Land of Jade

by Bertil Lintner

  It was cold that night and we kept a fire burning in the hearth. Hseng Noung and Ee Ying were both soon asleep on a mat spread on the hut’s mud floor. I was tired, too, but fought off sleep to savour a moment I had longed for, for many months, and to imbibe a sudden exhilarating sense of complete freedom. Finally, I was free from the claustrophobic confines of my tiny hiding-place in Kohima; free from the anxieties and doubts of the interminable months behind us; free from the subterfuge and concealment; free from the nagging fear of failure. I was alone to enjoy the stillness of the night and the vibrant immensity of the heaven studded with a million stars.

  The rainy season was over and the weather ideal for walking. I pulled out the map and studied the route that lay ahead of us: hundreds of kilometres of serried mountain ranges, winding rivers, and jungle valleys. I could hardly believe that, at last, we had actually crossed the frontier—even if we were only a few kilometres inside Burma. It was far from safe, but certainly an improvement on Longva where Sakulemba would have had us sleep.

  But with the morning came the tedious practicalities of the road once more. It transpired there were no porters available and the NSCN soldiers began leading us back towards Longva and the border. Alarmed, I demanded of Sakulemba exactly where we were going. He kept walking.

  “The soldiers say we need porters from the village.”

  We were forced to wait for more than an hour in a hut on the eastern fringe of Longva, a few hundred metres below the border crest. Convinced that the nearby Indian Army camp must have got wind of the passage of strangers the previous afternoon, both Hseng Noung and I waited apprehensively. Eventually, the porters arrived and, urged on by our remonstrations, began assembling their loads. Just before midday, as the sun neared its zenith, we set off in the blazing heat.

  We marched rapidly downhill for almost an hour until we reached a stream in the forested gorge below the Longva ridge. We were now on the Burmese side of the watershed that defined the frontier. From here on, the rivers flowed eastwards down to the Chindwin, rather than west into the Brahmaputra and down towards the Indian plains. I glanced back up towards an Indian Army observation post on the denuded ridgeline behind us: it was empty. Once we had crossed the stream and reached the next ridge, Longva was lost to view. For the first time, we could afford to feel really safe.

  But we soon realised that neither of us was ready for the trek ahead. Hseng Noung had given birth only six weeks before, while after three months deprived of both daylight and exercise, I was in even worse shape. As we plodded upwards, my legs trembled violently and I was obliged to stop and rest every few hundred metres. Sakulemba was considerably fitter, as was the Konyak girl who carried Ee Ying. The steeper slopes, which for us were an interminable agony, hardly caused her to breathe heavily.

  Nor was there much respite. The narrow track ran either steeply downhill to a stream, or sharply uphill to the next ridge—and then precipitously down again to the depths of yet another gorge. The path was taking us straight across the grain of the Patkai range in a brutal roller-coaster.

  Two young village boys and a man from Longva carried the luggage. Pressed into porter service by the guerrillas, they had had little choice in the matter. It was a state of affairs with which I was less than happy and in an effort to establish a rapport I gave them cigarettes whenever we stopped. The NSCN guerrillas—of whom there were six in our escort—were all very young and evidently inexperienced. None had a proper uniform; one was wearing a straw hat and three were barefoot. But the leader of the group spoke heavily-accented Burmese.

  Naga boy in a village in northwestern Burma.

  It was sometimes hard to understand him, but we did gather the Burmese Army maintained an outpost at Yengchung village, only a few hours walk from Longva. When we stopped for a rest, he pointed out the position, marked by a pillar of smoke rising from the slope of the ridge. The Army, it appeared, occasionally patrolled the area and skirmishes with NSCN troops were frequent.

  Because of the traditional importance of village defence in the “East”—where head-hunting had continued until only a few years before—the tribals invariably built their villages on the mountain tops. And the last stretch, before our first Naga village inside Burma, was an exhausting uphill struggle that seemed to consume our final reserves of energy. As we straggled into the settlement, a large village of over 100 houses called Kamoe, the light was fading. For anybody fit, it would have been a four hour walk from Longva. It had taken us nearly twice that time.

  Our arrival in Kamoe aroused no particular interest. Evidently all manner of people with underground connections passed through the village frequently, and since the locals had never seen a white man before, I was presumably regarded as simply another insurgent, albeit a rather odd one.

  The Patkai range in the Naga Hills as seen from the Burmese side.

  Indeed, the locals were of far more interest to me than I to them. They looked quite unlike the urbanised Nagas of Kohima and the “West” we had grown used to. The poor—who were in a majority—went semi-naked. The men wore only g-strings while the women were topless regardless of age. Their only garment consisted of a coarse, and very brief homespun skirt. Those better off were dressed in Burmese-style longyis made from Indian cloth, and little sleeveless blouses. Brassieres were clearly not in vogue.

  We were shown into a large hut and the porters put down our bags. A semi-naked man, sitting by the fire, looked at me and asked the Naga soldiers something. They translated to Sakulemba who laughed:

  “He wants to know whether you come from India or Burma.” I replied that I was Burmese; from Rangoon, in fact. He seemed satisfied with my answer. But I rather doubted whether he even knew where Rangoon was.

  As we discovered that night stretched out to sleep on the earthen floor, Naga houses were very dark. The only light sources were the door which in the daytime let in some sunshine; and, by both day and night, an open fire in the middle of the house. All these houses had smooth, beaten-earth floors and at night rats came swarming up from their holes in search of food. I was sound asleep before they emerged. But I learned the next morning that Hseng Noung had sat up almost the whole night with a bamboo stick in her hand, defending Ee Ying from the enormous rodents.

  Sakulemba left us that morning.

  “I’ve done as much as I can. I’m going back to Kohima. But now you have an armed escort and one of them speaks Burmese.”

  We thanked him and waved goodbye as he began walking back towards Longva. Without his help, we would never have been able to cross the frontier, and for that we were very grateful. But it was also our impression he was unwilling to proceed with us up to headquarters. His mistrust of the NSCN was no secret and if the authorities in Kohima found out where he had been, he would also find himself in serious trouble on his return.

  Shortly after Sakulemba had left, our own party set off—the six Naga soldiers, the Konyak girl with Ee Ying in a cloth sling over her shoulder, Hseng Noung and myself. The sun was already high and the sky clear. The verdant, almost glossy ridges of the mountain ranges undulated to a far horizon. And the path, once again, alternated between steep ascents and dizzying drops. We were still weak and panting heavily, but as we adjusted to the rhythm of the march, our energy was slowly returning and we managed a steady pace.

  At first, we found it difficult to understand why the paths always followed the most difficult routes. Instead of zig-zagging up and over passes, as mountain trails usually do, Naga paths invariably ran in a straight line from the highest peak to the next highest peak. Only later was it explained to us that this was a safer way of travelling since from the peaks one always had a clear view of the territory around. Obviously, if you were a headhunter, you needed to expend considerable energy keeping your own firmly on your shoulders.

  At noon we passed a small village and found it almost deserted. The Burmese-speaking soldier said the villagers were afraid of government troops. We could once again see smoke from their camp at Yeng
chung in the distance and were told a skirmish had taken place only a few days before. There was no reason to doubt it: all around the village were deep trenches and trails through the grass where bodies had evidently been dragged away.

  In the evening, we reached another almost deserted village, Kayu Longkai. A ragged procession of a few dozen semi-naked people appeared, bearing off a corpse on a bamboo stretcher. They were chanting an eerie, monotone dirge which slowly faded and died as the funeral party continued into the forest. Hseng Noung and I exchanged glances. She turned to the Burmese-speaker and before long we knew the worst. The emptiness of the villages we had passed through was due not only to fear of the Burmese Army: the area was plague-stricken.

  The realisation chilled me and we immediately took much stricter precautions against rats, flees and unboiled water. We had with us a small mosquito net which we rigged up in one of the huts and slept under, our daughter lying between us. These measures were nearly undone by one foolish mistake. That night, I used a small rice sack as a pillow. We discovered in the morning that a rat had tried to gnaw through the mosquito net, but evidently been scared away by something—probably my snoring, Hseng Noung suggested.

  The NSCN soldiers were unwilling to go further than Kayu Longkai without clearance from their headquarters. So they sent a runner ahead with a letter in which we referred to our earlier messages. But at our insistence, we left after two nights. The prospect of remaining indefinitely in a plague-infested village, with a Burmese outpost only a few hours’ away, was a grim one.

  But the next village, Kayu Noknyu, was worse still. The approach to the village was lined with freshly filled graves, surmounted with crude, wooden crucifixes or intricate bamboo devices of some magic significance. In the village itself we saw not a single healthy person. And word was that the trembling, shuffling corpse-bearers who passed us would themselves be dead by nightfall.

  But we needed to find new porters and the soldiers, almost at gunpoint, produced two sick people. We protested vehemently, insisting we would carry our own luggage sooner than allow this grotesque exercise in press-ganging.

  “But what can we do? There are only sick people in this village,” the aggrieved Burmese-speaker retorted.

  Finally, however, the soldiers relented and came back with two comparatively healthy-looking men. They put our backpacks in cane baskets and hoisted them onto their backs where they were held in place with leather straps around their foreheads. Our efforts to demonstrate how the packs were designed to be carried met with blank incomprehension. It was apparent that the traditional method of porterage was regarded as the only method.

  Beyond Kayu Noknyu, we entered a beautiful valley, narrow but wide enough to accommodate the first irrigated paddy field we had seen in the eastern hills. But the path, in the usual Naga fashion, avoided the easy terrain on the valley floor and arrowed up towards the heights. At one point, it traversed a wild mountain torrent by means of a bridge constructed from a chaotic tangle of vines. In Swedish it would be described as a “magpie’s nest”. No attempt had been made to tie any of its constituent elements together, nor to fix them securely to the ground. To negotiate the bridge, it was necessary to clamber through a jumble of vines and creepers. But it served its purpose.

  Shortly after crossing the bridge, we spotted two young men standing in the middle of the path blocking our way. They were clearly awaiting us and to judge from their appearance were Naga officers. Cowboy hats, patched jeans and pistols carried on their hips in leather-holsters defined them beyond doubt as Nagas from “the West” and, in the primitive surroundings of the eastern hills, persons of some standing. One of them, a stern-faced young man with a thin moustache, pointed curtly at a patch of grass beside the path. We sat down. But my initial relief finally to have encountered someone of authority was swiftly overtaken by apprehension when one of the pair began shouting at the young soldiers in our escort.

  They spoke in Nagamese, the pidgin mixture of Naga dialects, Assamese and Hindi which is the lingua franca of the western tribes. I inferred they were demanding to know why the soldiers had brought us this far without prior approval from headquarters. And I was also sure the two officers could speak English. But apart from a sharp “No”, they refused to speak it with me. Our Burmese speaker was summoned and he sat down beside us in the grass. The interrogation began—in Nagamese translated into fractured Burmese and back again.

  “Who are you? What are you doing here?” the more aggressive of the two demanded.

  “I’m a journalist and my wife’s a photographer. Your headquarters has been informed about our arrival. They’re waiting for us.”

  Trying to appear more relaxed than I felt, I handed him the letter of introduction from the KIA. He demanded to see our passports. Seeing one name in the KIA’s letter and another in my passport—John Hamilton and Bertil Lintner—he concluded he had unearthed something of importance. My efforts to explain the circumstances and insist he contact his superiors who would clear everything up did nothing to mollify him.

  “You have no pass! I can shoot you as a spy if you have no pass!” he barked.

  I tried hard to control my temper and after half an hour of heated exchange, his attitude mellowed. It appeared I had finally managed to convey that we might be what we said we were—guests of their leaders. They joined our party and we set off for the next village, Kayu Nasa. Naturally, this village was also built on the highest mountaintop in sight. But, to our surprise and relief, instead of the usual Naga straight line up the most difficult route, we followed a more conventional zig-zag path. Exhausted as we were, however, even this trail was hard going. Every few hundred metres, we needed to stop, swallow some glucose powder and take a swig from our water bottles. This gave us the strength—just—to reach the top.

  But the ordeal was not yet over. The aggressive young officer bellowed orders at the soldiers and we were taken to a bamboo hut in the village where the interrogation continued. At this point, the friendlier of the two revealed that he could speak English fluently, leaving us mystified as to why he had wanted to conceal his knowledge in the first place. Sitting on the split-bamboo floor by the hearth, his companion, our tormentor, began asking me questions with a pen and a notebook in his hand.

  “Where did you cross the border?”

  “At Longva. Four days ago.”

  “Who brought you there?”

  “We came by ourselves. Your leaders know we’re coming.”

  “You have no pass!”

  “I’ve a letter from the KIA which you have seen.

  “The Kachins are Kachins and the Nagas are Nagas! You have no pass from us!”

  That remark astonished me. But politics did not seem to be this officer’s strong suit. He stared aggressively and pointed at me with his ballpen.

  “Who are you?”

  “I’ve told you a hundred times already. I’m a journalist.”

  “What are you doing here?”

  “Well, what do journalists usually do? Aren’t you happy a reporter has come here? As far as I’m aware, no foreign correspondent has been to visit you since 1961. And in this particular area, never!”

  “We don’t need journalists!”

  “Let your leaders decide that. They know we’re coming.”

  “Where did you stay in Kohima?”

  “In a friend’s house.”

  “What’s his name?”

  “I promised to keep that a secret for his own security’s sake.”

  “Do you refuse to answer my questions? Where did you stay?”

  “You keep repeating the same question! Why don’t you ask me something that matters? For instance, about my work and reasons for coming here?”

  “I can shoot you this instant if you don’t obey orders!”

  At that moment my patience snapped. I sprang to my feet and began shaking my fist in his face.

  “I’ve come here to find out more about the Nagas and your struggle, risking not only my own life but al
so my whole family’s! Including our newborn baby! And you’re threatening to kill us! I know who’s going to be shot if you don’t ask your superiors immediately and stop this bloody pointless interrogation!”

  “You know nothing about life in the underground!”

  “Don’t give me that bullshit! My wife here was a soldier in the Shan State Army for six years before we got married! How long have you been a soldier?”

  Throughout the interrogation, Hseng Noung had been sitting quietly in the background with Ee Ying sleeping in her lap. But now she too burst into a rage. Tears streaming down her face, voice trembling with fury, she poured her pent up scorn and anger on the young man, cursing him for an inexperienced lout.

  Our interrogator was suddenly deflated. The boot now was on the other foot with a vengeance. By the time Hseng Noung had finished her tirade, he was sunk in sullen silence. He scribbled a few notes on a piece of paper and hastily left the hut. The baby still slept soundly in her mother’s arms.

  We were left alone with the other officer and a few of the young soldiers. Most of them were already asleep with their rifles beside them.

  “I’m sorry,” the officer said probingly, glancing at me. “But we have to be careful with outsiders.”

  “That’s all right,” I replied. “I just didn’t think your friend needed to be quite so offensive.”

  My new acquaintance’s name was Phomting and it turned out that he was a friend of Kewezeko’s and that we had other mutual friends as well. He had joined the NSCN a year before together with Kewezeko’s cousin Zekope, the former editor of an outspoken newsweekly in Kohima, the Oking Times.