Burmese Lessons (14 page)

Receptionists and office workers in high heels walk past (making me self-conscious about my clunky shoes), along with salary men, factory employees, pizza deliverers (at ten in the morning), and dozens of teenage girls (wearing the same navy-blue-skirt-and-white-blouse uniform I hated when I was seventeen). The crowd spreads over the broken sidewalks, hurrying toward the new Asia. The Mercedes and Saabs inch by slowly, trapped in the traffic like the cheaper cars and buses.

City of filthy angels and garbage, metropolis of smog and children. The gleaming tops of the pagodas disappear among the skyscrapers, Siam’s new temples, the usual gilded and gleaming centers of commerce. They are flanked by an architectural cancer of shopping malls that has destroyed most of the city’s old buildings.

What makes so much noise? Revving cars, the traffic cop whistles,
two-stroke engine motorcycles, three-wheeled whining tuk-tuks, much human- and machine-generated clamor around building sites (which are ubiquitous), sledgehammers falling, rising, falling beneath the slow pirouettes of cranes, and here in front of me: a man tapping together finger cymbals to entice people to his fruit cart.

Only money makes this much noise.

The stinking, lung-burning serenity of the traffic impresses me. Few drivers honk; no one screams. Buddhist patience informed by habit civilizes the mayhem: people listen to music, talk on their cell phones, and do crossword puzzles. Unwilling to walk any farther, I stop at a corner and enter into negotiations with a motorcycle taxi driver. After a deal is struck, I follow his lead and hop on the back of his huge bike. He hugs the gas tank and enters the gridlock, weaving between vehicles. Perched behind, higher up, I try not to grip the young man’s hips too hard with my thighs. This is not so easy, because my first loyalty is to my kneecaps, which must remain attached to my legs as we speed past jagged fenders and side mirrors.

To keep themselves safe from harm, the motorcycle drivers wear strong amulets. Strong helmets are not as popular, though they sometimes use plastic caps, like the one I’ve got on my head, held on with an unraveling, sweat-stained chinstrap. These young entrepreneurs know that hundreds of people die on Bangkok streets every year, sometimes bleeding to death on the pavement because the traffic is so thick that ambulances can’t get through. The police occasionally have to fly in helicopters to crane-lift wrecked cars—to get the traffic moving again, not to save the accident victims. Self-appointed squads fight over who gets to clean up the bodies.

The traffic makes me miss Rangoon. Away from that beleaguered city for less than twenty-four hours, I am already nostalgic. Less development—read grinding poverty—means fewer cars, less noise, not so much pollution, thousands more trees. I know the generals have kept it that way, inadvertently, through mismanagement, corruption, and lousy public relations.
As we cut through the diesel-y nooks and crannies of Bangkok traffic, I mentally compose a letter.

Thailand has responded enthusiastically to the multinational come-ons. The West promises prosperity for all, or at least for a showy few, forever and ever, or until the market crashes. Thailand, black eyes shining, laps up the dream of a rich future and smiles its famous smile. Unlike every other little country in the region, old Siam was never colonized. The Thai people never struggled vociferously for independence from foreign rulers. Instead, Thai kings and their envoys managed to make alliances and deals with various Western countries, preserving old Siam’s freedom while learning the art of compliance. The most obvious recent example of this gift for accommodation took place during the Vietnam War, when the country became a major site of R and R for American soldiers. Their presence helped create the blueprint for sex, tourist, and service industries that have brought Thailand some financial prosperity and a lot of painful problems.

My motorcycle driver deposits me a couple of blocks away from the Regent Hotel, so I squeeze through the Pratunam Market district, where shops are stuffed with gorgeous bolts of fabric and stalls almost disappear
amid piles of clothes and gadgets. I love the anonymous intimacy of market streets. People push behind me, beside me, until they get past; and I push past other people coming in the opposite direction. Strangers rub against each other matter-of-factly. Your body is also a thousand bodies, two thousand, more, all of us platelets of blood bumping together then giving way as we slip through the artery, rushing onward to do our little blood-tasks in the giant pulsing organism of Bangkok.

I cross a large intersection and begin a perilous walk beside a sprawling construction site, tripping over broken chunks of cement, blowing dust out of my face. The workers’ heads are wrapped in cloth and sometimes hidden under wide-brimmed straw hats. Bandannas cover their mouths, though the cloth will not protect them from the stronger poisons of the trade or the smog in the air. I pause in my walk to look up at a mountain of bricks, upon which sits a young man, cross-legged, eating dust and diesel with his rice. He pulls the bandanna up from around his neck, wipes his mouth, and smiles down upon me, beneficent. I wave back.

Construction workers’ shifts here are twelve hours long. Why smile?

When the day crew finishes, the night crew begins, hammering and hauling and welding—usually without protective glasses—under floodlights. The building sites are hardly different from the ones in Burma, though there is a merciful absence of child laborers. At this site, and at the dozen others my motorcycle driver sped me past, the dark hands of men and women carry buckets of rock and dirt, moving out the debris of the old city as they build the new one.

What is this building-in-progress? No billboard shows the shining computer-generated structure that will rise from the rubble. There is only a vast block of the rubble itself, and people carrying it around. The great boxcar-shaped loads of bricks seem like a beginning. Of what? More established civilization is just a few meters away, across the road.

On the other side, I buy some pineapple from a squat middle-aged man with inflamed acne and layers of acne scars. He bears an uncanny resemblance to the thorny fruit he sells. Using his machete, he hacks a yellow
pineapple into chunks and gives me a quarter of it. I take the fruit, hand him the money, and ask, “What are they building over there?”

“Condo,” he says, the second
o
lifting, stretched out in a rising tone. The word makes me think of the dearth of prophylactics in Pagan.

“How long have the people been working here?”

“Several months. They took down the other buildings.”

“The workers are from the North, right? Esaan?”

The pineapple man looks offended. “No! I am from Esaan. We don’t want that kind of work anymore. All of them”—he waves a dismissive hand toward the construction site—“they are
kohn baa-maa.”
Burmese people.

I see the scene before me anew. Burmese migrant workers. Unable to speak Thai. If they have work permits, they’re still vulnerable to the unscrupulousness of their employers. I eat my fruit as I watch the men and women hoisting, scurrying, carrying. No wonder there are no earthmovers. Burmese laborers are cheaper than machines.

On the next block, I find myself walking up the gentle slope to the entrance of the Regent Hotel. As casually as I can, I step between the tall white pillars. Thai doormen in pith helmets nod at me solicitously.

Now I’m no longer part of the throng. I am a white woman. I try to look the part as I walk among the carp and turtle pools, realizing that scruffy khakis and a T-shirt are not the best costume for an illicit visit to a fancy hotel. But here I can be a mess because of my white woman—ness. I could be staying here, slumming it among the natives. I ascend the wide staircase and smile into the Thai employees’ eyes. Their deference is horrible; I don’t deserve it. I’m an impostor.

I’ve brought my bathing suit because I want to go swimming in the hotel pool. The proper way to return to Bangkok is with a ritual bathing in turquoise-tinted chlorine.

In the change room, I scrub my face with a linen hand towel. Gray water swirls around the sink. Whatever I blow out of my nose is the color of the roads I’ve recently crossed. I get into my bathing suit and walk out
to the shimmering aquamarine rectangle. Water belongs to peace and freedom and that Mediterranean island where you can swim six months of the year. I dive into the pool and put the last harrowing weeks in Burma out of my mind. I think of the Aegean, and remember Seferis:

“The thing is
, you were indiscreet.”

How to answer this accusation? I often am indiscreet, by nature and by choice, but I think she’s wrong about this incident. Unfortunately, I’m not good at arguing, especially with older women. I so badly want them to like me that I perform the metaphorical equivalent of whining, rolling over, and pawing the air: a submissive bitch. Later, on my own, I abhor my groveling and spend hours defending myself.

She continues gravely, “What you did—or, rather, didn’t do—put other people, Burmese people, in danger. You should have switched guesthouses.”

I am still silent, puzzled by the sanctimonious tone I’ve never heard her use before. Where is the Marla I knew before I left for Burma, the tough-talking American activist and journalist, the storyteller who gives impassioned speeches about the Burmese cause? She has two distinct oratorial traits: she punctuates her main points with staccato gestures of her long, thin hands and, when finished with a story, she throws her heavy
dark hair over her shoulder with the finality of someone closing a door. I like her very much.

Or, rather, I think I like her. I have liked her in the past. She tutored me before my trip to Burma and introduced me to Burmese people, both here and inside the country. But something fishy is going on.

“I don’t understand why you wouldn’t have changed places after the first protest. You and most other foreigners were probably being watched from the moment you appeared at the demonstrations.”

Despite the glacial air-conditioning in the coffee shop, Marla’s chest and neck have flushed red. “It’s like you weren’t taking the danger seriously. I’ve stopped phoning into the country, because phone lines are tapped. We have to be careful. We don’t go into the country to endanger Burmese people.”

“Marla, there were protests every day for over a week. I would have called more attention to myself by repeatedly changing hotels. Besides, not everyone changed hotels. One reporter who worked for a major American newsmagazine stayed at the Strand from beginning to end. I chatted with him the night of the Hledan Junction showdown, and he said he was going back to the hotel to file his story over the phone.”

“But he was staying at a big hotel. No one person would have to take responsibility for his behavior—calling out on a line that was probably bugged. No one person could get in terrible trouble because he was staying there.”

“Well, I can’t afford to stay at the Strand.”

“That’s not the point. I told you that if the situation got tense it was best to switch guesthouses.”

Frankly, I was just too tired to switch guesthouses, but I don’t want to admit this to her, so I cast about for some ammunition. “Anita didn’t switch guesthouses.” I hear the petulance in my voice.

Marla spits her rejoinder. “She did, actually, earlier that week.” She and Anita are friends.

“But she didn’t change hotels once those intense days began. There just wasn’t time. We were running around all day long.”

“And look what happened to her.”

“Do you mean that the arrest and interrogation were her own fault? Because she stayed in the same hotel for a few days? If the military intelligence agents in Rangoon decide to pick up a tall blond foreign woman who’s been meeting with Burmese people, obviously they will find a way to do it, no matter where she’s staying.”

Her eyes narrow. “Do you know what else they do?” Her voice cuts loud and sharp through the coffee shop. Several Thai patrons look up. “Do you have any idea?”

I don’t reply. Marla’s fury doesn’t make sense. Is she angry that she wasn’t in Rangoon when the protests took place? After years of filming in Burma and on the Thai-Burma border, she missed recording some of the most significant political events of the past decade.

“Well, do you? I’ll tell you. The MI agents also intimidate and extort guesthouse owners when the ‘wrong’ sorts of foreigners are staying there. That’s what they did to the owners of the guesthouse where you stayed. Personal friends of mine! Who knows how much money they lost.”