Burmese Lessons

by Karen Connelly

  I am cautious enough, I think. I hope. I’ll be leaving the country in a few days anyway, and the MI agents must be very busy tracking down student activists and organizers.

  However: Myo Thant said that a Burmese man he has never seen before came by the guesthouse yesterday, asking for me. Anita also had an unknown visitor, but she, too, was away from her hotel when he came by. He waited for her in the lobby for a full hour, then went away without leaving his name. Neither of us has found out who our mystery callers were.

  CHAPTER 10

  HLEDAN JUNCTION, DECEMBER 6

  When we arrive, Hledan Junction is already crammed with people, most of them under twenty-five. We are on the street—in the middle of the large intersection, in fact, where Insein merges with Pyay Road and University Avenue. In the thick of this mass of people, it seems like we’re inside a vast circular stadium, with apartment blocks surrounding us instead of rising seats. Several thousand more faces look out on the protesters from the windows and balconies of these apartments. Many people call out slogans of their own, to encourage the students. Some throw down packets of food. We watch a man carry out a box of water bottles, which he hoists into the arms of one of the students, then he hurries back inside his building.

  This gathering is nothing like the small rallies of the past few days. Those felt like taunts, gadfly stings at the authorities. Anita and I estimate that there are between two and three thousand people here. Row upon row of faces shine under the chalky streetlight. We walk through, burrowing into layers, sometimes pausing to talk to other foreign journalists and observers.

  When we get to the core group of several hundred at the center of the crowd, we stand and listen to the speeches. Young men and women yell through bullhorns, their voices sometimes strong, sometimes hoarse—they’ve been speaking for hours. They gesticulate as they make their speeches, outraged by the events of the past few days. They invoke names from the last generation of young activists: Min Ko Naing, who has been in prison since 1989, and Moe Thee Zun, who left Burma to become a revolutionary on the Thai-Burma border. Between speakers there are often a few moments of group chants, and the most popular one is in English: “We want demo-cracy! We want demo-cracy!” In 1988, the people yelled the exact same words.

  Suddenly I hear someone behind me start to cry. I slide through the crowd until I reach the source. A young woman is pleading with her parents. They want her to leave the rally. Her hair swings over her shoulders when she whips her head from side to side, spreading her arms to indicate her friends—the hundreds of people, thousands, her comrades. How can they take her away? She wears a white blouse and a green longyi—the uniform of the high-school student.

  The mother does the talking, moving her hands to and fro, weaving the reasons that her child should come home. I can tell she’s winning the girl over. The older woman glances nervously, beseechingly, at the onlookers. Hers is the tear-stained face; she is the one who was crying before, and now she begins to cry again, shamelessly.

  Who knows what their story is? A son might be dead, or he might be a guerrilla soldier on the Thai border. Maybe they never lost a child and cannot bear the possibility of losing this one, a pretty girl who walks slowly into her mother’s arms.

  A few young women come forward and hug their friend, but it’s too late to argue. The mother has clamped her arm around the white-bloused shoulders, and the father walks behind the two women, a hand clasped on either elbow.

  Not long after the girl’s departure, a murmur runs through the crowd, building quickly, transforming from sound into attention. Everyone turns toward the massive lights far down Pyay and Insein Roads and University Avenue. The trucks have arrived. Or maybe they’ve been there for a long time already, and the lights were off. I wonder if the girl’s parents, on their way to find their daughter, passed the five fire trucks—I can see them now—and the six trucks loaded up with soldiers, and the empty cage trucks ready for the students they intend to arrest.

  The regime announces its presence with high beams. The lights shine blindingly down each thoroughfare, informing the large crowd that it will not be so easy to get away. The faces around me, and presumably my own face, appear raw, exposed. To run would draw attention. Better to slink. As the trucks roll down the streets, more than half of this huge crowd does precisely that, dispersing into small lanes. People who live in the surrounding houses and blocks of flats have already gone back inside, their willingness to support the students having evaporated. The metal grilles that seal many apartment buildings for the night are pulled down with a resounding clank.

  Several hundred protesters form into a thick ring, at the center of which stand perhaps eighty young men and women, some holding aloft portraits of Aung San and pictures of the golden fighting peacock, the symbol of student protest. The young women form the nucleus of this group; the young men stand around them in a protective, if futile, gesture. How bravely, foolishly, and profoundly dedicated they are to their cause! They knew the soldiers would come. They know they could be arrested, imprisoned. They know they could be tortured. Yet here they are.

  The fire trucks begin their approach.

  Anita and I lost each other when I went to watch the family drama with the young girl. I stand by myself at the far edge of the main group of students, in front of a block of flats. Faces behind me peer out from the closed grille. The students at the center of the gathering have finished yelling their political slogans. They light candles and pass the small flames through the circle. They remove their shoes or slippers and kneel down on the pavement, facing one direction. When they begin to intone Buddhist sutras, I realize that they’ve turned toward the Shwedagon Pagoda, Burma’s most revered place of worship. As their voices rise in a mournful, steady chant, the hairs on my arms and neck stand on end. Here and in Thailand, in temples and meditation halls, I have listened to hours of similar prayers uttered by monks and by laypeople, repeating together the ancient words that call for loving-kindness, for compassion, for equanimity.

  The water shocks me. A wide white arc of it shoots through the air, then another, and another. I feel only cold, heavy gusts, but the water cannons knock over some of the kneeling students; others swing at the air as they try to keep upright. The posters and portraits of General Aung San shoot up and fall back on people’s heads. The drenching is meant to humiliate them before the final assault. More liquid salvoes come before the trucks pull aside to make room for the riot police and the soldiers. When I look around at the crowd, I find it mostly gone: the demonstrators in the outer ring have melted into the dark side streets beyond the lights.

  Sitting in a ragged circle, the students murmur quietly. The soldiers make a tremendous racket when they jump out of the trucks that have carried them here. The riot police stand aside while the soldiers push and pull the protesters off the ground and drag their limp bodies to the army trucks. I am so mesmerized by what’s taking place in front of me that I don’t realize how alone I’ve become. The remainder of the crowd has gathered across the intersection. I stand in the glare of the lights. As soldiers lift the last of the girls into the trucks, I walk slowly along the face of the apartment buildings, touching the rough plaster walls with my fingers. The intersection is filled with trucks and troops, yet I hear only the thud of blood rushing in my ears. An epiphany of adrenaline pours through me: I have witnessed how oppressed people fight back and forge a new history with their own bodies. The hunger for justice shrinks the self; at first it makes the word sacrifice possible, then necessary. In the moment when people hurl their lives at dictatorships, they hardly care if their lives return to them.

  I reach the intersection where the last group of demonstrators and observers huddle together. A row of riot police stand across the road. The students of the inner circle are in the trucks now. I glance at the person next to me and am relieved to see the familiar face of a young man I spoke with earlier in the evening. He asks, “Are you all right?”

  “I’m fine.”
>
  I look around, trying to find Anita. Usually her blond head sticks up in a crowd. The young man catches my elbow as I am knocked off balance. People are running, pushing past us. “What happened?” I ask, but he doesn’t need to answer. I turn to see the riot police charging us, their batons raised in the air. Shields and guns, helmets and boots, the black sticks. We run. Everyone is running and shouting. Flip-flops slap the pavement, and behind them comes the pounding of boots. I feel little fear, only the clear-headed desire in the midst of noise and bodies to get away, to be safe. Several open apartment blocks are the only places that offer immediate refuge—the side streets are too far up the block.

  I follow the white-shirted young man and two younger men who have joined him, boys really—neither of them can be over sixteen. Knees and elbows pumping, we climb up one floor, two, three, four floors—no effort at all, I might be flying—into a dark hallway. A woman has opened her door, she ushers us into the apartment. “Shh,” she whispers, “the children are asleep.” The room is lit only by bands of streetlight. She closes and locks the door, then we all freeze, because we hear the boots hammering up the stairwells. The riot police yell to one another. It’s depressing how easily their voices cut through the concrete walls. They begin to pound on people’s doors.

  The woman holds her hand out in front of her, telling us without a word to keep still. For the first time, I feel real fear. Why have we come here? What am I doing? What if the police break in and discover us and this woman gets into trouble? What about her children?

  They’ve reached the third-floor landing. Their voices are so clear that they could be right outside the door. The woman murmurs, “Come quickly,” and we follow her down a narrow corridor into a small room. I’m shocked: she has brought us to her children. She pulls boxes and blankets out from under each of their cots and whispers to the Burmese students. The white-shirted one translates: “If the police come in, you and he”—he points at the smaller boy—“will hide under there, and we will hide under the other one. But don’t do it unless they come to her door. She doesn’t want the children to wake up.”

  I’m in awe of the slumbering forms. It’s too dark to know if they are boys or girls or one of each. How have they slept through the noise? One bare arm sticks out from beneath a blanket; softly bent fingers hook the night air.

  We listen to the shouts of men and their thumping feet. From outside comes the crash of breaking glass—storefronts, windshields, streetlights—and people yelling.

  The footsteps never come to the woman’s apartment; no fist pounds on her door.

  The younger boys have begun to breathe more slowly. The mother brings us a tray laden with glasses of water. We thank her and gulp it all down. She and the young man whisper together, then he turns to me. “She thinks the police have gone. I will go on the balcony to see what’s happening.”

  We follow him as far as the dark sitting room. When he reenters the apartment, he tells us there’s nothing to see; too many streetlights have been broken. Farther up the road, people still shout into the dark, and more glass shatters. We wonder if the police themselves are doing the damage, trying to frighten people.

  Our hostess brings some blankets. We lie down on the floor.

  Is the night long, or short? I nod off once or twice, but mostly I’m awake, listening to the breathing of the young people beside me. At one point, I drop into a disturbed sleep and wake up so disoriented that I think I am dreaming. Then I see the boys’ sleeping faces beside me, and feel a deep pang of sadness.

  Young people always look younger when they are sleeping; the child returns with the slack mouth, the guileless forehead. Before they dropped off, the two boys told me their ages: fifteen and sixteen. Each told his parents that he was staying over at the other’s house. By now their lies have probably been discovered and their parents are sick with worry. But the woman told us we couldn’t think about leaving the apartment. She said it will be safe only in the morning, after residents in the building start going to work and school.

  Soon enough, dawn light appears and grows in the room, revealing what we couldn’t see last night: the color of the kitchen table, the family photographs on the wall above the little sofa, the English and Burmese titles on the bookshelf. Though dazed with sleeplessness and stiff from lying on the concrete floor, I realize that I must have slept more than I thought, because I missed the woman’s husband coming in. Once we’re all awake, he brings us a tray of tea as though he regularly entertains young strangers at 6:45 A.M. He couldn’t get home last night because of barricades and rumors of a curfew; he stayed at the home of a colleague.

  He has a long, low-toned discussion with the young men. The sadness I felt in the night emanates from all of us. The older man nods a lot and kneads his big-knuckled hands. We’ve finished our tea. The young man and I thank our generous hosts. There is so much emotion in the room that the boys tear up when they say their thank-you.

  They will leave together. The young man gives me his address, carefully written out on a small scrap of paper. “I will meet you again someday,” he confidently predicts, though I know better. The three of them give me surprisingly lighthearted smiles and walk out the door.

  Twenty minutes later, I follow them down the stairs and step into the morning sun. It is a normal day. People cross the intersection. Smoke-belching buses hurtle over the spot where the protesters kneeled, reciting Buddhist sutras. Walking away from Hledan Junction, I pass a woman whose plastic baskets are packed with green leafy stuff and mangoes. She has just been to market. As though nothing happened here last night. As though no one was taken away.

  I step off the curb too lightly. My body floats across the road, as insubstantial as a ghost.

  CHAPTER 11

  “THE SKULL IS MADE OF SUCH THIN BONE”

  Anita is missing. I called her hotel repeatedly through the morning and afternoon. Now it’s past five, but she’s still not there. Since the protests started a week ago, we’ve telephoned or met each other every day, to compare notes and to check in and make sure all is well. My gut tells me that all is not well, but I resist the obvious conclusion. I don’t want to believe that she has been picked up by military intelligence agents. The generals are not very good at public relations, but I don’t believe they’re unwise enough to hurt a white woman journalist.

  On the other hand, why wouldn’t they? Like me, Anita is here on a tourist visa, but she is writing articles for major European newspapers and collecting material for a book about Burma’s dictatorial politics. It’s foolish to assume that our white skin can protect us, yet we assume precisely that. At least I do. There is a measure of arrogance (how much?) mixed into this assumption. Even if I don’t act arrogantly, I benefit from the racism that is part of this world, the discrimination that adds a layer of value to this white-skinned body.

  Yet today I feel like a ghost, invisible, erased because the acts of brave protest I witnessed have also been erased. Ghosts are white, aren’t they? Does it matter that I saw what I saw? I have no newspaper to write for, no report to make to anyone who cares. The students who did not run were hauled away in trucks. What is happening to them?

  I go downstairs and call Anita’s hotel again. Then I ring another journalist, who is also worried about her, but he has news only about last night. The riot police roughed up dozens of onlookers who didn’t get away fast enough (though they didn’t touch any white foreigners). They also beat up some people who sheltered the fleeing protesters in apartment buildings. More than a thousand students have been arrested in the past three days. Some of them have been released, though organizers and leaders are still being detained; they will probably receive long prison sentences. Word has it, too, that a man who handed out water bottles to the demonstrators has been sentenced to several years in prison.

  In two hours, another rally will begin downtown. Students told me about it last night. Part of me doesn’t want to go. I just want to lie in bed and read John Ruskin. I want to hide. B
ut the day after tomorrow I leave the country—I’ve already overstayed my visa by several days. Who knows when people will protest this way again? I feel I must go, to watch, to witness the protesters’ courage. It’s the least I can do.

  I’m afraid of touching one of the monks accidentally. People are crushed together on this side of the street; half a dozen monks and I are among them. With news of the crackdown at Hledan Junction, the bystanders are not so brave; none of us mingle with the student protesters in the middle of the road. The monks stand in a tidy row beside me. I keep getting elbowed and jostled ever closer to them. Owing to monastic vows of abstinence, Buddhist monks are not allowed to touch women.

  Around us and across the road, people angrily shout the rallying cry, “Do-ayey, do-ayey!” When cars pass, the celebratory sound of honking horns and pop music crescendoes and fades, replaced by people’s voices. The monks don’t join in the yelling, though sometimes they politely smile into the crowd. After a particularly loud volley of chants, I find myself locked in a stare with the tallest monk, who is at the end of the row. One by one, each monk bends forward past the shoulder of his fellow to smile at me. I smile back. We nod. It is a formal, wordless acknowledgment, but the solemnity ends when the monk nearest me, a youth not yet twenty, starts laughing merrily. I begin laughing, too. The tall man at the end of the row asks me in Burmese, “Do you understand?”

  The language? Burmese politics? Their laughter? Karma?

  “Yes,” I lie. “I understand.”

  The monks laugh again, concluding our exchange. We turn our attention back to the demonstration. A new group of students have entered the fray. The energy in their voices gusts toward us like a strong wind.

  But it will not be like yesterday, when the military let the young people occupy the street for hours before closing in. Another salient difference: there is no foreign-journalist presence here that I’ve been able to see, unlike last night, when there were a dozen or more of us running around, taking pictures, watching, shooting videos. Some of the students told me that several embassies sent cars out last night, too, and posted observers at different points around the intersection. I’m not sure where the white people are tonight, but the military has less reason to show restraint, because the soldiers won’t be on film.