In Death's Shadow

There's something striking about Ma-ae, but it takes a while to work out what it is. It's not his looks: he's a lanky teenager who, like most Thai youths, wears blue jeans and a T shirt. Nor is it his religion: he's Muslim, like almost everybody else in Thailand's three southernmost provinces. What's striking about him is this: in a part of the country where a separatist insurgency has claimed more than 1,800 lives since it flared anew three years ago, and where ordinary people are gagged by fear and secrecy, Ma-ae talks. He talks about growing up in a remote,...