Playing Lady Gaga, Being Nan Pau. Steve Tolbert

outside Sule Pagoda, from today the most dangerous place in Myanmar to be. Police trucks had come in the night, their mounted megaphones screeching out warnings about defying curfew restrictions, about joining the recent outbreak of protest marches. And just half an hour earlier their mother had repeated those warnings before waving them off to school and work.

      Well Mya wasn’t going to school. Not until Thant was inside the Trader Hotel donning his doorman clothes. She chased after him, seized his arm and pulled him around. ‘Don’t be so stupid, Thant! If what happened to Khoo Tone and our own father aren’t enough to keep you from joining the protest, think of Hla Hla Win. Remember her? Sentenced to twenty years in prison just for interviewing protesting monks. And you’re planning to march with them. You know what’ll happen. You know, you know, you know!’

      ‘There are times,’ he replied, his voice dripping with insincerity, ‘when your perfect face takes on the serene beauty of a temple painting, and other times, like now, when it resembles the face of a naga serpent about to attack.’ His fake smile was meant to soothe her, his words to make her laugh.

      No chance. She wasn’t his slavish little sister any more, auditioning for his approval, responding all wide-eyed and expectant to his every wish, believing every word he said. She knew his tactics now, how manipulative he could be. ‘Look at me, Thant.’ Mya spoke very slowly. ‘My face has nothing to do with what we’re talking about. This does. Only when you go to work do I go to school. Understand?’

      He prised her hand from his arm without commenting on her long, delicate fingers. ‘I want to meet a friend at Sule Pagoda. It won’t take long.’

      Finally, a straight answer out of him. She shook her head. ‘If you go down there you’ll get caught up in the protest march and probably be thrown in prison and we’ll never see you again.’

      He glanced up the footpath. His eyes sharpened. ‘MI coming,’ he muttered, his face suddenly tense. ‘Talk to the footpath.’ He raised his voice to performance level. ‘You know what we forgot to buy at the market?’

      Mya looked around. True, a Military Intelligence agent was coming, his mirror sunglasses turned their way. ‘What?’

      ‘Cooking oil.’

      Mister MI slowed, lingering. Despite his closeness, this was better, the two of them working together instead of bickering.

      ‘You’re right. How could we have forgotten that?’ Mya considered putting on one of Thant’s fake smiles and waving to Mister MI, maybe even saying ‘Hello’ just to show she wasn’t intimidated by him, though she was. But when she turned his way he was staring down the road in the other direction.

      ‘So do we go back and get it?’

      ‘I think we’ll have to.’

      As Mister MI moved on, Thant’s mood darkened. ‘Life’s good when you’re them.’

      They watched Mister MI quicken his pace then slow again behind Khoo Tone and his monk friends, one with a mobile phone pressed to his ear.

      ‘Did I mention the words “cooking oil”?’ Thant asked.

      Mya sighed, knowing what was coming next.

      ‘Not unless we steal it. “Welcome to Myanmar, the Golden Land” is how that big billboard near the airport greets international tourists. It’s easier to buy drugs in this golden land of ours than the essentials we need.’

      He looked around for more agents before his eyes settled back on Mya. ‘Though it’s a golden land for our generals. What happens to people when they put on officers’ uniforms, self-awarded medals covering their puffed-out chests? What part of themselves do they turn off while the rest of the population goes hungry? So the question is, Mya, how much injustice are we, the other ninety per cent of the population, prepared to live with?’

      ‘Just go to work, Thant – please.’

      ‘Soon we won’t need to take bags to the market. Our pockets will be enough to carry what we have the money to buy. Sawdust and fish paste. “Believe nothing unless you hear it from us.” That’s what the generals tell the people, as if we’re too stupid to think for ourselves. Myanmar’s a prison, Mya, the police and military our guards.’

      She glanced up the footpath, fearful of people listening. ‘Ssshhh.’

      ‘Yes, exactly. Ssshhh.’ He didn’t bother to lower his voice. ‘Ssshhh. Everyone is listening. Ssshhh. We’re all so dead-scared of going to prison we see informers and spies everywhere. Ssshhh. Like “In the Quiet Land of Burma”.’

      ‘I know you like to recite that poem as passionately as our father once did,’ Mya said, ‘but you always forget the lines about the soldiers coming. And the soldiers did come, didn’t they, Thant? And they did carry our father away. Why – why do you think that happened?’

      Instead of answering, Thant turned in the direction of the pagoda. ‘Look at them down there. The city’s monks and students on strike, Khoo Tone included. They’re our courage. They’re our hope. All of Myanmar should follow their lead. Anger solves nothing on its own. It’s got to be channelled into mass protests that give us a voice – a voice that tells the world we’re still here; the generals are still raping the country. And the bigger the protests, the likelier the outside world will listen and the likelier things will improve.’ His voice quickened. ‘The power of the powerless, Mya: people realising they can change things simply by working together. Besides, I’m my father’s son. Given the choice, you know where he would be right now.’

       And for a few moments, there she was – a little girl in the market place being hoisted up on her father’s shoulders, so high, so look-where-I-am-everybody excited, leaning forward, locking her arms around his face, using his eye sockets as finger-holds.

      ‘If he was out of prison, or a labour camp, or still alive, but we don’t know, do we? Not since you two last marched for the good of Myanmar. And we’ll probably never know what’s happened to him, unless one day he suddenly appears at the door, a toothless, stooped-over sack of bones. Can’t you see, Thant? We need you at home more than ever, and we always will.’

      He kept his eyes on the pagoda, its golden spires gleaming in the morning sun. ‘Remember what he’d say to us whenever we got depressed about something? “Don’t let it defeat you, be strong, find a way to rise above it.” Doing that is what the march is all about.’

      ‘There are enough protestors down there to make the whole world take notice without you getting involved. If mother knew you were joining the march, she’d go crazy. You know that. Our first concern must be her. She’s suffered enough.’

      ‘I don’t have to be reminded of that.’

      More students passed, chanting slogans and waving banners, like they were on their way to a football match.

      ‘Watching is not joining,’ Thant said. ‘I’ll just walk along on the edge of the march until it gets to here, then I’ll go to work. Promise.’ He turned and, before she could say anything, sprinted after the students.

      ‘Remember, I’m not going to school until you go to work!’ she shouted, her scowl meant to penetrate the back of his head. ‘I’m not! I’ll be waiting for you right here, Thant! Right here!’

      A storm approached, wind stirring the trees, thunder rumbling, lightning cracking the sky. She could smell the rain before the first heavy drops sent her scurrying under a tarpaulin where child construction workers squatted and chewed betel or smoked cheroots, their faces turned towards the Sule Pagoda.

      And there she stood fretting and waiting, the rain pouring down as though from a hole in the sky.

      Minutes later the march came up the road, monks’ shaved heads bobbing above their red robes, their student supporters encircling them and everyone chanting:

      ‘Improve the lives of the people.

      Our