The Lady and the Peacock
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14. “I went wrong,” she told U Win Khet, one of her close assistants, privately, “but not without a reason”: quoted in Wintle, Perfect Hostage, p.295.
15. He had left Rangoon in late September or early October, ostensibly for a “holiday in Maymyo,” the British-built hill station northeast of Mandalay: Ma Thanegi papers.
16. Aung San Suu Kyi was “surrounded by communists” it was claimed; she was “going the same way as her uncle’s Burma Communist Party”: writers of opinion columns in the Working People’s Daily, and Khin Nyunt.
17. General Saw Maung, visited University Avenue the evening before the funeral to sign the condolence: Steven Erlanger, “Burmese, Still Under Military Rule, Settle Into a Sullen Waiting” in New York Times, January 9, 1989.
18. I hope this occasion has been an eye-opener: Terry McCarthy, “Rangoon Peaceful for Funeral of Widow” in Independent, January 3, 1989.
PART TWO, CHAPTER 5: OPEN ROAD
1. She was coming to open a new NLD office in a suburb on the outskirts of Rangoon: interview with the author.
2. it was at the town of Panglong, in the far north of the region, in February 1947, that Suu’s father signed a historic agreement: cf. Martin Smith’s classic book on Burma’s insurgencies, Burma: Insurgency and the Politics of Ethnicity, Zed Books, 1991.
3. It costs a lot to keep Gandhi poor: Sarojini Naidu, quoted by Jyotsna Kamat, “India’s Freedom Struggle” on www.kamat.com.
4. she had not touched alcohol since experimentally sampling sherry with Indian friends in the ladies loo of Oxford’s Bodleian Library, more than twenty years before: see Part Three, Chapter 3, p.197.
5. Boys very interested in traditional dress, esp. that of the Padaung women: “Padaung women” are the so-called “giraffe-necked women” who wear numerous brass rings around their necks.
PART TWO, CHAPTER 6: HER FATHER’S BLOOD
1. In a letter released internationally by his lawyers, the regime’s former critic repeated his earlier accusation: Loktha Pyeithu Nezin, Rangoon, March 16, 1989, translated in BBC Summary of World Broadcasts, March 18, 1989.
2. “I don’t believe in armed struggle,” she told a journalist during these difficult days, “but I sympathize with the students who are engaged in armed struggle”: quoted on BBC Summary of World Broadcasts, April 3, 1989.
3. by the spring of 1989, press estimates of membership ran as high as three million, in a total population of around 50 million: Terry McCarthy, Independent, April 19, 1989.
4. Two days later Erlanger returned to the subject in the long New York Times piece, which probably did more than anything else to put her on the world map: Steven Erlanger, “Rangoon: Journal: A Daughter of Burma, but can she be a symbol?” in New York Times, January 11, 1989.
5. The water festival of Thingyan, the Burmese New Year: in the original Indian myth, the King of Brahmas lost a wager with the King of Devas, Thagya-min, and was duly decapitated, but his head was too hot to be allowed to touch the ground and was passed from the hands of one goddess to another. As it was too hot to hold, it had to be cooled by the pouring on of water. A more generic explanation is that this is one of many traditional rain-making festivals. Cf. Scott, The Burman, His Life and Notions.
6. In front of me was a young man holding our NLD flag: Alan Clements, Aung San Suu Kyi, The Voice of Hope, p.52.
7. She explained that the captain’s rejection of her proposal to walk at the side of the road struck her as “highly unreasonable”: The Voice of Hope, p.52.
8. In a later interview she said of that split-second decision, “It seemed so much simpler to provide them with a single target”: Fergal Keane, “The Lady Who Frightens Generals” in You magazine, July 14, 1996.
9. The fact that she had survived the army’s attempt to kill her was proof positive of her high spiritual attainment: Houtman, Mental Culture . . ., p.328.
10. She was “a heroine like the mythical mother goddess of the earth,” one admirer wrote three years later: Gustaaf Houtman, “Sacralizing or Demonizing Democracy” in Burma at the Turn of the 20th Century, ed. Monique Skidmore, University of Hawaii Press, 2005, p.140.
PART TWO, CHAPTER 7: DEFIANCE
1. Alas, your poor Suu is getting weather-beaten: “Dust and Sweat” in Aung San Suu Kyi, Freedom from Fear, p.225.
2. A joke current in Rangoon in those days went that Ne Win’s favorite daughter Sanda had challenged Suu to a duel: Wintle, Perfect Hostage, p.319.
3. no water festival pandals: in India and Burma a pandal is a temporary shrine set up during a festival, usually made of wood, and the focus of festival revelry.
4. the happy highways where I went/ And cannot come again: lines from A.E. Housman, A Shropshire Lad.
5. fragrant nakao on their cheeks: Burmese women grind the bark of particular trees into creamy paste and apply it to their cheeks as a face cream. Nakao is a type of bark.
6. history did not in fact end after all: in The End of History and the Last Man, published in 1992, Francis Fukuyama argued that the revolutions that ended the Cold War signaled the end of ideology as a factor in the world’s divisions.
7. “had such success making alliances between many political and ethnic groups, much like her father . . . that it looked as if she had the ability to unify the opposition in a manner that would leave no political role” for the army: Houtman, Mental Culture . . . , p.46.
8. when the regime introduced a newly designed one kyat note in 1989, the designer showed his anti-regime feelings in a very delicate manner: the fullest account of the one kyat note fiasco is in Small Acts of Resistance by Steve Crawshaw and John Jackson, Union Square Press, 2010.
9. give lectures on the meaning and achievement of the hero’s life. But not this year, and not ever again: my account of the dismantling of the Aung San cult owes much to Mental Culture in Burmese Crisis Politics by Gustaaf Houtman.
10. On that date they set up a twenty-one-member “Commission of Enquiry into the True Naming of Myanmar Names”: Michael Charney, A History of Modern Burma, pp.171, 173; Houtman, Mental Culture . . . , pp.43, 49.
11. Now, Suu announced, her party’s defiance of the regime would be enshrined in all its literature, in a permanent call to nonviolent resistance: cf. Houtman, Mental Culture . . .
12. “General Ne Win,” she declared, “[who is] still widely believed to control Burma behind the scenes, was responsible for alienating the army from the people”: Houtman, Mental Culture . . ., p.17.
13. When the peace of his lakeside villa was disturbed by a Christmas party: Harriet O’Brien, Forgotten Land, Michael Joseph, 1991, pp.104–6.
14. “We don’t have any intention to seek a confrontation,” Suu insisted to the New York Times’ Steven Erlanger: Steven Erlanger, “As Tensions Increase, Burma Fears Another Crackdown” in New York Times, July 18, 1989.
15. “Now it is obvious who is behind the recent bombing,” said Khin Nyunt, “and plans to disrupt law and order”: quoted in Keith B. Richburg, “Myanmar Moves on Opposition, 2 Leading Activists Under House Arrest” in Washington Post, July 22, 1989.
16. “I was picked up at my hotel at night on the 18th, after curfew, although I had a valid journalist visa,” he recalled: quoted in Lintner, Outrage, p.174.
PART THREE, CHAPTER 1: GRIEF OF A CHILD
1. If the British sucked our blood, the Japanese ground our bones: quoted in William Slim, Defeat into Victory, p.590.
2. He became more and more disillusioned with the Japanese: ibid.
3. The arrival of Aung San, dressed in the near-Japanese uniform of a Major General, complete with sword: ibid., p.591.
4. He went on to say that, at first, he had hoped the Japanese would give real independence to Burma: ibid., p.593.
5. My father died when I was too young to remember him: Aung San Suu Kyi, Freedom from Fear, p.3.
6. “I have a memory of him picking me up every time he came home from work,” she told Alan Clements: Alan Clements, Aung San Suu Kyi, The Voice
of Hope, p.83.
7. I don’t remember my father’s death as such: ibid., p.75.
8. How long do national heroes last? Not long in this country; they have too many enemies: quoted in Wintle, Perfect Hostage, p.141.
9. I never felt the need for a dominant male figure: ibid., p.83.
10. She was such a dignified woman with a very distinctive voice: interview with author.
11. My mother was a very strong person: ibid., p.86.
12. There was a Buddhist shrine room at the top of the house: interview with author.
13. My mother was very good: ibid., p.196.
14. “I was very close to him,” she said: ibid., pp.75–6.
15. It was not something that I couldn’t cope with: ibid., pp.75–6.
16. “When I was young,” she said, “I was a normal, naughty child”: ibid., p.63.
17. “Ours was a mixed school,” her friend Tin Tin remembered: interview with author.
18. This tightly planned section of the city was “imperial and rectilinear”: Norman Lewis, Golden Earth, p.14.
19. These massive columns now rise with shabby dignity from the tangle of scavenging dogs and sprawling, ragged bodies at their base: ibid., pp.14–16.
20. The school was on Sule Pagoda Road in the middle of town, north of the pagoda: interview with author.
21. politics has always been linked to literature and literary men have often been involved with politics, especially the politics of independence: Alan Clements, Aung San Suu Kyi, The Voice of Hope, p.61.
22. When I was about twelve or thirteen I started reading the classics: ibid.
23. Before the coup Burma was the one country in Southeast Asia with a really good economy: interview with author.
24. At the weekend we had jam sessions: interview with author.
25. “The Burmese,” writes Michael Charney, “had achieved independence without a revolution”: Michael Charney, History of Modern Burma, p.72.
26. The last occasion when Burmese affairs had been strongly featured in the British press: Norman Lewis, Golden Earth, p.22.
27. His delusions did not last long. They were “stripped away: ibid., p.22.
PART THREE, CHAPTER 2: THE GANG OF FIVE
1. I soon hated my new school and till well into adulthood would avoid going anywhere near it: from Bungalows, bageechas and the babalog, in Remembered Childhood—Essays in Honor of Andre Beteille, eds. Malavika Karlekar and Rudrangshu Mukherjee, Oxford University Press New Delhi, 2009.
2. Delhi, characterized by much heat and disorder: Harriet O’Brien, Forgotten Land, p.57.
3. Her mother was shrewd, funny and generous: quoted in Edward Klein, “The Lady Triumphs” in Vanity Fair, October 1995.
4. She also met his daughter Indira, shortly to become prime minister herself, and her sons Sanjay and Rajiv: when Suu was visited in Rangoon by India’s Foreign Secretary, Nirupama Rao, in June 2011, Suu recalled her friendship with Rajiv Gandhi and asked Ms. Rao to pass on her greetings to his widow, Sonia Gandhi.
5. always full of good gossip about the latest political intrigues which she dispatched with much wit and humor: ibid., pp.58–9.
6. In Delhi Suu learned, at an impressionable age, the ways of “the argumentative Indian”: the title of a book (pub. 2005) by Amartya Sen, the Nobel Prize-winning Bengali economist.
7. Both in their different ways had a world outlook: quoted in Aung San Suu Kyi, Freedom from Fear, p.116.
8. In Delhi Suu was discovering the great cry of freedom, written in English, of Rabindranath Tagore: these lines from the poem “Walk Alone” by Tagore were quoted by Suu in her address to the University of Natal on April 23, 1997, on being given the honorary degree of Doctor of Laws. The address was read in her place by Michael Aris. “Many of [his] verses,” she wrote, “even in unsatisfactory translation, reach out to that innermost, elusive land of the spirit that we are not always capable of exploring by ourselves.”
PART THREE, CHAPTER 3: AN EXOTIC AT ST. HUGH’S
1. I was really annoyed!: interview with author.
2. Every male who met Suu had a little bit of a crush on her: interview with author.
3. She had strong views about her country, and about right and wrong: interview with author, London, 2010.
4. We got to know each other in Oxford, as freshwomen at St. Hugh’s College, in 1964: Ann Pasternak Slater, “Suu Burmese,” published in Aung San Suu Kyi, Freedom from Fear, pp.292–300.
5. When I first got to know her as a student I can remember her talking very proudly about her father: interview with author, Oxford, 2010.
6. my mother, who was another foreign oddity: Lydia Pasternak Slater, chemist, translator and poet and the youngest sister of Boris Pasternak.
7. four years after the Lady Chatterley trial and two years after the Beatles’ first LP: “Sexual intercourse began/ In nineteen sixty-three/ (which was rather late for me)—/ Between the end of the Chatterley ban/ And the Beatles’ first LP” from “Annus Mirabilis” by Philip Larkin. Lady Chatterley’s Lover by D. H. Lawrence was first published by Penguin Books in 1960, more than thirty years after its original publication in Italy: its exculpation under Britain’s new Obscene Publications Act on grounds of literary merit was a major cultural event.
8. “When we first arrived,” Pasternak Slater’s memoir continued: in Freedom from Fear, p.293.
9. he carried around one of the works of John Ruskin, and his social philosophy was based as much on primitive English socialism as on anything suggested by the Vedas: Unto This Last by Ruskin had a dramatic impact on Gandhi’s social philosophy; he carried a copy of the book with him at all times, and in 1908 he translated it into his mother tongue, Gujarati.
10. Aung San Suu Kyi was, briefly, a pupil of mine when she was reading for the honors school of PPE: Mary Warnock in a review of The Voice of Hope, in the Observer Review, May 25, 1997.
11. She was curious to experience the European and the alien: Pasternak Slater in Freedom from Fear, p.294.
12. Suu set out, a determined solitary figure in the early morning haze: ibid., p.295.
13. She was curious to know what it was like: Pasternak Slater in Freedom from Fear, p.295.
14. She was more comfortable with Indians than with Brits to begin with: interview with author.
15. It wasn’t a romance. It was an utterly genuine friendship: interview with author.
16. Suu “was much more interested in getting to meet Algerians and in what was happening in the country than in the many parties to which she was invited”: Ma Than É, “A Flowering of the Spirit: Memories of Suu and her Family” in Aung San Suu Kyi, Freedom from Fear, pp.275–91.
17. She didn’t want to be doing PPE: interview with author.
18. He was in Queen’s College. We knew each other but were not chums: interview with author.
19. One university friend mentioned that she was still talking about him “at least a year after she left Oxford”: private information.
20. Some of her Indian friends did not approve of Hyder. “He was a bit of a sleazeball,” said one: university friend of Suu who requested anonymity.
21. She would discuss these things with me when she came to Burma: interview with author.
22. Aung Gyi had been a subordinate of Ne Win’s in the 4th Burma Rifles during the war: cf. Michael Charney, History of Modern Burma, pp.120–1.
23. The only reliable classes were those who contributed to the material needs of society, such as the peasants and the industrial workers: ibid., p.122.
24. in a letter written years later: private information.
PART THREE, CHAPTER 4: CHOICES
1. Her Oxford friend Ann Pasternak Slater worried for her: Ann Pasternak Slater, “Suu Burmese” in Aung San Suu Kyi, Freedom from Fear, p.295.
2. “She called me Di Di,” she remembered—the affectionate Indian equivalent of “aunty”: author interview with Lady Gore-Booth, and quotes from documentary Aung San Suu Kyi—Lady of No Fear.
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3. From a diplomatic point of view, we should have said “Go”: interview with author.
4. He and his identical twin brother, Anthony, were born in Havana, the sons of an English father, John Aris, and a French-Canadian beauty, Josette Vaillancourt, whom he fell in love with and married while working as ADC to the Governor General of Canada, Lord Tweedsmuir (better known as the thriller writer John Buchan): thanks to Lucinda Phillips for details about her family.
5. He was smitten from the word go: Anthony Aris, interview with the author
6. as Norman Lewis put it, “through failure to spend a token period as a novice in a Buddhist monastery, the foreigner has never quite qualified as a human being”: Lewis, Golden Earth.
7. While he was still at Durham: interview with author.
8. “Getting to and from New York University meant a long bus ride,” Ma Than É wrote: Than É, “A Flowering of the Spirit” in Aung San Suu Kyi, Freedom from Fear, p.284.
9. “I see myself as a trier,” Suu told Alan Clements: Alan Clements, Aung San Suu Kyi, The Voice of Hope, p.33.
10. A more believable explanation is that, within those few weeks, Suu discovered that Professor Trager was on friendly terms with high officials in the Ne Win regime: the true reason why Suu dropped out of Frank Trager’s course was one of several questions I gave to Suu, in writing, during our meeting at her party’s headquarters in March 2011, but she declined to answer them. A future biographer may be more lucky. Trager’s friendship with Ne Win cronies is mentioned by Robert Taylor in “Finding the politics in Myanmar” in Southeast Asian Affairs, Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, June 2008.
11. U Thant “saw no reason why I should not go wherever I wished”: Norman Lewis, Golden Earth, p.33.
12. U Thant said that the railway service from Rangoon to Mandalay was working: ibid., p.23.
13. “Thant’s dream,” wrote his grandson, Thant Myint-U, “had been to become a civil servant in the British Burma administration.”: Than Myint-U, The River of Lost Footsteps, p.271. Much of the detail in this chapter is culled from this work.