Storyteller

by Zoe Daniel

  When I rise at 4.30 a.m., I’ve had an hour’s sleep. Nisha arrives in the dark to take over until Rowan flies in that afternoon. By now, Pearl is crashed out in a deep sleep. Arkie, a fitful sleeper at best, wakes and cries and clings to me until I leave for the airport. I fly out feeling gritty and guilty.

  Wayne and I are staying at a colonial-style boutique hotel in central Yangon. The Savoy is an appealing place, decorated with Asian antiques. It’s frequented by development workers and older travellers, which suits our purposes. We’re hoping we can pass as NGO workers to explain our comings and goings. We pay for everything in cash and obscure our cameras whenever we enter and exit the hotel.

  I speak to Rowan on the phone in code, and he confirms that the kids have both bounced back fine as always. I tell him I’m enjoying my ‘trip’. I doubt we’re being monitored that closely, but it pays to be cautious.

  We’re working with our fixer, Jimmy, and we rendezvous at local cafes to discuss our plans for interviews and filming: who we’ll talk to and where and how to avoid any of us getting caught.

  Our interview with Aung San Suu Kyi is the last thing on our agenda. Our plan is to film everything else that we need, then do the interview and leave the country immediately, hopefully before anyone in a position of authority tries to stop us.

  We begin by visiting Win Tin, the aged co-founder of Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy, who’s in his eighties but still hoping to see democracy in Burma in his lifetime. He’s living alone in a tiny bungalow. After nineteen years in jail, most of it in solitary confinement, he’s used to his own company. It’s uplifting to meet a man who clearly retains his optimism despite a lifetime of sacrifice and hardship.

  ‘Do you think that you will live to see real change in Burma?’ I ask.

  ‘I always think that I cannot see the real change in Burma but when Aung San Suu Kyi got released on November 13 I got some spirit, you see. I believe that I will see this. I will see some change. So I think there might be some change before I’m away, of course – but I’m now eighty-two, maybe I will have to stay for about twenty years or something like that.’

  We both laugh. He uses a walking frame to go back to bed, to rest and wait.

  Others, much younger, are equally determined. Hip-hop star Zayar Thaw, who has literally just been released from prison, also agrees to speak with us. He’s spent three years in jail for recording and performing subversive music, yet he’s prepared to risk re-arrest. He’s already making music again.

  ‘Because like us,’ he tells me, ‘young people want change. We live long in the military agenda but it doesn’t bring us our hope and it doesn’t bring anything except for poverty. We just want to live in the normal life like you.’

  Our interview with Aung San Suu Kyi is scheduled for five o’clock on a Saturday afternoon. Wayne and I spend the day backing up everything so we’ll be set to leave Burma the next morning as soon as we have the interview done. It’s a sultry day in Yangon and as the afternoon passes the sky begins to darken and the clouds roll in, ahead of what threatens to be a big tropical thunderstorm.

  Arranging the drop-off has been difficult because Aung San Suu Kyi’s house is being watched and no one wants to be seen pulling up at the front gate where she’s rallied supporters so many times. Jimmy drops us off on the side of the road at a pre-arranged spot where we get into his nephew’s taxi, while he bravely heads off on his own to warn Aung San Suu Kyi’s staff that we’re on our way.

  It’s hot and sticky and there’s no air-con, so Wayne and I sit in the back of the bashed-up old cab with the windows down. We’re parked opposite some kind of police base and we can see guards out the front, which feeds our paranoia that we’re going to get caught. We’re wearing hats and sunglasses, a feeble attempt at disguise considering that Wayne is a giant, grey-bearded man and I’m tall and blonde, and we will stand out in Yangon no matter what we’re wearing. But it’s a busy road and the guards don’t seem to notice us parked in the old white taxi. Time passes very slowly as we sweat in the tropical afternoon, waiting.

  The driver’s phone rings and he passes it to me. ‘There’s a problem,’ Jimmy says. ‘Keep waiting.’ He abruptly hangs up.

  My heart sinks as I wonder if we will fail at the last moment.

  Wayne is keyed up as well. He swears when I tell him there’s a delay. ‘Fuck, I just want this to happen!’

  We fall back into silence, waiting, as the sky gets darker and darker and the storm builds.

  Forty minutes later we’re fully drenched in sweat when the phone rings again.

  ‘Come.’

  The taxi lurches forward at speed. Five minutes later the driver screeches to a halt at the gate. Wayne and I leap out as it opens a crack, just enough for us to slip inside, the taxi already heading away into the grey evening. The din of the city seems to fade and we find ourselves standing in Aung San Suu Kyi’s driveway, facing the legendary house, grand and elegant but crumbling on the shores of Inya Lake, where she spent fifteen years under arrest.

  We’re shown into a large, sparsely furnished sitting room holding a couple of simple timber lounge chairs overlooked by a giant pop-art painting of her father, a revolutionary politician known as ‘the Father of Burma’, who was assassinated aged only thirty-two.

  Like Thaksin, Aung San Suu Kyi surprises me by appearing as soon as we arrive, dressed traditionally in a Burmese longyi skirt and, as always, with flowers in her hair.

  ‘What would you like to do?’ she asks.

  Wayne sets up the cameras while we have a long chat about painting and drawing and the skill of Burmese artists. I’ve been surprised by the talent and diversity of the art in Yangon’s galleries.

  She’s touched to receive Arkie’s homemade birthday card and writes him a note on a postcard made from a drawing she has done of her father. ‘Dear Arkie, Thank you for the very big birthday card, love from Aung San Suu Kyi.’

  I’m sure it will be years before Arkie understands the significance of that.

  It’s getting dark because of the incoming storm and we’re suffering from a serious lack of TV lights because we’ve come with such a pared-down kit. By the time we sit for the interview, the trees are bent double outside and the lights are flickering in time with the thunderclaps. But we haven’t come this far to be worried by a storm.

  I remind myself that Aung San Suu Kyi spent fifteen years inside this house, looking out into this very garden and across this very lake. I ask her if she found it frustrating.

  ‘I don’t get frustrated because I can’t go out. I can read, I can listen to the radio – the only thing that used to bother me was when I felt I should be outside helping my colleagues and friends when there were difficult times.’

  Even now, her movement is limited. She’s unable to leave the country because the government may not allow her back in.

  ‘Do you find it frustrating that you … well, I say you can’t leave the country, I mean, I suppose you can but you may not be able to return. Is that a source of frustration for you, not to be able to take your message out? To have to try and get it out through other means?’

  ‘No, because after all I can get out my message. It’s not the same as going, of course, but I’m not frustrated by it. I mean, you’ve got to remember that I’ve been under house arrest for fifteen of the last twenty years and I have discovered that I’m really not a gadabout.’

  We both laugh.

  She’s tough to interview because she doesn’t like personal questions or assumptions, and despite everything that she’s clearly given up, she won’t admit to having paid a personal price.

  ‘Do you ever think “I’ve spent so much of my life devoting my life to this”? I mean, you’ve sacrificed so much yet we’re still sitting here having this conversation after you’ve spent fifteen out of twenty years under house arrest.’

  ‘No. First of all I don’t think it’s a sacrifice, and this is something that I try to explain, it’s a choice and
I think it’s a little vain to see it as a sacrifice. What sacrifice? I decided to do this. Nobody forced me to do this. I did what I did because I believed in it, so it was a choice. A choice is quite different from a sacrifice. And then about the time element, of course if you ask me when would I like democracy, I would have said tomorrow or even yesterday, but in terms of the history of a country, twenty years is not that long. In terms of the history of a far-reaching movement, twenty years is not that long. Of course it seems long to those who want to get to where they want to get in a hurry – and we do want to get there as quickly as possible.’

  ‘What’s your feeling about how long people will have to wait to see any real change here?’

  ‘I don’t think you can work on feelings in politics, apart from anything else, political change can come very unexpectedly, sometimes overnight when you least expect it.’

  Much later I’ll reflect on that comment and wonder just what she knew that I didn’t while the interview was taking place.

  Afterwards we chat on the verandah overlooking the lake while Wayne takes pictures. She points out where Cyclone Nargis knocked down trees along the shore in 2008. She seems sad to see her garden in such a state of disrepair. The junta wouldn’t allow her to have someone tend to it while she was under house arrest. It’s clear just how grand the house and garden once were, both now decrepit in the evening light, although the occupant seems as bright and determined as ever.

  When it’s time for us to leave, she advises us to take care we’re not followed from her gate, and wishes us well getting out of the country. ‘I must go to feed my little dog,’ she says, and laughs gaily, almost girlishly, as she disappears into another part of the house.

  Wayne copies the interview and we hide the camera cards before we leap out the gate into the same taxi, which pulls up at speed with the rear door open. It’s raining now, growls of thunder menacing overhead. The road is red and white with the sheen of car lights on the wet tarmac. The rain will be a good cover.

  The cab drops us at a big hotel in central Yangon where we enter via the back door and sit in the bar, exuding false calm and having a beer, while outside Jimmy checks to make sure we haven’t been followed. Soon he comes in and gives us the all clear. It looks like we have our story.

  A few days later I turn my attention back to the Thai election. Yingluck wins and Thailand has its first female leader.

  I wonder if Burma will be next.

  EIGHT

  It’s a Saturday morning at the end of July and I’m having that moment parents have when they wish their kids would sleep past dawn. It’s around six o’clock and I’d love to stay in bed, but I’ve been away all week and the kids – and Rowan – need my attention.

  Arkie, as usual, is up with the birds. He takes after his father. Pearl and I enjoy our sleep, but when I get home from the grind of a hard work trip, sleeping in is not acceptable. Generally I wake up either to a kiss on the nose from our daughter, or to Arkie shaking me and asking, ‘Mummy, can you come downstairs now?’

  I’ve just returned from Malaysia, where David and I have been travelling back and forth so often that it’s becoming a weekly commute. The story is ongoing and controversial: the Australian government’s plan to send asylum seekers to Malaysia.

  When the story broke, a 5 a.m. Sunday phone call saw us on the first flight to KL. Rowan drove us to the airport, with me squished in the back between our camera gear and the two kids, all of us eating a nutritious breakfast of McDonald’s hash browns. Since then, in between covering political life in Thailand and Burma, David and I have been back repeatedly because the politics of refugees has once again become dominant news in Australia.

  I find it a difficult story to cover, having been to so many conflict zones and refugee camps. As a parent I can understand the desperation that drives people to attempt to get their family to a relatively safe and happy place like Australia. Those fleeing war and persecution are in a different category to those fleeing poverty, but in the end they’re all trying to go somewhere better. To them, Australia is a golden land, but getting there by boat is dangerous, as we saw starkly on Christmas Island and have seen many times since.

  Even if they make it to dry land, those seeking asylum spend months or years in detention while their refugee status is assessed. They also become faceless political pawns amid toxic debate over so-called queue jumping.

  The Australian government wants to deter asylum seekers from taking boats by sending them to Malaysia rather than detaining them in Australia. The proposal is to send eight hundred asylum seekers initially. In return, Australia will accept four thousand of the approximately one hundred thousand people who have been deemed genuine refugees by the UN High Commission in Kuala Lumpur.

  The news creates a furore among refugee advocates. In Malaysia, asylum seekers have no rights. The country doesn’t accept refugees; it’s merely a transit stop for those seeking resettlement in a third country, and some spend years waiting. They have no right to work, public education or healthcare. More than one hundred thousand are in this limbo.

  As David and I witness, most live in squalid, crowded conditions. They have little choice but to work illegally to support their families and they’re subjected to extortion and abuse by their employers because they have no power to object. The Malaysian immigration authorities and police are an even worse enemy. They’re complicit in the appalling treatment of asylum seekers, who frequently have to pay bribes to avoid being beaten and arrested, even if they’re registered with the UN. Sometimes they’re beaten and arrested anyway.

  Many of the refugees are Burmese and they hope to be offered resettlement in Australia under the scheme, but four thousand extra places over a period of years won’t go far. Few will experience the joy of finding refuge.

  Mang Doi, an ethnic Chin woman from Burma, is one of the lucky ones. She’s in tears of happiness when she tells me about receiving a letter inviting her and her husband and their four sons to live in Brisbane. ‘I was so very glad that I cried. We live in hard conditions in Malaysia. I cry at night, it’s so hard. The Australian people wished to call us and when we received this letter, I felt more joy than I can express.’

  Mang Doi’s husband, Chan Hmung, was a rebel soldier targeted by the military junta. After he escaped from Burma it took him years to get his wife and sons out too. Since they’ve been in Malaysia, they’ve lived in poverty with few rights.

  It’s lovely to spend time with the family as they make their preparations to move. The four young sons can barely stop smiling and they’re vowing to take up Australian Rules football as their sport of choice.

  Mang Doi and her family are selected under the Australian government’s existing resettlement program therefore their fate is not tied to the so-called Malaysia Solution. They depart happily for Brisbane. David and I speak to many others who hope to be selected – but before the expanded scheme gets underway, an Australian high court ruling bans it because Malaysian law doesn’t ensure the safety of asylum seekers. We’ve seen and heard plenty to confirm that: it’s one of the many reasons people take boats – after all, what have they got to lose?

  We spend damp, warm evenings sitting around tables at the base of KL high-rise flats as refugees tell us of their plans to take boats to Australia. They talk among themselves about costs and timing. They call brokers, discussing distances, weather and the dimensions of fishing boats. Children fidget on laps, old men and women lean and listen. It’s the fastest way – for some, the only way – to search for a home.

  Afghan refugees have a particularly hard time getting resettlement. Many of them have been waiting longer than others, but there is no ordered queue. Each country decides who it will take – it isn’t first come, first served. Most of the Afghans have been waiting at least five years, and few have been offered legitimate resettlement in that time. Out of frustration and impatience, many have taken boats.

  We visit the Afghans repeatedly, trip after trip. In the end the
y get angry that our stories have yielded nothing.

  One woman berates me, furious that we keep coming back to talk to them yet it’s making no difference; they’re still stuck. Obviously I have no power to fix their situation – highlighting the issue is all I can do and I’m more than aware that it’s frustratingly little. But I sit quietly while she yells at me. When she’s done, she smiles and thanks me, and pours me a cup of tea.

  A number of people from the Afghan community were on the boat that smashed to pieces on the rocks at Christmas Island. I’m reminded of the days spent watching the navy divers conduct their grim search in the foamy waves. Even though I understand why the Afghans might still want to go, I try to warn them against the perilous journey.

  Community leader Rajab tells me that he and his family have been refugees for decades, having fled from Afghanistan to Iran then Pakistan then Malaysia. ‘I got married as a refugee, I’ve had children as a refugee and I have had eight grandchildren as a refugee. How long should I be a refugee?’

  He says that in the five years he’s been waiting in Malaysia, only five Afghan families who’ve fled war have been resettled through official channels. Meanwhile, about twenty to thirty families have taken boats to Australia and, he says, most have been given refugee status.

  Rajab’s wife, Serena, says that’s why those who died at Christmas Island were on that boat. ‘Our main concern is our children. We think a lot of our kids. We have been in this country for the past five years, but if our kids were five, they are now ten. If they were ten, they are now fifteen. So every day of their life is passing by without any proper education and any future.’

  She weeps. After wasting their lives as refugees, these women now see the same happening to their children.

  Twelve-year-old Sajedah is frustrated; she wants to be able to go to school. ‘I just need a country that needs refugees, and to help us.’