Burmese Lessons (32 page)

“Our brother monks followed me out of the monastery carrying their alms bowls upside down. That means they would not accept any gifts from the generals or perform Buddhist ceremonies for them. This is a serious thing and everyone would see it, that the Sangha did not support the government.

“As we walked along, more and more people came out of their houses to join us.” He conjures up masses out of the air with a sweeping gesture. “There were thousands, then tens of thousands, walking down the road together, and the crowd continued to grow even after we reached the pagoda and gave our speeches.

“We had a lot of power through these rallies, but we lacked political experience. The older politicals who knew more about the government did not want to help us. They did not want to form some kind of coalition with us. They thought we were too young to be involved in politics. This was the big missed opportunity. The Burmese BBC radio station announced that we would be having a rally on August 8, a strike rally, and none of the students realized how big that strike would get. Millions of people heard the BBC broadcast and went on strike. Imagine that! We could have brought down the government—just a few more days, the country would have stopped functioning, no one was working! But we had no real plan of action and not enough unity, not enough direction.”

He drops his hands in his lap. A heated exchange follows, in Burmese, between him and the other men. I see that he is not as young as he looks. None of them are students anymore. Like Maung, this man is pushing forty and living by his wits in an unstable political exile.

Two of the men go back inside the teeming house. The political meeting that Tennyson mentioned will take place tomorrow, and a dozen people have arrived to spend a couple of days here. One of them is Win Min, whom I first met at the Christmas party. He has a dapper mustache, a quick sense of humor, and a talent for computers. Earlier in the day he promised to show me how to send an email, but at the moment he stares
into the screen of a laptop; he’s busily finishing a report. A couple of guys stand behind him like hypnotized sentinels, watching his fingers fly over the keys.

With the house so full, I suggested that I get a room at a guesthouse in the town, but Moe Thee Zun said no, I could have the bedroom. Two more men have since shown up, making me regret my presence as an overnight guest; I’m taking up badly needed space. But it’s too late to leave. And it’s probably the only chance I’ll have to talk to Moe Thee Zun alone. His comrades have left us out here on the porch together. “Ko Moe Thee, I have a difficult question to ask. You don’t have to answer it if you don’t want to. Of course.”

He puts his elbows on his knees and rests his head on his hands, an expression of longing on his face. He will be disappointed: I’m not going to ask him if he’s single. He’s been flirting with me steadily. Many of the Burmese men on the border flirt subtly, or charmingly, or obviously, or ingratiatingly, each according to his means. It’s a condition of life without women; a new woman in their midst must be tried. Is she single? Is she available? Will she love me?

“I still don’t understand why there are two parts, two sections, to the ABSDF. Why did the organization split up?”

He sits back and bites his lower lip, puts his head to one side. Grunts. His hesitation makes me feel the depth of my duplicity. I’ve asked him about a rift that involved him and Maung. If he knew about our relationship, he would answer the question differently; he might not answer at all. I feel like a spy. Though I am spying only for myself, in an attempt to understand what’s going on. At least, that’s my rationalization.

I wave my hand. “You know what? I’m sorry, never mind. It’s a private matter.” But it’s also a tendency of secrets: we want to tell them and they want to be told.

“No, it’s all right. It’s not so difficult to explain. There were conflicts between people. Disagreements. If two groups do not get along, they split
up.” I wait. He steeples his hands together. “But we were right to part ways.”

“Why?”

“Many reasons. Some people on the other side do not respect.”

“Don’t respect what?”

“The law. After we split up, I was very glad.” I wait again. “Because in 1992 there were executions in Kachin territory. I was thankful we had nothing to do with that. Maung gave the order.”

“What order?”

“For the executions.”

I immediately think, It’s a war. People have to die in a war. “Were they SLORC soldiers?”

“No.” His forehead wrinkles in consternation.

“Well.” I can hear the defensiveness in my voice. “I thought … I heard there was just one. Only one.”

Moe Thee Zun looks at me, puzzled. “No. That’s not true. It was a group of people.”

“Who were they?”

I know. I know before he says it. The gooseflesh rises up my arms, down my back.

“They were members of the ASBDF. Some were students, like us. Some of them were tortured.”

The words reverberate in my head. “Like us.” The voices inside the house, and the Burmese music on the ghetto blaster, grow faint. “But they must have been …” What? What could they have been? “Did they commit crimes?”

“The men in command said they were spies for the SLORC. But I don’t believe that. Many people don’t believe that. It’s almost impossible that they had any communication with the SLORC, especially so many of them. It wasn’t just one or two. It was a group, and at least one woman. One of them had been a political prisoner. He had already suffered enough. He would never betray the movement. There was no trial.
And there was no place to confine them. So they were executed. Maung was responsible.”

“He did it? He killed them?”

“No. He wasn’t in the camp. One of his men did it. Or maybe more than one. I don’t know the details. I only know it was wrong. Many of us think it was a power struggle within the organization.” He takes a cheroot out of his breast pocket, tamps it against the floor, and snaps off the end. But he doesn’t light it.

I remember Maung talking, before he left: “If people think someone is stealing their power, they do bad things.” And Nola, that evening outside her gate: “A lot has happened on the border that you don’t know about.”

One of the men comes out onto the porch again and announces that dinner is ready. Moe Thee Zun puts his cheroot behind his ear and gets up. I stand too quickly and almost lose my balance. Moe Thee Zun walks into the house, and I wait for the dizziness to pass. Do I know anything at all?

A large group sits in a circle on the wooden floor; the steaming bowls of food begin to arrive from the kitchen at the back of the house. Someone gives me a stack of chipped plates to hand around. Win Min the computer expert asks if I’m still excited about sending my first email. We laugh about the Westerner learning computer skills from the man who has spent years living in jungle camps.

Maybe the story I’ve just heard about Maung is meant to discredit him. It could be a lie, a fabrication by a rival who doesn’t like him.

Moe Thee Zun returns to his flamboyant, talkative self. As we reach out to take spoonfuls of curry and soup, he makes jokes in English and Burmese. People chat easily through the meal. I listen from a distance, half my mind on what I’ve just been told. I need to speak to Maung. Why didn’t I know about these allegations? The woman is always the last to know. About the other woman. About the executions.

I glance at Moe Thee Zun throughout dinner. His colleagues are indulgent or deferential toward him, but consistently affectionate. Along
with his charm and earnestness, an essential element of his character is a persistent innocence. He’s like the teenager who has dared, and fought, and beaten himself into the mold of manhood. Has, in fact, become a man. But remains boyishly transparent.

L
ate in the chilly evening, Moe Thee Zun and I talk about the mental and physical benefits of yoga—of which we are both practitioners—particularly of Sirsasana, the headstand. He’s about to demonstrate his agility in this pose when, fortunately, we’re interrupted by footsteps and voices on the porch stairs. Two men announce themselves just as they come into view. Moe Thee Zun greets them and asks if they’re hungry. I see their guns even before they take off their jackets—gleaming gray and black machines.

Moe Thee Zun whispers, “They’re semiautomatics,” though they look automatic enough to me. “Here,” he murmurs confidentially, and pulls a small handgun from the back of his jeans. “I carry one, too.” He puts it down beside him on the floor and gives it a few pats, like a pet turtle. The Karen men who carry the bigger guns place them on the same table where Win Min, indefatigable, continues his light clatter at the computer keyboard. The cell phone that has been ringing intermittently throughout the evening rings again. Someone answers it in a low voice. The gun, the computer, the cell phone: all the elements of modern guerrilla warfare are here. I’m the only woman and the only Luddite in the house.

The newly arrived visitors aren’t hungry, just tired. A young man comes out of the shadows of the back bedrooms with a pile of mats and blankets. There’s already a row of sleepers farther back in this large main room. Another row forms, to be followed by several more during the next hour, until the spacious floor is lined with sleeping bodies, or wakeful bodies shifting on the hard, cold planks.

“I will go to bed now, too,” I say, nodding at my host.

He gives me a long, probing look, to which I cannot reply. Finally he says, “I understand. You are also tired from your journey. Your things are already in my bedroom, yes?”

His bedroom? I’m sleeping in his bedroom? Bloody hell.

I get my toothbrush and return to the main room a few times, but the bathroom is continually in use. I forgo brushing my teeth. Wearing a nightshirt and clean shorts, I cringe as I get into the cold bed, which makes me want to pee even more. Never mind. Exhausted, I go to sleep with a full bladder. But a few hours later, when I wake in the pitch-dark room, I have to pee so badly that it hurts. I hop out of the bed and fumble for the switch on the wall. It takes a long time to find. My watch reads 4
A.M
. I open the door. Men everywhere, snoring, snuffling, slumbering. The bathroom is on the other side of the main room, near the kitchen. There is hardly a path to be found through the bodies. Then someone gets up and goes to the bathroom before me. I hear each foot shuffle. A double-nostril sniffle. A yawn so long that it becomes suspenseful. The bathroom door creaks open, creaks shut.

I hear the first tentative dribble as it falls into the squatter toilet. Then comes a good hard spray, steady on, which reverberates through the whole house.

I quietly shut the bedroom door. I will not walk through the collection of sleeping bodies and perform water music for the revolutionaries. Legs squeezed shut, I look around. A man could pee out the window. A man would not be worried about this.

I open the wooden shutter and lean out the window. Impossible.

Could I just go out the nearby front door and down the steps? To pee in the bushes beside the house? But scorpions hunt at night. And spiders. What if one of the armed Karen men thinks I’m a dangerous intruder and shoots me as I’m ascending the stairs?

I open the bedroom door again, wide enough to let a swath of light fall across the first two rows of sleepers. I walk out, determined to go to the
loo. But I just can’t. My feet pad down too close to their faces, sometimes almost touching the tousled black hair. It’s a dreadful combination in Buddhist culture, where the lowly feet must not come near to the esteemed head. I gingerly creep back into the bedroom.

I have a water bottle in my pack. It will have to serve as a traveling chamber pot. I get out my scissors and hack away the plastic top.

When I pour out the urine, it falls to the ground with an unexpectedly hard thud, then a splash. I crawl back into bed, mortified.

I
n the morning when I get up, the first thing I do is look out the window. The splotch of wet dust is still visible—not soaked in and faded, as I hoped it would be. But no one will ever know.

The big main room of the house is full of sunlight and glittery dust motes and sleepy men drinking tea. One of them gives me a familiar movie-star smile. “Tennyson! When did you get here?”

“Early in the morning. Still dark. I slept in the hammock under the house. I think you pour some water out the window. Why you do that?”

I wave my hands and quickly ask, “Why didn’t you tell me you were coming? I thought you had meetings to go to.”

“Yes, Karen. This is one of the meetings. Today.” He blinks slow panther eyes at me. Of course, he would be here. Naturally he would not tell me he was coming. It’s like that. Before Mae Sot, I took a weeklong trip to Mae Sarieng, where I met the same people I’d interviewed in a safe house in Bangkok. In a bar in Mae Sot, I drank a beer with Bo Saw Htun, the man I met at the Chiang Mai party who reminded me of a Mexican composer. People are fluid, I am fluid—we move and bump into one another.

So I learn the assumed normalcy of having no home. The exhaustion goes underground, underskin, into the blood and bones. I, too, can sleep
on a mat, a mattress, in a stranger’s bed. To be honest, I have led a vagabond existence for years, but here, as I follow the dissidents, cross paths with them, wander through the tarpaulin-and-bamboo camps collecting the faces of ash-dusted children, my sense of homelessness deepens as it expands. This is the way of the world. Fragmented populations of people live at the edges, their clothes getting thinner and dirtier with each passing day, their eyes yearning toward a center they cannot reach. That center is a safe home. Not a safe house, which denotes danger, but a full domestic world, its known pleasures, its rich containment and simple beauties. Even nomadic peoples enjoy that containment, which arises partly from comforting routine, partly from familiar, beloved objects: the set of spoons, the enameled plate, Grandmother’s hand mirror. The largest embodiment of that containment—the biggest container—is the community that envelops the cherished home.

No wonder the men here live in obvious longing for women, for wives, for mothers. It’s erotic in the sexual sense, certainly—there are more young men than young women, many of them are single, and they don’t want to be—but it is erotic in the larger sense, too. Home is an extension of the human body. The first human home, the original safe container, is the womb. Women are the mistresses of containment, the holders, the absorbers. Men can be this too, of course, but homemaking itself remains a womanly art.