The Lady and the Peacock (24 page)

After passing through many small delta villages they arrived at last at the tiny spot where Suu was born.

Arrived at Hmway Saung Village where Daw Khin Kyi gave birth to Suu while hiding from the Japanese. That village so proud of it.

First we went to monastery then to large stage built in the fields. No shade for the audience yet they had waited in that summer sun for hours. Whenever Suu apologizes and tries to cut short her speeches because of hot sun and people sitting in their full rays they call back no, no, it's not hot, denying the very existence of that fiery ball.

Since we came by car we couldn't see the place where Daw Khin Kyi landed over forty years ago. So three of our boys including Win Thein, the hothead who had carried the party flag at Danubyu, went to investigate in the name of historical research.

But the Burmese capacity for taking it easy got the better of them. “They saw some boats moored and decided to snooze in them a while. They can nap anywhere and under whatever conditions. They were still sleeping when we unknowingly left after about one and a half hours. There were so many cars and so many NLD supporters hanging on to the cars welcoming us or seeing us off from place to place, sometimes we feel like a circus traveling with its audience.

On to Hmone Gyi village and a speech there . . . Discovered three boys missing and Ma Ma worried sick. I wasn't so worried. They eventually caught us up by boat, arriving a little after 10
PM
.

April 10: Ma Ma wore a yellow jacket, brown longyi. Left Pyapon village 5
AM
by boat. Kyontar village and Kyowar Kyauk village welcomed us with music from the full traditional orchestra. Long boat ride, nearly seven hours, changing boats twice, small fast ones.

As the NLD party puttered on through the muddy waters of the delta, Burma's biggest annual holiday was stealing up on them:
Thingyan
, the annual water festival, ushering in the new year, when problems large and small are forgotten and for a few wild days everyone says exactly what is on their mind, however unthinkable that may be the rest of the year.

But a full year of revolt had put the festival in a new and menacing light. The temptation for the students to let rip with their true feelings about the regime would be hard to resist—and in fact to channel and encourage those emotions the NLD had organized a competition for the most humorous and hurtful anti-regime slogans, to be bawled out by
contestants outside the party's head office during the festival days. But could the army be relied on to take the abuse lying down, as those in power had laughed off such acts of
lèse-majesté
in years past? Ma Thanegi was not at all sure they would. “I felt apprehensive about this Thingyan thing,” she confided to her diary, “as it is a good excuse for SLORC to start gathering up our NLD people.”

“April 11,” she wrote, “Ma Ma wore pink jacket, red Shan longyi, left Kadon Kani at 5:30 by boat arrived at a village where people very scared . . . Arrived in Bogalay 1 pm, big crowd, flowers, arrived Maung Kyaw town at 6
PM
for overnight stay.” The students in the party were already getting in training for the festival. “Our boys shouting anti-regime Thingyan slogans at tops of lungs, practicing for slogan competition to be held in Rangoon.

“April 12, first day of Thingyan. Left Mawkyun at 6
AM
when we were supposed to leave at 5. Boat trip the whole day . . . Passed by Bon Lon Kyaung village, Thingyan songs played from loudspeakers and two very rough-looking types danced in welcome. All through day water splashed on our boat.”

Now they were heading back to Rangoon for the culminating days of the festival. But the city, normally a scene of wild celebrations at this time, was sullenly silent, closely guarded by the army.

Spent night on boat, traveling all night when we were supposed to be back in Rangoon that night.

April 13: Arrived 6
AM
at Nandigar jetty in Rangoon. Driving through city, saw the streets were deserted, no water festival pandals of any kind—there were only about three in town.
³
As we came home in the back of the pick-up truck, a couple of the kids with us waved the big NLD flag.

We all went first to Ma Ma's house where we got down. We noticed a large stage at gate of 54 and enormous loudspeaker system. I don't think Ma Ma realized to what an extent this slogan competition had grown.

We chatted a bit at the house, then went with seven boys in car to go home. As we got near to a restaurant almost opposite the NLD office a MP [military policeman] stopped us and we saw an army truck parked nearby. One army captain strode towards the car and told us angrily to get down. We got down. The captain kept asking who had been waving the flag from our car. One of our boys had run towards the house as soon as we were
stopped so Ma Ma received the news that we had been stopped. By that time a crowd had gathered across the street. We were searched then told to get in the army truck and taken to Tatmadaw park, to the Army outpost there.

Though now under army arrest, they affected the relaxed, light-hearted manner that had become Suu's trademark. Ma Thanegi noted:

Very pleasant place, hollyhocks, some white geese, green grass. We were asked the usual and none too intelligent questions, name age etcetera . . . we answered the questions very casually and not at all worried, we said what lovely geese and so on, made the young thin MI guy furious.

We heard later that first Ma Ma and then [party chairman] U Tin Oo had arrived at the scene of our departure and were sitting down by the side of the road refusing to move until we were released . . . A lot of wireless calls, rushing to and fro of army etcetera, and a chastened captain took us back to NLD, we were stunned to see the crowds there, Ma Ma sitting on a kerb stone. Ma Ma thanked the captain and we marched home, Ma Ma making sure we walked ahead . . .

The stress was beginning to tell. Suu gave an impromptu press conference at the house to protest at the detention of her colleagues, then Ma Thanegi went straight home and stayed there. She wrote:

Worried about the Thingyan pandal and slogan competition. I kept phoning to see if everything all right, everything okay.

April 14: Stayed home to paint. Very hot and constantly worried. Ma Ma ill, stayed in bed till evening when she went to see the slogan competition.

April 15: Apparently all okay at NLD . . . Ma Ma better, stayed in bed a bit.

April 16: Competition still on . . .

Though Ma Thanegi was not there to see it, the competition had become yet another stand-off between the party and the army, with the NLD office ringed by rifle-toting soldiers, who were obliged to listen as one student after another, drunk with the reckless festival spirit, bawled out poison and defamation about them and their masters. The regime took the opportunity to arrest several of them, but the blitz Ma Thanegi had been dreading failed to materialize.

That afternoon, Suu fought off her illness to attend the finale.

“Ma Ma made closing speech at competition, saying it was a tradition of Burmese to let off steam every year by shouting political slogans during water festival, government should have sense of humor and grace about it or words to that effect, SLORC probably foaming at mouth and shrieking.”

Probably—but they were also taking emergency measures to ensure that the spectacle was never repeated, and that those responsible paid the price. On April 16th, as Suu was making her plea for tolerance, they set up what they called the Committee for Writing Slogans for Nationals, whose goal was to make sure that any and all slogans bellowed during Thingyan “aimed for national unity.” Within a week, NLD members accused of dreaming up the offending slogans were being hauled in.

There were still moments, however, for taking consolation in the simple, elegant customs of Burmese tradition.

“April 17: New Year's Day, to office, cleaning up reports and letters and stuff. To NLD hq in afternoon for Buddhist ceremony.” Burmese Buddhists believe they gain merit—take steps along the road to Nirvana—by releasing fish and birds from captivity, and New Year's Day is an auspicious time to do it. “Our boys and girls released fish and birds,” Ma Thanegi wrote. “Two brown doves either would not or could not fly, and we brought them back to house. Ma Ma was holding one cuddled against her and they sat and preened and ate rice at the marble-topped round table where she has her meetings. I was visualizing them sitting on CEC heads during meetings and happily dropping liquid bombs.” But she was duly punished for her malicious thoughts. “As I went home on bus I was soaked with water thrown by somebody—it never happened on New Year's Day before.”

*

Within days Suu, Ma Thanegi and their colleagues were packing for yet another trip: the last leg of a nationwide journey that had more in common with a triumphal circuit than a campaigning exercise.

In her diary a few days earlier Ma Thanegi had recorded the return of an NLD party from Kachin state in the far north of the country, “looking dirty, bedraggled and exhausted.” They had been arranging Suu's most ambitious tour yet, this time to the Kachin region in the far north, whose ethnic army, fighting for the autonomy of this overwhelmingly Christian
corner of the country, had for years been one of the best-trained and most formidable of the regime's ethnic enemies. It was another pilgrimage in Suu's father's footsteps—he had visited the regional capital, Myitkyina, in December 1946.

The first leg of the journey, to Mandalay, took thirteen hours. Now the punishing schedule of the past months was telling on practically everyone.

April 24: Ma Ma wore pale blue plain longyi, blue lavender print jacket, looked very lovely. Left Rangoon at 4:30
AM
in two cars. Arrived in Mandalay at 5:45
PM
and shocked at heat of everything, air, dust, furniture, water, even reed mats which are supposed to be cool.

On the way Tiger had been very sleepy twice so U Win Htein took over the wheel . . . I have been so busy these days that I felt sleepy as never before on a trip. Ma Ma insisted I lay my head on her shoulder while she held me. Preparing for bed, I told Ma Ma that when we are over 80 we will be laughing over all this craziness. Ma Ma said that if anything goes wrong we won't be able to laugh.

April 25: Ma Ma wore mauve longyi and darker jacket. Spoke at two monasteries . . . Back to house, lunch, long baths and to the station at 3
PM
.

Low-intensity official humiliation, sometimes apparently decreed directly by Ne Win himself, was becoming an everyday experience, though sometimes it backfired.

“SLORC or, as we were actually told, ‘orders from above,' state that Aung San Suu Kyi must queue up at the station and buy her own ticket. They thought it was an insult but we know it to be good publicity. Crowd stood around to watch, offered sweets, drink, food, sandwiches . . .”

It was the first time they had traveled in Burma's notoriously slow and cranky trains. They managed to obtain two sleeper berths between the whole party, which they used in shifts “We all took turns sleeping, Ma Ma and I slept from 12 midnight to 6
AM
next day.”

But if the regime was determined to make them suffer as they moved around, their ever-swelling body of supporters made them feel like kings and queens.

At every stop NLD and public were there to give flowers, food and expensive dishes, Seven-ups, Cokes etc., each can cost 30 kyats, we've never
had so much Coke in our lives. Icy cold too. Even in the dead of night local NLD members turned up smartly dressed, I remember elderly men in perky gaung baungs and large matrons dressed to kill in silk and nets, and there we were as usual a bedraggled, dusty, dirty, sweating, untidy bunch of wild-looking people.

Once our train stopped alongside an army train and troops craned their necks to see Ma Ma, most of them smiling. . . . Ma Ma was in upper bunk where at first she didn't want to sleep; we insisted as window too close to lower bunk.

The precaution was justified. “After midnight as we settled down in our bunks with lights out we heard men at the next stop shouting ‘Where is she, can't see her!' and shining torches all over the place. They were just friends, Ma Ma and I giggled and kept very still.

April 26: spent more than half the day on the train. We had heard horror stories about people climbing in through the windows and squatting everywhere with their black market goods and chickens but our trip went smoothly: No crowds, no long halts, but whistle stops at unscheduled halts so crowds could welcome Ma Ma with huge smiles and sky-raising shouts, “Long live Aung San Suu Kyi,” “Good health,” “God help Daw Aung San Suu Kyi,” “May her wishes come true,” they would chorus. Or where there is forced labor working as porters for the army, they chorused, “May she be free from the Six Evils.”

A traditional Burmese salutation is to wish one's friends free of the “five evils”: government—Burma's problem with oppressive rulers is nothing new—fire, thieves, water and enemies. “Number six, the latest addition,” Ma Thanegi explains, “means the Army.”

Several of the most senior NLD people maintained a daily routine of vipassana meditation—but it was hard to keep it up on a journey like this.

“Uncle U Hla Pe tried his best to meditate but I wonder how far he got with our monkeys around. We heard small beeps coming from somewhere among our luggage up in the racks, Aung Aung finally located it as coming from a brown holdall, we asked who owned it and no one owned up . . .”

In the carriage the reaction to its discovery was hysterical.

Local people are so used to KIA [Kachin Independence Army] blowing up trains etcetera that they panic at the slightest beep. I was getting worried, people in some compartments so alarmed they shrieked and ran out near to the loo, we thought it was a time bomb.

Aung Aung was just about to throw [the holdall] from the window when Uncle Hla Pe came out of his meditative trance and yelled that it was his. Close shave, he nearly had to travel a month with just the clothes on his back. It was his alarm clock, he couldn't shut it off and it gave us trouble all the way, it would beep on and on at every dawn driving Ma Ma wild. I and others just snored on.