Private Dancer

by Stephen Leather

their mistakes or lies, it's not in their culture to accuse people of falsehoods or to rub their noses in their errors. It's all about face, and if I told Joy I knew that she'd lied to me, she'd lose face. But in her mind, I'd be the one in the wrong because I'd behaved badly by pointing out that she'd lied. It was game, and

If it's someone older or more respected, they'd say ‘pee’ for he or she. If younger, ‘nong’. Between equals they'd use ‘kao’ for he. But Joy and Sunan had used ‘man’ as the pronoun, and man wasn't used for people, ‘man’ was used for animals. It meant ‘it’, but ‘it’ doesn't convey the contempt implied when a Thai uses it to refer to a person. It's a huge insult.