Gulf

The book group’s last two selections have been set in India and Afghanistan (The God of Small Things and The Places in Between). Reading them has made me appreciate Thailand more than ever.

I found nearly every one of the characters in these books to be off-putting. No doubt they would feel the same way about me.

Normally, learning about other cultures makes me want to pack my bags and go see for myself. This time, I felt quite content to stay put and continue adapting to the Thai ways.

Those ways are just different enough from the ways I grew up with to be interesting, but not different enough to be unattractive. But India and Afghanistan strike me as just a little too weird.

I know these countries are big places. Like the U.S., probably anything you say about them is true somewhere. But as long as I’m generalizing shamelessly, let’s look at conflict resolution. Here in Thailand, people often go so far out of their way to avoid disagreement that problems linger and fester because nobody wants to address them.

I’ll take that approach over an attitude that turns even small stuff into a fight. Nearly everyone in the books went around shouting, or preparing to take revenge. Me, I’d rather tiptoe.

Or consider an everyday event like meeting someone you haven’t seen for a while. In The Places in Between, the author describes normal people reciting long prescribed speeches that sound to me like high-level diplomatic protocol. I know that kind of drill probably isn’t as common in real life as it appears in the book, and I know Americans’ impatience with decorum and formality makes problems for them in many parts of the world. Nonetheless, I prefer just putting my hands together in front of my face, as the Thais do, than going through a long spiel every time I run across a friend.

Just one more reminder that the world needs to do lots more cross cultural communication. Next month our group tackles Nine Parts of Desire, about Muslim women. The gap between the cultures described in that book and the one I live with here is even wider than the ones in our previous titles. No doubt this medicine is good for me, but I’m still glad Jip and I met where we did.