Burma brave

September 21, 2008
Burma brave
Under the Dragon celebrates the 'gentle generosity' of the natives of this brutally repressed South Asia nation

By AL PARKER, SUN MEDIA

UNDER THE DRAGON

By Rory Maclean

Palgrave/Tauris

Rory Maclean's Under the Dragon is the finest book you will ever read about Burma -- that tragically abused and heartbreakingly beautiful southeast Asian country.

Don't make the mistake of calling it Myanmar, the name imposed by the corrupt and brutal military tyrants who have terrorized and despoiled their own land and people since 1962.

As Canadian Maclean says in an opening note: "Because the Burmese people, who have scant say in the conduct of their lives, were not consulted about (the) alternation, I have retained the original name..."

Only four month ago, when cyclone Nargis ravaged Burma, killing 130,000 and displacing 2.4 million more, the world spotlight shone on that benighted land.

But the military regime pushed the light away, the world acquiesed and darkness again enveloped Burma.

Read Under the Dragon and you will curse that darkness. And you will curse anyone who could help the starving, enslaved Burmese people and doesn't.

Maclean's book, republished in a new trade paperback this month, originally appeared in 1998. A decade later, it is still the freshest, most relevant, insightful and painfully revealing book you will find on the Burmese tragedy.

Ostensibly searching for the origins of a century-old basket, Maclean and his wife Katrin tracked across Burma on foot, jeep, bus and train, eschewing tourist comforts and privileges to live among the people of Burma.

Maclean tells their collective story by weaving together individual lives like the strands of a basket-- from Ni Ni, the poor girl with sensitive hands who survived the serfdom of forced labour and brothels, to the state censor who became a free-speech activist, from Kalashnikov-toting teenagers in mountain militias to "the Lady" -- Aung San Suu Kyi -- the Nobel Prize-winning heroine who is the hope and heart of her people and who has, as a result, spent most of the past two decades under house arrest, harassed and vilified by the military junta.


And that's what Maclean calls "the central dichotomy of Burma: that the gentle generosity of the people -- the constant offers to share food, to give us presents and pay our bus fare -- was at odds with the grasping brutality of authority."

It's a dichotomy that has not been reconciled to this day, but one that is overcome by the words Maclean sees on the T-shirt of one of the Lady's supporters as the author talks to her: "Fear is a habit; I am not afraid."

Maclean is the right person to tell Burma's story. He's a staggeringly wonderful writer and also one of the bravest men I know, truly brave because he sees the mortal threats before him, fears them, and still moves forward.

Like Burma's finest, he will not let fear be a habit. Buy Under the Dragon and you can help kick the habit.

---

Also republished this month is Maclean's Next Exit Magic Kingdom: Florida Accidentally. Its dark humour and wry eccentricity stands in sharp contrast to the melancholy sonata of Under the Dragon, but Next Exit is just as deftly written and richly detailed as Maclean's Burma masterpiece.