Burmese Lessons (24 page)

“I know,” he says. “I would like to give up politics, but I cannot. I will be an opposition politician, too. That is my job. To oppose the ruling party.” He sighs. “Do you see children?” He looks at me so seriously that I literally squirm.

“Maung, I don’t really know how to read palms.”

“But whatever you say, I believe you.”

“Then I will say that you need to eat more. You’ve had five cigarettes and half a beer for dinner.”

“You are like my mother.”

“That is not a sexy thing to say to your girlfriend!” I toss his hand away from me, happy to change the subject. “You must never again say I’m like your mother. It’s forbidden!”

“But it’s a compliment.”

“Eat some food!”

“See? Just like Meh Meh.”

I push his plate in front of him. He puts out his cigarette, sheepishly picks up his spoon. “I will try.”

“Try.” My pleasure, as I watch him eat his food, is smug, even carnal. And deeply motherly.

•    •    •

H
e goes back to the office tonight—the Bangkok office, that is, where he sleeps on a mat on the floor—to prepare for an early meeting with some NCGUB guys: the National Coalition Government of the Union of Burma. And the NLD-LA: the National League for Democracy—Liberated Area. Meetings, meetings, meetings. They are endless. Maung doesn’t tell me what they talk about. There are more than a dozen different groups to interact with, at least, and a few hundred egos to negotiate in order to proceed as some kind of united front. Though I’m not sure how united that front really is.

Within its own ranks, the ABSDF has had serious problems. The two sections of the organization represent a serious split in the leadership, with Maung on one side and Moe Thee Zun, the prominent student leader, on the other. I’ve also discovered that an execution took place in the jungle a few years ago, of an alleged spy, which outraged those who believed the man was innocent. An ABSDF member told me about that incident reluctantly, in confidence, and I didn’t press him for details: an execution was not the proposed subject of our interview. I would like to ask Maung about it, but I’m not sure how to, or when.

Maung wants to know what I’m faithful to, what defines me, the way revolution and being Burmese define him. What do I belong to? Why on earth did I say I belonged to him?

Because that’s what he wanted to hear. But it was a romantic feint. I don’t believe that lovers belong to each other. He doesn’t belong to me. His work owns him; it’s the center of his life. I respect him for that, as I respect all those who are involved in Burma’s democracy movement, both the armed and the unarmed fighters. But I also understand those French NGO people who don’t like the word
revolution
. Recent history is drenched in the blood of revolutions. They have always been such a good excuse for mass murder. Even the word makes me suspicious. Doesn’t the revolution simply revolve, coming back to what was there before in a disguised form?

And yet. I believe that some wars need to be fought. But most of them should never begin, and too many of them—in Africa, Central America, the Middle East, not to mention the jungles of Burma—lead to the slaughter of innocent civilians.

But to return to the first question, which should be easier to answer than ones about revolution and war: what do I belong to?

A code of behavior—morals. I believe in acting when I see injustice. I believe in speaking out against violence of all kinds, especially if it means risking my own comfort. But that’s too noble: my big mouth never thinks of comfort; it has its own designs. It’s hard to know when speaking out makes a difference, or if the course of action chosen is the right one. But it is wrong to do nothing. It is criminal to be silent in the face of an outrage. The pathology of the bystander pretends to be a minor, forgivable pathology, but it is the mildest, most common face of evil.

Daily I meet people who have lost everything because they acted and spoke out against injustice. They insisted on their right to protest, to demand better from their abusive leaders, and they paid dearly for it. All the former political prisoners I’ve interviewed have had staring contests with death. A man I spent a few hours with last week, Win Naing Oo, was interrogated, tortured, and, once he had healed from the torture, beaten unconscious in prison. After the beating, he watched as his whole body turned blue and swelled with septicemia. It is a miracle that he did not die, or that he was not crippled by the beating. He has made it his mission to document the various prisons and work camps he lived in. My writing about the Burmese prison experience will depend on his book
Cries from Insein
. My work will come, in part, from his memory. This tall, slender man with shaking hands sat across from me (there was no table between us) in a dirty room with a broken tap dripping behind him, and he said that it was worth it, his suffering, his exile, his loss of health, the nightmares, the pain—so many different kinds of pain. It was all worth it. Not because he had survived but because he had acted, and his action took the form of resistance.

And I have fallen in love with a man who does not question the sacrifices
he makes for the cause he believes in. Do we match? Maybe I should join an NGO and do real humanitarian work in the field—build wells in the refugee camps or help in the Burmese clinic in Mae Sot, an extraordinary place run by a Karen Burmese woman named Dr. Cynthia Maung. Maybe I should just teach English. The most useful thing I do around here is interview people about their experiences in Burma and on the border. Even that is beginning to feel more useful than actually writing a book.

The people I interview want to talk, even if they don’t want to talk about everything. By listening carefully, by asking questions, I become a mirror that reflects their lives back to them. They are here illegally, set apart from the dominant culture, existing in a long, difficult limbo. To tell his or her own history is one way for a human being to reclaim legitimacy. The power of story gives both ways, to the teller and to the listener. It is literally life-affirming.

Brutality makes no sense. It ravages the senses; it takes apart meaning. To be survived, it needs to be integrated into the larger context that is the story of a life, the story of community. If something else came before the cruelty, something else can come after the trauma it leaves behind.

When I have finished an interview with a former political prisoner, I feel a mixture of emotions: a closeness to someone who, an hour or two before, was a stranger; a deep weariness, from taking so much in and holding it; and a sorrow that is not always sad. Maybe a better word is
tenderness
—an anxious tenderness for this person who has entrusted me with his story. Tenderness for his family, from whom he’s been separated, usually, for years; tenderness for my own family, from whom I’ve separated myself willfully. Tenderness for the human condition—how we struggle, how cruel we are to each other, how deeply we want to love and to be loved. I think I feel
metta
, to use the Buddhist term, which carries with it an appropriate formality: loving-kindness. It is a specific feeling, but also a kind of atmosphere that I move around in for a few hours or days after talking with the person.

It’s not easy to separate after these interviews. Too much has been said,
too much has been given, for a hasty departure. The desire to remain in the same room is almost physical, a magnetism between myself and the people I’ve spoken to. We want to return together to this other world of the present, in Thailand. Usually I end up staying at the house or apartment for an hour or two afterward, talking with the larger group of people, drinking tea, chatting. And laughing. We return to the present and usually find a way to laugh. Often the group ends up eating together. The ubiquitous food vendors of Bangkok make it easy for me to contribute to a communal meal. And I talk about my other work, or show the photos that I often carry around with me, of Greece and Canada.

What do I belong to?

The story.

Such a small word. And not an answer Maung would understand.

On the weekend
, I took Aye Aye Lwin shopping for clothes to keep her warm in Norway. She doesn’t know when she’s leaving—the paperwork is still moving through the labyrinth of United Nations and Norwegian bureaucracy—but I’ll miss her when she’s gone. I’ve returned to the house where she lives perhaps half a dozen times; Aye Aye, Ma Tu, and Chit Hlaing have taken the place of a small family in my life. They help me with my Burmese and tell me stories about Burma.

On our shopping trip, I got to be the expert on cold weather, searching for skirts that were thick enough, socks with real wool in them, a good-quality winter jacket. Late in the afternoon, near the end of our spree, she said, “I am older than you, but you are just like my mother!” A few minutes later she said, “And Maung, he is like my father.”

“Is he?” She always refers to him as Ako, which means “older brother.” They seem to be very close. They were in the same jungle camp together for a long time, and I think he protected her. Early on, in the military camps, the ratio of women to men was something like three to two hundred. She’s told me that she has a boyfriend, but he’s still in the jungle.

I don’t know if she knows that I am involved with Maung. More than once, we’ve arrived at her house together, as we did this evening. Maung came in to say hello to everyone, then went to the ABSDF office, which is not too far away. I’m not sure when or how romantic relationships are made public. People must figure things out on their own, but surely, at some point, we will be more open about being together. At present, I have the feeling that we’re sneaking around. Maung is a private man, discreet, though that was not my first impression of him. Chiang Mai was more of an exception than I realized. I’ve gone with him to another party, in Bangkok, but I attended as “the writer who is writing about political prisoners.” Maung didn’t stick to me as he did in Chiang Mai, which was a relief. Of course, he doesn’t have to woo me now that we’re sleeping together. But I don’t think he would have wooed me anyway—too many older political figures were there. Maung was serious throughout the evening, drinking little, murmuring a lot on his cell phone. Once, he disappeared for half an hour. I eventually found him outside, deep in conversation with one of the other men.

We see each other sporadically, and spend our time together in a room without a kitchen. To share a home you must be able to cook food together, not pour curry and som-tam out of plastic bags. I love the street food, but I miss cooking. For that matter, I miss sitting at a dining table. I contemplate buying one but always have better things to do. I bought a work desk for one of the communal dissident houses, but a table for myself seems an extravagance. One of the reasons I love visiting Aye Aye is that the little townhouse provides a domestic haven. It’s comforting. It’s comprehensible, though much of the conversation goes on in Burmese.

T
onight, after we eat together and have a discussion about the mysteries of skiing—Why would anyone want to ski, really, in the cold, covered with padded clothing? Why?—Aye Aye asks me in Burmese if I want to
go to “[Burmese word I don’t understand]” with her. I’m so pleased to understand half the question that I say, “Yes, let’s go,” without knowing our destination. Typical. Somehow I think it has to do with Maung—his house, which I take to mean the ABSDF office. But I’m not sure.

She picks up her knapsack, which suggests that she’s going to a computer training or something, but they’re usually on the weekends. We say goodbye to Ma Tu and Chit Hlaing, but we don’t leave the little street in the usual way, by walking out onto the big road; we walk back down the lane for two minutes, then turn into a narrow passageway between buildings, the kind of path you would miss altogether unless you know it’s there. Obviously the locals use it often, to get from one
soi
to another without having to go to the main street. Aye Aye glances at her watch and picks up the pace. “We have to hurry. I’m going to be late for English.”

“English?”

“English class. I’m going to school.”

That was the word I didn’t get. School.

We leave a vacant lot and pass into the next soi, walking up the street past good-sized houses with small compounds. “That building. Classrooms are upstairs.”

A big dog begins to bark. Louder and probably tougher than the dog, a woman yells in English, “That’s enough! Stop! You know everybody. Stop that barking!” She sounds Irish. Or Scottish.

Aye Aye says proudly, “Is Miss Nola.”

“Your teacher?”

“Headmaster.”

“Oh.” Through the chain-link fence I see the woman turn sharply into the doorway, her dark red hair swinging. The screen door slams behind her.

“Her house is our school.” Aye Aye opens the gate. The dog—a German shepherd—resumes his barking, which is pure canine welcome, accompanied by tail wagging and stolen licks of hand or leg.

“But, Aye Aye, why did you bring me to your school? My English is pretty good.”