Charmaine Craig - Miss Burma

But now we come to the most remarkable tradition of all, held absolutely identical by each tribe of the Karens, and enabling us to understand the success which the American missionaries have had among them, and their devotion to the British alliance. After the Fall, they say, God gave His “Word” (the Bible) to the Karens first, as the elder branch of the human race; but they neglected it, and God, in anger, took it away and gave it to their younger brother, the white man, who was placed under a promise to restore it to the Karens, and teach them the true religion after their sins had been sufficiently expiated by long oppression of other races.

“Oppression.” The word was one pole of an axis around which Dickens Jr. seemed to pivot, the other pole being “loyalty,” as in: “their loyalty to the British Crown is beyond question,” and “their loyalty and courage have been in refreshing contrast to the dacoity and unfaithfulness of the Burmese.” Were not oppression and loyalty, Benny wondered, the twin forces that still kept the Karens in a kind of limbo — caught between outright destruction and advancement of any meaningful kind? Even in Dickens’s time, the Karens had “rendered signal service” to the British government, which had received their loyalty with “only scurvy acknowledgement”—so much so that they were “not even known at all” in England. The Karens: the chronically oppressed loyalists spinning continually in the void of an apathetic realm.

On a March morning several weeks later, Benny was introduced by the inspector at the wharf to a new colleague and fellow officer named Saw Lay—“Saw,” Benny knew by now, being the Karen for “Mister.”

“This chap was a national football hero until recently,” the inspector raved. It was fitting, Benny thought, that the inspector had hired a Karen to fill in for the recently transferred Indian, but also curious that a Karen could rise to national stature as an athlete. Perhaps the British domination of the Burmans had allowed for such a shift in the order of things.

Saw Lay was a serious sort, the same height as Benny, though leaner, lankier, less apt to meet others in the eye. He spoke English impeccably, and was terribly unimpressed with his renown—“It’s only football,” he liked to say. If it weren’t for the nimble way he leaped up onto the launches, Benny would have doubted his football prowess, so unassumingly did Saw Lay stride up and down the wharf each day. And yet, there was nothing passive about him. His every infrequent look, his every measured word, burned with intelligence and intensity — and rage. A steadying rage, Benny thought, just the opposite of his own explosiveness.

The new officer had taken a flat across from Queen’s Park, which abutted the Sule Pagoda and the colonnaded municipal office in Fytche Square, and often after work they would stroll through the gardens, seeking shelter from the heat under a variety of blooming trees, Benny asking questions and then retreating into silence while Saw Lay began to speak.

“You must understand,” Saw Lay explained as he and Benny walked one evening in April. “The loyalist bond we share with the Brits. what made it stick was our mutual security. Their takeover of the country wasn’t easy. It happened over time, with several wars. We welcomed them because we’d been persecuted by the Burmans for centuries, we’d been their slaves — our villages perpetually attacked, our people perpetually preyed upon, stripped of everything from our clothing to our lives. There is a reason that we are characteristically afraid. Our tendency to be shy, to be modest, to avoid confrontation, to be cautious — all of this comes from our long history of being intimidated. And the Brits, well, they made use of that history. It didn’t hurt that we populated strategic territory. It behooved them to make nice with us, as they say. And, well, it behooved us, too. We’re not shy about referring to the missionaries who brought many of us our faith as ‘Mother,’ just as we’re not shy about referring to His Majesty’s government as ‘Father.’ Why shouldn’t we? Like a good father, the British government rescued us, taking us out of our long state of slavery and subjugation.”

They stopped to sit on a bench under a shade tree, and for a few moments Saw Lay fell quiet, as though sinking into the recesses of his vast mind. He sighed, looking up at the intricate white facade of the municipal building.

“Is that why there are so many Karens in the army and the police?” Benny ventured. He’d learned in recent weeks, with some surprise, that of the four battalions of the Burma Rifles — the regional regiment of the British army — two were made up exclusively of Karens.

A melancholy shadow passed over Saw Lay’s eyes, and he looked up again, above the municipal building to the white clouds poised above the city. “Without us fighting by their side,” he said, “the British couldn’t have won the wars against the Burmans, couldn’t have annexed one piece of the country after another.” He glanced at Benny, in one of his rare moments of meeting another’s eyes. “The Burmans rose up, rebelled — sometimes in the smallest, the ugliest of ways, with dacoities, armed robberies. And the Brits didn’t hesitate to use us as police, as troops, to suppress these rebellions. If you were a Burman, wouldn’t you therefore hate the Karens as viciously as you hated the British?”

Benny didn’t immediately answer, and the silence into which Saw Lay fell again silenced him further — he had the sense that even a single word might disturb the calibrations of thought vitally taking place in his new friend’s mind.

“The problem—” Saw Lay went on, with the caution of someone vigilantly staking his claim, “the problem is that the Brits are more favorably inclined toward the Burmans when it comes to issues of administration — no doubt because of the Burmans’ centuries-long rule over this country. You would think that, knowing the Burmans’ tendency to subjugate, our Father would limit their power, politically speaking. But our Father has always behaved very strangely in this regard. Even as we’ve continued to serve loyally, militarily, we have had to suffer being governed by Burman subordinates. We have a Burman prime minister, a Burman cabinet, a legislature dominated by Burman nationalist parties. And now with their strikes, their riots, our Father has been giving them greater and greater self-government. You can understand why we Karens are apprehensive, fearful. Has our Father forgotten our needs, our acts of loyalty? Surely he must ensure the fulfillment of our right to a measure of self-determination, to a separate administrative territory or state that we can call our own, and to some sort of guarantee of representation at the national level.”

Now Saw Lay looked straight at Benny, his intelligent, perspiring face suddenly frightening for its startling openness. “If our Father abandons us, Benny, everything— everything will come undone. Don’t you see?”

His hands swept over her body whenever he made love to her, as though he couldn’t quite believe that this — her body, this closeness — were real. And sometimes Khin felt unreal. Sometimes, even in this, she felt herself drifting away. Benny’s pants had to be taken in at the waist, she might remind herself. Obviously, the food she was preparing for him wasn’t rich enough. Or: Why had he yelled at her after dinner and then denied it? Was he so tone-deaf he couldn’t hear the difference between a frustrated and a loving pitch? Her sense of drifting might all at once vanish: she would catch a glimpse of Benny’s arms — how strongly beautiful they were, and how lucky she was to be held by them. Then she would be drawn back to her body, to the moment, to the fortunate reality she shared with this man, who like her had been so lonely before their union.