Playing Lady Gaga, Being Nan Pau. Steve Tolbert

words: ‘I should tell you, dear, I could not have got this far without your brother’s help.’ And just how far did Thant get you, old nun? Let me tell you: as far as the wall of police murderers who must have enjoyed their day. Think of the satisfaction they got. Like shooting birds out of trees. Using a hammer to crush a flea. And supposedly they’re Buddhists. Doesn’t that make you want to change your religion, old nun? It does me, even as I wear this robe to escape imprisonment. Buddhists arrested, beaten and killed by other supposed Buddhists. Myanmar’s in hell, old nun, and with the generals as our masters, it always will be.

      She lost concentration and scolded herself, thinking: Nothing matters but getting out of Yangon, so get back to who you are – Nan Pau: positive, compassionate, self-disciplined; forever walking in the Buddha’s footsteps. And if she couldn’t be her, she might as well stop this farce right now and make up a banner saying something like, THE POLICE KILLED MY BROTHER. MAY THOSE RESPONSIBLE BECOME DOGS IN THEIR NEXT LIVES AND EAT CRAP. Then walk down the road with it, shouting and waving it in the air. How far? As far as her namesake got? Unlikely. A satisfying experience though; the rest of her pain-free life squeezed into a few minutes of revenge. And when the police came to arrest her, how long would it take for a bottle of rat poison to take effect? She looked down at her robe and shook her head. Had there ever been a more unlikely person to walk along this road in a novice’s robe?

      Rat poison diverted her thoughts and caused her to revise her route. She needed to buy some before going to the train station.

      On the next corner, a man in a red pin-striped longyi,3 white shirt and mirror sunglasses sat under a banyan tree. As Mya neared him, her heart beat harder, her stomach tightened. He might just as well have had his job description written across his chest, for although he wore different clothes now, Mya recognised him. She wanted to stop, to cross the road, to run.

      Mister MI turned and saw her.

      Mya lowered her eyes and passed him, her pulse in her throat. Seconds later hard-soled sandals, in time with her own, clapped the footpath behind her.

      A trishaw driver pedalled past, his arms and shoulders shiny with sweat, his passenger seat empty. ‘Yes, please,’ Mya shouted, in a voice more resembling a market seller’s than a nun’s. ‘I want to go …’ The words ‘Chinese Market’ froze on her lips, the disinterested driver well down the road by the time she finished her sentence. She continued on, listening for those sandals but no longer hearing them. She slowed, stopped, looked around. Relief was instant. No one was behind her. On she went, past vacant vendor and fortune-teller stalls, the Sakura Tower and Trader Hotel, until she spotted the railroad overpass up ahead.

      One more intersection: the massacre site, where policemen were stopping vehicles, checking ID cards and possessions, pulling people out and questioning them. Mya watched as two men were shoved into the back of a cage truck and driven away.

      Fear nudged her back into the shade of a tamarind tree. Her eyes darted about. She recalled a shop that sold traps and poisons across the road and down a nearby side street. How to get there without crossing that intersection? She stepped out of the shade, turned and looked straight into the face of Mister MI, his mirror sunglasses boring into her. Only his lips moved. ‘You’re looking confused,’ he said. ‘Why? Does this road, that intersection, bring back recent memories for you?’

      She, novice imposter, was about to be arrested. Her eyes found the footpath. Face hot, throat constricted, she tried to speak, but couldn’t. She forced a smile, gazed at cracks in the footpath and waited for what came next.

      ‘Your ID card.’

      Mya took it out and handed it to him.

      ‘You’re trembling.’

      It took all her concentration to reply, ‘A little. The city feels very tense.’

      His eyes jumped from Mya to the card – once, twice. He returned it. ‘Have you come from the Sanchaung Nunnery?’

      Stupid man. Where else would a novice nun walking in this area come from? Importantly, he didn’t grab her or appear to recognise her. She answered him in her quietest voice, ‘Yes, I have.’

      ‘A good distance away from there, aren’t you? Have you walked or taken transport?’

      Mya looked out at the road, a sponge for so much blood just hours earlier. ‘I got transport,’ she lied, hating him. ‘I’m going to visit friends nearby.’ May you choke on a fish bone and die in agony. Holding her body very still, she forced another smile.

      ‘I trust they avoided the protest march here and are well.’

      ‘Very well, thank you.’ With every lying word she spoke, she sounded more and more pathetic to herself. In another life she’d have told him whose backside to crawl up. Though, like now, maybe only in her thoughts. ‘I want to buy a few things at the Chinese Market before going to my friends’ place.’

      He studied her before flicking the back of his hand as if shooing her away. ‘Go then. You need only buy food for yourself for a day, maybe two, I should think.’

      She had no idea what he meant by that.

      ‘Go on, off you go.’

      Mya turned and crossed Sule Pagoda Road; she thought for the last time ever.

      3

      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