“We stopped for a week here and there on our way to the Lao border, living off the land. One day he turned up at the campfire with his diary in his hand. He’d taken it from under the seat. I didn’t even realize he knew where his kit was. He showed it to me. I couldn’t understand anything but it was beautifully written. I wasn’t sure what he wanted me to do. He’d point to this or that and I realized he wanted me to tell him the Lao words. So that’s when I started to teach him Lao. We began with the basics: name, where he came from, age, et cetera. I’d write it in sand or mud and he’d copy it into his diary. It was incredible how fast he picked it up. I guess all those nights in the hospital with me speaking to him in Lao language had stuck somehow. He ate it up. He was like an alien coming to earth with only a brief time to understand everything. I would give him a phrase and do my best to explain the meaning and he’d nod and write. On the journey we picked up a notebook and pencil for me and we’d communicate through Lao writing. I suppose you could say we became pen friends. But from that night we fled the hospital till he left us, I never heard him say a word.”

“In all the time you were together?” said Daeng.

“Not a single utterance,” said Satsai.

“And you brought him here,” said Siri.

“It was the only safe place I knew. My family liked him. They understood. The war had crushed him just as it had destroyed our country. The weight of it had been too much for him. It was a month in my village before he lost his multiple nervous tics. His hands stopped shaking. He no longer drooled. He used school notebooks to express himself. The village women taught him embroidery and cooking. He read the few Lao language books we had. His diary became his private world. I didn’t ask him what he was writing there. I hoped that one day he might show me.