Burmese Lessons

by Karen Connelly

  I stop to rest, and notice. Even the trees ask for that. Since I was a child, I’ve liked to stand among trees. Being upright like me but taller, they often had some wisdom to impart. They still do.

  Say nothing. Breathe. Bend.

  The men have passed me. I stand alone on the path, listening to their fading footsteps. Bend. I will have to change. Beyond putting on my flip-flops. Maung and I will have a child—an alteration I can’t fathom at the moment, with my muddy feet and bounding mind. Really, I should say I will have a baby, because who knows where Maung will be when I give birth?

  Not long after I arrived in Burma, I thought the place would alter me somehow. And it did—in the sense that we are always altered by powerful experience. Only now, though, with this difficult love, do I sense my self changing. Breaking open. This is what I am—these are my elements, scattered. After breakage comes … what?

  Less self. And less certainty. But the spirit augmented.

  “Yee Yee Cho!” Maung yells. “Where are you?”

  “I’m in the jungle. But not far away,” I yell back, and keep walking. Barefoot.

  I wake up with the gun pressing against my anklebone. Like a finger. At first I think it is a finger, attached to the tattooed hand of the soldier who sat here beside me, reading a Burmese paperback while I dozed. But he’s gone now. The paperback lies facedown on the stool where he sat. He left the gun on the sleeping platform beside me.

  I presume that the safety catch is on. Nothing untoward would have happened if I accidentally knocked the gun to the dirt floor. When I was still awake, I asked him what kind of gun it was. “M16.” I made a mental note of the relatively short barrel.

  “Where does it come from?”

  “Cambodia.” But I thought M16s were American-made.

  I rise up on one arm, nudging the M16 with my foot. Like the other guns I’ve seen on the border, it looks well used. Old. Could it have killed people during Pol Pot’s reign of terror? Though the Khmer Rouge did not favor bullets. Too expensive. Maybe it killed people in Vietnam.

  My face, where it pressed against my elbow as I slept, is marked with lines from my cotton sleeve. I can feel them like thin scars, from the top of my cheek to the place where my ear begins. How long was I out? I don’t usually fall asleep in the presence of strangers with guns on their laps. I sit up and rub my eyes.

  This is where I am to bunk for a week or two. Maung and his bodyguard will stay in a similar hut slightly farther down the slope. Despite the thatch and the dirt floor, the room feels clinical. Usually these places are stuffed with personal belongings—Burmese calendars of popular singers, Thai posters of fruit and waterfalls, photos, little mirrors. Talismans that ward off no-one-ness.

  In contrast, this hut is full of anonymity. The view through the doorway is straight down the narrow valley we switchbacked up—when? Two hours ago? Three? Above the mass of trees, the sky glows magenta. The trees are already black. Voices filter down the hillside. From below, I hear a guitar. It’s not a tape deck because the player misses the same chord twice and picks up the phrase again, repeats, repeats, faintly and patiently melodic, like a child practicing piano scales. The sound brings tears to my eyes.

  CHAPTER 42

  RAGE AGAINST THE MACHINE

  This place is a lively village, with many Karen families living and working alongside the ABSDF members. Small clusters of huts spread over the thickly forested hillside. I take a walk on my own through the heart of the camp—Maung doesn’t want me to go too far away without a guide—and marvel at the elegant system of irrigation. Long pieces of bamboo channel water to a dozen gardens at different levels. In the morning and the evening, the bell-like music of fast-falling water fills the clearings.

  In one of those clearings, people keep rabbits. A Karen woman explains that they’ve had mixed success with rabbit breeding. Too many other animals besides humans are interested in the easy pickings, and disease occasionally wipes out entire litters and breeder pairs. Nevertheless, the rabbits continue to be amorous, and the men keep getting better at building snakeproof hutches.

  Glancing over my shoulder, I quickly slip away on a path that leads to a less inhabited area at the edge of the camp. A brand-new meetinghouse stands there, with a view across the river into Burma. I lean out the big window, wondering how far the range of a rocket launcher is. The river is wide, but not that wide.

  My eyes are in Burma, my feet in Thailand. How strange borders are. Even the obvious demarcation of the river seems an arbitrary line to distinguish one stretch of land from another. It wouldn’t be that hard to swim across it. The trees, the animals, the mud, the nature of pain and of suffering, the way people die: it’s all the same across the water. But for everyone in this industrious, well-run camp full of children and guns and military fatigues the far bank is dangerous, enemy territory as well as homeland.

  Considering the work that has gone into this structure—the fresh yellow weave of the walls, the carved beams, the bamboo-strip floor—I wonder how long it and the rest of the outpost will last. Three years? Five? Maybe six months, if the Burmese military infiltrates that porous emerald wall across the water. The KNU base of Manerplaw was like a small city, a bastion for both the Karen people and the democratic movement. But the Burmese military overran it in January 1995, looting and burning everything.

  I know only the basic facts about Manerplaw, but when people discuss the loss of that stronghold their eyes tear up, their voices tremble. Even Maung, who is so matter-of-fact about everything, including losses, doesn’t like to talk about it. “After Manerplaw, we have to do revolution differently. That is what we learned. The Burmese army is more powerful than our forces. We accept that. But there are other ways to be powerful. That is what we learn now, slowly.”

  When he talks this way, measured, sure of himself, I feel sure of him also. English is a recent second language; in Burmese, his voice and his words are more incisive and weighted. For a politician—isn’t a dissident a politician without an expense account?—he has the rare diamond quality: he inspires trust. At least among some. It surprises me how much I trust him, not just with my safety here but with my safety in general. My heart.

  Yet he has been dishonest with me, and he is often far away, inaccessible. That is my future with him. I say it to myself over and over, attempting to muster … anger? rejection? acceptance?

  I’m testing them all out. I dig through my emotions, trying to find what I am, unbury my private nature. But, more and more often, the big primordial Nature takes me by the shoulders, gives me a good shake, and says, “Child. Baby. Dig that, honey.”

  For the first time in my lustful life, lust has a purpose beyond its own fulfillment. I want him to fuck me because I want to get pregnant. A shocking admission. It makes me think of my mother, who often says, “Be careful what you wish for.” A baby is a squalling, shitting, utterly needy concept. Not a concept. A human being. A mongrel boy or girl born whole out of this fragmented world we find ourselves in. Is that profound love? Or my ovaries on overdrive?

  I am a maze. Or treacherous. I worry about trusting him, but can he trust me? Half an hour after fantasizing about the lovemaking moment of conception (a simultaneous orgasm, of course), I busily compare one kind of life with another. I examine the life I have had in Greece. Short flights from Athens to London, Paris, Amsterdam, San Sebastián. Friends in each city. I miss the great calm Europe of the mind, the long conversations over food and good wine, in languages that are easier than Burmese. Where will I be able to become myself?

  That the self changes constantly is a tenet of Buddhism and a fact of life. With motherhood, everything changes. First the body stretches, then the heart, then the whole shape of one’s existence. Love and selflessness become a function of biology.

  But I didn’t need to have a baby to figure that out. Burmese people have taught me a similar lesson. To care is the essential human act. A long time ago, as an infant, my life depended upon such care. That little o
ne grew and thrived. But she didn’t grasp until recently that nurture is the crucial template of all human life.

  Is it a twist of the poetic mind that after the word nurture the next one that comes to me is torture? Or is it because we’re in the jungle?

  I finally asked Maung about the executions. He came to see me at my guesthouse in Mae Sarieng the day before we left for the ABSDF camp. “Other officers made that decision. It happened in the North. I wasn’t there. They found evidence of treason. There was no place to imprison traitors.” He started to light a cigarette, then stopped. “We’ve had to do things that, in the other life, we would never do.” He turned his face away. My will failed me. I didn’t ask him about the allegations of torture, the woman. How many. The names.

  I watch him among the people here. Do they trust him? They obviously respect him. Most everyone defers to him subtly or overtly. Demure smiles from the girls. Indulgent, motherly nods from older women. Young men gaze admiringly as he passes. I don’t think I’ve really believed it until now. That he is a leader. He has power over people’s lives.

  Is that why I trust him? Not because he is trustworthy but because he has power? A narrow power in strained circumstances, but that only makes his life, and therefore my own, more intense. Any man who is powerful in his world exerts a magnetism, drawing many toward him, repelling others just as strongly.

  When he walks around the camp, he could be any famous leader. He cuts a far more arresting figure than Clinton, not as tall but much better-looking. He even stands with an air of utter self-possession. I study him. There is no doubt about it: that wholeness and self-confidence is attractive. Still, I question myself about the cliché of women falling in love with powerful men. Observing the swagger, I try to be critical. Sometimes I hear, or sense, the patrician affection. Yes, my children, I have arrived. I will try to ensure that all is running smoothly. Yes, it is good to see you, too. I wish I could be among you more often.

  But I’m being unfair. He is affectionate with people, and kind, but he doesn’t hold forth or talk down to them. He is their leader; they give way to him. That’s part of the culture as well as part of his position. As far as I can tell, their regard for him is genuine. And many Burmese men swagger, ceremoniously tying and retying the knotting fold of their longyis. I’ve heard the joke, several times. Why are so many white women hooked up with Burmese dissidents? It’s all in the wraparound skirt.

  Two men interrupt these thoughts. They wear jogging shorts, not longyis, but they immediately command my attention. I watch from above as they come up the path, Karen men, muscular as triathletes, quick-footed despite the incline and their impressive cargo. Between them, strapped to a bamboo pole, is a monitor lizard, gray-and-yellow-scaled, almost four feet long. Many coils of rope fasten the living animal to the pole, testifying to the lizard’s strength.

  Monitors are powerful carnivores. While not normally a threat to large animals—like us—they can be dangerous if provoked. I’m sure being tied up like that is extremely provoking. A thinner nylon twine binds its jaws shut. I step closer, my hand out. The javelin-blade head hangs down at an awkward angle, eyes open but resigned.

  The hunters have climbed higher up the path. They stare at me harder than I stare at the lizard, surprised to find me alone in the beautiful empty building. “I wonder if it’s thirsty,” I say to the man in front.

  He immediately responds, “We are also thirsty.” The other man, younger, wearing a Rage Against the Machine T-shirt, laughs loudly. He wipes the sweat from his face and gives me a disarming smile. Rage against the machine, indeed.

  “I have some water.” I hold out my water bottle to the thirsty man, but he refuses. I insist. I point at the lizard. “Or I will give it to him.” He smiles and takes the bottle.

  “We’ve been walking for a couple hours,” Rage Against the Machine says as his friend gulps audibly.

  “Drink all of it. I’m going back up to the camp in a few minutes.” I have to return soon or Maung will send out a search party. I don’t know the words in Burmese, so I try in Thai. “Tukouwad sia-jai,” I say. I’m sorry for the lizard. Literally, the phrase means, The lizard breaks my heart.

  The men laugh again. “Are you Buddhist?”

  “A little. Enough.” But do you need to be a Buddhist to feel sorry for a lizard? “Will you give him some water when you get home?”

  Neither man responds, though Rage Against the Machine says “Thank you” and hands me the bottle. As though in a dance, they change carrying arms at the same time, stepping around either end of the pole. Just as they lift it back up to their fresh shoulders, a ripple shudders through their arms and down their bodies. The quaking radiates from the lizard, who undulates his long, roped-up self in slow motion. The hunters shout, dance an involuntary jig, and grasp the ends of the carrying pole with both hands.

  Then it’s over. The animal is motionless once more, defeated.

  “Will you give him some water?” I repeat.

  “Yes, yes,” says the man in front impatiently. They begin to walk again, slowly—the gravelly path past the new building is steep. The tip of the dinosaur tail pokes over the man’s shoulder. I watch them go, wanting to run after the monitor lizard with my water bottle.

  I hope they kill the animal soon, but they probably won’t. The point of a living reptile is that it can survive for days on end, fresh meat at the ready in a place without refrigeration.

  CHAPTER 43

  SPARROW HANDS

  I tilt my head back and open my mouth. Starlight pours down my throat.

  I hope it’s a laxative. Nine days and counting. What a grave insult it is to assert that someone is full of shit. I’ve eaten almost nothing for two days. I don’t want to drink water. But I must, and I do, and I’ve been peeing a lot in the past twenty-four hours because a particular stinging sensation informed me yesterday morning that I also have a bladder infection. Cystitis. No doubt from that stupid erotic wrestling in the stream. This is karma all right, a Buddhist lesson in cause and effect.

  “What are you doing out there?” Maung’s voice, from the war office. It may be a bamboo hut, but they still call it a war office. It holds radio equipment, guns, maps, important papers, good cheroots. I stand a few feet away, at the beginning of the long path that skirts the side of the small mountain. This path will lead us back down to the camp proper.

  “Waiting for you.” What else would I be doing? “I’m looking at the stars.”

  “We’re just going over a few more things. We’re almost done.”

  “There’s no hurry.” I am calm and dignified, almost obedient. It’s the new me. I can wait for him for an hour or two at a time, meditating, or making notes. Scribbling thoughts toward my deathless prose. My time is endless. No, let me be more grandiose. I am endless, like the stars. Who believes that most of them are already dead?

  Maung comes out a few minutes later and, before the others join us, kisses me quickly and well, a wet-tongued probe of significant innuendo—he’s so damn good at that, the bastard—then darts ahead of me with the flashlight. We walk carefully down the hillside, on our way to a dinner of dried fish and curry.

  We eat in a group, as we always do, discussing the day, sharing stories. Several people notice me pushing the food around on my plate and suggest that I eat more. I satisfy the dinner table with a few bites. The attention moves elsewhere. Voices murmur, crickets fiddle away, fifty other kinds of insects whir and hum in the invisible trees.

  And then we hear … yodeling? Sort of. People stop chewing. Between the long, loud notes we also hear words, men talking and hooting in the dark. They must be coming up from the Salween. I can’t understand what they’re saying, but one of them sings a few high-pitched lines in an overdone, plaintive voice, which sends his companions into paroxyms of laughter. Everyone at the bamboo table listens intently now, amused. In the candlelight, the grooves and wrinkles made by our smiles become exaggerated, theatrical.

  Maung is smiling with
the rest of us, but I see something else beneath the handsome mask. I recognize this expression now. It’s something like well-held sadness, but not exactly. It’s evidence of the separation between himself and the men and women he loves. He thinks as they do; he feels as they do. Then he thinks something else, beyond them. He is always a step away. Is that the nature of leadership? Does the apartness come first, giving someone the aptitude to lead, or does it come after assuming the role, a toll to be paid for power?

  He sees me watching him. “Soldiers back from the front line,” he explains. The English words sound angular, almost crude. The yodeling singer raises his faux-feminine voice again.

  “Sparrow,” someone says with a grin, and gives a comical salute.

  That is my introduction to the man.

  The next morning, Maung and I walk down toward the river, following the stream as it tumbles fast over fallen trees and boulders as big as the backs of elephants. Here, close to the water, the well-used track widens. To celebrate our stolen moment of solitude, we walk side by side, holding hands. My happiness erases my doubts. I am deeply in love. I will marry this man, have children with him. My life will change forever, as it is changing now, and I will know joy and suffer and hate my days sometimes, as I have known joy and suffered and hated the solitude of being unmoored, completely free. An hour. Five warm fingers laced through mine. This is all I need from him to feel certain again.