Windows To The World

Laos in yellow

ANARCHY AND OLD DOGS

Colin Cotterill

Vientiane, Laos

Dr. Siri Paiboun is a hearty 73 year old that is quite proud of having been an active force in the thirty-year struggle of the Pathet Lao in their efforts to throw off the yoke of colonialism. He understands that the very new two-year-old Democratic Republic of Laos has to undergo a great many growing pains. He is still willing to do his part and that is why he is the national coroner of Laos even though he has no training in that particular field. He never hesitates to thumb his nose at his very young and superior boss who knows less than he does  when he is not shown the proper respect.

Dr. Siri is a humble man who lives in a government issued bungalow with Mickey Mouse curtains on the windows. He lives a simple life and he believes utterly that despite all the foolishness of the current government things will get better when people get trained for the jobs they hold.

Sometimes when Siri is in doubt about certain aspects of his job he turns to the French expert Inspector Maigret. This is the case when he discovers a blank piece of paper in the pocket of a blind dentist who was hit by a bus. He remembers how Maigret used a formula of sodium bicarbonate to reveal hidden messages written in invisible ink. Thus he uncovers an n encoded message that starts him on an adventure that caps a lifetime of struggle. It appears that is a rebellion afoot, a drive to bring the royalists back.

Movie theater

Siri and his associates take a trip into the countryside to see if this rebellion is real. What I find most real about this book is some of the idiocies that are perpetrated on the populace of the fledgling socialist republic in order to indoctrinate them into the correct way of thinking. One example is in the showing of a Bruce Lee film. In the theaters the actual sound tracts are silenced and Lao actors and musicians substitute the words and music according to a specific script. The villains become capitalistic western oppressors who are usurpers of agronomic labor and Bruce a defender of the Lao Democratic Republic. Siri and his friend find these films hilarious but understand how they have come about. The Laotians have been kept down and uneducated for a long time and are poorly prepared for the positions of power they now hold, but he knows things will get better.

In ANARCHY AND OLD DOGS Cotterill gives a greater voice to Dr. Siri’s past than he has in previous books and he does it in a gentle fashion, which adds greatly to the story. The Laotians are reacting to the fact that for a long time they were considered lazy, dumb, and in fact lotus-eaters by the French. It was also a bitter pill to swallow that the Royal Laotian Army, their own kind turned against the peasants. They felt they were kept poor and ignorant to be better slaves to the colonialists. These mostly poorly educated men and some women are now the people in power and they have a lot of learning to do and it will come in time. This book is the fourth in the series and it  is in this mystery that Dr. Siri really starts coming to life for me.