Land of Jade

by Bertil Lintner

  Sakulemba and Narola had two small boys and a Bangladeshi maid, an illegal immigrant in her early teens. I had developed a great deal of confidence in the Nagas’ ability to keep secrets, but I was not sure about Hasina, the Bangladeshi girl. There were plenty of other Bangladeshi maids working for nearby households and I was almost certain Hasina would gossip with them about me. Sakulemba told me not to worry.

  “It’s safe here. Nobody will come.”

  The next day I discovered that this was hardly the case. Both Sakulemba and Narola worked in the daytime and Hasina stayed at home alone with the children. Neighbours kept dropping by all day; no sooner had one visitor left than another came. Since my cubbyhole was anything but sound-proof I had to remain motionless. As a result of my long stay in damp, closed rooms without proper ventilation I had developed a bad cough—I now had to smother the noise by burying my face in the pillow.

  With the window covered, I could only catch a glimpse of the visitors through a gap between the door and the floor. I quickly discovered that lying in the narrow space under the wooden bed conferred two distinct advantages from the point of view of security. I could not be seen there by any curious neighbours who might push aside the blanket and stick his head through the hole in the window—which actually did happen after a few days. But from under the bed I was also well positioned to peep through the gap at the bottom of the door; my only view of the outside world.

  Moving hiding-places inevitably meant I had to get used to a new set of voices, sounds, shadows and warning signals. Although I never saw any of the neighbours’ faces on their frequent visits, I soon learnt to recognise them through the noises they made; not only their voices but also the sounds of their footsteps. Through my spyhole, I developed a new angle on the world consisting of sounds and faceless feet.

  To help me pass the time I elaborated this absurd situation into a game: whenever I heard a voice out of my sight-range, I tried to match it with a mental picture of the visitor’s feet. The chatterbox of a woman from next door had long, thin, pointed feet and always wore shabby, brown leather sandals. The dark pair in the blue rubber flip-flops with the dainty, little toes on which hours of pedicure had been lavished, belonged to another Bangladeshi maid. She spoke the local Nagamese patois with a staccato Indian accent. Were I ever to go back to Kohima, I would instantly recognise certain people by their voices or their feet.

  The only relief from the tension was during the spells of heavy rain. Nobody would come, so I could actually lie on the bed instead of under it, cough freely and stop worrying about any other involuntary noises I might make. But the rains came rather infrequently and I was forced to spend most of the time on the floor under the bed. I did what I could to make myself comfortable by spreading out my sleeping-bag and a couple of woollen Naga shawls. Beside my head on one side, I had a stack of books, and on the other, writing materials, a small candle and an ashtray. I read J.A. Stewart’s Manual of Colloquial Burmese over and over again and practised the Burmese alphabet on sheet after sheet of scrap paper. By the end of it, I could read a fair deal of Burmese without knowing how to pronounce a single word properly.

  Hasina made tea for me every few hours, tapped on the door at those rare moments when nobody was around, and handed over a large, white enamel mug of the steaming, sweet brew. In my seclusion, the arrival of each mug was a major event.

  The days wore by, and the agony of solitary confinement grew more intense than ever, particularly as I became increasingly concerned about the untenable situation my wife, our baby and I were caught in. I did not even have the faintest idea where in Kohima they were. Then Kewezeko came together with Phatang. I met them in the living room where all the curtains had been closed. Phatang appeared tense and nervous. He spoke with embarrassed smiles punctuating his short sentences.

  “Everything’s settled now. I’ll send you to Longva. Within a few days.”

  “What about my wife and the baby?”

  “They can follow later. It’s better for them to stay here. For the time being. The baby is still too young to travel. Your wife needs time to recover from the birth also. But don’t worry. I’ll take care of everything. If I do it, it’ll be all right.”

  Map 2: Route followed through Nagaland, across the Indian Border to the Hukawng valley

  The arrangement sounded practical. If I stayed much longer in my tiny world under the bed, I was risking either discovery or insanity, probably both. Once I was across the border, Hseng Noung and the baby could easily be smuggled after me. I felt encouraged and after the meeting I felt more optimistic and for a moment I almost forgot how irritated Phatang’s reluctant cooperation had in the past made us. My opinion of him thus improved considerably. But after a few days I learnt he had left on another trip—but nobody knew where he had gone. We never heard from him in Kohima again.

  On September 23, I wrote up my diary while lying under the wooden bed in my cubbyhole:

  Rain all day. Foggy and misty. Kewezeko came in the afternoon with bad news. The situation in “the East” is “not so good”, he said and “You’ll have to wait for some time.” I couldn’t believe it. I feel terrible tonight. It’s like being trapped alive in a coffin. Now I can understand how a hunted criminal feels. Half-animal, half-human. Constantly alert and nervous. Always expecting the worst. I don’t know where this is going to end.

  Though I still had no idea where they were staying, I was able to send letters to Hseng Noung through Kewezeko who came over to see me every now and then. Hseng Noung assured me in her letters that she and the baby were all right and safe. I missed them desperately and constantly wondered how our little daughter was. After all, I had only seen her for a few hours immediately after her birth.

  I maintained my mental equilibrium by making life as orderly as possible. I worked out a routine and stuck to it. When I woke at 8 am I had tea or coffee and talked to Sakulemba and Narola until they went to work at 10. Then followed five difficult hours when I had to stay absolutely still and quiet under the bed and tried to read and write. A large, empty tin served as my toilet since I could not risk leaving the room in the daytime. Narola usually came back at 3 pm and the flow of visitors dwindled. Since I had faith in her ability to deal with the unexpected, I could relax. Sakulemba always returned from work sometime later.

  Almost every night, I discussed Naga politics with Sakulemba. He was now in his late twenties, and had been only six or seven the first time a detachment of the Indian Army came to his village in the Ao area near Mokokchung.

  “We ran for our lives to the jungle and stayed there for more than a year. The entire village, including the church and the school, were burned down. Our granary was destroyed; all our domestic animals, chickens and pigs, were slaughtered and eaten by the army.”

  After a year in the jungle, the people were rounded up and herded into a high security grouping centre. There they could be more easily monitored and, the Indian Army hoped, separated from the guerrillas who staged almost daily ambushes in the area, evidently supported and kept informed by the local villagers. Sakulemba’s bitterness was genuine; unlike Zanietso, he would never come to see that the Nagas realistically have no other choice, despite the bitter past, than to try to make the best of the present situation. He believed adamantly in the inevitability of Naga independence and seemed to have an unshakeable faith in the old leader Phizo, exiled in London.

  The dire times Sakulemba described did not end until a ceasefire was proclaimed in 1964. A peace-team of observers arrived in Nagaland, consisting of Indian politicians and a British church worker, Michael Scott. He had been included at the insistence of the Nagas; it was he who had helped Phizo into Britain in 1960 and assisted him in advocating the Naga cause abroad. Phizo, who lived in Bromley, Kent, did not take part in the talks. And the peace mission failed in the sense that it did not result in any written accord between New Delhi and the Naga rebels. But it did succeed in creating a more open political climate in Nagaland.

  T
his new style peace process, in which Michael Scott was included, marked a radically different approach to the insurgency involving negotiations, political concessions and a measure of diplomacy. India may have its shortcomings and flaws, often easy to detect and which many foreigners find it easier still to ridicule. But it remains a strong democracy where criticism as a concept is officially tolerated and the government is flexible when a situation demands it. The Nagaland press possesses an extraordinary freedom which has no equivalent in any other Asian war zone. The local press contained detailed reports of rebel ambushes and even underground statements from both the NNC and the NSCN. I tried in vain to explain to Sakulemba that such things would be unthinkable in Burma. He stuck to his views that India oppressed the Nagas.

  While under the bed, I pondered on the contradictions inherent in this situation. Initially the plan had been to investigate the truth about the civil war in Burma. To achieve this I had, in the course of the journey, to resort to lies, deceit and outright law-breaking. Had I been arrested by the Indian authorities, I would have no defence; they would have had every right to sentence our whole family to long terms in prison.

  In Nagaland I was caught in the midst of a conflict which was very comparable with the situation I had been researching in Burma for over five years—but where the Indian government had greatly reduced the level of conflict by a more pragmatic attitude in sharp contrast to Rangoon’s heavy-handed approach. I believe Winston Churchill said in reference to covert operations during World War Two that “in wartime, truth is so precious it must be defended by a bodyguard of lies.” Whilst I am not a spy, these words seemed to have a direct relevance to the position I found myself in.

  Of all the various ruses de guerre we had employed, the one I most keenly regretted was having abused the name of the World Wildlife Fund. I have, since childhood, been a lover of nature and never felt at home in big cities. The World Wildlife Fund is one of the few international institutions I profoundly respect. But it was because that respect is shared by so many others in Asia, especially in India, I had guessed it would work. Since it had, I promised myself I would make recompense by including in this book notes on the wildlife of northern Burma—where in the mountains and the jungles animals still roam free; outside Borneo and parts of the Indonesian and Philippine islands, this must be one of the last real wildernesses in Asia.

  To study the political conflict in northern Burma was not the sole reason why we had decided to undertake this long and risky journey. There was also the longing for a free wilderness where the air was fresh and the streams clear and pure. I had even brought my fishing equipment, and there were many lonely nights in Sakulemba’s little house when I dreamt of wandering along the banks of the Chindwin in search of mahseer, the mighty Indian salmon.

  At Zanietso’s house, when Hseng Noung and I were still together, we used to talk about our ultimate goal, the Kachin State, as ‘the Land of Jade’. For us the area took on a mythical dimension, a dreamland whose romantic appeal sustained us through the numerous trials and tests we encountered. As ‘Land of Jade’ implies, the area has the world’s largest deposits of this green, precious gemstone. Once in the mountains of northern Burma, the nightmare would be over. More prosaically speaking, we had long ago passed the point of no return. If we were forced to turn back, the road back led straight into an Indian jail.

  Sakulemba and Narola usually went to bed early, so at night I could relax more. If it was quiet in the neighbourhood, I would open the window and let the fresh air blow into the cubbyhole. Then I would sit cross-legged on my bed in the breeze and listen to the muted sound of a stream which flowed gently nearby. I sometimes gazed for hours at the star-speckled sky and wondered about the journey ahead. What did the future hold?

  The days and nights went by and I could see no way out. Sakulemba still did not know where I was going, or anything about Hseng Noung and the baby. Phatang was gone and Kewezeko unable to proceed any further without him. At last, I decided I must tell Sakulemba the whole truth. I felt I could trust him despite my initial worry that he would talk too much. One night after dinner, I sat down with him by the fireplace in the kitchen.

  “Sakulemba, we know each other quite well by now. I must tell you what I’m up to.”

  He looked up attentively. I went on to tell him about our plans to go to Kachin State via the NSCN’s base area in ‘the East’ and all the other details.

  “And I’m not alone here in Kohima. I have a wife and a daughter also. Our child was born here in Kohima only a few weeks ago.”

  He understandingly found my story scarcely credible. But somehow I managed to convince him that it was true. I sensed he was upset about Phatang’s behaviour which he apparently thought brought shame on the Nagas. Sakulemba shook his head.

  “You shouldn’t have trusted him. He’s a Tangkhul, almost a Manipuri.”

  In many ways, Sakulemba seemed to have a better grip of the situation than any of the other young Nagas we had met before. It was obvious his sympathies lay with Phizo and the NNC. But he thought if I could go to the NSCN and explain what people said and felt in ‘the West’, there might be a possibility of unity developing between the two factions. Though I had no wish to act as a go-between in delicate negotiations, I felt if through my writings I could contribute to a better understanding between the Nagas, I would have accomplished something worthwhile.

  Sakulemba offered to go up to Mon town and make arrangements for us. It was getting late and I blew into the embers in the fireplace both for light and warmth. He poured me a cup of tea.

  “There are some people in Mon I know quite well. They could help you up to Longva and maybe even across the border.”

  Father and daughter a few weeks after her birth.

  “At least they could deliver the letter Phatang never sent,” I replied, not wanting to be too optimistic. “Once the NSCN’s headquarters know about us, maybe they could take some action.”

  We shook hands to confirm our agreement. I felt relieved not to have to keep Sakulemba in the dark any more. His sympathetic reaction was the first encouraging sign in weeks. That night, I slept soundly and even completely forgot to listen to the BBC’s World Service.

  Sakulemba left by bus a few days after our long, frank talk in the kitchen. While he has away, some teenage boys from his home village came and stayed in the house. They helped Narola with some construction work and I asked her not to tell them about me.

  While the work was in progress one Saturday afternoon, and I thought the boys were out, I carefully opened the door to my small room. I could not see anybody and I longed for a cup of tea. I tiptoed quietly towards the kitchen. When I reached the open door and peeped in, I saw one of the boys there with a knife in his hand, cleaning snails for dinner. He looked up and his face went pale. I put a finger to my mouth to indicate he should be quiet. He stood up stiffly and advanced towards the door, knife in hand, ready for a fight. His face was frozen as if he had seen a ghost. I tried to pat him on the shoulder to calm him down. It had the opposite effect. He fled back into the kitchen, petrified. Unsure what to do next, I went back to my room and shut the door.

  When I came out again, he caught sight of me a second time—and ran out of the house screaming. Through the curtain, I saw him standing amongst his friends, talking loudly, gesticulating and trembling. I retreated to my room, leaving Narola, who fortunately was at home, to deal with the crisis. A jittery half an hour later, there was a knock on the door. Narola entered together with the boy who still looked very pale. He offered his hand, smiling tentatively. He had been sure I was a ghost, especially since I had appeared so silently by the kitchen door, vanished without a trace—and then reappeared equally mysteriously, causing him to flee from the horrid apparition.

  When he rushed out, he had shouted that a ghostly white man was inside the house—but, luckily, in the Ao dialect which none of the neighbours understood. The matron-like Narola had had to calm him down, explaining that I was a fri
end of Sakulemba’s and not a spectre. Briefly she described the circumstances and though potentially disastrous, this actually improved the situation as the Ao boys volunteered to stay on and guard the house until Sakulemba came back from Mon. It was infinitely better than being alone with Hasina and the children. We had to communicate by gesture since we had no language in common, but we soon became good friends. The other boys had endless fun teasing the poor fellow who had mistaken me for a ghost.

  Sakulemba returned after a few days. Full of expectation, we sat down in the living room, but it was obvious from his manners that news was as usual mixed.

  “I’ve sent your letter to the NSCN and written one myself also,” Sakulemba began.

  “But there’s one complication.”

  I sighed. My guess had been right.

  “My friends in Mon told me the Burmese Army attacked the NSCN’s headquarters about a week ago and burnt down a nearby village. Right now is not a good time to cross the border. I’m afraid you’ll have to wait a bit longer.”

  I nodded trying not to look too downcast.

  “Till when? How will we know when things are clear again?” “Well, I’ve got a friend in Mon called Tongwang. I’ve told him everything. And as soon as he gets a reply from the NSCN, he’ll let me know.” I crossed my fingers, hoping that this time it would work.

  Sakulemba seemed to have thought of everything. Having learnt from Kewezeko where Hseng Noung and the baby were staying, on October 11 he brought them over by jeep for our first meeting since we had parted at Zanietso’s four weeks before. Hseng Noung almost cried when she saw me. I was mere skin and bone, pale and sickly with hollow eyes. I sat blinking in the living room. Her horrified reaction made it plain to me that the Ao boy’s mistake had been a thoroughly understandable one.