research on the atrocities of the Khmer Rouge. I can’t rest knowing how many know next to nothing of Israel and Palestine, Afghanistan and Iraq, or the general mayhem and fragmentation of the Far/Near/Middle East. So we must screen scenes of Hurtlocker, discuss the themes in Kiterunner, indulge in bits of Caramel. Though I only achieve a fraction of such lofty ambitions as deconstructing and reconstructing their images of the wide, wide West, with all my years of educational training, prep, and yes, literary, historical, and socio-political obsession with the greater world around me, even now, even a year out/in, it still baffles me to encounter this lack of concern with the greater, wider sphere, or as one student put it, the relative chaos of life both outside and inside of Siam’s walls. “Ajarn, we like calm. Not so much drama, so serious, better calm, more normal.” And suffering in the land of smiles isn’t normal? And pain in a world of hair extensions and lipsticked tears isn’t normal? No, there isn’t suffering, or pain, or general malaise and discontent for that matter, only occlusion, the greatest mask of all. If you don’t see it, it isn’t there. Or is it?
When I get essays from students saying that they were blighted (or was it doomed?) with the curse of homosexuality, and despite their best efforts to change, it was fate they should end up this way; or writings that state: “Sooner or later I have to accept my fate that I am ladyboy and no one can be my soulmate. I have to live my life alone,” that’s when I recognize, in Langston Hughes’ well-worn words that the plastic grins and shrilly giggles truly are mere “laughter to keep from crying,” the high stonewalls of a people’s protective façade. Ironically, that’s when Thailand feels a little less foreign. Because in those moments when I want to reach out and hug someone (but don’t because the physical expression would make most kids blush); or when I want to shed my own salty tears of heartache for their dilemmas (but refrain because such an unchecked display of woe would bring me shame), those are the moments when I feel that maybe I too comprehend the method to the madness so to speak.
Still others remind me on a daily basis of how little I really know about this place and the people in it, even after my year of residing here. The very same day we all giggled and guffawed behind raised palms at the hasty admission of nocturnal indecencies/explorations, I sat in my office, eagerly packing and ready to go, finished with a long afternoon of twenty plus student meetings to counsel my students on their progress in class and warn those dancing on the edge of their imminent descent into the depths of academic no-return. One student, a straggler, tip-toed in bowing politely and sitting before me. I had seen this particular student only a few times before, no regular face in our weekly lessons of which eleven classes had already been skipped. I sighed, sucking in air through my teeth, and had to restrain the urge to roll my eyes. It was 5:30 on a Friday, I was ready to go home and had zero patience for the excuses and whinnies of yet another delinquent pupil. Informing my erstwhile scholar of the pitfalls of self-destructive acedia, I posed the questions I ask to each student who is struggling in a class (albeit at this point eroded to a weary and rehearsed monotone as the clock struck 5:34): Is everything okay at home? Are you having trouble? Why aren’t you coming to class [insert: doing your homework/handing in essays/being a student]?
With that same plastic grin, head slightly bowed, came the soft reply, half-apologetic, half-gentle chuckle. As I heard the words, my mind sort of withdrew. I could hear my own bumbling, stumbling response, though from a great distance, some aquatic bubbles in my ears. The student was rising now, leaving and I wanted to reach out a hand, run and give a hug, scream why don’t you stop smiling and cry?! Why are you even in school right now? If this were the States, you’d be sobbing on my desk. If this were the States, you’d be heaving in my arms. If this were the States, I wouldn’t see you for a month, two months, forget the measly eleven classes you skipped. If this were the States… but of course this wasn’t the States, this was Thailand where domestic violence, sexual assault, abortion, death of loved ones, and attempted suicide are secrets of the shadows. In the haunting words of poet Paul Laurence Dunbar:
WE wear the mask that grins and lies,
It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes—
This debt we pay to human guile;
With torn and bleeding hearts we smile,
And mouth with myriad subtleties.
This is Thailand where the sun only shines on those who shine back and life must be lived in episodes of bright white orchids and mountain rainbows. This is Thailand where the mask isn’t merely a defense mechanism: it’s a way of life.
"This land is your land, this land is my land/
From the teak wood forests, to the Phuket islands/
From the rushing waters, to the peaks of Siam/
This land was made for you and me/
This land was made for you and me."
This land is Thailand after all.
