Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
He showed me to a small room in another building where a cot was made up with a
blanket, pillow, and sheets, and next to it a tiny night table with a lamp on it. He made
a gesture:
This is my room; you sleep here.
Then he placed both hands on his chest with the fingers knitted together and said a
word that sounded like
Dah-lot.
“Dah-lot?” I said.
And he nodded, though I'm sure I got it wrong, and tapped his chest again. Dah-lot
or something, he said. One of those words I'd never manage to hear or say properly. His
name.
“Bruce,” I said.
“Roo,” he said with a smile, revealing bad teeth and a wear and tear in his face I hadn't
noticed before. He was probably thirty. “What you do?”
“I'm president of the United States,” I said.
Dah-lot nodded and went on to the next subject, gesturing as though lifting a fork to
his mouth.
“Eat?” he said.
It turned out that Dah-lot knew maybe a dozen words of English, and so had been desig-
nated as my host. It also turned out that he was hungry. His plan to feed me was to walk
me into town—I had, in fact, made it to A Luoi—which was about a half mile beyond
the compound and to visit a restaurant he knew. He wanted to know if I had money.
There was a dim streetlight or two along the road, but more prominent was the glow
from television sets in the huts we passed. Dah-lot asked me, in a complicated, half
hand signal, half verbal sort of way, if I wanted to watch TV, letting me know (I think)
that it would be perfectly all right if we just walked up to someone's house and invited
ourselves inside, though I was beginning to get the idea that he was using me as an ex-
cuse to do what he wanted to do himself.
The restaurant, which wasn't much more than a couple of tables in the back room of a
hut, someone's home, was empty, but the woman who lived there let us in and grumpily
fixed a meal. We had a bowl of
pho
and boiled cabbage, and I drank beer. Dah-lot asked
shyly if he might have a beer of his own—this is when I understood I'd be paying the
bill for both of us—and of course I said sure, and when the woman brought a rice pastry
for dessert he asked again if he might have one of his own. He'd found himself a meal
ticket, and I liked filling the role.
I tried to pump him for information. When would I be allowed to leave? He said to-
morrow. I asked him several times to make sure. “I can leave tomorrow?”
