Burmese Lessons

by Karen Connelly

  When she won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991, her young sons, Alexander and Kim, accepted the award on her behalf. She was released from house arrest in 1995, and very soon after started to give weekend talks. When I asked San Aung about them, he told me, “Go to one. See for yourself. You’ll like it. Everyone likes it. Except for the army, of course. I don’t think they’ll let her speak publicly much longer. That’s why you should go. It will be different from the interview you had. More interesting.”

  “But it was interesting to meet her.” I interviewed her during my first week in Burma, because Ma Thida, the young woman writer in prison, had worked with her on her election campaign in 1989. I also thought that Suu Kyi would have some insights into the prison experience, having spent so long in solitary confinement. But she refused to compare herself to the prisoners in prison, and she knew no more about Ma Thida’s situation than anyone else did. But, like Sayagyi Tin Moe, she cautioned me against trying to interview her family; they could be under surveillance by the MI.

  “I think I interviewed her too early in my stay. I didn’t ask her the right questions, and I was nervous. Despite that, she was very gracious. But I didn’t know how to talk to her. She’s in this immense public position—national heroine, international Nobel laureate—but she’s one of the most private people I’ve ever met. That much was obvious just from her posture—she’s like a wall. A beautiful wall. I was afraid to ask her anything too personal, anything unexpected. I didn’t want to offend her or invade that privacy. So I asked boring questions. Or awkward, overly complicated ones. And I didn’t dare ask if I could take a portrait of her.”

  “You know, every Western intellectual who drops into Rangoon tries to get an interview with her.”

  “Exactly. I was just another Western intellectual. She must get sick of us.”

  He laughed. “You should have asked her about that, to see what she would say.”

  “Oh, I know what she would say. She’d say of course not, she appreciates the support of the international community. Boring answer. Correct.”

  “Karen, she cannot be outrageous and incorrect! She’s a politician. But I know what you mean. Other foreigners say the same thing—she’s charming but stiff. Not a typical Burmese woman. And she’s not, is she? She has spent most of her life abroad, and a lot of that in Britain. I don’t mind the stiffness. But I wish she would agitate, like Gandhi. Tell people to go out and march on the streets again. He’s one of her heroes, but marching in the streets is not her style.”

  The crowd is now so big that it spills out across the pavement and up onto the other side of the road. Cars drive carefully through the masses of people, the drivers blaring their horns—“to show support,” says the woman beside me. Another festive sound is the metallic clink-clink-clinking of vendors knocking cups against their metal water coolers. Sun, not rain, suddenly pours through the heavy clouds, and the water sellers begin to do a brisk business.

  When a young couple rises together to change position, hoping to squeeze into the welcome shade of the tall trees lining the street, they carry their shoes in their hands and place their bare feet gingerly on the ground in front of sitting people. They smile and talk to strangers as they go. An old woman holds the shoulder of a young man as she lowers herself down. Young girls hold each other’s hands.

  Here and now, outside the pale blue gates of 54 University Avenue, the familiarity is such that we might be attending an enormous family reunion. The Lady will speak, as she does every Saturday and Sunday, at 4 P.M. We’re packed in tightly, faces and hands, feet and folded knees. People fan themselves with newspapers and pieces of cardboard. Sometime after three o’clock, a young man appears and tests the microphone. The crowd goes silent with expectation as his voice rings out into the avenue, but he goes away again and the people return to chatting.

  A few minutes later, two groups of supporters come through the gate. A row of young women in traditional cotton jackets sit facing the crowd in a half circle, the first band of a human shield. The second band consists of white-shirted men who file out of the compound and face us with earnest expressions. The talkative people grow silent. Two men step up onto the unseen platform behind the gate, leaving a space between them. A wave of sound rises up and crests into the shockingly articulate syllables of her name: “Aung San Suu Kyi! Aung San Suu Kyi! Aung San Suu Kyi!” Despite the heat, goosebumps rise on my skin.

  I’ve never heard, in Burma or in any free country, how quickly a thousand voices can join together. People shout this rallying cry at the tops of their lungs. I hear and I feel the words vibrating through my head, against the roof of my closed mouth. The force of it is almost frightening.

  Suddenly she is up there, between the two men, in front of the microphone. Even after the photographs in newspapers and books, even after meeting her in person, it’s surprising to see how beautiful she is, how upright, and how small. A string of white jasmine flowers hangs from the knot of hair at the back of her neck. She dips her head for a moment, waiting for the chant of her name to ebb. Then she greets the people, smiling, and begins to speak.

  It doesn’t matter that I don’t understand. I hear something in her voice that I did not feel with her at all in person. Ease. Her public Burmese persona is not the woman I met in the front sitting room of the house in the compound. The authority and intelligence are the same: sharp, undeniable. But the small woman who stands on a table and smiles at the crowd as she speaks, and pauses to let them digest her words, and pauses again to look up from her notes and meet the eyes of her supporters—this woman is the myth incarnate, the beautiful, warmhearted heroine, the daughter of the hero father. She speaks without earnestness or anger. She is attractive, almost sensual in appearance. It’s a complete transformation from the rigid-backed person I met during my first week in Rangoon. Though she stands behind her gate—both fulfilling and pushing against the SLORC dictate that she must not speak outside of her own home and compound—she brings herself close to her audience. What astonishes me most is how funny she is.

  And how the crowd laughs! She makes her witty remarks and her jokes and laughs with them, throwing her head back and opening her mouth wide. That’s the essence of the alteration: she is open. She unlocks her heart for a thousand people. They unlock their hearts for her. Their faces shine as they listen, their eyes follow her, reverent and focused. I must be the only shifter and fidgeter in the crowd. Unlike everyone else, I am unable to ignore my pins-and-needles legs and numb feet.

  When she begins to speak with the crisp, hard consonants of British English, the private, cool woman returns. She speaks English politely, giving the few foreigners in the crowd a brief summary of her talk, which will “concern the struggle in South Africa to end the rule of apartheid.” She explains that she has recently read and been inspired by Nelson Mandela’s autobiography. But we are not her real audience. Rightly, she doesn’t waste much time with us. She opens her mouth again and becomes Burmese once more by speaking it.

  A moment later, she must offer another joke or a play on words, for a big swell of laughter washes over the people around me. An answering smile animates Aung San Suu Kyi’s face. With one hand, she grapples with her notes and the unwieldy microphone. The other hand she stretches out toward her listeners. At first I think the gesture is meant to quiet them, as a teacher hushes an unruly classroom. But she is reaching for them.

  It makes me think of the words San Aung taught me the other day. Let pwa-deh, a verb: to open the hand, to give. To be generous.

  *Dr. Michael Aris was a professor in Asian studies at Oxford, and one of the leading Western authorities on Tibetan, Bhutanese, and Himalayan cultures. A dedicated and outspoken supporter of his wife’s political work in Burma, he edited an important book of essays by and about her, Freedom from Fear. When he became seriously ill with prostate cancer in 1997, he wished to spend his last days with Suu Kyi in Rangoon, but the junta repeatedly turned down his application for a travel visa. The U.N., Western
governments, and many prominent world figures petitioned the regime to grant him permission to see Aung San Suu Kyi before he died. The generals refused their requests. Suu Kyi refused to leave Burma for fear of not being allowed to return. Michael died in London on March 27, 1999.

  CHAPTER 9

  DO-AYEY

  I hear a knock at my guesthouse door. “Telephone!” Myo Thant crisply announces. He waits for my acknowledgment, then thumps back down the stairs.

  I suspect that San Aung is calling to tell me that he does have time for a last visit. But when I pick up the phone a woman’s voice surprises me. It’s Anita, the Swedish journalist I met my first night here. I ran into her at a coffee shop recently and we had a long chat. She’s been doing work in Burma and on the border for years.

  Her words tumble out breathlessly. “Yes, it’s me. I remembered the guesthouse you were staying in—that’s how I found you. I’ve been wondering how you are. No, no, everything’s fine. Could you meet me for a drink at the Strand around seven? It would be lovely to see you again.”

  I go back up to my room, close the door. How odd. Anita is on a tight schedule. She cannot be calling me just to have a drink.

  • • •

  She needed a partner, a fellow watcher. For the past four nights, we’ve gone out together to small student protests, which have been held in or near busy downtown pagodas. We try to keep an eye on each other, especially when the soldiers come. The rallies begin with a group of twenty to forty students; some of them hold up pictures of the Lady’s famous and beloved father, Aung San. He is particularly beloved by politically minded young people because he was one of the country’s first student activists, a fervent protester turned revolutionary against the British colonialists.

  A young woman who had a small photograph of him pinned to her shirt told me why she and her classmates were protesting. Three months ago, after a minor argument between a small group of students and a tea-shop owner, police arrived on the scene, arrested the students, and beat them up in a nearby police station. Apparently, the tea shop was owned by an MI agent. The students were eventually released, but several had been seriously injured, and all were angry about the unjust treatment. When Rangoon University administrators refused to support them in their demands for a public inquiry into the affair, the students began to organize these small demonstrations.

  As the young woman gave me this background, drawing maps of Rangoon University’s campus and listing the names of the main participants—she had a photographic memory and was an excellent sketcher—I was struck by how familiar the story sounded. It was almost a play-by-play repeat of the incident that launched the 1988 democracy uprisings, when a student was killed by the police after an argument at a tea shop. This time, too, police brutality has ignited a firestorm of indignation. The university students are like a collective human barometer that reveals how frustrated and angry the entire population is. Often they arrive at the protest site empty-handed and begin yelling political slogans that attract sympathetic passersby. Small but supportive crowds gather quickly and join in with the chanting students. The most rousing slogan now was also the rallying cry of marchers in 1988: “Do-ayey, do-ayey!” Our business, our concern!

  I felt a mixture of awe and anxiety the first time I saw one of these shouting knots of protesters. After so many hushed conversations and so many descriptions of the 1988 marches and how violently the army quelled them, I was amazed to watch these brave young people claim public space yet again, volleying chants back and forth, clapping their hands whenever someone yelled new words of protest above the din.

  One young man recited their collective goals: “We want justice for the students. We want the SLORC to stop shutting down the university every few months.” He looked around at his friends’ faces, and I did, too, moved by the pure vulnerable youth of them.

  New indignation entered the young man’s voice: “We want a new government. We want democracy. Our government has nothing good to offer us. And our teachers are cooperating with the government because they are afraid. Instead of accepting these conditions, it is better for us to risk our lives!” With that pronouncement he started yelling again, punching the warm night air with his fist.

  The student-led revolt of 1988 spawned a strike that spread across the country. I doubt the students will be able to manage that again. Along with the crippling university closures, increased SLORC surveillance on campuses all over Burma has kept student bodies from organizing and mobilizing. Even these guerrilla protests—or hit-and-run rallies, as Anita calls them—are a feat of organization, arranged without the benefit of cell phones or email. Inevitably, after about half an hour or so, the army and the riot police arrive in their big trucks, and people scramble into side streets, away from the uniforms and the guns. Some of the students are caught, but their comrades move on to another pre-selected site. In the past three days, hundreds of soldiers and riot police have spent hours running around Rangoon, trying to catch up to these bands of ingenious young activists.

  The soldiers have set up a large barricade of wood and barbed wire blocking the way to Aung San Suu Kyi’s house; she is no longer allowed to give her weekend talks, and the young people holding the rallies say that before long she will be put under house arrest again. There’s a visible army presence in Rangoon, hundreds of machine-gun-toting men in berets and boots. Some of the students being held in detention have been badly beaten. A writer whom I had arranged to visit two days ago sent a message to the guesthouse canceling our appointment. Her note said, “Now is not a good time to talk.”

  Yesterday afternoon, Anita and I arrived too late to witness a student march down Insein Road. We were stopped at a barricade after riot police had broken up the march and detained dozens of students, whom we saw confined in big blue cagelike trucks. A girl stuck her hand through the bars and waved at us. As surreptitiously as possible, standing behind Anita, I shot a few photos. But a commander saw me and ran across the road, yelling. A soldier let him through the barbed-wire barricade; he rushed at me and grabbed my camera. There ensued a frightening yet horribly comic scene as he struggled to remove the film, screaming the entire time. When he managed to get the roll out, he pulled at it until all the black film lay twisted on the ground. Then he thrust the camera into my chest. “Thank you,” I said in Burmese, pissed off about losing my pictures but grateful that he hadn’t smashed the Nikon. The day before, a Japanese photographer had had both his still and video cameras confiscated. Then he was deported.

  He was one of several foreign journalists who have arrived in Rangoon to cover this latest outbreak of unrest. The young activists have told us that a much larger, more significant rally is planned for tonight at Hledan Junction, a historic spot near the Rangoon Institute of Technology, where political marches have taken place for decades.

  I’ve spent the afternoon trying to rest in preparation for the evening, but I can’t sleep. I’m wound up tight with adrenaline and the excitement of so many unexpected events. I’m also plagued by a feeling of uselessness. Why am I not a journalist, like Anita, who has been filing reports for the past several days? She has been here for the past month because she’s researching a book, but she also writes for a couple of major newspapers. I should be doing the same thing right now, telling the world what I’ve seen.

  I sit up on the prickly bedcover and listen to the sounds of the midday street, si-car bells and honking horns and the cries of fruit sellers. It sounds so … normal. As if nothing untoward were happening outside. This doubleness makes me feel unbalanced. That is how life is every day for Burmese people, even those with uncommon privileges. Here is the surface—the sun shining down, the man on his bicycle, the nun with a deformed face selling candles, as usual, at the corner. There are the schoolboys in their green shorts and white shirts playing on the curb. But another reality also exists, hidden though in full view, known by all but secret. That is the nature of life in any politically oppressed country: reality itself has a personali
ty disorder. I know this intellectually, but for the first time I feel it in my gut.

  After scribbling these notes, I flip back through my book, rereading. Then I find a felt marker—bought this morning, for this purpose—and start blacking out particular names and meeting places, erasing the list of people I’ve met with here. Unexpected things are happening these days, and several people have asked me to be careful with their names. Anita has told me about activists and journalists who have had everything confiscated by the MI agents—computers, notes, address books—and she has learned to keep all her contacts on a single piece of paper that can be disposed of quickly.

  It’s amazing how easy it is to become paranoid. Suddenly the inquisitive taxi drivers who want to know my name and my friend’s name and “What are you doing at the pagoda?” could be informers. And they could be. A network of informers and spies really does exist throughout the country; it is no longer something I read about in a book.

  Two days ago, I interviewed a Shan man whose father had been executed by the regime in the 1970s. The Shan people are one of many ethnic groups who have demanded land and language autonomy from the central government. They’ve been locked in conflict with successive regimes for half a century. The man I spoke with lost not only his father; he lost the land and the way of life that had belonged to his extended family for generations. The government stole their ancestral property, impoverishing thousands of people in the process. He asked me not to record our conversation on tape, because “I trust only myself. People do things we do not believe that they will do. You have to be careful, Karen. Especially when the generals are upset.”