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Chalerm called me in the evening and said he would go to his mother’s village the next morning. He had then arrived in a nearby town where he and the guide stayed overnight in a hotel.
The next day I received a text message from him. I saved the message and it is still in my mobile phone. It reads: “Now I see my mother. I think come back today.” The message was sent 8.06am.
His message made me worried. It was 8am and the visit to the mother was already over? This didn’t sound promising.
I could not reach the phone Chalerm had sent the message from and didn’t hear from the boy until he came back in the afternoon, looking tired and pale.
- Did you meet your mother, I asked.
- Yes.
- What did she say?
- She say “Why you look like girl?”
- She said that?
- Yes.
- Did you see your sister?
- See.
- How did you find them in the village?
- People introduce.
Then he went to bed.
Later the boy told me that his mother had a new family with a husband and several children - Chalerm’s half siblings. The mother had accepted the gift Chalerm brought. I don’t know what it was but the budget for the gift was 1500 baht. The mother had said Chalerm was born in December, not in May the year after. Chalerm was four months older than his papers said. Chalerm also told me that when his family belatedly had taken him to register the child with the authorities his aunt had pretended to be his mother.
Chalerm didn’t say anything negative about this mother. But it was clear both from his face and from the short nature of the visit that the reunion had been a failure.
Chalerm slept for a while and when I joined him in bed he woke and looked at me with distant and foggy eyes. He wanted to be embraced and fell asleep again in my arms. In his sleep he shook and had strange spasms, as if he had a continuous nightmare. He curled up in a foetus position while I held him and only in the early morning hours did his body relax. Then I could sleep too.
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