Silver jewelry neck finger

displaying gold and silver jewelry. Their ears, necks, fingers, and hands are heavy With yellow twen\ty—four-carat gold jewels as they beckon you over to their counters. A couple of feet across from the women, behind yellow, featherless chickens hanging from hooks, men in bloody aprons raise their cleavers and cut into slabs of beef with the precision of many years’ practice. Farther away from the meat vendors, fashionable youths with thin Elvis Presley sideburns in bell—bottom pants and cor- duroy jackets play loud Cambodian pop music from their eight—track tape players. The songs and the shouting vendors bounce off of each  Other, 2111 Vying for your attention.  Lately, Ma has stopped taking me to the market with her. But I still '  wake up early to watch as she sets her hair in hot rollers and applies her makeup. I plead with her to take me, as she slips into her blue silk shirt and maroon sarong. I beg her to buy me cookies while she puts on her gold necklace, ruby earrings, and bracelets. After dabbing perfume around her neck, Ma yells to our maid to look after me and leaves for the market.  Because we do not have a refrigerator, Ma shops every morning. Ma likes it this way because everything we eat each day is at its freshest.The pork, beef, and chicken she brings back is put in a trunk—sized cooler filled with blocks of ice bought from the ice shop down the street. When she returns hot and fatigued from a day of shopping, the first thing she does, following Chinese culture, is to take off her sandals and leave them at the door. She then stands in her bare feet on the ceramic tile floor and breathes a sigh of relief as the coolness of the tile flows through the soles of her feet.  At night, I like to sit out on our balcony with Pa and watch the world below us pass by. From our balcony, n1ost of Phnom Penh looms only two or three stories high, with few buildings standing as tall as eight. The buildings are narrow, closely built, as the city’s perimeter is longer than it is wide, stretching two miles along the Tonle Sap River. The city owes its ultramodern look to the French colonial buildings that are juxtaposed with the dingy, soot—covered ground—level houses.  In the dark, the World is quiet and unhurried as streetlights flicker on and off. Restaurants close their doors and food carts disappear into  Side streets. Some cyclo drivers climb into their cyclo to sleep while