A strange thing that we found in both Japan and Thailand is a laugh can have more than one meaning. At first I misunderstood when people would laugh at the most inappropriate times.
The most incredible instance happened yesterday when I was talking to my friend P (not her real name). She was telling me a story of what happened when the military took action in Burma about 15 years ago. There were sounds of machine guns reverberating through out her neighborhood and her parents would not let her and her sister go outside. Her brother came back and said the military was out and they were using firetrucks to wash the blood from the streets...there were bodies everywhere.
A couple of days later she ventured out with her sister down a street near some factories. At this point she described in detail the men's heads that were cut off and placed on the table in front of the factory to discourage any more trouble. .. " The man had long hair and a beard...ha, ha, ha. " She then pointed at her arm to show me the goosebumps. I got to say she was not alone. How strange it is to hear laughter in the middle of such a gruesome story.
An interesting sidebar to this story is that I asked my friend if I could write about this and she said I could if I changed her name and did not show a picture because she is still worried about the welfare of her family members. Maybe she is paranoid...maybe she should be.
No comments:
Post a Comment