“Hello, American Embassy?” I say. “Remember that body you were going to send us? We won’t be needing it after all.”
Bob frowns. He is trying to give serious advice, and I am being a wise ass. I can’t help myself. I drum my fingers on the chair arm.
Bob throws up his hands. “Go if you want, but stick to the more traveled routes, okay?”
“Will do,” I say.
“I’ll make some inquiries,” Bob says, “so let me know when you when get back if you’re interested in a teaching job.”
“Thanks.”
***
The next day I commence a long bus ride to the far northern corner of Thailand, up between the Burmese and Laotian borders. I get off in Chiang Rai and check into a small hotel. The manager, a rather formal middle-aged guy, smiles from behind his tinted glasses and pushes the register book toward me. I write my information down, then flip through the pages looking for ...
“Is something wrong?” the manager asks in decent English.
“Uh, no, everything’s fine,” I say.
Jon Glass. That’s who I was looking for – his signature or Korean motto. I found nothing.
A placard on the wall reads: Visit the hill tribes. Don’t miss this chance! You many never pass this way again.
How true. I can’t imagine ever coming back to this place. Then again, I never imagined being in the middle of a revolution, either. I point to the sign.
“Are you interested?” the manager asks.
“Yeah.”
He pushes another book across the counter which contains testimonials from foreign tourists. Most of the travelers have spent one, or at most two, nights at a tribal village. They rave about the experience – what a satisfying cross-cultural thing it was, etc.
“The overnight trip to the Black Lahu village is very popular,” the manager says. “Not too far, beautiful scenery.”
“I want something longer,” I say. “A week, at least, with lots of hiking.”
The manager frowns slightly. “That would be more difficult to arrange. I’ll see what I can do.”
I go up to my room, a minimalist place with rock hard bed, dingy paint, and a trio of insect-devouring lizards on the walls. I open the window. In a repair shop across the street, a motorcycle engine roars incredibly loud, belching blue fumes into the street. An unwholesome burnt smell wafts up to my room.
After a shower and a shave in the Spartan bathroom, I lie down for a rest. The motorcycle racket has ceased, so the mechanics must have either fixed the damn thing or put it out of its misery.
Lying on my back, observing a lizard creep along the ceiling, I begin to experience claustrophobic paranoia. The horrid thought that I might never be able to leave this room grips my mind. The lizard’s tongue darts out and grabs an insect. I flinch.
Relax, Tyler, my internal voice soothes. You’ve just escaped from Iran. If you’re not paranoid after that experience, it would prove that you’ve really gone off the deep end. Right?
There is a certain logic to this, and I feel a little better. But then another frightening thought occurs. I am preparing to disappear into the wilderness with God knows what kind of person for a guide. Nobody will know where I am – except that spooky manager guy, maybe.
I recall Bob’s warnings, feel the sharp steel at my throat as somebody yanks Jewel Eye from my dying hands. I see faces thrusting out of the darkness, like the soldiers’ faces at the Afghan check points, only these are filled with murderous intent. Cold sweat breaks out on my forehead.
Why not chuck this absurd plan and take the touristy overnight trek instead? I head downstairs. A young boy stands behind the counter.
“Where’s the manager?” I ask.
The boy apparently does not understand. I make circles with thumbs and forefingers and place them around my eyes, miming the manager’s big glasses.
“Yes, yes!” the boy says.
He leads me to the café next door. The manager is sitting at a table with a large bottle of beer and a half-filled glass. He looks coldly elegant and relaxed, like that Mr. Han villain in Enter the Dragon.
“Please sit down, Mr. Lakatos,” he says.
He snatches up another glass and fills it. “Have you tried our local brand?”
“Thanks.”
It is quite good, if a bit warm.
“I wanted to talk about the hiking trip,” I say.
“Yes, good news!” the manager replies. “I have arranged a guide for you. A vigorous young man, like yourself. He can take you far!”
He leans back in his chair, chuckling softly. His front teeth are golded in, enhancing the creepy effect of his tinted glasses. No, he’s not Mr. Han so much – he looks more like Reverend Jim Jones with those glasses.
“That’s ... good.” I study my beer glass.
“He is available for an eight day excursion,” the manager says. “You will see much more than the usual traveler.”
“Eight days?” I say. “That’s a bit long, isn’t it?”
The manager’s joviality instantaneously vanishes. He leans forward.
“You did say at least a week, did you not?”
“Yes.”
He settles back and folds his arms.
“The guide is available for eight days only, Mr. Lakatos, no more and no less.”
Too late to back out, I realize. Best to avoid business disagreements while in foreign countries. Remember the Filipino guy with the chopped arm.
“Fine,” I say.
That night, turning fretfully in my miserable little bed, I am transported back to Iran in my dreams. I hear again the chanting mobs outside my apartment window, the pounding footsteps on the stairs. But when I open the door, instead of security men, an enraged mob clad in burial shrouds awaits, knives flashing.
Later, I return to the canyon where I call into a black, swirling void: “Come back, Jon! Come baaaaaack!”
I wrench awake covered in dank sweat. The night terrors have come for me, and if I don’t fight them, they will take over my life. Action is what I need – great physical exertion and tiredness – until I am strong enough to cope with the shocks I’ve received in the waking world.
67: Final Search
My guide has sharpened canine teeth and ornate tattoos on his arms and torso. His appearance startles me at first, but he seems personable enough – as long as he doesn’t develop a taste for my flesh with those spiky teeth. Best of all, he does not understand English. I have no desire to speak with anyone.
We trek the forested hills together, spending each night in a different village. Every settlement is ethnically different: the Red Lahu, the Black Lahu, the Karin, and other tribes. I scarcely know which is which and do not care. Things just blend together from one day to the next.
The scenery is lush, a jarring contrast to the bleak Iranian desert. But the beauty makes little impression on me. It is the dash along narrow trails that I want. Up, down, then up again, shoving aside the greenery, scarcely pausing to rest. My guide’s speed and endurance are great, but I manage to keep up, refusing to let him slacken the pace.
At the end of each day, I collapse into a dreamless sleep. My vast exhaustion leaves no room for nightmares to intrude.
The villages where we stay are clean and pleasant, for the most part. The people wear attractive native clothes. This could be a real National Geographic experience, but all I want to do is keep moving. And in every village, around every mountain bend, I look for signs – a cryptic inscription, a flash of recognition in somebody’s eyes, a flaming bush. I never find anything.
Late in the afternoons, as exhaustion weighs heavily upon the trek, I imagine that it is Julie leading the way instead of the guide. As my eyes mist over, I visualize her beautiful shape ahead of me on the trail, beckoning me on. Would she ever really be there for me again?
One village is appallingly filthy. Large amounts of pig manure litter the ground, along with sundry other droppings. Bedraggled children roam ab
out. In the hut where I stay, an old man sprawls on the floor mats smoking an opium pipe, observing me with a rheumy eye. The burnt corn smell of the bubbling opium lends a sinister aura to the place. But even here, I keep the night terrors at bay.
***
It isn’t until the sixth day that the realization strikes me. I stop cold, letting my guide surge on alone. Here I am, in the remotest possible location, chasing after Jon all day. And at night I try to hide from him in dreamless sleep. But none of this is necessary.
I don’t have to chase Jon anymore because I’d already caught him, back in Iran.
What would I have done if I hadn’t surpassed him in that race across the desert? Would I have just kept following him, right into the storm? I shudder, recognizing the distinct possibility.
But I’d passed the test and here I am – my own man at last.
Things happened so quickly in Iran that I’d had no time to ponder my success. I now know that, if absolutely pressed to the edge, I could match Jon Glass. I also know that I do not want to live out on that edge like he did ... or does.
I feel as if an evil spirit has been exorcized from my life.
“Slow down!” I call to my guide. “What’s the big hurry?”
He catches my drift across the language barrier, and our trek becomes a leisurely stroll.
***
The final day of the trek, we cross a river in a little pole-driven ferry. After enjoying a soft drink with me, my guide bids farewell and vanishes.
Back in Bangkok I treat myself to a night at a tourist hotel – hot showers, luxurious meals, even a hair cut. The face gazing back from the barber’s mirror actually looks half way human. My action-therapy regimen seems to have helped.
Then, with considerable trepidation, I put through a call to Julie.
How is she going to react, I wonder? I’d essentially dumped her twice – once when I left for Iran without telling her and again when I stopped writing. Would she even talk to me? Would she take only enough time to scream some insults before hanging up?
As I wait for the international operator to perform her magic, I brace myself for the worst. Somewhere, along the tangle of connections between Asia and America, my call is grinding its way through.
“Tyler!” Julie cries the moment she hears my voice. “Thank God you’re safe! When are you coming home?”
68: Melancholy Farewell
“If a hustler goes for you, she ain’t got but one reason ... she likes you.” – Mac, speaking in Sweet Thursday, by John Steinbeck
The situation at Bob’s place has changed greatly when I return there. Rosie has left the bar and moved in with him. The house now reflects a woman’s touch, and the disheveled bachelor atmosphere has departed. Bob can barely contain his excitement.
“Do you think we can make a go of it, Tyler?” he asks.
“I don’t see why not,” I say. “You two look muy simpático.”
That night, I treat us all to a fancy tourist hotel dinner and wish them success in their new life together.
“Best of luck,” I say, hoisting my wine glass. “You certainly deserve it.”
***
The next day I catch my plane to Korea. Bob sees me off at the airport.
“Looks like this is finally the end of Das Road,” I say.
“For me at least,” Bob says, “maybe there’s still a chapter left for you.”
He hands me a large brown envelope. His manner is hesitant, almost apologetic.
“Here’s a photocopy,” he says. “Maybe you’ll want to read it some day ... to remember the old times.”
“Thanks, Bob.”
I feel greatly honored, like I’ve just been handled a medal. The silence becomes sad.
“Well, the ‘real time’ must be here now instead of Michigan, right?” I say.
Bob laughs. We shake hands. I get on the plane, and a strong cord connecting me to my previous life snaps for good.
***
Not much to say about my farewell visit to Korea. The time for Oori Nara is past, and it isn’t home anymore. I am forgetting the language and have no particular desire to speak it, anyway.
Mostly I hang around Choon Chun. The blind beggar man is still playing his flute in the market place, led by the same girl. She is bigger now.
In an act symbolizing my estrangement from the old Korea, I actually patronize a GI bar one night. The American presence in Choon Chun has been scaled back and the Ville has shrunk accordingly. Only a few tacky bars remain near the base.
A semi-circle of black GIs is partying out on the dance floor. Bar girls circulate around them. The white soldiers drink together at tables, some with girls, others in stag groups. I have the impression that an uneasy truce prevails but that it could shatter any moment once the alcohol level gets high enough to unleash animosities.
A white GI approaches my table and speaks in a slurred voice. “You don’t look like you’re in the army!”
The guy has a Southern accent and is talking louder than necessary to override the music. My mind flashes back to the jerks I’d met in the bar back home – the ones with the Nazi attitudes and the Confederate flags on their shirts.
“No, I’m just a visitor,” I say.
I keep a smile on my face but am thinking: Uh oh, the fight’s about to start – me against the whole bar.
The GI is friendly, though, just a bit drunk. We sit a while talking. He seems impossibly young, on a par with the Iranian cadets in Esfahan. I feel like some wise old uncle in comparison. Maybe that’s why he chose my table.
He speaks of his frustrations, homesickness, and uncertainty about the future. A lonely young man far from home, as I have been. He gestures toward the black GIs on the dance floor.
“Most of them are okay,” he says, “though there are a few ass holes.”
I shrug. “Everything is like that.”
He nods agreement and takes a slug of beer.
“So tell me,” he says, “if you saw two people drowning, one white and one black, and you could only save one, which would it be?”
“That’s not enough information,” I say.
“How so?”
“Well,” I explain, “suppose it’s a choice between some white guy and a sharp looking black woman. In that case, consider the white guy drowned.”
He laughs. “Okay, how about if they were both good looking women? Which would you save then?”
The world sure is the same everywhere. Always the big concern is Us and Them – find the differences between people where hatred can fester, and to hell with our common humanity.
The mistreatment of the little mixed-race boy in the tabang, people firebombed out of their homes in Esfahan because they were foreign ‘infidels,’ the miserable outcasts near the Bombay airport – and now back to typical American racial animosities.
“Well?” the young GI says.
“I’d try to rescue both,” I say. “And if I couldn’t, at least I’d die happy trying.”
The black GIs vacate the dance floor. Other soldiers get up from their tables, and the room goes into a general state of flux. Wishing my youthful acquaintance the best of luck, I leave the bar.
Outside is depressing winter. I pull up my collar and shoulder my way through the snowflakes. I feel like some superannuated insect that has survived beyond its natural time and is still fluttering around when it should have long since departed.
Two days later I catch a plane back to the U.S.
69: Homecoming
I’m a human being, and a human being is a vulnerable creature who cannot possibly be perfect. – Karate, My Way of Life, by Shoto Funakoshi
I hang around Los Angeles a couple of days sightseeing. Disneyland is nice, but after experiencing Iran, I cannot be impressed by any make-believe place.
At night, on my hotel room TV, I watch the death throes of the Shah’s regime – escalating violence, Khomeini’s grim reaper visage spewing hatred. I feel an almost unbearable s
adness. I call Mom and get a double earful of news.
She’s filed for divorce! I can hardly believe it, but it has to be true. The world simply can’t be so cruel as to mislead me. The last straw came when Mom discovered Ed had a girlfriend – a.k.a. “that slut.” He’d not spent all those extra hours working at the hardware store, after all. He’d been getting his tool sharpened someplace else.
I am speechless with joy.
“Tyler? Are you there?” Mom says.
“Yes, Mom.”
“You’re awful quiet,” she says. “Are you angry?”
Angry? I want to find “that slut” and give her a big thank-you kiss!
Then comes the sad news. Grandfather Alois had been ecstatic when he’d learned of my escape from Iran.
“Wonderful!” he’d cried. “I can die happy now.”
The next morning, he was found deceased in his bed with a serene little smile on his face. Perhaps Grandma Margit came back for him after all.
***
I receive a joyous welcome at the airport from Mom and Julie.
“Just think, Tyler,” Julie says, “everything that’s happened has brought you right back to me!”
She is so lovely that I can’t believe I’d actually left her behind. Speaking of her behind, it is even more fabulous than I remembered.
The next week, after shopping for an engagement ring, Julie and I visit my grandparents’ grave at Valley Oaks Cemetery. While I’d been in Iran, Grandpa had purchased a double plot and relocated Grandma’s remains. I wonder if Frank Meade handled the transaction.
I can just hear Grandpa saying: “Cut the razzmatazz, young man!”
So, this benevolent figure who watched out for me my entire life has finally moved on. I’m glad that I sent him so many pictures. I felt as if I was carrying Grandpa’s youth in my camera as I traversed the foreign lands. Dozens of my photographs were found spread on his coffee table when they came to take him away.
I brush a tear from my eye and try to direct my thoughts toward happier things. For the first time in my life, I feel prosperous. My Iran savings, plus my inheritance from Grandpa, comes to a tidy amount. At the jewelry stores today, I’d refused to consider any diamond under a full carat. Two carats would be better.
But Julie, always the practical one, said that she’d like to wear her Grandmother’s beautiful diamond. She’ll let me pay for a resetting, though. Later, when I am rich and successful, I can splurge on the big gem I want for her, she said.