To preserve the books from decay he restored them, copied and bound them, then sold the copies to some of the rare tourists, diplomats, or businessmen who found themselves in Burma in those days. But truth be told, he saw himself primarily as the guardian of a treasure he wanted to pass along to future generations. He pointed to a little girl playing in the street. She would sometimes run through the shop and disappear into the apartment at the back. She was his granddaughter. “If I don’t look after the books, she’ll never have her own chance to read them.”
The more we talked, and the farther I roamed in Yangon, the keener my interest in this country and its history grew.
When it came time for me to travel farther north, he handed me a parting gift: a book he himself had restored, copied, and bound. Because I was such an extraordinarily curious person with so many questions about Burma, he said. I would find some of the answers in this book, he supposed.
I was touched and grateful. I carefully leafed through the first few pages. The Soul of a People. Published in London in 1902. As a reporter I did not generally have much time to read books that were published a hundred years ago. Slightly disappointed, I closed the book.
“Thank you,” I said. “It’s rather old, isn’t it?”
He furrowed his brow in thought, as if it had never occurred to him. “True enough,” he answered after a pause. “But no matter; the soul of a people does not change so quickly.”
I stood in the late afternoon with hundreds of other passengers on a platform at the main train station in Yangon, an imposing building from the fifties, built in traditional Burmese style. I intended to catch a train to Mandalay, about four hundred miles away. The “night train to Mandalay” had a romantic ring to it. According to the timetable it would take twelve hours. More likely fourteen, the bookseller had warned. Or eighteen. Or twenty-four. Depending on the condition of the track, the vagaries of the weather, and a host of other unpredictable factors.
We pulled out of the station right on time in the early evening, and the first two or three hours of the journey were among the finest I have spent on any train. We lumbered along the rails at ten, maybe twenty miles an hour, sometimes even at a walk. Warm breezes drifted through the open windows. Street vendors scurried up and hopped on, then ambled through the cars hawking curries, tea, or soup in plastic bags, fruit, crackers, water. At some point they would just jump back off again.
A picturesque Asian landscape rolled past my window. Rice paddies, little rivers, children riding water buffalo. The sunset behind palm trees.
It was the ideal speed for the human senses. I heard the voices of children playing. The scent of open cooking fires drifted through the cars, preparation for the evening meal. Any time we approached a river the heat relented, only slightly, but still perceptibly.
But then night fell, and there was nothing more to see. The wooden bench I was sitting on grew harder by the hour; the unbearable heat and humidity persisted. Sleep was out of the question. By hour ten I was completely drained; after twelve hours I wanted nothing more in the world than to be done with the “night train to Mandalay.”
At the next stop I grabbed my pack and stepped out. Dawn found me standing at the train station in Thazi surrounded by hundreds of sleeping travelers—curled up on the platform, the baggage carts, the stairs. Waiting for some connection that would eventually arrive. Timetables in Burma, I would learn, offered only rough approximations.
In front of the station was one of those white Toyotas that often serve as taxis. A man was sleeping inside. A few yards away a snack cart had already opened for business. A kettle hung over a fire, and the first customers crouched groggily on stools to sip their tea. I sat down beside them, ordered a Burmese tea, and waited for the driver to wake.
A few hours later we were on the road to Kalaw. I had picked up two potential contacts from a diplomat in Yangon. I was looking for Tommy and Father Angelo. Just ask anyone.
Father Angelo was well over eighty, an Italian missionary who had lived in Burma for decades. He introduced me to Tommy Ezdani, a short man, about fifty, with an almost delicate frame who looked me over full of curiosity. He wore a yellow bath towel that he had wrapped around his head into something like a turban. He caught my dubious expression and explained, amused, that it was the headwear of the Pa-O people, an ethnic minority that lived in Shan State. He had just returned from a visit to one of their villages.
We immediately hit it off. During the following weeks he would accompany me on various excursions. Even today nearly all of my trips to Burma include a visit to Tommy in Shan State. Though born in Kalaw, Tommy was a Pashtun. English colonial rulers had relocated his grandfather from Afghanistan to Burma. Even as a child he had frequently accompanied his grandfather, a doctor, to the surrounding villages of the Pa-O, the Palaung, the Shan, and the Karen, so that he grew up learning the languages of the various ethnic groups that live in the mountains encircling Kalaw. When we met, he had only recently founded an aid organization that was building schools, wells, and bridges in remote settlements.
After a few days in Kalaw he asked me if I wouldn’t like to visit some of the villages with him. We would walk to our destination and spend the night there; I would see a completely different side of Burma.
A few hours into the hike we ran into a woman whom Tommy obviously knew well. She was gaunt, with long arms and big, sturdy hands. On her back she carried a sizable bundle of firewood that she had gathered in the forest. The two got into a lively conversation, but all the while she kept a sharp eye on me. She was scrutinizing me, not antagonistically, more out of curiosity, sizing me up. Eventually she approached me and wanted to touch my arms. I backed away and asked Tommy what she wanted from me.
“She wants to marry you.”
I looked at him, confused.
“She’s offering five cows for you. I told her that was too much. You’re already thirty-five, after all.”
By Burmese standards that was old, he said. The average life expectancy was only fifty-three.
But she would not be dissuaded. I looked rather different from the locals. She reckoned I would last longer.
We went our way, and near evening we reached a Pa-O village where Tommy enjoyed considerable popularity. Only a short time earlier he had organized the installation of a pipeline from a water source more than a mile away. Now at least there was a well in the village, and no one had to walk miles for a pail of fresh water. Tommy was acquainted with their language and culture, and he was a frequent and very welcome guest. We were greeted by children who stared at me wide-eyed. Everyone tagged along as we made our way to the village leader. His old teak house stood on stilts. A pig rooted around underneath it.
The man and his family welcomed us warmly, and invited us to spend the night.
That evening we sat around a fire; the family had slaughtered a chicken and prepared a curry in my honor. Of course my plate was piled with the choicest bits, and no one else would eat a thing until I was finished. A Burmese host eats only when the guests have had their fill. The village elders had come, men and women, and they watched my every move with curiosity. Above the crackle of the fire I heard children whispering and giggling in the dark. A baby fussed but settled quickly. An older woman sat close by speaking softly to a circle of children. I could not understand a word she said, but the melody in her voice had a magical quality. I asked Tommy who she was and what she was doing. A grandmother telling her grandchildren a fairy tale, he explained. It was still very much a living tradition in Burma, as I learned on subsequent visits, especially among the ethnic minorities and in the villages.
I had no shortage of questions for my hosts, but at some point it occurred to me that they might have questions of their own.
They discussed it for a while, and eventually someone wanted to know how long it would take me to reach their village. By oxcart.
I tried to estimate the travel time from Hong Kong. O
ne year? Two?
More than a year, I replied.
General amazement. The village leader’s wife wanted to know how many suns we have where I come from.
I didn’t understand her question.
She spelled it out for me: I would probably not be able to work my fields for three years. One year for the journey out, another for the journey back, and to make the most of such a long trip I would presumably spend a year at my destination. She herself could never afford such a long absence, no matter how hard she worked. My fields must therefore be extraordinarily productive, and that she could explain only if we had multiple suns that shone for more than the usual twelve to fourteen hours.
When it came time to retire for the night my hosts showed me my bed: a paper-thin mat on wooden floorboards. They must have seen from my expression that I was not used to sleeping on the floor. I had not said a word, but they pulled together some blankets and cloths and made them into a mattress. They had me test it several times and were not satisfied until I sank deep into it.
When Tommy and I took our leave the next morning nearly everyone in the village had come to offer their good wishes for the road. They also had a farewell gift for me, as is customary among friends in Burma.
The village leader handed me a sizable sack nearly bursting with black tea. Now, I like to drink tea, but this was more than enough for a lifetime. I thanked them sincerely but suggested that it might be too much of a good thing. Maybe they had a smaller bag or even a pouch?
Of course so much tea was not intended for me alone, they countered; it was for my whole family.
“But I live alone,” I told them. It took a while for Tommy’s translation to make its way around the entire group.
“Alone?” they asked, astonished.
I nodded.
At no other moment in my life had so many people looked on me with such pity. Alone.
No one in Burma lives alone. Bachelor or widow, everyone lives among their extended family. You’d have to be a pretty unsavory character before no one wanted to live with you, Tommy would later explain.
In order to break the tension I explained that I was married, but that my wife was still living in New York in order to finish her studies while I lived in Hong Kong, but that I called her every evening if it was at all possible. They passed around this new information. There was some whispering and nodding, and then everyone relaxed and smiled.
“Really every evening?” the village leader asked, doubt in his voice.
I nodded.
“Then you must have a very loud voice.”
When I returned to Kalaw almost exactly one year later, Tommy asked me if I had time to hike back to the village with him. He had been there often since our visit. People inquired about me every time, and they would surely be delighted to see me again.
He was not kidding. We had hardly arrived before we were surrounded by a small throng. Everyone wanted to welcome their foreign friend. I had brought balloons and a few toys for the children.
We were invited again to spend the night, but this time the atmosphere was different, joyfully enthusiastic, almost festive. After dinner many more people gathered in the village leader’s house than the previous year. We sat in long, cramped rows on the floor in front of a cabinet. It was clear they were planning some sort of dramatic unveiling. At some point our host rose and opened the cabinet doors with a flourish. And there was a television. The military junta had doled out battery-powered televisions, they told me, the better to spread their propaganda. But the people were no fools; they ignored the official broadcasts. There was only one national broadcaster, and once a week they featured a foreign movie. As luck would have it, I had arrived on just the right day.
For the next forty-five minutes we watched an episode of some mindless American detective series. It was set in Los Angeles, and not much happened aside from the continual car crashes, exploding helicopters, and people shooting or stabbing one another. The villagers stared at the screen, stunned, stealing an occasional horrified glance in my direction. I did after all bear a considerable physical resemblance to those perpetrators of nonstop wickedness.
When the show was over, our host rose, turned off the television, closed the cabinet doors, turned to me and regarded me for a long time. I avoided eye contact. Awkward silence filled the room. He cleared his throat.
“If you wish, Jan-Philipp, you may stay here with us. It is much too dangerous where you live.”
I did not take their offer, though I have returned to Burma many times since, first as a journalist—twice I was able to visit the former opposition leader and current head of government, Aung San Suu Kyi, in her home—later as a writer doing research for the novels The Art of Hearing Heartbeats and A Well-Tempered Heart. My fascination deepened with each visit. I gathered impressions and stories and took a growing interest in Burmese folk tales, fables, and legends. Whenever I saw a woman telling stories to her children or grandchildren I would sit down with them if at all possible, and have the stories translated for me. I learned that in their tales, too, animals played an important role, though for them it was of course tigers, elephants, crocodiles, and monkeys.
I was also struck by the fact that the evil mother-in-law often made an appearance. The wicked stepmother, on the other hand, was not nearly as prominent as in our tales.
Whenever I stayed overnight at a monastery I would ask the monks about Buddhist fables and parables. I heard many stories about the Buddha’s wisdom, but I also heard about how difficult it can be even for a monk to apply these teachings in everyday life. The story of the two sculptors beating one another to death (this page) is a case in point. Likewise the story of the young monk in “The Long Path to Wisdom” when he feels compelled to choose between the Buddha and his parents (this page).
Years later, while traveling through the country researching my first novel, I resolved to begin collecting Burmese folk tales so that I might incorporate some of them into the book. And so I spent many evenings sitting around campfires with women who, somewhat perplexed by a foreigner’s interest, told me tales, legends, and fables. Many of these stories reminded me of my own childhood. There is, for instance, a Burmese version of the story of the tortoise and the hare, except that a turtle outsmarts a conceited and overconfident horse.
Many of the legends describe the origins of the numerous mythical characters, ghosts, and deities.
At times I was appalled by the cruelty of certain stories, such as “The Flood” (this page), where an entire village commits an atrocious crime for which they must atone. When I considered “Hansel and Gretel” and “The Wolf and the Seven Little Goats,” however, I recalled that not all of the Grimms’ tales were for the faint of heart.
Many stories tell of dismal sorrow, such as the tale of “The Starving Orphans” (this page), in which two siblings starve to death and are doomed to this day to scour the country in the shape of birds, searching for one another.
I was strongly reminded of Hans Christian Andersen’s tales, especially the fate of his “Little Match Girl,” whose poverty and loneliness reliably moved me to tears as a child.
While working on The Art of Hearing Heartbeats I determined to incorporate the gorgeous love story “The Tale of the Prince, the Princess, and the Crocodile” into the broader narrative. I had heard it from several women beside many a campfire. The main character of the novel, Tin Win, is a Burmese man sent by his family in the 1940s to New York City, where he lives for many years. In the book he tells his little daughter, Julia, Burmese fairy tales, and this is her favorite. Tin Win’s American wife does not know what to make of the legends from her husband’s homeland. She finds them “confused and bizarre…without any moral and completely unsuitable for children.” Julia, on the other hand, loves these myths and their marvelous settings, so different from the stories she hears from her mother. The present volume represents a small selection of Tin Win’s repertoire.
Good does not always triumph. Many of the tales are informed by a deep fatalism, others by a longing for justice or the magical power of love. They give us a glimpse into an unfamiliar, sometimes even exotic realm of thought and beliefs, only to strike us in surprising ways as utterly familiar in their humanity just a few pages later.
It would be misleading to say that the people of Burma are superstitious. Superstition smacks of mummery, naïve gullibility, or childish irrationality.
Yet many Burmese people take it absolutely for granted that the stars exert influence over human lives, that there are dates and days that bring luck and others that invite calamity. They would not understand how anyone could doubt it. It is such an integral part of their everyday lives and their worldview that it requires neither mention nor explanation. Again and again during my investigations I asked people whether they were superstitious. With deep conviction they denied it, categorically, only to tell me a moment later of a nat, a guardian spirit, who lived in a tree in their garden and to whom they made a daily offering. Or of their last consultation with an astrologer.
During my first visit to Yangon, a young man drove me through the city in a vehicle that was barely roadworthy, with a steering wheel on the right in a country that drives on the right, a circumstance that made passing difficult, even life-threatening. He told me that many years ago the traffic direction had been switched from left to right overnight on the advice of an astrologer. I did not get the impression that he found this at all shocking.
Stuck to his dashboard was a black-and-white photo of a young woman with an infant in her arms. Curious, I asked who it was. He smiled proudly and explained that it was his wife and baby daughter. She was four months old, but, alas, he saw far too little of her because he had to work so much. He had big debts.
The Long Path to Wisdom Page 2