Page 37 of That's Not a Thing

I find Rose in her office and fill her in on the work I’ve managed to complete, as well as the holes that still need addressing. We have ample data about Moe’s home district, the political climate of the region as a whole, and the day on which the Myanmar military plundered his village, but we are still missing adequate details about how those attacks affected Moe personally. Beyond the obvious devastation that a military attack would precipitate, we need to populate Moe’s application with personalized details to bolster our claims: names of lost loved ones, specific actions of enemies that have led to a continued fear for his safety in his home country. We also need more background on the time he spent in the refugee camp in Thailand. I want to know why he avoided speaking about that period when we last met.

Rose nods while I talk but doesn’t jot down any notes. Instead, she fishes for a pair of eyeglasses that she finally pulls from her purse. Along with her dark hair pulled into a low ponytail, and a long pearl necklace hanging over her pink sweater set, the wire-rimmed spectacles are the final touch, completing her costume as an up-and-coming superstar attorney.

We head down the hall to the conference room where we will be meeting with Moe. It’s noticeably chilly, the air-conditioning blasting forth in the odd display of corporate bluster that turns our office into an icebox, even during the winter months. It’s as though there’s an unspoken understanding that whichever firm can afford to keep its rooms the coldest must somehow be filled with the smartest, most desirable attorneys.

Rose’s assistant has taken care of stocking the room with platters of pinwheel sandwiches, cookies, and petite bottles of soda. There’s enough food for a party, even though there will be only four of us here once Moe arrives with the interpreter. I wonder how it must look to him, all this excess, after having grown up in one of the world’s least developed countries. His life was so different from the average American’s that he had to be shown how to flush a Western toilet after he arrived in the States.

I hear the ding of the elevator and look through the all-glass wall of the conference room to see Moe emerging from the opening doors, along with another young man who is probably the interpreter. Though it’s not the same interpreter who was with him last time. Rose walks out to the reception desk, and I follow behind her to greet them.

“Good afternoon,” the man with Moe says. “I am Arnie, the translator.”

“Excellent.” Rose speaks first, showing herself to be the one in charge. She reaches out to shake Arnie’s hand. “I’ll try not to keep you too long.”

Arnie is older than Moe, probably in his mid-thirties. He’s taller, too, somewhere around five foot eight, as opposed to Moe’s mere five feet, four inches of stature. They have the same caramel-colored complexion, but Moe is the handsomer of the two, with his sparkling brown eyes and wide-open smile. I notice for the first time that his teeth are in surprisingly good shape, though I wish he would lose the silver hoop in his left ear.

“It is ... good ... seeing ... you.” Moe ekes out the greeting word by word, as he nods at Rose and me. She and I exchange an openly impressed glance, silent kudos to the bit of progress Moe seems to be making with his English.

We sit down at the conference table, Arnie and Moe on one side, Rose and I on the other. I have the irrelevant thought that we’re in the perfect position to begin a rousing card game as Rose charges straight to business. She begins asking Moe for elaboration on his prior statements, one after the other. He tells us again how his village was inhabited by Rohingya people like him, a Muslim group that has been persecuted in Myanmar for decades. He explains that the Tatmadaw, which are the Burmese armed forces, have been targeting the Rohingya people for ethnic cleansing.

I hold up a finger indicating that Moe should pause in his story, and I turn to Rose. Her dark eyebrows are rising in what appears to be impatience. “This is the same information he’s already told us. We need more information about how these conditions affected him personally. Can you try to steer him in that direction?”

Rose sighs as she turns back toward Moe and Arnie, rewording her question. “What happened to you, Moe, in your home, that made you decide to leave?”

Arnie repeats the question in Burmese, and Moe’s eyes shift from Rose to me and then back to Arnie before he responds in Burmese. “They arrested my uncle, but with no reason,” Arnie speaks as though he is Moe, his eyes on Rose. “They took him away.” Moe is finally telling us something new. “My mother, she told me to go, to escape before they came back for me. I did not want to go, because then my mother and my sister would be unprotected. The secret police, they are known to commit terrible violence on the village girls or sell them. So I would not go away.”

He stops then, as though that is the whole story.

“What happened next?” I press. Rose shoots me a look like I’ve spoken out of turn, as though only she can ask the questions.

Moe eyes scan the room as he answers the translated question, looking everywhere except at us.

“My cousin told me the Tatmadaw were coming back, that they were at the other end of the village, making more arrests, that they had my name and they were coming for me. So then I did run.” He swallows. “I don’t know now, about my mother.”

I remember my musings from earlier, about Moe being one of the lucky ones, but as I watch his face tighten, I begin to rethink the wordlucky.

“What about your sister?” I ask, and I feel Rose tense up in the leather chair beside me, her anger at me for commandeering the conversation escalating.

Arnie repeats the query in Burmese and Moe swallows hard, like the question has surprised him. The interpreter says something else, in his own words, and Moe shakes his head, his jaw clenched.

“What is it?” I ask as Rose’s phone pings with a message from its spot beside her notepad on the table. I glance her way as her eyes dart to the screen.

“You know what?” Rose interrupts, pushing back from the table. “They need me downstairs for a few minutes. You seem like you’ve got this.” She flings the words in my direction, her tone acidic.

I am too focused on the question of Moe’s sister to care whether Rose is miffed that I’ve somehow encroached on her authority.

“Thanks for your help,” she adds to Arnie as she whisks up her papers and marches back toward the elevator.

“Your sister,” I say again as soon as the glass door swings shut, my eyes focused on Moe.

He shakes his head no, and I’m surprised he understood.

“Please,” I say directly to Moe, but then I glance quickly at Arnie, wondering if he can help convince Moe to reveal the information. “The more we know about what happened to you, the better we can argue your case. Evidence about your other family members is important to your application.”

As Arnie repeats my words, Moe lets out a heavy breath of air, his eyes shifting from Arnie to me, then back to Arnie, and finally to his hands. He pulls absently on a loose thread hanging from his chambray shirt before speaking again, quietly.

“I found her,” Arnie translates, “in Mae La, in Thailand. I didn’t think I would see her again, but then she was there, standing in the center of the small market, just beside the mangoes, on my fifth morning in the camp. She had a wound healing down the side of her face, a scar coming, but besides that, I thought she was all right. All she knew of our mother was that the military men had taken her somewhere. We couldn’t go back for her, so we started making plans to go somewhere else together—Australia, America.”

He looks up at me, and I nod encouragingly.