Video Night in Kathmandu

by Pico Iyer

  The signs, I thought, were apt reflections of their makers. For the Burmese seemed an uncommonly jolly and guileless people, not veiled or stealthy as other Southeast Asians could be, but sunny and open as their plains. Even the black marketeers had more mischief about them than malice. Generally, they approached me with respectful diffidence (“If I may, sir …”) before treating me to a few housewifely maxims, a lecture or two on topics Burmese and an inquiry after my particulars (“If I am not being too inquisitive please, what is your age and where is your home?”). Only after the pleasantries had been observed would they get down to business. Could I sell some Johnnie Walker Red and a carton of 555 cigarettes? Would I like to exchange dollars? Could I buy them cigarettes from the Diplomatic Stores where only foreigners could shop? Should I not take a ride around Rangoon? Even then, however, a strict sense of decency was preserved: the irregulars cheerfully informed me exactly how much profit they stood to make before they fell into bargaining. Then, with undisguised pride, they chaperoned me toward their waiting chariots. “This,” said the beaming owner of a 1952 Chevrolet, “cost only six thousand dollars.”

  Hardly was I installed in the back seat of one of these jalopies when a friendly rapscallion would hop behind the wheel, two of his cronies would bundle into the passenger seat, and off we would bounce through the sleepy streets, the Rangoon-squadders furnishing a running commentary of piquant perceptions, loony anecdotes and antic fables. Two topics were forbidden, they said: politics and drugs. But did I know that Ne Win was born in the same year as Reagan and Chernenko? And had I seen Rangoon’s most efficient and prosperous industry—its black market? It was a wondrous thing, and indispensable. “Alas,” said one shadow economist, “you can’t just live on love and fresh air.”

  One day, during another such jaunt in an ailing thirty-year-old Morris, a typically amiable soul named Harry elected to deliver an irresistible defense of the system that had supported him, after a fashion, for eleven of his twenty-four years. “You,” he said, “are rich and can buy many things. But we cannot. Therefore, if you buy for us, everyone is happy.” Taken by this jabber-wocky logic, I agreed to buy Harry some Burmese cigarettes. Instantly, his accomplice spun the wheel, and we whizzed—or rumbled, at least—across town to a hotel, where Harry instructed me to buy two cartons. Then we drove back to the Strand, and Harry, whispering prompts over my shoulder, asked me to get five more. The storekeeper objected; Harry stepped forward and fired back a riposte; the merchant protested; the two chattered excitedly; money was slipped from one palm to the next; Harry assured me that the manager had agreed not to enter the transaction on my currency form; I picked up the cigarettes, paid in dollars, and we left. Not everyone was happy, exactly, but the system seemed to work. Once outside, Harry addressed me as patiently as if I were a child. “In my country,” he said, “it is, I am afraid, always necessary to bribe.”

  Many of Harry’s confreres brought an equally wry and urbane sense of irony to the helter-skelter high jinks of their homeland, footnoting its antique anomalies in the Macaulay diction they had mastered at school under the British. A fast-dealing black marketeer who seemed to run an entire network of agents in Maymyo commanded the eternal fealty of his minions through nothing more than his honey-tongued English—“Mr. Ahmed,” announced his followers with pride, “was educated at St. Albert’s Mission School.” A bookseller in Rangoon, as I tried to peddle a paperback copy of Mailer’s latest novel, engaged me in a learned discussion on the prospects of the Great American Novel. And one bright afternoon, a withered old crone suddenly emerged from the shadows of one of the capital’s lofty monuments to civic disrepair. “Money breeds money, brother,” she began, tugging at my sleeve. “Brother, I ask for two minutes of your time, maybe three.” She proceeded to make a spirited case for some ad hoc redistribution of income. Then, with Latinate decorum, she concluded by restating her principal theme: “You see—money, I believe, breeds money.”

  Most classic of all the Old World orators, however, was Lionel, the Anglo-Burmese guide who dropped epigrams and tropes in Chestertonian profusion as he offered to show me around Inle Lake. Thoroughly won over by his rhetoric, I stumbled outside before dawn the following day, and together we drove in the dark, through town after town of phantoms, to the water. There, as the light came up above the distant mountains, we climbed into a motorboat and began moving across the lake. Just as the sun appeared, a procession of boats came into view. In each one of them, twenty or thirty men were standing upright, propelling the vessel forward by rowing with their feet and, in the process, leading down the river a grand and golden bird-faced barge. After the floating monument had passed, trailed by boat after boat of chalk-faced votaries, hands prayerfully joined in the dawn, Lionel guided me around villages built on stilts in the water, showed me crops that grew on the lake itself, took me into huts where village girls wove Shan State clothing and temples crowded with Afghan-turbaned merchants. The highlight of the tour, however, and its grand finale, was a stop at the Taunggyi contraband market. “This,” said Lionel, “is a necessary evil. Or, you might say, an evil necessity.”

  It was also a heterogeneous confusion. Tiny old ladies, puffing furiously on cheroots, sat guard over decaying cartons of Kodak film and calendars featuring photos of the White House; house-wives, babies in bundles on their backs and faces whitened with thanaka bark, browsed through stalls, searching for tubes of French face cream; among framed pictures of old Burmese warriors there were jars of Nescafé, cans of Ovaltine, Mickey Mouse watches. Did I have a copy of Noble House by James Clavell? Lionel inquired. I didn’t. He shook his head sorrowfully. “Here you could sell it for fifty dollars.” How on earth, I asked, could anyone in Burma afford such luxuries? Fifty dollars was twice as much as a government clerk made in a month. “Oh, we have ways and means,” said Lionel. “We have means and ways.”

  Indeed, the entire country seemed much too ironic or happy-go-lucky or simply good-natured to enforce all its ironclad regulations. At times, in fact, this affable land of xenophobia came to resemble nothing so much as a sitcom version of a socialist dictatorship. “In my country,” reported one ebullient underground man, “the government has one eye open and one eye closed.” The upshot of this Cyclopean state of affairs was predictable: the system frantically tripped over itself, got ever more tangled in its own red tape and finally upset so many pieces of furniture that every transaction became an under-the-table affair. In the chaos that resulted, there seemed to be more loopholes than laws, more dodges than directions. Thus the government insisted that visitors could stay no longer than seven days, yet freely allowed them to come for one seven-day stint after another. It demanded, and demanded again, that all transactions be noted down on a Declaration Form, yet when I presented an official with my form, which proved beyond doubt that I had availed myself fully of the black market, he punished me with no more than a helpless shrug. The government imported rice, and it exported rice. Tourist Burma gravely warned visitors not on any account to use Tourist Burma jeeps. And once, in the Taunggyi Hotel, I saw a Tourist Burma official, who had been kicked off a Tourist Burma flight, in despondent search of a shortwave radio: he was desperately trying, I gathered, to get in touch with the nearest Tourist Burma office twenty miles away. Naturally, there were no telephones.

  Burma, moreover, seemed adept at confounding not only its own laws but also those of gravity and human nature, and, in fact, pretty much every theorem propounded by pundits and politicians alike. The Socialist Republic of the Union of Burma was neither strictly socialist nor unified nor much of a republic. But Burma it remained, and in its own inimitable fashion it continued to defy oblivion. It was among the ten poorest countries in the world, in per capita terms, yet it seemed to be cursed with little poverty and no starvation. It was decidedly backward, yet it boasted relatively fine schools and glorious, golden pagodas. One third of the country, the infamous Shan States, was a hornet’s nest of political skulduggery where smugglers, Christian K
arens, the Shan United Army, opium kings with armies 20,000 strong, remnants of Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalist forces and at least twelve ethnic groups (each with its own shadow government) fought against each other, the government and themselves. But that riotous scene was off on the margins of Burmese life, as remote and as ritualized as the thumping of bumptious hellions in some distant corner of the house.

  Indeed, while battles had bloodied the fields of Indochina, civil and incivil wars had torn Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and India asunder, Singapore and Japan had given themselves radical facelifts and China had swung like a murderous pendulum, Burma had kept serenely to itself, undisturbed by superpower rivalries or foreign interventions, at peace. And by abdicating from the rough-and-tumble of world affairs, it had, in effect, written itself out of the history books. One hot afternoon, as we drifted through Inle Lake, Lionel told me, almost offhand, that there had been some explosion the previous day in Rangoon, involving a few South Koreans. As soon as I could, I hurried to the British Council reading room to consult the local newspapers. Both The Guardian and The Working People’s Daily delivered the same terse report: a bomb had exploded, three South Koreans had been killed. It was only two days later, when I left Burma, that I discovered that the story had pitched Win’s land into the headlines for the first time in twenty years. Small wonder. Eighteen visiting dignitaries, including four South Korean cabinet ministers, had been killed by North Korean guerrillas; the South Korean President himself had only narrowly escaped assassination.

  WHEN I RETURNED to Burma two years later, very little seemed to have altered. At the customs desk in the airport, mobs collided, calumnies were exchanged, forms were flung this way and that, hapless passengers were obliged to declare their pencils and their shoelaces. I stumbled out of the customs hall and a Tourist Burma official loomed before me to make an opening bid on my whiskey and cigarettes. By his side, a little girl started bargaining for my duty-free bag—not whiskey, not cigarettes, just the bag. After haggling in several currencies with an amused old man, I stepped into a 1952 English Tomahawk already occupied by two dazed British punks, and we lurched spasmodically toward the capital. Herbie Goes Bananas was playing at one cinema, and The Terror of Mechagodzilla at another. Inside the Strand, a blackboard apologized for the absence of all hot water this week. An ancient porter gave me a key ring, and it fell apart in my hands. I inserted the key into the lock, and the whole contraption got stuck.

  Hardly had I stepped out of the Strand, a few minutes later, when a half-familiar voice hailed me from the darkness. “You were born in England,” said a smiling young man walking up to greet me. “Your parents live in California. When you came here two years ago, you were wearing a brown cord jacket.” Though doubtless few tourists had visited Rangoon over the past hundred weeks, I was nonetheless astonished. “Come, my friend,” said Jain, and together we went to a nearby café.

  The streets of Rangoon were somewhat brighter, a little quicker than I had remembered, lively with whispers and a bootlegged swagger. Inside the coffee shop, I saw a boy in a T-shirt that said “The Diana Ross Story’ by Leonard Pickens Jr.” and heard a tape playing “Riders on the Storm” by the Doors—or so I assumed until I listened more closely and realized that the acid-head anthem was actually being sung in Burmese (the Playboys, explained Jain, were sons of government officials; only they could afford to buy electric guitars and amps). Outside, Jain pointed out a few of the country’s other developments: a new Datsun could be bought, he said, for only $40,000, and TVs were now available for just $4,000. A house could be purchased for $250,000. Some things, however, never change. When I asked Jain how people managed to afford such luxuries, he smiled. “Household goods,” he replied, in a phrase last heard before the war, “and foodstuffs also.”

  Strolling in the warm evening through the fallen center of town, we sauntered past the Baptist Church and Gold Cup Café and Confectionery, wandered into a Hindu temple where we were hailed as dignitaries. Jain led me across the main park, and when we came upon three beaming young layabouts, he graciously provided introductions. I smelled liquor on the fellows’ breath, and when we shook hands, they held mine slightly longer than seemed necessary as he stared at me imploringly. “Do not worry,” Jain assured me. “They are not gays. They are just looking for gays to make love to.” I registered my surprise. “Whatever is easier,” he smiled. “They prefer girls. But they like what is easy.” He himself, he said as we resumed our walk, had once been invited up to her room by a Spanish woman. But then she had told him she was married, and he, as a good Muslim, had been unable to conceal his shock.

  And though the country seemed a touch more worldly than I had imagined, it was, for the most part, the same old, good old Burma. At breakfast the next morning, there was only one item on the menu: a five-course extravaganza that began with fruit juice (“Pineapple, please.” “Only orange, sir”) and concluded with fruit (“Banana, papaya or pineapple?” “Pineapple, please.” “Sorry, sir, we are having papaya only”). There was only one telephone directory in the four-floor hotel, and it was three years out of date. I attempted a local call, but it was alternately cut dead or rerouted, so it seemed, through Gabon.

  When I went to the Tourist Burma office, the stern lady of two years before greeted me as a long-lost friend, reminding me that it was most advisable to travel around her country by plane. Knowing as much from experience, I asked for a flight to Pagan. Sorry, she said, there were no flights. Burma Airways had only four planes and one of them had crashed last month. I asked for a train to Pagan. Sorry, she said, but the area was closed. An entire section of the country closed? “VIP,” she explained cryptically; perhaps I would like to take the train to Mandalay? I quickly agreed and asked for a sleeper. Sorry, she said; all sleepers were taken. Because planes were scarce, trains were full. Perhaps a third-class seat would be satisfactory?

  That evening, on a stiff wooden seat suited for nothing but the construing of Greek irregular verbs, I jounced through the long blue evening. Silent cracks of lightning illuminated the distant mountains. Across the broad plains a few oil lamps burned in tiny huts. The rest was darkness. Inside the carriage, vendors shuffled through the aisles, renting books to read during the journey or selling Bambi-like toys; outside, village girls slept by the tracks, bouncing up whenever a train approached and gathering by the windows to sell cups of water. By the time we got to Mandalay next morning, I learned that the local hotel was full. Perhaps I would be interested in a small room in a guesthouse?

  That day, as I wandered through temples, I met a Burmese man who told me to give his best to his cousin in the Seventh-Day Adventist Hospital in Bakersfield, another who explained his plans for moving to Idaho. And as I descended from Mandalay Hill after watching the sun fall over the river, a middle-aged woman hopped nimbly into the back of my trishaw. “Make hay while the sun shines,” she cried as she entered. As the cycle began moving, she winked broadly and advised, “Don’t let the cat out of the bag.” The next thing I knew we were riding together through broad avenues in the falling dusk and she was alternately cackling inscrutably and singing “Blue Suede Shoes” or other hits from the distant past. When at last we drew up to my hotel, the ineffable lady solemnly extended a skinny hand and, though it was the eve of a Buddhist festival in mid-October, declared, “Please give my very best regards to your parents and wish them, on my behalf, all best wishes for Christmas and the New Year.”

  That night I slept fitfully under a mosquito net which ensured that no bloodsucker would ever be more than two feet from my body. Shattered and scratchy by the break of day, I staggered out to join three other battered survivors on a bus to Inle Lake. The only hotel in Taunggyi was full; perhaps we would care to stay at the Inle Inn guesthouse? After an hour of bumping in a horse-drawn cart along quiet country lanes, we got out at a tiny rustic cottage and stumbled inside, famished and fatigued. Instantly, a young boy hurried out to greet us, and pointed meaningfully at a nearby blackboard: underneath a sig
n that read “Take a regard not to show braless and bare shorts in public places,” it listed “Burmese Dinner” and “Roast Beef.” “The Burmese dinner sounds very tempting.” “I am very sorry, sir, but the Burmese food we serve in the evenings only.” Oh. “May I recommend the roast beef?” All right. “Then it will be easiest for all your friends to have roast beef also.”

  As our host bustled into the kitchen, we collapsed gratefully into chairs. Two minutes later, however, another boy emerged, distraught. “Very sorry, sir, for roast beef we must go to market.” No problem. “It means a wait of an hour.” Fine. “Or longer.” Okay. “You would like noodles, perhaps, sir, and maybe roast beef this evening?”

  That evening, we had the Burmese dinner, seated on the floor around a lacquer table, by the light of a flickering candle, and feeling ourselves in a place of magic never to be known again. Afterward, we walked into the village and were led backstage at a traditional pwe where male actors were decorating themselves with rouge and lipstick, while families crouched on the ground outside. Next morning, before daybreak, we walked through the mist, where monks in bright red robes were filing silently from hut to hut with their begging bowls. And as we entered a boat on the lake and glided through the gathering light to see the golden temple on its annual trip downlake, we could hear, in the distance, the pwe going strong.

  To get back to Rangoon, two hundred miles away, I traveled for six hours in a motorboat, one hour in a horse-drawn cart, another hour clinging to the sides of a 1946 Jeep crammed with fourteen excitable villagers, nine hours in a suspensionless army truck and fourteen more hours on yet another third-class overnight train. And when I got back to the capital, I found it giddy with the look of a happy children’s toy, all its decaying buildings strung with lights in honor of the Thadingyut Festival, when angels light the path for Buddha to return to earth. That evening, as I walked among the carnival stalls, I suddenly heard a shout behind me, and turned to see the three boys whom I had met by the park waving me over for tea. Earnestly, they quizzed me about New York and the Live Aid concert, discussed the merits of Moshe Dayan’s autobiography, assured me that Addis Ababa was the capital of Ethiopia and La Paz the main city of Bolivia. Then they told me about the life of Dr. Haing S. Ngor, hero of The Killing Fields, and showed me how to moonwalk (two months later, both rock ’n’ roll and break dancing were officially outlawed in Burma). Finally, my new friends took me for a ride on a hand-operated Ferris wheel that revolved as slowly and as creakily as an ill-oiled gerbil’s plaything. “Please do not think badly of us,” said one of the boys, as, very gently, we rocked back and forth high above the city, gazing in the far distance at the full moon above the golden stupa of the Shwedagon Pagoda. “Please understand: we are pure.”