Burmese Lessons (11 page)

The regime announces its presence with high beams. The lights shine blindingly down each thoroughfare, informing the large crowd that it will not be so easy to get away. The faces around me, and presumably my own face, appear raw, exposed. To run would draw attention. Better to slink. As the trucks roll down the streets, more than half of this huge crowd does precisely that, dispersing into small lanes. People who live in the surrounding houses and blocks of flats have already gone back inside, their willingness to support the students having evaporated. The metal grilles that seal many apartment buildings for the night are pulled down with a resounding clank.

Several hundred protesters form into a thick ring, at the center of which stand perhaps eighty young men and women, some holding aloft portraits of Aung San and pictures of the golden fighting peacock, the symbol of student protest. The young women form the nucleus of this group; the young men stand around them in a protective, if futile, gesture. How bravely, foolishly, and profoundly dedicated they are to their cause! They knew the soldiers would come. They know they could be arrested, imprisoned. They know they could be tortured. Yet here they are.

The fire trucks begin their approach.

Anita and I lost each other when I went to watch the family drama with the young girl. I stand by myself at the far edge of the main group of students, in front of a block of flats. Faces behind me peer out from the closed grille. The students at the center of the gathering have finished yelling their political slogans. They light candles and pass the small flames
through the circle. They remove their shoes or slippers and kneel down on the pavement, facing one direction. When they begin to intone Buddhist sutras, I realize that they’ve turned toward the Shwedagon Pagoda, Burma’s most revered place of worship. As their voices rise in a mournful, steady chant, the hairs on my arms and neck stand on end. Here and in Thailand, in temples and meditation halls, I have listened to hours of similar prayers uttered by monks and by laypeople, repeating together the ancient words that call for loving-kindness, for compassion, for equanimity.

The water shocks me. A wide white arc of it shoots through the air, then another, and another. I feel only cold, heavy gusts, but the water cannons knock over some of the kneeling students; others swing at the air as they try to keep upright. The posters and portraits of General Aung San shoot up and fall back on people’s heads. The drenching is meant to humiliate them before the final assault. More liquid salvoes come before the trucks pull aside to make room for the riot police and the soldiers. When I look around at the crowd, I find it mostly gone: the demonstrators in the outer ring have melted into the dark side streets beyond the lights.

Sitting in a ragged circle, the students murmur quietly. The soldiers make a tremendous racket when they jump out of the trucks that have carried them here. The riot police stand aside while the soldiers push and pull the protesters off the ground and drag their limp bodies to the army trucks. I am so mesmerized by what’s taking place in front of me that I don’t realize how alone I’ve become. The remainder of the crowd has gathered across the intersection. I stand in the glare of the lights. As soldiers lift the last of the girls into the trucks, I walk slowly along the face of the apartment buildings, touching the rough plaster walls with my fingers. The intersection is filled with trucks and troops, yet I hear only the thud of blood rushing in my ears. An epiphany of adrenaline pours through me: I have witnessed how oppressed people fight back and forge a new history with their own bodies. The hunger for justice shrinks the self; at first it makes the word
sacrifice
possible, then necessary. In the moment when people
hurl their lives at dictatorships, they hardly care if their lives return to them.

I reach the intersection where the last group of demonstrators and observers huddle together. A row of riot police stand across the road. The students of the inner circle are in the trucks now. I glance at the person next to me and am relieved to see the familiar face of a young man I spoke with earlier in the evening. He asks, “Are you all right?”

“I’m fine.”

I look around, trying to find Anita. Usually her blond head sticks up in a crowd. The young man catches my elbow as I am knocked off balance. People are running, pushing past us. “What happened?” I ask, but he doesn’t need to answer. I turn to see the riot police charging us, their batons raised in the air. Shields and guns, helmets and boots, the black sticks. We run. Everyone is running and shouting. Flip-flops slap the pavement, and behind them comes the pounding of boots. I feel little fear, only the clear-headed desire in the midst of noise and bodies to get away, to be safe. Several open apartment blocks are the only places that offer immediate refuge—the side streets are too far up the block.

I follow the white-shirted young man and two younger men who have joined him, boys really—neither of them can be over sixteen. Knees and elbows pumping, we climb up one floor, two, three, four floors—no effort at all, I might be flying—into a dark hallway. A woman has opened her door, she ushers us into the apartment. “Shh,” she whispers, “the children are asleep.” The room is lit only by bands of streetlight. She closes and locks the door, then we all freeze, because we hear the boots hammering up the stairwells. The riot police yell to one another. It’s depressing how easily their voices cut through the concrete walls. They begin to pound on people’s doors.

The woman holds her hand out in front of her, telling us without a word to keep still. For the first time, I feel real fear. Why have we come here? What am I doing? What if the police break in and discover us and this woman gets into trouble? What about her children?

They’ve reached the third-floor landing. Their voices are so clear that they could be right outside the door. The woman murmurs, “Come quickly,” and we follow her down a narrow corridor into a small room. I’m shocked: she has brought us to her children. She pulls boxes and blankets out from under each of their cots and whispers to the Burmese students. The white-shirted one translates: “If the police come in, you and he”—he points at the smaller boy—“will hide under there, and we will hide under the other one. But don’t do it unless they come to her door. She doesn’t want the children to wake up.”

I’m in awe of the slumbering forms. It’s too dark to know if they are boys or girls or one of each. How have they slept through the noise? One bare arm sticks out from beneath a blanket; softly bent fingers hook the night air.

We listen to the shouts of men and their thumping feet. From outside comes the crash of breaking glass—storefronts, windshields, streetlights—and people yelling.

The footsteps never come to the woman’s apartment; no fist pounds on her door.

The younger boys have begun to breathe more slowly. The mother brings us a tray laden with glasses of water. We thank her and gulp it all down. She and the young man whisper together, then he turns to me. “She thinks the police have gone. I will go on the balcony to see what’s happening.”

We follow him as far as the dark sitting room. When he reenters the apartment, he tells us there’s nothing to see; too many streetlights have been broken. Farther up the road, people still shout into the dark, and more glass shatters. We wonder if the police themselves are doing the damage, trying to frighten people.

Our hostess brings some blankets. We lie down on the floor.

Is the night long, or short? I nod off once or twice, but mostly I’m awake, listening to the breathing of the young people beside me. At one point, I drop into a disturbed sleep and wake up so disoriented that I think
I am dreaming. Then I see the boys’ sleeping faces beside me, and feel a deep pang of sadness.

Young people always look younger when they are sleeping; the child returns with the slack mouth, the guileless forehead. Before they dropped off, the two boys told me their ages: fifteen and sixteen. Each told his parents that he was staying over at the other’s house. By now their lies have probably been discovered and their parents are sick with worry. But the woman told us we couldn’t think about leaving the apartment. She said it will be safe only in the morning, after residents in the building start going to work and school.

Soon enough, dawn light appears and grows in the room, revealing what we couldn’t see last night: the color of the kitchen table, the family photographs on the wall above the little sofa, the English and Burmese titles on the bookshelf. Though dazed with sleeplessness and stiff from lying on the concrete floor, I realize that I must have slept more than I thought, because I missed the woman’s husband coming in. Once we’re all awake, he brings us a tray of tea as though he regularly entertains young strangers at 6:45
A.M
. He couldn’t get home last night because of barricades and rumors of a curfew; he stayed at the home of a colleague.

He has a long, low-toned discussion with the young men. The sadness I felt in the night emanates from all of us. The older man nods a lot and kneads his big-knuckled hands. We’ve finished our tea. The young man and I thank our generous hosts. There is so much emotion in the room that the boys tear up when they say their thank-you.

They will leave together. The young man gives me his address, carefully written out on a small scrap of paper. “I will meet you again someday,” he confidently predicts, though I know better. The three of them give me surprisingly lighthearted smiles and walk out the door.

Twenty minutes later, I follow them down the stairs and step into the morning sun. It is a normal day. People cross the intersection. Smoke-belching buses hurtle over the spot where the protesters kneeled, reciting Buddhist sutras. Walking away from Hledan Junction, I pass a woman
whose plastic baskets are packed with green leafy stuff and mangoes. She has just been to market. As though nothing happened here last night. As though no one was taken away.

I step off the curb too lightly. My body floats across the road, as insubstantial as a ghost.

Anita is missing
. I called her hotel repeatedly through the morning and afternoon. Now it’s past five, but she’s still not there. Since the protests started a week ago, we’ve telephoned or met each other every day, to compare notes and to check in and make sure all is well. My gut tells me that all is not well, but I resist the obvious conclusion. I don’t want to believe that she has been picked up by military intelligence agents. The generals are not very good at public relations, but I don’t believe they’re unwise enough to hurt a white woman journalist.

On the other hand, why wouldn’t they? Like me, Anita is here on a tourist visa, but she is writing articles for major European newspapers and collecting material for a book about Burma’s dictatorial politics. It’s foolish to assume that our white skin can protect us, yet we assume precisely that. At least I do. There is a measure of arrogance (how much?) mixed into this assumption. Even if I don’t act arrogantly, I benefit from the racism that is part of this world, the discrimination that adds a layer of value to this white-skinned body.

Yet today I feel like a ghost, invisible, erased because the acts of brave
protest I witnessed have also been erased. Ghosts are white, aren’t they? Does it matter that I saw what I saw? I have no newspaper to write for, no report to make to anyone who cares. The students who did not run were hauled away in trucks. What is happening to them?

I go downstairs and call Anita’s hotel again. Then I ring another journalist, who is also worried about her, but he has news only about last night. The riot police roughed up dozens of onlookers who didn’t get away fast enough (though they didn’t touch any white foreigners). They also beat up some people who sheltered the fleeing protesters in apartment buildings. More than a thousand students have been arrested in the past three days. Some of them have been released, though organizers and leaders are still being detained; they will probably receive long prison sentences. Word has it, too, that a man who handed out water bottles to the demonstrators has been sentenced to several years in prison.

In two hours, another rally will begin downtown. Students told me about it last night. Part of me doesn’t want to go. I just want to lie in bed and read John Ruskin. I want to hide. But the day after tomorrow I leave the country—I’ve already overstayed my visa by several days. Who knows when people will protest this way again? I feel I must go, to watch, to witness the protesters’ courage. It’s the least I can do.

I
’m afraid of touching one of the monks accidentally. People are crushed together on this side of the street; half a dozen monks and I are among them. With news of the crackdown at Hledan Junction, the bystanders are not so brave; none of us mingle with the student protesters in the middle of the road. The monks stand in a tidy row beside me. I keep getting elbowed and jostled ever closer to them. Owing to monastic vows of abstinence, Buddhist monks are not allowed to touch women.