Читать книгу Playing Lady Gaga, Being Nan Pau - Steve Tolbert - Страница 10

Once, when she and Thant were little, their parents took them on a day train to visit friends in Bago. Mya was really excited about the visit, as she was about anything out of the ordinary.

It was good to leave Yangon station and pass through places where children played and goats fed along the grassy track, and Mya and her brother – competing to see who could stretch furthest out the open window – waved to people and animals, then to each other, then giggled and made faces, until the train sped up and their father dragged them back inside. The two of them were too excited to nap like their parents and others did. So they snuck off again, visited other train carriages, played hide and seek, until their frowning father found them and took them back to their seats and told them not to leave again. Their window stayed open though, so Mya and Thant could poke their heads out and watch the landscape and people passing by and wave to them.

Thant suggested a game: a point for every golden stupa4 or bul­lock cart they saw and two points for every villager they waved to who waved back. Thant won. He always won. Like all the other older brothers in their neighbourhood, he’d often change the rules to win. But on that train it didn’t matter. There was always a new game to play, and so much to see outside the window that was so different from Yangon, even though Thant, typically, had to brag about how observant he was, how blind Mya was, once the train got to Bago. But this did nothing to spoil the trip. Mya loved being on the train that day. It was one of her best experiences ever.

What a fun world she thought she lived in then.

Now Mya tried to hold on to that memory, but too soon it was gone, replaced by close-up strangers, their stupid laughter, the trivial things they were talking about: soccer scores, whether they should buy food and drinks, where their children should sit. Nothing at all about the massive protest march for the good of the country, and the massacre that followed, now only nine hours old.

Then anxiety replaced irritation as Mya tried to make sense of a future without her family. She was the only one in the carriage without someone, and had never felt so alone. Besides that one day in Bago, she’d spent every other day of her life in Yangon. And she’d never gone through a night without her family or a girlfriend’s family in the next room.

A lump formed in her throat. She shook her head to stop the tears. She placed her hands on her lap – one over the other – and took deep breaths and tried to talk herself into a calmer state. Second time at the station now, wasn’t it? The same sights and sounds as before: ear-­ringing platform announcements; vendor and fry stalls; people squatting and chatting, smoking cheroots, sucking on grilled chicken feet and rooster heads, or sleeping in hammocks or under tarpaulins. Inside the carriage people arriving, dropping their bundles, sitting on them or the wooden bench seats. All the while vendors – trays of trinkets and snacks and drinks balanced on their heads – roamed from window to cracked window calling out items for sale.

‘Disappear into yourself.’ Abbot-advice about as useful as a pocket on her underwear. Just how was she supposed to do that? Roll up into a ball, close her eyes and cover her ears, like in a game of hide and seek – her robe providing her hiding place? Of course not, but through deep concentration and meditation that she knew absolutely nothing about. Not something she and her girlfriends practised in between gossip and Facebook sessions, perfect boyfriend appraisals, and listen­ing to their MP3 players.

So here she was trying to impersonate a novice nun and she couldn’t even do the most basic Buddhist things. Though she did get past Mister MI on Sule Pagoda Road, didn’t she? Maybe, just maybe, without realising it, she was doing some novice things right.

That last thought bolstered her and she glanced around again at the people nearby: backs of heads, conversations half heard. Just fam­i­lies: fathers already curling into sleeping positions, mothers looking after the children. She could be in far worse places. At least no one in the carriage was likely to attract informers.

The train jerked forward finally, slowly picking up speed and rolling side to side.

Outside three boys raced the train, shouting, laughing and waving their arms about before they tired and slowed. Mya sensed the fire in their lungs, their leaden legs, and envied them their silliness and laughter, doing fun things together, being able to stay in Yangon.

She thought how quickly lives could change, be lost; that she was leaving behind everything she’d ever known, her routine, the certainty of it all. She had no idea what was to come, or even what she’d see out the window in the morning. Though one thing was certain: nothing, no one, would be familiar to her, until finally she found her mother – and she would, surely she would.

Mya leaned her head against the half-closed window and continued to look out at Yangon slipping past, buildings getting further and further apart, night coming on. As a distraction, to keep up her English writing even as her life was collapsing, she took out her English diction­ary, pen and pad as though her English teacher – a former monk and lover of haikus, tankas and short poetry – had just assigned her a writing task. She listened to the train noise, wrote, deleted and wrote more:

Vibrating metal,

Thumping of wheels on the track.

Darkness thickening.

She liked words, especially English ones. Liked filling up writing pads and diaries with them. She thought of writing about the massacre, but how ridiculous was that? There weren’t the words available – in Burmese, in English – to convey what had happened. Never would be. Her mind skipped to the abbot – what he said, how he was arrested. ‘Feel yourself grow invisible in your stillness.’ She shook her head: incomprehensible. Yet over the next few hours, it surprised Mya how still she could sit just thinking, and how upright she could sleep; how coughing, snoring and a mother’s head dropping on her shoulder didn’t upset her, or at least not as much as they would have in the past. Now, strangely, she welcomed the sounds, closeness and touch.

Mya slept; woke to a baby crying. Outside, a wall of blackness until a light or two showed, and passed.

An idea came. Maybe, out of habit and yearning, an imposter could absorb the person they were pretending to be. Start by acting, end up becoming. From the Tripitaka: ‘What we think, we become.’ Hard to explain exactly, especially with how muddled her brain felt. But all she knew was that in the time it had taken to get from the Sule Pagoda Road to the Chinese Market and onto this train, she’d become aware of the people who nodded, smiled and pressed their palms together to greet her. And what surprised her most was how easy it was for Nan Pau to return those greetings. She’d like to talk to somebody: an abbot, abbess, a teacher maybe; someone with ideas who might be around for her in the morning. She scanned the carriage.

Stupid girl, dreaming with her eyes open. No one was around for her: zero. Just poor families challenged enough by trying to get to their destinations. She was on her own. Maybe forever. So get used to it, Mya Paw Wah, fugitive from the law.

Her quick mood swings, feeling hope one minute, devastation the next, were not helped by stomach cramps signalling the onset of her period. As Nan Pau, or any other celibate novice or nun married to the Buddha, what purpose did periods serve?

Absolutely none: zero. That word again: the one that best summed up her prospects for the future. She’d give up ever being able to have children right now, this very instant, if she could just stop having useless, maddening periods.

No sobs like before; just silent tears. She pressed her fists into her cheeks, knuckle-dried her eyes, as those train wheels thump-thump-thumped a rhythmic chant. She put words to the rhythm – I’ll be with you soon. I’ll be with you soon. I’ll be with you soon – imagining she was capable of sending brainwaves to her mother.

The train rocked and rattled, the wheels thumped on and on.

At some point she slept again and woke to a brand new landscape. To her Yangon eyes it was a different country out there. Stilted huts perched like giant crabs. Groves of bamboo, mango trees and sugar palms, and vines and rice paddies, their shoots poking out of brown water. Beyond the villages hills rose up, their brows and ridges capped in stupas and golden spires shaped like the fingers of classical dancers. A dirt road came into view, running parallel with the track. Ox carts moved over it and work gangs of women and children with baskets of stones and dirt on their heads walked along its edges in trance-like slowness.

The carriage lurched, tossing sleepers sideways, and soon they started to stir and stretch and greet one another.

To avoid conversation, Mya pretended to read, keeping her Tripitaka close to her face until the carriage lurched again, veering left then slowing. Up ahead, above a wide, brown river that emptied into the sea, stretched a massive bridge, dark against a cloudless sky.

‘The longest bridge in all of Myanmar,’ a voice croaked next to her ear.

She swung around.

An ancient nun stood gripping Mya’s seat, her hands claw-like, her face a dried-up mango. ‘Myanmar is beautiful this time of year,’ she said. ‘Don’t you think so?’

***

The motorbike taxi slowed as it neared the end of a bustling alleyway full of conjoined double-storey houses, a tea shack and street dogs stretched out in the shade. The old nun muttered, ‘You wear a mask and your face changes to fit it.’

It was as though she’d read Mya’s thoughts. ‘Or wear a novice nun’s robe?’ she asked.

‘Or wear a novice nun’s robe.’

‘Does your brain change too?’

‘If it must, daughter. If it must.’

The taxi stopped. Mya got out.

‘Take this,’ the old nun said, handing Mya a key. She nodded at the tea shack. ‘You’ll find the owner behind the counter. He knows a novice nun is coming. Register your name with him then use the pathway at the side. Your room is at the back with a postcard of the Shwedagon Pagoda on the door. Remember to keep the door locked. Don’t go far. You will be contacted.’

‘When?’

‘Soon … Be patient.’

Mya reached into her bag for money.

The old nun touched Mya’s shoulder, shook her head. The motorbike taxi turned around.

‘And I will light a candle for you tonight,’ the nun said, going past.

A second motorbike taxi pulled out heading in the same direction.

***

Small room. White tiled floor. Wooden bed with a sleeping mat. A ceiling fan and a light bulb hanging from a cord.

Mya dropped her shoulder bag and pressed her forehead to the window that might as well have been metal bars. The ache for her brother, of being alone – a stranger to everyone – rose up again like a sickness. Her eyes filled and she wiped them and they filled again. Before the massacre she’d felt shame if she cried. No longer.

Nothing to see out there but the thick trunk of a banyan tree and a dirt path that led to the toilet, wash basin and tea shack. Mya went and lay down on the bed, looked up at the ceiling where green geckos – the story-book bad-dream catchers of her childhood – moved in bursts, froze. ‘How long will we be sharing this room?’ she asked them. Hours only, she vowed. Twenty-four at the most, then she was leaving, no matter what.

‘Be accepting. Be patient. You can no more …’

Yes, yes. Mya went outside to the basin and washed, then went to the toilet before returning, her maddening monthly with her, accepted and no longer so maddening or painful. She watched the fan circle and listened to every sound: the hum of a generator, tea shack noise, the bell of a bike rickshaw, flip-flops passing the door. When she was little, she avoided ceiling fans, afraid they might crash down and slice her into pieces. Thant had told her they would.

A vision of his last moments tracked through her mind over and over, until tiredness weighed her down, her eyelids refusing to stay open. She slept until chanting and gunshots invaded her dream, jolting her awake.

Darkness. Street dogs barking a duet. She located herself and stood and turned on the light. A scrap of paper was under the door. She picked it up and read: Your room includes free meals.

Reminded of her hunger, she took her bag and walked around to the tea shack. Tables lined two walls, while giant woks heaped in rice, noodles, skewered chicken parts and large pots of tea and soup simmered away along the wall to her left.

He’d pinched his ear. ‘Remember, walls have these.’

But there was nowhere away from walls to sit. A stool and small table tucked away in a back corner looked the best option. Mya went there and sat down, checking for wires, tiny speakers inside table-top shrines or under the table itself. A serving boy came and placed a bowl of fish-head soup, a slice of Indian bread and a glass of tea in front of her. He smiled and greeted Mya as though she were a regular customer. That relaxed her, as did the aroma of her first meal since leaving Yangon.

Mya ate, devouring the bread between spoonfuls of soup until the scrape of a stool made her pause. She turned and looked into the smile of a thick-set man in a dark longyi and white singlet, his arms covered in blue-black tattoos.

Her pulse quickened. Dignity, serenity, she reminded herself. She re-arranged her robe around her shoulders and ankles and took five deep breaths, concentrating on each one.

The man sat down just as the generator quit, lights flickering then dying, the place suddenly as black as the outdoors. In seconds, torchlight beamed in the kitchen. Candles were lit.

The serving boy brought one over and the man next to her emerged again, his fishy eyes wandering over Mya. She was struck by how quickly she could dislike someone trying to befriend her.

He seemed to like what he saw. He leaned closer, still smiling, before his food came and moments later a glass of whiskey. He pointed to it. ‘Would you like one?’

Breath that could melt plastic. Blind to her robe, shaved brows and head. Or maybe he was just mocking her. Mya did her best to smile, serenely, saying with all the self-control she could muster, ‘No, thank you,’ before she continued to eat.

‘Inside or outside the gut, it’s the best disinfectant in all of Myanmar. You’re still a bit young for it, maybe. Or maybe you’re so close to the Buddha you don’t need disinfecting.’ He chuckled then gulped down his whiskey like it was cold tea. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and nodded to the serving boy. Another whiskey came. ‘So which reason is it?’ he asked.

‘I prefer water or tea.’

‘And you have a tongue and you speak as well as pray, eat soup and bread, and dress in robes.’

Mocking her and enjoying it, the pig. May he choke to death in his sleep and never be discovered, Mya thought as she forced another smile, rubbing a hand over the hem of her robe to reinforce who she was trying to be. She looked down. A section of the hem had come away and needed re-sewing. She lifted the hem to the candlelight. Another section had a small tear. If she wasn’t contacted by morning, she’d find a shop, buy a needle and some thread, and mend it.

The man slurped his soup, sucking on the eyes and small bones before murmuring his approval. ‘Brains and eyeballs are the best part,’ he said, ‘Don’t you agree?’

‘Yes.’ She’d say nothing to contradict him. She should leave. But she was still hungry. She ate quicker, concentrating on remaining blind to his stares.

The generator sounded and moments later the lights came back on. A mosquito was on Mya’s wrist. She slapped it: then came the shock of what she’d done.

The man stared, a slow smile forming on his lips. ‘You’ll return as a dog in your next life.’

‘A mistake.’ She picked the remnants from her wrist and placed them carefully on the table. ‘Much regretted.’

‘The excuse being you’re just a novice prone to such mistakes.’

If he happened to fall off his stool in the next minute, she’d kick him in the head, also by mistake and with deep apologies. ‘Perhaps.’

A black cat entered the tea shack, examined the place and disappeared.

‘So which nunnery are you from?’

As Mya, she would have been on her way to another table by now. ‘What?’ She’d heard, but she needed time to think of the name of the nunnery she’d passed earlier in the motorbike taxi.

He repeated the question.

Mya couldn’t remember. She only knew the name of one nunnery, and that was in Yangon. ‘Sanchaung.’

‘Ahhh,’ he uttered, as though some great secret had been revealed. ‘Far away from home, aren’t you?’ He stared at his whiskey before draining the glass and raising it in the air for another one.

Mya finished her soup and stood up in one motion.

‘Leaving so early?’

A quick nod and, without looking back, she left.

Back in her room she felt panicky, trapped. She couldn’t read or settle. She listened for footsteps, a knock, the door handle turning. She wanted to find another room. Somewhere close by. So what about this? Go for a walk, find a room, return and tell the proprietor she’d met a girl she knew who lived with her family down the road. The girl had asked her to stay the night with them. She’d return in the morning.

Mya grabbed her bag, opened the door and jumped back.

In the doorway, the silhouette of a man. ‘Myanmar is beautiful this time of year,’ he said. ‘Don’t you think so?’

The whiskey drinker? But he looked to be wearing trousers and seemed smaller. A hand reached out like it was about to grab her.

‘For you.’

Another note, intercepted before it could be slipped under the door. Wary of that hand, Mya snatched the note quickly and stepped back into the light.

Tomorrow Karen State. First bus for Hpa-an leaves at six am.

‘Who are you?’ she asked, looking up. He was gone. Mya dashed down the path to the road. No one: just sleeping dogs. She entered the tea shack. Two tables were occupied. She glanced at the faces. The whiskey drinker’s wasn’t among them.

Back in her room she lay on the bed, watched shadows waver on the walls, listened to bats flitter about outside. At times she confused them for people about to knock or slide another note under the door. The bat noise ended. She dozed: Mister MI’s and the whiskey drinker’s claw-like hands gripped prison bars, eyes staring, mouths agape.

Tiny cell, hot. Smell of mould. Stench from a toilet bucket. Biting bedbugs, mosquitoes. She curled into a ball, itching and bleeding from continual scratching.

Huge rats, one by one, came up through a broken grate. They squealed, fought and mated, then raised their noses in the air, faces twitching, and watched her.

She heard clicking sounds. Giant beetles appeared on the ceiling, antennae waving. They slid down the walls, climbed over each other in their rush to get to her.

She tried to stand, but it was like she was nailed to the floor, she couldn’t move. She screamed, ‘Mother! Help me!’

No one came and the squealing and clicking got louder as the rats – teeth bared – and dung beetles – emerging from piles of crap – mounted her legs and arms, intent on penetrating her, sucking on her brain. A rat scrambled to her chin, went for her mouth. She screamed.

Mister MI and the whiskey drinker – the only ones to take any notice – grinned approvingly through the bars.

Mya screamed again and snapped awake, fighting for air, heart thumping against her chest. Light still on, the roof fan circling, three useless bad-dream catchers splayed against the opposite wall. The longer she stared at them, the more the room seemed to compress, the image of those long-toothed rats and crap-covered beetles swarming over her, gnawing away at her chin, lips and tongue.

She leapt up, threw on her under-dress and dashed out to the road.

No one about. Dogs – homeless like her – still curled up asleep, one of them growling in its dreams. Over her a half moon and bright stars. She stopped, thankful for the memory they brought: her father’s voice, clear; the feel of his arms around her. Like she’d been lifted up and transported back.

Sitting together on river bank rocks. The smell of mud. Thant, closest to the water, skimming stones across its dark surface. She on her father’s lap, leaning into his embrace, feeling all snug and safe. ‘Six thousand stars up there visible to the naked eye,’ he said, looking up. ‘And a hundred thousand million more that are not. Count in English the ones you see, Mya.’

‘Too many,’ she squealed, burrowing into him.

‘Okay, twenty then. Point to them as you count.’

The older Mya finished counting, then spotted a stool and sat down on it, recalling when she was a pre-schooler thinking darkness was like paint. Go outside for too long at night and she’d come back black.

Across the road light flared between the second-floor shutters of a house. Inside a family chattered away, before the voice of a young girl rang out. And such a voice it was. Like she was seated right next to Mya as she protested about having to go to bed. Typically, the mother bribed her with a story, which was obviously what the girl wanted, as her ‘Okay’ was instant and expectant.

Mya recalled when she was that little girl, not getting a story read to her the greatest disappointment of her day. Recalled also her mother squatting down in front of her, gripping her hands and instructing, ‘Gentle hands, walking feet, kind words and a quiet voice – yes?’ She’d given up doing that with Thant.

Mya listened, and when the story finished and ‘Good nights’ were said and upstairs went dark, she walked back to her room, glimpsing a figure standing under the moon shadow of a nearby building, the smoke from his cheroot rising in the air.

***

The first hint of dawn appeared in the sky as passengers started boarding the bus. Mya was last on and sat at the front, a woman and her toddler next to her, the driver across from them bent over the wheel yawning. The bus coughed to life, roared, steadied. Jerked into gear it took off, bouncing and swerving out of the depot.

Along the traffic-less road they went, past plaster-walled buildings splotched with mildew, people wrapped in shawls and monks carrying their begging bowls the right way up. Scrawled in red paint on the side of one building was: Worship life. It’s a joy to bring into existence and too precious to destroy. A plea, Mya thought, to any pig generals being chauffeured past.

Third day as Nan Pau, of avoidance and solitude, of the stupefying ache of losing family members she never valued enough until they were gone.

Mya wished she’d hugged her mother before she left for school, hugged her father before he protested the previous year. Told them both how much she loved them. That Thant had died more slowly so she could have told him that too. At least with her mother, and hopefully one day with her father, she’d have a second chance to do that.

Outside Moulmein the bus moved eastwards toward the rose-pink dawn that turned orange and paled yellow as the sun lifted over the rim of the world. Hpa-an was out there under all that new colour. Mya imagined it: a small town bordering a brown river, stilt houses and small fishing boats scattered along its banks; background of hills rising into grey limestone mountains; morning market starting to fill with school children and mothers, including hers. She had to be there – had to be. Further east was a war zone.

Though it was hardly a war zone where she was looking.

Her monk English teacher: ‘Writing short poetry is about stilling the moment, probing it with words.’ The English word for where the edge of the earth and sky met? Started with ‘h’. She got out her diction­ary and found ‘horizon’, and checked on ‘stubble’. She wrote:

Rice field plain,

Stubble now

All the way to the horizon –

Sharp –

Like the edge of a plate.

Walk too far,

Drop off

And never be seen again.

Hard to believe the world was round, she thought, as all that uninterrupted space held her gaze, the smell of harvested rice blowing in through the open windows, the road straight as the lines on her writing pad, the bus only veering to pick up passengers, avoid potholes and villagers on bicycles.

She relaxed a little and watched the driver reach for a cellophane bag filled with betel leaf. He took out a clump, inserted it between his gums and cheek and chewed; his periodic spitting of red phlegm out the window sounded like a pop-gun.

‘Do you have extra?’ the woman next to Mya asked the driver, pointing to the bag above the steering wheel.

He took out another clump and handed it to her.

The woman thanked him and dropped the betel in her mouth and chewed, her mouth soon turning as red as the driver’s. She gave an impatient sigh. ‘Very slow bus today,’ she said to no one in particular, bouncing her toddler up and down. When the toddler started to cry, she turned towards the open window and asked, ‘Could we switch seats?’ Mya agreed and the woman leaned her head out and spat. She took the remnants of the betel from her mouth and rubbed it over the toddler’s lips, hoping to stop its crying.

The bus slowed and creaked over a rusty bridge and the toddler shrieked.

Mya offered the woman a banana and sticky rice wrapped in fresh green leaves, telling her she’d already eaten. As a novice nun, her first act of charity for the day. The woman took the food and thanked her. With the first taste of banana on his tongue, the toddler went quiet, his eyes growing large with interest, his tongue pushing out for more.

‘Try each day to smile. It is good medicine.’

And Mya did – her eyes on the toddler. The worst part was over, wasn’t it? Someone would be in Hpa-an to meet her and she’d be taken to her mother’s room. There they would grieve, yes, but over time find work and, as best they could, recover their lives together.

The mother and toddler finished off the banana and sticky rice and were soon asleep, the toddler sprawled across his mother’s lap, the mother’s arms over him. Betel was supposed to prevent sleep. That was why people like their driver chewed it. The woman must have been exhausted.

Mya looked out at the fields, the farmers and their water buffalo at mid-distance quivering in the heat waves, the far horizon now blurred in haze under a sun-bleached sky.

Time seemed to slow: the monotonous drone of the bus, the road’s straightness and flatness, the constant travelling starting to feel endless.

‘You can no more hurry life along than you can hurry the phases of the moon.’

Limestone formations started jutting up and merging into jagged, sheer-sided cliffs, stupas and their spires appearing on the most inaccessible outcrops. How builders got up to those places to build those structures was a mystery to Mya.

The woman stirred. She hooked an arm through Mya’s and leaned her head against Mya’s shoulder, all the time appearing to sleep.

The bus slowed. Up ahead a red and white boom gate. Heaped sandbags encircling a propped machine-gun on one side, three soldiers – guns held loosely across their waists – on the other. Mya sank down.

‘Wave to the soldiers,’ the mother said, suddenly awake, before picking up her toddler’s hand and doing it for him.

Seconds later the barrier rose and the bus drove through.

More boom gates and check-points appeared as they neared Hpa-an, but not once did soldiers board the bus. ‘A different story going the other way,’ the driver noted between check-points, as though Mya might need to know that.

Storm clouds were building, lightning flaring in the distance.

The bus entered Hpa-an, weaving through the narrow streets before shuddering to a stop in the central square. The door screeched open. Passengers piled out, though not the woman and her toddler. Boxes and bags were untied and came down from the roof, the passengers collecting them and moving off. When the doorway cleared, Mya got up and descended the steps, bus noise still lingering in her ears.

A tea shack was just metres away, two of its tables outside. A monk sat hunched over a glass of tea at one of them. The other table was vacant. Mya watched the monk spread his hands and stare at them like they’d suddenly become a mystery to him. She waited for him to look up, meet her eyes, but he didn’t. Sitting at the next table seemed the logical thing to do, but if that monk wasn’t there for her and started asking difficult questions, how long would it take for him to realise who she wasn’t?

The woman disembarked and, strangely, stood beside Mya, toddler perched on her hip. Again she hooked an arm through Mya’s, as though they were good friends or shared a family. ‘Good to feel our feet on the ground,’ she said.

Mya nodded, wary.

From the tea shack a man’s voice called out, ‘Mya!’

She answered, ‘Yes,’ then realised her mistake. Panic took her breath away.

‘Good trip?’ The man was sitting just inside, against the wall. Only his pressed trousers were visible until he stood up and moved outside, his stare like an animal’s fixed on its prey. He put on mirror sunglasses.

Someone clomped down from the bus and stood behind Mya. She looked over her shoulder into the eyes of the whiskey drinker, a grin spreading across his big slab face. ‘Surprised?’

The woman let go of Mya’s arm and looked around, holding out her hand.

The whiskey drinker gave her some bills and she walked away.

Wide road. Little traffic. A market place a hundred metres or so to Mya’s left.

‘Save yourself the effort,’ the whiskey drinker said, close enough for Mya to catch the smell of his breath. ‘You won’t get halfway.’

She was Mya Paw Wah again, fastest girl in her class. Nearly as fast as Thant, so midfield football player fast. And if she could reach that market place, she’d have a chance of escaping. Or should she just grab her rat poison instead? But the whiskey drinker was close. Getting the poison and swallowing it would take too long.

Mya looked at him like he was a rotten piece of meat, saying, ‘Something’s died in your mouth.’

She bolted, passing two motorbike taxis, leaping over a sleeping dog and a pot hole, weaving around bikes and motor scooters. She got to the market, chose the widest aisle and raced on, ducking and sidestepping, stalls flashing past, the eyes of thanaka-faced5 women turning to stare at her. Sandals slapping her heels, people shouting – ‘Sister’, ‘Daughter’, ‘What is wrong?’ ‘Why do you run?’ Sudden silence when they see why.

‘Watch out, watch out!’ Mya screamed, darting left through a narrow opening. People jumped back, giving her room; her breath gasping, pounding boots closing in, until a hand grabbed her by the neck, pulled and threw her into a stall.