Burmese Lessons (47 page)

These and other thoughts arise when I meditate on the hill in the disused
pagoda. I join them, as the sages recommend, to my practice, releasing one image after another on the out breath. But when I breathe in they come back, the curved bits of wood and metal, the faces and bodies of women. I have missed too many of their voices. And I’m leaving soon. Just as I learn that their breath is also my breath, I realize that it’s too late to know them.

Maung leaves Chiang Mai
today. He’s coming to pick me up; we’ll say goodbye at the airport—a first for us. An airport farewell promises a heady combination of formality and romance. I will be graceful and movie-star-like. Sad movie-star-like. But strong. Glistening eyes, no spillage. Ingrid Bergmanesque. Though she was the one who got on the plane in Casablanca and flew away.

I won’t see him for at least two months, more likely three or four. Like most significant departures, the impending one feels unreal, a shape with no substance, which may be why I keep thinking of Hollywood. His cell phone will not work in China, and he’s not sure what kind of land-line access there will be. In Greece, I won’t have a telephone, either.

Whom is he meeting with on the Chinese border? The Kachin Independence Army? No. The KIA signed a cease-fire with the Burmese junta a couple of years ago. Underground agents? Doubtful. Old school buddies? I have no idea.

The phone jangles, makes me jump. Maung is here, waiting down in the atrium.

I am careful not to trip on the last flight of stairs. My beloved stands there in a suit jacket and pressed trousers. I’m surprised he’s so dressed up. He could pass as a businessman. I suppose that’s the idea. Or maybe he’s meeting someone from the Chinese government? I wish I’d worn a skirt.

We smile and walk out into the afternoon sunlight. I’ve forgotten my sunglasses, but there’s no time to fetch them. Maung steers me by the elbow toward a large black truck parked in the road. None of the dissidents I’ve met own a black truck. None of the foreign NGO workers, either. The passenger’s and driver’s doors open at the same time; two men step out and turn toward us. Just as I wonder where the perfunctory smiles are, they appear. They’re in their late forties, early fifties, a charming couple—one slight and gentle-looking, the other, according to the international cliché of pairing the good with the bad, meaty and brutish, his big head bristly with crew cut.

I take in their nice clothes, their relaxed yet faintly demanding demeanor, that massive black machine still purring exhaust behind them: they are Thai. They have power. Resisting Maung’s hand on my elbow, I slow our pace and whisper, “Who are they?” Why aren’t we going to the airport in a hired car, or even a songtow? Why are we going to the airport with two Thai men? We stop walking. To the Thai men, we might be having a tender moment. Maung does his best, looking with round, liquid eyes into my narrowed slits. “They will help me if I need help.” I frown harder. “So that I can pass security.” I tilt my head. “Because I’m traveling with a fake passport.”

They are Thai military intelligence agents. I’ve met other Thai MI before, in Mae Sot.

“Why didn’t you tell me they were coming with us? Or, more accurately, that we are going with them?” I swear under my breath. I don’t mind, I just wish he would tell me. A few details. Occasionally.

“Because I wasn’t sure they would be available.” The relief in his voice makes it sound as though he’s smiling. He is happy to have them with us. For their airport-security powers as well as for the monster truck. What
man doesn’t want to be sent to the airport in a gleaming black machine with tinted windows? If it makes his passage safer and easier, then I am glad they are here. So much for our romantic goodbye.

After brief introductions, I step up on the running board and duck down. Spacious back seats, tan leather. Maung follows me. Alone, we turn to each other in the freezing air. I’m covered in goosebumps. Maung runs his hand over my forearm and whispers, in Burmese, “It’s very cold, isn’t it?” Neither of us is used to air-conditioning.

The skinny man throws his cigarette down in the parking lot; the bigger one takes Maung’s bag to the back of the truck. Then we’re on our way through the lively streets of Chiang Mai and the sunstruck landscape that will lead us to the airport. Through the smoky glass, everything is tinged a shade of gray or purple. It’s such a realistic way to see the world, perpetually bruised.

W
hen will I meet Maung again? That is the question I ask myself as our odd little company goes through the motions of his departure. We approach the flight desk, smile at the Thai service attendant, take in her dazzling gold jewelery and purple eyeshadow. Maung’s hand, I see as he passes over his ticket, is shaking slightly. Probably just too many cigarettes. Nicotine and coffee overdose.

We have said goodbye already, standing in the diesely air of a loading zone as people hurried past. Farther out, bougainvillea burned in the flower beds, vivid in the stark light of midafternoon. The Thai agents had gone to talk on their separate phones. I realized this would be it, my last moment alone with him, standing in the public blur and clamor. His face was close to mine, though we did not think of kissing. He was talking. I breathed in words with the scent of tobacco from his mouth.

“You know, there is a place I hold people,” he said. “A place inside where the ones I love stay with me. They never go away. There are my parents, and a few others. I need to care for many people, but that isn’t the
same as this feeling, this place inside. You are there. I will hold you in my heart forever.”

His declaration left me speechless. I wished he had made it earlier, so that I would have had more time to respond. We are not in the habit of making declarations. I gripped his hand and closed my eyes, unprepared for the onslaught of my own tears. No Kleenex, as usual. He gave me a handkerchief. “I knew I had to bring two,” he said, laughing, his fingers on the small of my back as we reentered the terminal building, where the Thai agents stood waiting for us.

What a demanding job they have! Watching over Burma’s busy political population in Thailand, dissidents, activists, revolutionaries of various ethnicities, NGO workers. Keeping their Burmese MI-agent counterparts happy. Managing their own finicky relationship with the Thai democratic government. Playing to every side, trying to amass as much information about everyone as they can, keeping tabs, doing damage control, being everyone’s friend. They are the ultimate diplomats, really. The Burmese acronyms alone must drive them crazy, as well as the fact that almost everyone has at least two different names, a real name and an activist name.

The big guy is respectful to Maung and solicitous with me, politely running through the beloved questions that all Thais must ask foreigners: Where do you come from? Do you like Thailand? Can you eat hot food?

In turn, I would like to ask him, How far do your earthly powers extend? To China? Will you make sure he gets on the return plane? Will you protect him even when you cannot see him?

Suddenly I am afraid something will happen to Maung: an accident, a violent incident in the rough border town where he will stay. Though he forgot his own nightmare of being stabbed, it has remained with me like a bad omen.

But this is not the time to worry about portents and dreams. He’s leaving. We stand outside the security gates for a few minutes, but he’s anxious to go through, in case the false passport holds him up. That’s when our influential
escorts will become involved. Maung and I talked about his papers last night, while he sat drinking a beer and smoking and I lay on the bed examining the signature binding of his passport. I held the coveted little book up to the light and flipped its pages. “An excellent job,” he said of the forgery.

It’s increasingly difficult to travel on these documents. Airport security is getting wiser; there is talk of installing cameras at ticket counters. Soon there won’t be any anonymous travelers. The very best forged passports that cost thousands of dollars will be identifiable and traceable. “But I prefer not to think about that right now,” Maung told me. “One trip at a time.”

The Thais stand a few feet away to let us say goodbye. We kiss each other quickly, lightly. A hug. Remember this: his body fits so easily into my own, the hollows to curves, bones nestled into flesh. Underneath the light suit jacket, I feel his shirt damp with sweat. The airport, too, is air-conditioned. He’s sweating because he’s nervous, though it doesn’t show on his calm face.

“I have to go,” he whispers against my cheek, and I release him immediately. He pulls me close again and murmurs so quietly in my ear that I scarcely catch all the words; I have to piece them together by rhythm: “I take strength from knowing you are alive on this earth.”

I, the writer, have nothing so profound to say to him.

W
e stand and watch him join the queue of people. Two men check tickets and passports. Maung approaches them and hands his passport to the younger one. Because he’s Burmese, there is the usual scrutiny accompanied by the suspicious sidelong glances. The men squint at his ticket, then slowly turn the pages of the passport. In their hands, as opposed to my own last night, it seems insubstantial, not a document at all, just small squares of paper. The older attendant asks Maung to stand off to the side, while the
younger one takes the passport away. Maung stands there, handsome, dignified. He smiles at us once, then lets his eyes rest elsewhere.

The Thai agents standing with me are also experts at dissimulation. They chat with each other distractedly, littering the air with words. When my eyes flutter over the slender man’s face, he gives me such a fatherly smile that I have to look away. The three of us watch the scene unfold just inside the security gate.

But it’s undramatic. No intervention is required. The young man returns with the small red book and hands it to Maung, who thanks him. We can see the round sweat stain on his back when he removes his jacket for the X-ray machine, but he walks through it without incident and slips the fine jacket back on. Like any traveling businessman, he refastens his watch and returns his documents to his breast pocket.

It’s done. He’s going to China.

Maung and I meet at the glass wall between the terminal and the departure hall. We wave and smile like children through the shining separation. He puts his hand on the glass. I place my hand there also, fingers against fingers. But of course I cannot feel him.

A moment later, the Thai agents appear. The burly one with the crew cut says, “We need to go now. We’ll take you back to your apartment.” Maung inclines his head to them, and to me, then turns away and joins the other travelers.

A day later
, Maung called me from China and said, “I’m afraid you will leave me and not come back.” We had never spoken of ending our relationship. My upcoming sojourn in Greece was only a trip away from the center of the world, to which I would return, to continue life with the man I loved and the people who had befriended me. Aye Aye Lwin, Ma Tu, Chit Hlaing, and dissident friends referred to the time when I would live in Thailand, not on the actual border, not in a camp in the jungle, but in Bangkok or Chiang Mai or Mae Sot, on the border of the mind inhabited by so many people who work for Burma. My return was a given. I believed in it as much as they did.

But Maung had undone me. “Are you still there?” he asked.

I finally replied, “I can’t do it, Maung. I can’t be the wife of the dissident, the revolutionary. I’m not strong enough. I’m sorry.”

“It’s because I couldn’t come to you when you were sick, isn’t it?” he asked. “It’s because I can’t take care of you.”

Yes. That was it, partly. But it was also the surreal walk I had taken
with the Thai MI agents, through the airport parking lot, each of them grilling me about my mate and my choice of a mate.

The agents had monitored our final touches, our last glance. Then they monitored me some more as they took me back to my apartment. It was a brief, profound lesson, as well as a teeth-rattling shake. By necessity, my life with Maung would involve his people, his supporters, his comrades, his men, his women. I had accepted that, somehow; it was a work-in-progress. But I hadn’t thought of these others. Also by necessity, my life with a Burmese political figure would involve them, Maung’s watchers and observers, both friend and foe.