Another Man's War

by Barnaby Phillips

  He looked at it with a furrowed brow, carefully turning the words into English. He mouthed them silently to himself, then eventually took the plunge and read them out in a halting voice.

  ‘I have found Shuyiman’s family. They are ready to see us tomorrow. They are happy that you are here.’

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  ‌17

  ‌For our children to be free

  If ever an army fought in a just cause we did. We coveted no man’s country: we wished to impose no form of government on any nation. We fought…for the right to live our lives in our own way, as others could live theirs, to worship God in what faith we chose, to be free in body and mind, and for our children to be free…

  William Slim,

  Defeat into Victory‌*

  16 June 2011

  Pagoda Hill, Burma

  Maung sat in the hotel dining room, his face glowing with pride. He chased his curry down with two large whiskies, and his face glowed all the more. Then he shared his news. He had travelled up the Kaladan River from Kyauktaw and got off his boat after an hour and a half when he saw what he took to be a Muslim village on the west bank. He requested to speak to the oldest man there. An elderly gentleman was produced, but he looked at Maung blankly when asked if he knew anything about two injured Africans hiding during the war. The villagers suggested Maung talk to another, apparently even older man, who was out working on his farm. This man’s face lit up with recognition when Maung asked him about a strange story involving Africans and the war. ‘I’ve heard about that, but you’ve come to the wrong place,’ he said, ‘you need to go on to the next village.’ Maung, now encouraged, got back into his boat and headed further upriver.

  He found another settlement, where a Muslim woman who seemed to be in her eighties was sitting in front of a basha, sheltering from the rain. Maung asked her if she had ever known a woman in the village called Gulasha.

  ‘Yes,’ replied the woman, ‘but Gulasha died.’

  ‘And did you know her father?’

  ‘Yes, he was called Shuyiman.’

  At this point, a young man who had been listening to the conversation drew closer. ‘Shuyiman was my grandfather,’ he said, and pointed to another basha closer to the Kaladan, ‘and that was his house.’

  A path ran next to it, parallel to the river.

  Almost seven decades had passed. A war had ended, an empire had fallen, civil wars had started and stopped and started again, there had been a coup, years of repression and many natural disasters. But Shuyiman’s house was still there.

  Maung asked the grandson whether Shuyiman had ever spoken of the war.

  ‘Yes, of course,’ he said. ‘He always spoke of how he hid two Africans in our house.’

  Maung fought back his excitement, and asked if the grandson knew their names. This was the point that I had emphasised the night before, with Moe’s dedicated efforts at translation. We had to be absolutely sure that we had found not just the right village, but also the right family. Maung needed to ask his questions carefully, without giving too much away. ‘Their names,’ said the grandson, without hesitation, ‘were Suleman and Dauda Ali.’

  Maung shared with us the bare facts he had learnt while he was in the village. Shuyiman was dead. He had passed away some fifteen years after the end of the war, by which time he might have been sixty years old. Poor Gulasha, the little girl who danced with joy on the day Isaac and David were rescued, had died some thirty years ago, when she would have been in her mid-forties. Her mother, Khatoun, who laughed and prayed on that day, had outlived her daughter by some ten years, but had died in the early 1990s. Even little Kalu, the boy who was born when Isaac and David were hiding in the jungle, and whose crying kept them awake when they moved into the house, had died.

  But Shuyiman had two other children, born shortly after the war, who were still alive. Maung told them there was a visitor from England who wished to give them a letter from Africa. They had seemed, he said, both delighted and apprehensive at this turn of events. They had made one thing very clear: they were firmly against the idea of my coming to Mairong.

  ‘The army is close, we are scared here. We are not free in this land, everyone is afraid,’ they told Maung.

  Whatever political changes were under way in Rangoon meant little here in the Kaladan Valley, where the military was still the real authority. The visit of a foreigner to this remote village would be highly unusual. If an intelligence officer caught wind of it, they said, he would certainly want to know why it had happened, and talk to those involved. That prospect made them afraid.

  It was frustrating. I had come so far. Now I wanted to go just a little bit further, to Mairong itself, to see where Isaac and David had been shot on the riverbank, and where they’d hidden in the nearby jungle. I wanted to see Shuyiman’s house, to climb the bamboo ladder to his basha. My mission seemed so innocuous, so wrapped up in the distant past, that there should be no good reason why it would upset anyone. But there was nothing I could do about it. I already knew of the potential risks for my guides, Moe and Maung. Now the very people whom I had come to see, and whom Isaac wanted me to thank, were urging me to stay away. I was learning that Burmese of all ethnicities feared their army, but the Muslims of Rakhine State felt especially vulnerable.

  And yet my journey was not in vain. Shuyiman’s family had suggested an alternative meeting place for the following morning. They said we should meet on Pagoda Hill, a few miles south of Mairong. It was the same hill that the Japanese had captured from the British on that fateful day, 2 March 1944.

  Maung, Moe and I climbed up a steep, covered staircase that twisted through the jungle to the golden pagoda on the summit of the hill. This pagoda was said to be built on the very spot where the ‘Great Teacher’, Buddha himself, arrived in 554 BC. He had come at the invitation of a local king, who waited for him there with his entire court and army. According to legend, Buddha travelled from India using levitation, and landed on top of the hill accompanied by five hundred followers.* He spent seven days in the Kaladan Valley, a spiritual sojourn during which he inspired everyone who met him with his compassion. Ever since, Pagoda Hill has been venerated as a holy place.

  In the wide sweep of the Second World War, the fighting between Japanese and African troops that took place on the ridges and jungles of this hill was of no great significance. Even in the histories of the Burma campaign, the Battle of Pagoda Hill in the Arakan merits only a passing mention; it is often confused with a more celebrated namesake, which also took place in Burma, far to the north, just eleven days later, involving the Chindits. But, for the West Africans who were forced out of the Kaladan Valley as a result of their defeat, Pagoda Hill mattered. It mattered, too, for the British officers whose careers were destroyed that day, some of whom would go to their graves decades later still blaming colleagues for the blunders they felt tarred not just their own reputations, but that of the entire 81st Division.

  And, of course, the fall of Pagoda Hill mattered for Isaac and David, who were shot and lying in shock and pain a few miles upstream when the British officers gave the order to the Gambian battalion to retreat from the advancing Japanese. That ought to have been Isaac’s and David’s death sentence. That they survived another nine months was down to a mixture of luck and courage. The courage was theirs, but also that of the family I was now, incredibly, about to meet.

  Rain pounded down noisily onto the tin roof over the staircase. A troop of grey monkeys squatted in the rafters, hugging themselves to keep dry. They seemed faintly irritated by our arrival. I could see why Shuyiman’s family had suggested we meet on Pagoda Hill. Save for the monkeys, we were alone, hidden under the trees, and it was unlikely that anyone else would take the trouble of climbing up here in this wet weather. The chances of any policemen or soldiers stumbling across us were slim. Far below us, to the west, I could make out the milky waters of the Kaladan River through the trees.

  By the time we got to the top of the hill, I was soaked from rain
and sweat. The rain was growing heavier, and the trees were now groaning in the wind. I tried to imagine Isaac and David huddled in their makeshift shelter for an entire monsoon season, drenched day after day, waiting for food, waiting to be rescued.

  I looked at my watch; they were late. Maybe, I worried, they had decided it was too dangerous for anyone to travel on the river in this stormy weather. Or the boatmen might have refused to make the trip. They could have been afraid of flooding, or strong currents. Or maybe the family had been stopped by a soldier who was suspicious of their movements. Perhaps, having had the night to reflect on it, they had decided this strange story of a foreigner with a letter from Africa was a set-up, some sort of trap. So they had decided not to come after all.

  My doubts grew and began to harden into a dull conviction; this meeting was not going to happen. That was when I looked up and saw five people climbing the steps towards me. They picked their way on bare feet, longyis wrapped round their waists, and glanced up shyly every few steps or so. There were two men, in old shirts, and three women, simple shawls draped over their heads. The oldest man, maybe in his early sixties, had large worried eyes and a small moustache. Much later, when I showed a photograph of this man to Isaac, he would tell me that he was the spitting image of his father, Shuyiman. The man was saying something to me, but I could not hear him over the noise of the rain on the tin roof. Anyway, we had no language in common. Not knowing what else to do, I embraced him. Shuyiman’s son was called Adu, and tears were streaming down his face.

  We stood on those steps, and talked for one hour. ‘We could not sleep last night, when we heard the news. To know that one of our Africans was still alive. There was so much to think about, and to talk about,’ said Roshi, the youngest of the group. He was the son of Gulasha and a grandson of Shuyiman, the man who had met Maung the previous day, and he spoke a little English. ‘Then we thought, wonderful news about Suleman [Isaac], but what can you tell us of Dauda Ali [David]?’

  If there had been any tiny piece of scepticism within me, it left me at that moment. This was Shuyiman’s family. The story of the wounded African soldiers was indeed part of their village’s folklore. And within the family itself I saw that the rescue of those soldiers was a treasured memory, the details lovingly handed down from generation to generation.

  All five of Shuyiman’s relatives that I met that day had been born after the war. One of the three women, Nurasha, was his only surviving daughter, and the other two were his daughters-in-law. All of them were still living in Mairong, still working in the paddy fields on the banks of the Kaladan. They were astonished that a stranger had come from the other side of the world with knowledge of what had happened in their village in 1944. They never imagined the good deeds of Shuyiman and Khatoun were still celebrated so far away, just as I had never imagined I would hear Isaac’s story one more time. Only this time I was not sitting in a front yard in Lagos, listening carefully as he strained to paint a picture of distant jungles. I was in those very jungles, sheltering from the rains on Pagoda Hill, and the story was being narrated in the dialect of the Muslims of the Arakan:

  It started like this, the British soldiers slept by the river…some died, some ran away, but we found two injured…One of them was nearly dead when we found him, that was Suleman, the other was called Dauda Ali…He was stronger, but he never left. He could have gone, but he wanted to save his friend…They were here for months; after some time we moved them into our house…We helped to bathe them, and gave them food. Then the Indian soldiers came and took them away…Afterwards, British officers came on two separate occasions and gave Shuyiman some money.

  I asked if Shuyiman ever explained why he took such risks for these African men, who came from the other side of the world and with whom he could only exchange a handful of words. Adu replied, ‘Our parents said those men were in trouble; they needed help, otherwise they were going to die. That is our culture.’

  I learnt new details too, of how suspicious Japanese soldiers came to the family door and asked questions, and of how Shuyiman and Khatoun would calmly lie and say there was nobody hiding with them.

  I handed them photographs of Isaac in Lagos, and read out his letter. It was entitled ‘To All the Good People of Mairong Village, in the Arakan part of Burma’:

  My name is Isaac Fadoyebo. I would like to thank the entire family of Shuyiman and all the good people of Mairong village for taking care of me and my comrade in adversity, David Kargbo, when we were in hiding in the Burma jungle. I still remember a few names like Mahmud Ali, Ismail Abdul Subahan, the village teacher Lalu, to mention a few of those who were coming to see us in the bush. May God bless you all.

  Now they were weeping, all of them. They touched the photographs of Isaac, clasping them to their tear-stained faces, trying to feel him. They clapped at his words. The raw intensity of their emotions caught me off balance. All their lives, the two African soldiers had been almost mythical figures to them, from far off in the past and from a world that they could not imagine, let alone visit. For the first time, they could put a face to one of the names, and they could see that he was still alive, very much flesh and blood. Moreover, they could hear, from the words I read, that Isaac cherished the memory of Shuyiman and Khatoun just as they did.

  We stood in silence, our heads bowed, in honour of the memory of Shuyiman and Khatoun, giving thanks for this wonderful encounter. I imagine that Shuyiman’s family put it down to the providence of Allah, just as Isaac and David always attributed their survival to the blessings of a Christian God. For myself, I’m not sure I’d ever felt the common bond of humanity as strongly as at that moment. We were celebrating courage and a friendship that transcended time and distance and race, and shone through the horror of a World War.

  Afterwards, I would ask myself if this meeting with Shuyiman’s family had really happened. Like Isaac’s description of being rescued, it took on a dream-like quality. When I think back on it, I see myself floating above, observing the conversation, but not actually participating in it. It seemed so incredible, so improbable that, if not for the photos I had taken, I would have doubted my own memory that it had taken place. We had struggled to make ourselves heard, let alone understood, through the sound of the rain and the confusion of Moe’s halting translation. At times, we had all been talking at once. It had been too brief. Moe and Maung were anxious that we should leave, before any unwelcome strangers came to the pagoda and asked what a foreigner was doing in an area where tourists were not allowed.

  On the long and uncomfortable journey back down the Kaladan, I thought about Isaac and Shuyiman, why they had sided with the British in the war, and of how their families had fared since. It wasn’t sentimentality, or loyalty to a distant king that made them risk their lives, but the simple calculation that a British victory would benefit them and their families. They could not have known it at the time, but they had placed their bets on a fading Empire.

  For Isaac, in spite of everything, the decision to fight for the British proved a sound one in the long run. He made it back home from Burma. And although he carried a disability for the rest of his life, his Army service smoothed his passage into the colonial and later Nigerian civil service. He became a respected man, even by those who knew nothing of what had happened to him in the war. Isaac never amassed any great wealth or lived in luxury, but I sensed that was of no great concern to him. What he cared about most was giving his children and grandchildren opportunities that he had not enjoyed when he was young. In this, he succeeded, and his family prospered. They had left the village life of Emure-Ile far behind. In spite of all of Nigeria’s political and economic problems, Isaac had progressed.

  Shuyiman’s family, on the other hand, was living much as Shuyiman himself had during the Second World War. The British rewarded him for his courage with some money, but, however much it was, it made no lasting impact. Shuyiman’s children and grandchildren are poor farmers, living in exactly the same village where he lived and died.
Maybe Shuyiman had seen the British as somehow kinder, more benevolent than the Japanese. Perhaps he also simply assumed that, because British rule was all he had ever known, they were the stronger and would eventually come out on top. If so, he was both right and wrong. Right, because the gamble of helping Isaac and David paid off, and the British went on to win. Wrong, because Burma would soon be independent, and Shuyiman’s good deeds during the war would count for nothing thereafter.

  The British quickly forgot their debts to the Muslims of the Arakan. In 1947, on the eve of their departure from Burma, they established a Frontier Areas Committee of Enquiry, to make recommendations on how the rights of minorities could be protected after independence. The committee did not even consider the peoples of the Arakan. The Muslims’ support for the British in the war had incurred the resentment of the Buddhist majority, yet this history brought them no lasting gain. If the British feel any guilt about this, it is only hinted at in a handful of obscure memoirs of some of the soldiers and officials who served in the Arakan. Many years after the war, one such official wrote of the Muslims, ‘I have greatest admiration for their tenacity, their toughness, their uncomplaining acceptance of hardship and suffering, their intense loyalty to their families and to their religion and – with few exceptions – to the British cause during the war. From this last they reaped very little ultimate advantage.’*

  Isaac had seen his sacrifices and contribution lose their relevance once the British gave up their colonies, but at least he was not part of a persecuted minority in a newly independent country. Isaac’s war ended, definitively, in 1945; Shuyiman’s people were not so lucky. For them, the Japanese surrender marked only a pause in the Arakan conflict.