Double karma, p.4
Double Karma, page 4
That is why, when he asked me to help him find subjects, I agreed. Despite my activist commitments, I found time over the next few weeks to buzz around the city on a motorbike with Min, showing off Rangoon while convincing taxi drivers, merchants, food vendors, street artists, monks, and other average citizens to let him take their photograph. Min was interested in everything and everyone, so no corner of the city was left unexplored in his attempts to capture what he called “the Burmese moment.” In Bogyoke Aung San Market, two young women out shopping, their cheeks dabbed with thanaka paste. In a Tamwe tea house, a trio of old men playing cards, their laughter exposing betel nut–stained teeth. At Insein Township, a group of teenage boys enjoying a game of chinlone, the Circular Train passing behind them as they deftly foot-tossed the tiny rattan caneball between them.
Min was a real professional. He knew how to make his subjects relax, how to capture them in their most natural state. But during the shoots he also tried interviewing many of them. He wanted to know more about their lives, and what it was like to live under the Ne Win regime. I advised him to keep the conversations light; nobody wanted to be turned in by their next-door neighbour for saying the wrong thing to a foreigner. But Min surprised me again, gaining his subjects’ trust after only a few minutes of conversation. Fascinated by the chance to become acquainted with an American — and, no less, a Burmese American who could pass for a local — most people he photographed were happy to share their opinions about the Ne Win regime and the sorry state of Burma’s economy. We all have opinions, they told Min, we just want to be free to express them, like you are in America.
4
Min:
Entering Burma with a fake passport was a stupid thing to do. I knew it was risky but did not feel the consequences until Thandar confessed, three weeks after my return to Rangoon, why she hadn’t yet introduced me to her family: it seems her parents weren’t thrilled by the optics of hosting an American photojournalist with a fake passport posing as a Mandalay farmer. When at last she invited me for supper at the family’s three-storey mansion in Mayangone Township, it was only after convincing her mother and father that she and her two brothers would tell no one of my visit. Humbled, I was determined to leave a good impression.
Both civil servants born and raised in Rangoon, Mr. and Mrs. Aye were the cream of the Burman Buddhist crop — society people of impeccable breeding who were warm and generous in their welcome despite the security risk I posed. When I showed up at the family home, they greeted me at the front door formally dressed in the finest of silk longyis, magnificently coloured and radiant. Mr. Aye directed me to the living room, where I sat on a silk cushion on the polished teakwood floor. Mrs. Aye asked Thandar to help present the traditional Burmese feast she had prepared for the occasion — tea leaves, pulses and beans, an assortment of curried meats, and steamed vegetables with jasmine rice, all of it served from shiny metal boxes on a silk cloth that Thandar carefully spread out on the floor in front of me.
Thandar’s brothers, both history majors at RASU, arrived as the meal began. Also formally dressed in fine silk shirts and longyis, Aye Maung and Hla Min were polite but said little during the meal, observing in fascinated silence as I dropped food and struggled not to fall over while sitting cross-legged on the floor. I had never eaten with my hands this way and didn’t recognize many of the dishes. Burmese food did exist in California, but I had been raised on an all-American diet, so I only ever sampled this exotic cuisine at the annual Thingyan festivals, where everyone sat at tables using cutlery. It was a sobering revelation that all my advance training — the language lessons, the monastery visits, the history books from Dad — was hardly adequate preparation for the culture in which I was now immersing myself. Despite a rapidly improving Rangoon accent, I hadn’t convinced anyone at that dinner that I could pass for a local. But I was a good sport, laughing with Thandar’s family at my clumsy Burmese manners as I reached over the deep-fried insects and hard beans and helped myself to the green tomato salad.
After the visit, Thandar and I began seeing each other every day. The more time we spent together, the more she seemed to forget about my potential security risk as an American. She clearly took delight in showing me the Rangoon that she knew. When we weren’t arranging photo shoots, we wandered aimlessly through downtown streets, stopping now and then to browse in a bookstore, catch a film at the cinema, or enjoy an hour of people watching from the tea houses near Sule Pagoda. One day she took me on the Circular Railway for a train ride that tracked the circumference of the city, giving me a glimpse of peasant life on the margins of Rangoon. These were neighbourhoods where people lived on next to nothing but enjoyed the richness of community. All around the route, whether at the trackside markets or in front of the corrugated tin shacks of family homes, I took photos of people who met every day and looked out for each other. Kids playing games. Mothers hanging the house laundry. Vendors selling produce, rice, and betel nut, all of it carried in large bags on their heads before being poured onto wicker trays for market display.
Thandar also accompanied me on a second visit to Shwedagon, pointing out things I might have missed the first time. That chorus line of young women I noticed sweeping dust from the temple’s polished marble floors? They were volunteering their time to make merit, she said; during the monsoons, they swept out the rainwater. That reminded her of other public displays of the faith, such as those colourful parades of Buddhist drummers that pass through residential neighbourhoods. I had taken several photos at one of these processions, delighted by the way it brightened an otherwise dull afternoon. Visiting foreigners are always impressed, said Thandar, but these parades lose their charm once you realize their purpose as donation magnets for the temple, to which even the poorest of Rangoon residents contribute. At one point during our Shwedagon visit, we found ourselves standing in front of the student monument I had seen the first time I went, the one with the list of eleven names of the first student activists. I was surprised, I told Thandar, that a regime so threatened by the student movement would allow such a tribute in the country’s main temple. But Burmese history, religion, and politics were more complicated than that, she assured me.
The purpose of the 1920 boycott of Rangoon University, she said, was to protest the British colonial education system. The university’s administration and curriculum were seen as elitist because they excluded the Burmese people. Colonial-era law only permitted students from the privileged schools, the minority elite, to attend RU. Because the Rangoon College students had used this spot at Shwedagon to plan the strike, their gathering was regarded as the first heroic act on the road to Burmese independence. So, when Ne Win created this monument in 1970 to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the protest, said Thandar, he was honouring those students as great patriots. Today’s students were great patriots, too, but there was a difference. The students of 1920 wanted an independent Burma, which they achieved. Today’s students wanted a free Burma — and yes, it was Ne Win who stood in their way.
Taking a stroll on the Kandawgyi Lake boardwalk, we competed for bench space with teenage couples — young people with raging hormones who, having escaped the prying eyes of their families but with nowhere else to go for privacy, huddled beneath umbrellas to feel each other up. When they weren’t sneaking out with their boyfriends this way, I learned, most Burmese girls and young women were chaperoned by brothers or other male relatives when out on dates. But Aye Maung and Hla Min had left Thandar and me alone. Perhaps they thought she was old enough to take care of herself. Perhaps they saw me as less of a threat than other young men who had bid for her affections. Or perhaps they regarded their sister as impervious to the attentions of men in general. Whatever the case, they saw no need to accompany us during the Thingyan festival in mid-April. Part of me wishes they had.
Back home, Burmese New Year was little more than a traditional dinner for overseas Burmese — a dry event, in every sense of the word. But in its country of origin, the Thingyan tradition was to toss a cup of water at your neighbour as a friendly bit of harmless fun and community-building during the hot season. In recent years, that little cup has been replaced by firehoses and water cannons. The Thingyan festival is now an annual occasion for sanctioned, if temporary public sensuality, an unspoken licence for Burma’s youth to get drunk and celebrate the body in what amounts to a five-day-long, communal wet T-shirt contest.
It wasn’t quite like that in ’88, but it was festive for sure. On the day we attended, Thandar and I spent a couple of hours getting soaked while dancing among hundreds of revellers on Kabar Aye Pagoda Road. At one point, I turned my back on her just as the mass of bodies began squeezing us closer together. Forcefully pulling me towards her, she held on tight, her breasts pressing against my naked back through her wet blouse as she wrapped her muscular arms around my chest. Out in the open, away from this crowd, I’d have had trouble concealing what began rising beneath my longyi. But in this mass of intoxicated youth, not even Thandar was aware of my erection.
Our chaste romance continued for months. Toward the end of May, we took the bus north to Mandalay, where Thandar was helping organize students. Spending a few days in the former capital, we slept in separate dorms on the Mandalay University campus where Thandar did her activist work. She could sense my impatience to spend more time together, so one afternoon she left a meeting early and dropped by my dorm. Joining her on the back of a rented motorbike, I wrapped my arms around her waist as she sped us away from the downtown centre, past the moated grounds of the imperial palace toward Mandalay Hill. We parked at the bottom, then spent a while exploring Kuthodaw Pagoda. Inhaling the jasmine-like scent of the starflower trees, we wandered through the maze of shrines containing the “world’s largest book”: seven hundred and thirty marble tablets etched with the script comprising the entire Buddhist canon. Then we followed a meandering footpath up to the summit.
The sun was about to set when we arrived at Su Taung Pyae (literally “wish-fulfilling”) Pagoda and passed through one of the decorative archways to the terrace. Squinting from the glittering iridescence of the temple’s gold-festooned pillars in the day’s remaining light, we crossed the polished marble tile toward the patio’s edge and leaned over the railing to look down on the city beneath us. Saying nothing, we held hands and gazed at a shimmering strip of water in the distance, the setting sun’s reflection off the Irrawaddy River.
Thandar broke the silence. The two months I was planning to stay in Burma were almost up, she said. How much longer did I intend to stay? I had to think about it. Two months seemed hardly long enough, and only now was I seeing the country beyond Rangoon. I told Thandar I had barely scratched the surface of Burma, with so much more to see and do, and besides, I liked her so very much. She said she felt the same about me, but that we had to be realistic. I was an American. There were people waiting for me back home, where I had responsibilities. If I stayed in Burma much longer, I would have to find a way to make a living, and my fake identity would become harder to hide from the authorities. I said I could make enough money selling photos overseas, and no one would discover my identity.
Then she got to the point. The Burmese people were headed toward a confrontation with the Ne Win regime, she said. Life was about to become a lot more dangerous. Things could get out of control and sooner than I might think. So, she needed to know how committed I was to the movement.
What a question! I told her I was committed.
She wanted to know if she could count on me if there was to be more violence from the Tatmadaw or the Lon Htein, something bigger than in March. Could I make that promise? Would I stand up for her?
I laughed: “Don’t be silly, Thandar. Of course, I will.”
At that moment, a passing European tourist carrying the same camera as mine stopped to compliment me on my good taste. Then he pointed at my Nikon, offering to take our photo. Handing it to him, I sat on the ledge beside Thandar. She draped one arm around my shoulder and goosed me from behind with the other, just as he pressed the shutter.
* * *
Universities reopened in June. The protests resumed as if nothing had stopped them, with students back on the streets seeking justice for the bloodbath in March. Thandar was at the forefront. One day, she produced a leaflet urging all students to join the struggle — Never forget Bloody Friday. Free Burma! — and enlisted volunteers to help distribute copies on every campus. At one school, a first-year student told her that no one was taking the leaflets; people were too afraid to challenge the regime. In response, Thandar called together the volunteers and collected their leaflets, stuffing them all into a giant bag. Then she led everyone upstairs to the fourth floor where, opening a hallway window, she dumped the entire bag into the square below. The leaflets rained down like confetti on surprised passersby. “There,” she said. “Problem solved. An hour from now, you won’t find anyone who hasn’t read it.”
The generals responded with a twelve-hour curfew and a ban on public gatherings. The students then called for a general strike, scheduled to begin at 8:08 a.m. on the eighth day of the eighth month of the year 1988: auspicious timing, according to numerologists. A few days before the big event, Thandar called me at the hotel, telling me to bring my camera to 54 University Avenue. There was someone I had to meet. Taking the bus to a winding, tree-lined street at the south end of Inya Lake, I was allowed through the property’s gated entrance, then walked down the driveway until I arrived at a simple white villa, a remnant of the colonial era, facing the lake. The first thing I noticed in the foyer was a framed black and white portrait of slain Burmese independence leader Aung San. The General was handsome but expressionless in this image, exuding a Buddha-like calm in his immaculate features, dressed in a military overcoat and officer’s cap that seemed too big. Taken in the last year of his life, when he was only thirty-two, the photo suggested a proud and defiant patriot staring confidently into a future he would not live to see.
As I was studying this portrait, another door opened. Thandar emerged, followed by a tall, elegant woman in her early forties, dressed in a purple silk longyi and a white cotton blouse. Her long black hair was tied up in a bun, neatly adorned with a white orchid. She had the delicate features and bearing of a princess. Thandar introduced me to Aung San Suu Kyi, the great man’s daughter. Surprising me with flawless English and an upper-class British accent, she welcomed me to Burma saying it was a pleasure to meet me and that she hoped I would find what I was looking for here. That last comment was a perfectly innocuous bit of small talk — and not the first time a Burmese national had said such a thing to me. But in the moment — and given The Lady’s importance — I found it oddly unsettling, as if intended to put me in my place. For Suu Kyi, told in advance that I was American, had marked me unequivocally as a foreigner, instantly destroying the fantasy I had embraced since being accepted into Thandar’s inner circle. Wasn’t I Burmese too? Weren’t we all looking for the same thing?
I said nothing but nodded politely in response. Then I switched to Burmese to give Suu Kyi instructions while preparing to take her portrait, seating my VIP subject in the foyer against a plain white background. Without prompting, she folded her hands on her knee exactly as I would have suggested — she was a natural, the camera loved her — then sat through several frames before excusing herself and leaving us alone. Thandar said that Suu Kyi lived in Oxford with her British husband and their two sons. After flying back to Burma a few months ago to look after her ailing mother, she had been staying at the family home and was keeping an eye on national affairs. In recent weeks, she had invited democracy activists to hold meetings here. Now the pressure was on for Aung San’s daughter to follow in the great man’s footsteps.
On July 23, Ne Win announced his retirement as Supreme Leader, ending his twenty-six-year reign as Burma’s strongman. The regime was losing its grip. Transition to democracy seemed inevitable, possibly weeks away. Everything was coming together beautifully. I was living a life of adventure. I had met a person I wanted to be with all the time. And Burma’s future was looking bright after so many years of darkness. How could love and justice not prevail? As general strike day approached, we knew August 8 would be all-consuming. Thandar and I would not see much of each other, given her duties at different rallies all day. But when I phoned her on the night of August 7, I insisted we meet for breakfast at a tea shop in Lanmadaw Township, before her first big rally. She said no. We would be too busy to take time for ourselves. But I insisted on a meeting. This was something I could not share over the phone.
At eight minutes past eight o’clock the next morning, shipyard workers walked off the job on schedule to begin the general strike. Thandar and I were sitting down in the lat-pei-yey-saing, a Burmese tea house, to order breakfast. When the server left us alone, I pulled a small box out of my pocket and gave it to Thandar. The moment she opened it and set her eyes on the modest, fourteen-karat gold ring, I asked her to marry me. She gasped. We had known each other less than five months, but she had become my universe. I loved everything about her and marrying her seemed the right thing to do. My father would not only approve, he would get off my back. Thandar and I could figure out the sex thing later.
Staring at the ring, she paused a moment and then laughed as she wiped away a tear. “Yes, you silly fool,” she said, looking searchingly into my eyes. “I will marry you.”
