At the border

Standing on the low, sandy cliff--the powdery slope serving as the border of Thailand--I squinted out across the river at the gleaming bodies making their way through the quick-moving water. One, two, three...five...seven--I counted the young men edging their way towards the opposite river bank, towards Burma, plastic slippers dangling from their finger tips, smiling broadly and shouting to each other. One of them was beginning to lose his low-slung pants in the current, prompting eruptions of laughter from the others. I tented my hands over my eyes and focused on the approach of the first boy to the far bank. He had told me, just days before, that it had been seven years since he had seen his country. He began to move faster as he got closer, elbows rising high above the glassy river to propel him forward, invisible legs running beneath the surface, smile spreading further as he went. As his body appeared, bit by bit, out of the river, he planted his hands on the steep embankment and scrambled up the bank, all skinny-muscled limbs and hard-narrow back. And when he was finally standing on the other side, he rose, lifted his hands above his head and shouted in English, "I am going back to Burma!"

You're already there, I said to him, to myself, from my perch on the cliff in Thailand. You're already back. The late afternoon glow off the river weeds and the glint of the sand lent the scene an other-worldliness; I relaxed my fierce watch--and with it, my belief that by watching I could keep him, all of them, safe, let me eyes blur and for a moment, I couldn't see him at all.