For Us Surrender Is Out of the Question (32 page)

We hopped on his motorbike and drove away from the house, out of town, in the twilight. The roads became narrower and the air cooler as we got farther along pavement cut through forest. I sat behind Htan Dah, who leaned easily into the bends, watching and breathing in the trees. We stopped when they gave way to a grassy clearing, and Htan Dah took the keys out of the ignition.

“What is this?” I asked.

“This is it.”

It was just a big field. “Really?” We started onto it, slowly. “What is this now?”

“Part of a farm.” His voice was low, quiet, like it always was when we were in public, though there was no one here to notice his accent now. I hated to see him doing this, nearly whispering out of habitual fear. I stuck close to him so I could hear his tour.

He pointed to which way Burma was, just over there, beyond those trees, and where he had lived with his mother—and his father when he wasn’t at war—over that way. There was a school, here, he said.
This, this was all houses, all of this. That is about it, he said, hushed. We hadn’t been there for five minutes. There wasn’t a lot to see. There wasn’t a single sign that thousands of refugees had lived there not ten years earlier. Htan Dah stood in the meadow, saying nothing, and didn’t make a move to leave, his black hair sharp against the glaucous, staticky light of the darkening sky. I looked away from his quiescent profile. All was long grass, beset by a wall of woods. It was hard to imagine him younger and running for his life here, how people had died here, in all this soft, empty green. Any trace of that had burned thoroughly and easily enough, and the field growth had fully reasserted itself. We turned and walked back through it, thick under our feet, when he was ready to go.

As we neared the motorbike, we passed an old man. He said something to Htan Dah, and Htan Dah smiled and nodded politely back, and we continued toward the road.

“Who’s that?” I asked.

“He is Karen. A laborer.”

“Do you know him?”

“No.”

“What did he say?”

“He said to come back often.”

There are many people have day dreaming to take resettlement in the
third countries. Everywhere I go, I hear talk about a third country, people
who live in one of the camp in the north of Thailand name Umphium
Mae are excited about to resettlement in the third country which is
arrange by the UNHCR. It becomes the hip pop popular in the camp.
So that people are crazy on going to the third country and have a dream
for their future.

One of my aunts who work in the hospital said “I don’t want to attend
work because soon I have to go to the foreign country.” when they meet
each other with friends, they talk about the same issue. Some people are
also confused about this issue. It is better to go to the third country or to
go back to their homeland? Even though they want to go back they won-
der to themselves Where is my land? Where is my house? How do I start
my life? Everything is vague for them. As for me I worry about another
thing. What should we do if the refugee people go to the third country?
Who will struggle for independence? This question comes up from my
mind and it makes me upset and worried and hurts my heart. I don’t
know. So if I visit the house in the camp I ask them “Will you go to the
third country? Most people reply “yes”. So it makes me tired.

—MU NA, THURSDAY, JULY 6, 2006, WORKSHOP, MAE SOT, THAILAND

IT WAS
possible that my presence reminded my housemates/students/ coworkers of all the freedoms that one could have in a life and that, as my departure grew nearer, their desire to get help acquiring them intensified. It was also possible that the firestorm of questions about and applications for resettlement that were suddenly pushed in my face was ignited by Htan Dah’s having left for Mae La. Everyone knew that he, like my student Mu Na, didn’t approve of the masses of Karen attempting to expatriate to a third—as in non-Thailand or -Burma—country. He loudly and conspicuously said, whenever I asked him about applying for resettlement, that he wouldn’t leave Southeast Asia and the struggle that was his duty to the Karen people. Once, when I was sitting in the living room surrounded by guys, Htan Dah walked in, heard that they were asking me how they could get to America and what life there would be like, then turned around and walked right back out.

Whatever the impetus, resettlement was the prevailing theme when I asked my students, the day after Htan Dah left, to make sentences for me in present perfect tense. “I have been to the US over a hundred times . . . in my imagine,” Wah Doh said. Saw Kaw, with the handsome shaved head and strong shoulders and hepatitis, smiled at me sweetly and said, “I have been to Australia . . . in my dream.”

Later that night, Ta Mla came into my room to talk, sitting down next to me on the reading bench. I’d come down with a little bit of something (“Of course you’re not feeling well,” Abby said. “You aren’t sleeping. You live in a frat house.”) and wasn’t my usual energetic self. I’d been told three times in as many days and by as many Karen men that I shouldn’t be too thoughtful, because I should be happy, because then I wouldn’t get sick, because being unhappy led to disease. Ta Mla had his own advice for me now: “When I get upset,” he offered, “nobody can make me feel as happy as playing guitar and sing a song.” But he wasn’t here to talk about me.

Three weeks ago, he said, a classmate of his who had moved to England had called. Living in England, the friend had told him, was
awesome. When I asked Ta Mla if the guy wasn’t totally broke, he said, “He said he can move about freely.” When I pressed him, asking about the culture shock and the language barrier and the distance between him and his family, Ta Mla said, “Yes, but anywhere he wants to go, he can.” This phone call had further convinced Ta Mla that the best place for him might be overseas. “The situation in my country is difficult . . . so that if I go back there, we might not be able . . . to . . . feed ourselves,” he said. “There is instability. So if I get opportunity to resettle . . . I would like to go there. The problem is, how do I resettle?”

This was no rhetorical question. Eh Soe had long ago filled out an application for asylum in some country or other and was having a hell of a time figuring out the status of his bid. The only thing he’d gotten so far was an email from the UN in response to his many queries, and it was so brief and cryptic and noncommittal that even I couldn’t decipher it with all my native English skills and college degrees.

Even getting that far in the process wasn’t so easy. In Ta Mla’s opinion, the UN workers in camp didn’t adequately assist uneducated families with their applications, and it was unfair,
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and it made him terribly “unhappy.” One time when he was in camp, he’d actually asked the UN workers why this was so, why they didn’t give priority to the illiterate, the poorest and most destitute, who needed the most help, since the current system was just rewarding the most educated and best off, the same types who had TVs and the generators to run them and already knew how to help themselves. The workers had responded that that was a difficult question to answer.

The process of getting Ta Mla from that reading bench in Mae Sot to the United States of America would have started with, well,
a preparedness to lie about ever having enlisted or met anyone in the KNU, and then his informing the UNHCR office in the refugee camp where he was registered (and pretended to live, since it was illegal for him to live where he did) of his interest. The UNHCR would refer his case to the US Embassy. That would prompt the Overseas Processing Entity, which is an organization contracted by the United States State Department, and which in this case was run by the International Rescue Committee, to preprocess Ta Mla’s application, which would involve filling out a family tree, a short bio, and requisite US government forms, before turning it over to the Department of Homeland Security.

The next step would be an interview by a DHS agent. If Ta Mla lived in Mae La or one of the camps that’s relatively easily accessible from big cities, he’d be interviewed there. If he lived in Umpiem, like Htan Dah used to, which is a couple hours’ drive from Mae Sot, he and any relevant spouses and/or children would have to be sent to Mae Sot,
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where an intergovernmental organization built DHS a little compound in its processing center because DHS had refused to go to Umpiem.
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There, Ta Mla and his family would sleep in the compound for four or five days while awaiting DHS interviews. The International Organization for Migration, which is contracted by the US government to prepare the refugees for resettlement and actually move them, would use some of Ta Mla’s downtime to sneak in English classes, which the US government does not fund. He would also go through the medical screening process, in which he’d be checked, per the Centers for Disease Control, for TB (but not malaria). If he did have TB, as did up to 15 percent of the camp dwellers, he’d have to start a six-month drug regimen. If he had multiple-drug-resistant TB, however, that, as IOM’s cultural orientation officer puts it, “is a problem.”

Ta Mla’s DHS agent would, by the principles of the Asylum Officer Basic Training course of the Immigration Officer Academy, on which refugee-officer training is based, begin the interview by “attempt[ing] to establish rapport” and “help the applicant feel at ease” in whatever manner the agent saw fit. The agent would then explain the interview process, that all information is confidential, taking time to elaborate, if necessary, on how some governments keep citizen information confidential. Ta Mla would be sworn in, the DHS agent making modifications to the oath if Ta Mla objected to saying “swear” or “so help me God.” The agent would then verify Ta Mla’s paperwork before pursuing, “in a nonadversarial manner,” a line of questioning that would prompt Ta Mla to explain in his own words why he was applying for asylum. He would be allowed to make a closing statement, and then be informed that he’d be notified of the decision by letter.

If Ta Mla’s application were approved, then it’d be time to learn to become an American! He would have five days to do this in twenty-five hours’ worth of cultural orientation classes run by IOM. The twenty or so students in the room brainstorm about what life in the United States will be like, have their attention brought to some laws that resettled Karen have run afoul of (you cannot just pee anywhere outside, like you can in a village), and are told over and over that it is important to get a job—Any. Job. They role-play important elements of this process, like handshaking. They are given a brochure that says please help me I’m a refugee and I don’t speak English that they can point to by way of seeking assistance in finding their connecting flights in US airports. They are given a book in Karen about United States culture. The information is practical, if occasionally brutal:

That description, helpfully, is complete with a photograph of a big fat white lady in an unflattering tank top and khaki shorts.

Many of these sentiments are echoed in a DVD developed by the Center for Applied Linguistics in Washington, DC, that opens with a waving American flag and some nice plucky folk guitar. First there are some refugee talking heads, people who’ve resettled from all sorts of countries providing some realistic expectations for arrival (you’ll feel lost, and scared, and sad and alone because you’re away from every thing and person you know, but you just have to work really hard). Then there’s some basic info (if you work hard and are resilient, you can make a contribution to this great nation like some immigrants before you have; try to learn English; when your plane lands in America, follow the other people on it to find your way out of the airport; “Americans value self-reliance, so you will be expected to work and to take responsibility for your own life as soon as possible”; you can apply for food stamps, and try not to be overwhelmed by the number of cereal brands in an American grocery store; you can apply for cash assistance, but it’s very limited, because “most Americans believe adults should work to support themselves and their families rather than rely on cash assistance from the government”; be aware that said assistance takes a long time and a lot of paperwork to get). There are some helpful tips about interacting with people who try to help you (just because a church gives you assistance doesn’t mean you’re legally obligated to participate in that religion with those people, and if any resettlement-agency staff pressures you to go to church, tell on them; policemen are your friends,
not your harassers, and they’re not going to hurt you, they’re never going to hurt you—“unless you fight them”) and how to live in an apartment (your resettlement agency will provide you with a week’s worth of food and enough dishes for cooking and eating; figure out which utilities you have to pay and how to pay them). It covers some of the differences you may experience in the culture of work (if you were a doctor or an engineer, you’re not anymore, and have to start the certification process over; in America, women can work outside of the house and in the same jobs and offices as men—“in fact, your supervisor may
be
a woman!”; in America, both parents often have to work; “the United States is a land of opportunity for those who are willing to work hard”) and education (there’s no shame in going to school as an adult; enroll your kids in school immediately; “discipline in most schools does not include beating”). If you feel so sad or anxious about the changes and challenges in your new American life that you feel like you can’t go on living anymore, the video explains, you should seek help if that feeling lasts for more than a couple of weeks (particularly vulnerable are the elderly, “who may find that in the United States they no longer hold positions of respect”). Then there’s a list of rules that may not apply in your old country but do in ours (you can’t smoke wherever you want; you can’t use drugs; hitting your spouse to ensure that your spouse respects you is “not what we do in this country”; don’t hit your kid; don’t drive drunk or high; don’t say sexually offensive things to your coworkers; again, seriously, no sex with minors).