Burmese Lessons (5 page)

Min Ley, who has rejoined us, points to the little boy pee-er and waves his hand. “Here, you can take this one. To Canada. And school, far away.”

San San laughs, bends down, kisses the boy’s red cheek, to make sure he knows it’s a joke, but he has picked up on his older brother’s distrust and pouts at me.

Min Ley sits down and announces, “Twenty kyat. You can have him for twenty kyat.” He is the only one who laughs. San San smiles politely, but she doesn’t think it’s funny, either.

I only know how to say “I don’t want to” or “I don’t allow it,” which I hope will work in this context:
“Ma ya boo.”
And I say, “He likes it here. With mother.”

San San sits beside the bigger boy with her own plate of food, now that the guest and her children and husband have been served. Her body, warm and right there, is enough to settle her sons and let them return, reassured, to their food.

We eat without talking. San San is the only one without a sizable
chunk of meat. Now that the boys know they’re not going to be sold, they eat steadily with their hands, no utensils. My first day in Rangoon, I had the wonderful shock of seeing people eat without utensils everywhere—in the biryani shops, on the pagoda steps, under a tree in Mahabandoola Park. San Aung, my guide-of-all-things in the capital, explained that it makes the food taste better, and he gave me a brief lesson on how to avoid messing the fingers past the first knuckle.

I’ve been practicing my technique to prepare myself for times like this, when it is awkward to ask for a spoon. I’ve learned how to roll a dollop of rice and neatly squeeze or scoop up a mouthful of curry to accompany it. I still make a bigger mess than any of these children, with the possible exception of the three-year-old, but no one comments on my sloppiness.

In between rice and curry, the children slurp soup from the communal bowl in the middle of the table. The soup, a broth with root vegetables of some kind, is barely warm, almost as clear as water, and absolutely delicious. The curry is also good, though less oily than I am used to. They are not rich enough to use a lot of oil.

People in Rangoon talk often about how difficult it is to earn the money for basic necessities, to get the extra job to pay for extra costs, such as a parent’s operation or the expensive journey to visit a relative in prison. I wonder how often the horse-cart driver and his wife and children eat meat. If a Burmese doctor makes sixty dollars (U.S.) a month and still has to take on other jobs to survive, especially if he has a family to provide for, how much does a cart driver make?

Oh, if only I could have a real conversation.

I can draw. After we finish lunch, I get out my notebook and draw pictures for the girls. A horse. A cat. A pig. These sketches give them a delight that is out of proportion to my meager artistic skills. When I hand the masterpieces over, the sisters squeal with pleasure and start arguing over the pages. Then a baby in the small house behind us starts to cry. San San goes inside to get their fifth child.

Min Ley shakes his head and says, “So many children.” He raises his
hands into the air and waggles his finger. “Difficult. We don’t have money.”

When he starts to smoke, I pop the question of the day, rudely, without thinking. “Do you know condoms?”

“Condo?”

“I don’t know how to say it in Burmese.” I’ve heard of a foreign NGO that uses a boat—the love boat—to distribute condoms up and down the Irrawaddy River. Hasn’t the boat come to Pagan?

“Condo,” repeats Min Ley. “I don’t know this.”

“Condom.” What next? I gesture to the left with both hands open, as if to point to exhibit A, “Condom.” And then, swinging both hands to the right, I announce the result of using the condom in Burmese:
“Kalay-reh muh shee boo.”
You don’t have children. I don’t know how to say “use.”

Then I remember the Lonely Planet phrase book in my knapsack. I flip through the pages until I find the section on health.

How much does it cost?

I have chest pain.

I vomit often.

My throat hurts.

Is it serious?

There is no word for
condom
in the glossary, either. What if a worthy traveler found herself in Burma and needed some handy protection? Why do the Lonely Planet writers take their title so literally? In my experience, the planet is not lonely at all.

How about
penis?

I flip through a few more pages while Min Ley looks on with a slight frown. He takes a long drag on his cheroot.

Ta-da! Just as San San comes out of the house with a fat baby perched on her hip bone, I pronounce my new word
—penis
—well enough to be understood.
“Ingaza!”

San San laughs and looks around. “Where?”

Min Ley sits up, waving cheroot smoke away with his hand. He leans over my arm, blinks at my pointing finger. Then blinks at me.

How about
plastic bag?
I’ve learned that word already, numerous times, but where is it now? Lost.

Here it is!

“Condom. Plastic bag. Penis. You don’t have children.”

They both stare at me. Min Ley smiles cautiously. He looks at his wife and says, “She can speak Burmese.”

San San looks confused.

I have to try to explain. I grab my notebook and begin, slowly, to draw a penis. San San and Min Ley both stand over the table and watch. To clarify, I add a little spray of semen, hoping they don’t think it’s pee. I say, “Children.”

San San laughs and announces, “Yes, yes.” The baby smiles, too.

On the facing page, I draw a condom.

On the next page—the sketching gets dodgy here, I have to admit—I pull the one onto the other, just so, with the little reservoir tip in place and everything. This time the little spurt is contained inside the condom. “See? You don’t have children.”

Min Ley’s brow furrows deeper. He tilts his head to the side and squints. “Ahhhh. I know. I know this. Condo. Good.” He explains to San San, who frowns at me as she listens. She nods, taps a finger on the drawing, suddenly all business. She asks Min Ley a long question. To which he responds with a single grunt.

Exasperated, she says to me, “We don’t have condo.”

“You don’t have it in Pagan.”

Min Ley shakes his head. “No, not in Pagan, not in Burma.”

“In Rangoon they have condoms.” Street vendors sell them. The brand is called Apaw.

“Really?”

“Yes. Rangoon has them. Apaw.”

“I don’t know apaw,” San San says. “But we want condo.”

Min Ley explains, “We don’t have this. Many children, no condo.”

I wonder if this can be true. If I went to a pharmacy here, would I be able to buy condoms and give them to Min Ley the horse-cart driver who has five children and does not want any more? Would he even try to use them?

He answers this question by picking up the pen. He places his elbows on either side of my notebook. Then he writes in Burmese: “Here, my house. My address.” He points at the condomed penis and continues, “Send me, from Rangoon. Very good.”

San San smiles at me and hands the baby to her husband. “Thank you,” she says. “Thank you.” Then she turns away and fills a kettle with water, lights the gas burner. “Would you like some tea?”

There is only
one other person staying at the wooden hotel above the wide river. We’ve run into each other a couple of times now, going in, going out, passing the terrace on the second floor. She is an artist from Spain, a brunette who wears graceful cotton shifts. She has pale brown eyes and high cheekbones. On the evening before her departure, we dine together.

“I’m an idealist, like you. I grew up in Spain. I remember what it was like, during Franco’s time. My parents were always telling me not to get involved in the politics, it was too dangerous. So I appreciate the situation here. And I think it’s terrible that the people are so badly off.”

“I don’t think ‘badly off’ describes it properly. Most people are poverty-stricken. And oppressed. Hungry for many things.”

Her tortoiseshell eyes search my face. “Do you think they are? Is it really possible to be hungry in the tropics? There is so much fruit everywhere.”

I swallow a sip of my bottled water.

She continues, “A doctor I met in the North said that he has never
seen the infant mortality rate so high. I agree—that is really awful. But, in a way, it’s a natural form of birth control.”

I wonder if this woman has ever had a baby, and watched her baby die of diarrhea or dysentery or malaria. Those are the common killers of small children and babies born in Burma, ailments often complicated by severe malnutrition. Three in five Burmese children are malnourished.

I finish my water. The food has come, but my appetite has left me.

“And the people are always smiling!”

“The Burmese are very hospitable. That’s why they smile at us.”

“There seemed to be a lot of people with bad eye diseases in the North, and even they laughed a lot.”

What can I say?

“I’m an idealist, but if democracy came all at once the country would disintegrate! It can’t come too quickly.”

“The people of Burma already voted in a democratic government. There were elections in 1990. The NLD, Aung San Suu Kyi’s party, won by a huge majority, but the military refused to hand over power.” She must know these details from her guidebook.

“Voting for freedom is one thing, living with it is another. A rapid transition could destabilize everything.”

“The situation in Burma is hardly stable. The currency is a farce, corruption is rife, the military makes deals with drug lords, and most people can’t afford to live on what they make because inflation is so high. Even the electricity doesn’t work. People die after operations because the hospitals cannot afford proper sterilization equipment.”

She looks at me condescendingly. “Journalists exaggerate the situation.”

“I haven’t been talking to journalists. I’ve been talking to Burmese people. Students, doctors, artists, women in the market.”

“Hmm,” she says, chewing a mouthful of chicken breast. “It’s not bad,” she adds approvingly. After another bite and swallow, she asks with alarming intensity, “What are
you
trying to do for the Burmese people?”

“Nothing.”

“But you said you would not come here only as a tourist. So what are you doing here, then?”

This is a good question. I consider it. “Talking. And listening.”

“Aren’t you trying to accomplish the freedom of these people?”

I laugh out loud; her statement is so lofty. We sit at this table in Burma, talking about the Burmese, while the waiters stand at the dining-room doors like sleepy sentinels. They might understand everything we’re saying. Or nothing, which is worse. “I don’t pretend anything like that,” I say. “It’s too presumptuous. Only they can accomplish their own freedom. I am … hanging around. I will write about what I see here. That’s all I can do, unfortunately. It’s not much.”

“Don’t you think you will contaminate your writing if you become political? Art in the service of politics can only be propaganda.” She smiles at me. Bitchily.

“But I probably won’t write much about politics. I will write about people.” This is a cowardly feint on my part; we both know it. But I’m tired of the conversation. Why are artists in so many disciplines afraid of being political? If an artist creates a work that defies oppression and violence, or offers an alternative view of history—like Ma Thida’s short stories—is that propaganda?

I’m about to tell her that I disagree with her when suddenly she starts to speak again, with her earlier intensity. “You know, I have tried to talk and smile as much as possible. To let them know that foreigners are not threatening. It’s absolute hell up in the North, where there are no other tourists. I wanted to go up there to prove I could, though it’s very isolated. It’s hard work, trying to get to places they won’t let you get to, and the locals mob you, and there are no other white people. But I kept calm the whole time, never lost my temper, always just smiled as much as possible.”

One of the dining-room attendants switches on the television. The news is starting. Out of respect for the diners, he mutes the volume. But the Spanish artist and I are relieved by the interruption. We turn to watch
the images of a fine mango crop, box after box of the small, sweet ovals lined up and glowing. It is impossible to be hungry in the land of a million mangoes. Then come the obligatory scenes of a smiling military leader inspecting a new factory. Followed by a battalion of soldiers marching on a road through the jungle, belts heavy with ammunition.

The Spanish woman turns away from the television and talks more about the difficulties of being a tourist. White-shirted waiters come, take away our plates. After the table is cleared, we stand up. The artist smiles with her teeth. She shakes my hand and says, “Perhaps we will meet again someday in Madrid.”

Perhaps. I wish her a safe journey home.