Southeast Asia: Martyrs, Villains and the Liquid Charm of Formaldehyde
As I was unpacking yesterday, I came across a book I've been trying to find since last year, a collection of short stories by Ben Fountain called Brief Encounters with Che Guevara. Don't be put off by the title: His talent is the real thing.
The protagonist of Asian Tiger is a washed-up Texas golf pro flown out by the Burmese generals to help General Myint bring down his handicap. It captures the country--the eerie sad beauty of it, the ignominy of the generals--far better than I could now at such a remove of distance and time.
Sonny stepped off the plane in Rangoon -- Yangon in the official, post-imperialist nomenclature -- got a whiff of the dense alluvial air, and thought: home? No, he was about as far as he could get from Linwood and the ditchwater funk of the gulf coast, but Rangoon’s scruffy urban mass had a small-town feel, its streets shot through with a rural ethic. The smog harbored startling hits of orchids and manure. Rusting corrugated roofs and moss-streaked stucco seemed to mediate a timeless, more organic state of mind. Roosters could be heard at all hours of the day, and even rush hour lacked world-class conviction, a tinny whirr and chutter that teased his ear like the plinking of thousands of pinball machines.
From the generic swank of his hotel room, he could watch Chinese junks gliding by on the river, a wonder surpassed only by the locals themselves, slender, graceful people with cashew-colored skin and hair that flashed midnight blue in the sun. And here is another wonder: they didn’t hate him! Poor people who bought their cigarettes by one’s and two’s, and yet they didn’t hold their hardship against him, this loud, lumbering, pink-skinned American whose sheer unsubtlety made the natives cringe and giggle.
His portrait of the generals in particular suggests the feeling I had about them from reading the New Light of Myanmar. (This is obviously a publication much like the Vientiane Times, for which I used to work.)
Ah, the generals -- after trying to chat them up at the nightly banquets Sonny had come away actually pitying them. What was the point of having power if you were comatose? They were weird little guys, homely men with pot bellies and wispy, tinted hair and all the liquid charm of formaldehyde. Sonny took a seat amid the chill of their anti-charisma and listened to General Hla make the pitch: they wanted Sonny to become Myanmar’s ambassador of golf, their consultant on matters of tourism and sport and their host to visiting dignitaries and businessmen. As compensation he would be provided a car, a house, reasonable expense money, and a salary of twenty-five thousand dollars a month.
“We also request,” Hla added as his colleagues came to the edges of their seats, “that you please be available to give us private instruction.”
Re-reading that story made me terribly sad for Burma all over again. It's easy to be romantic about Aung San Suu Kyi; she's obviously the stuff fables are made of. But I doubt she has what it takes to go beyond the role of beautiful, imprisoned symbol. I wish I could say otherwise, but my intuition says she's not going to be able to hold the opposition together; and having been released, she'll quickly lose the luster associated with martyrdom. The opposition is already fracturing.
If you're interested in books that bring Southeast Asia to life, I also recommend Stan Sesser's Lands of Charm and Cruelty: Travels in Southeast Asia. I misplaced my copy of that years ago, but it's outstanding.
Speaking of charm, cruelty, and Southeast Asia, I note once again that Anwar Ibrahim is not Suu Kyi's Malaysian analogue. He's doing the rounds comparing himself to her. It's nonsense. Yes, he's been imprisoned under what are obviously spurious charges, for obviously political reasons. And yes, this is deplorable. But the parallels end there. What on earth is this business of calling him a "noted democracy advocate in his own right?" How did he get a reputation for that? On the golf course, I suppose. It does seem as if he's been playing golf with the right people.
It's all so sadly craven. By all means, object to Malaysian political corruption and the political use of its judicial system. I surely do. But it's grotesque to play make-believe about someone like Anwar. He's the co-founder and director of the DC-based International Institute of Islamic Thought, which is under investigation for terrorist financing. (He's invoked the Fifth Amendment when questioned about this.) His connections to the most extreme fringes of political Islam are extensive and extremely well-documented. He's not a hero of democracy. He's yet another deeply unpleasant, corrupt Southeast Asian politician, and what's more, he's mobbed up with the anti-heros of global political Islam, and has been since the beginning of his career.
Genuine heros of democracy are few and far between in Southeast Asia. Being locked up on ridiculous sodomy charges doesn't make you into one--it just disqualifies the people who locked you up.
Anyway, Fountain's story really captures something about the stupid cruelty and corruption of the Burmese generals, and about Southeast Asia generally.
Photo by John McDermott, and the whole gallery is stunning.
- Comment (2)
- · Quote
- · UnfollowFollow (2)
Comments :
Nov '10
Re: Southeast Asia: Martyrs, Villains and the Liquid Charm of Formaldehyde
Claire, thank you so much for this. I asked you to fill in some of your impressions of Burma, and I appreciate reading more.
Nov '10
Re: Southeast Asia: Martyrs, Villains and the Liquid Charm of Formaldehyde
Thank you for the tip, Claire. Ben Fountain and Stan Sesser are now both on my Amazon book-buying list. In return, I highly recommend:
http://www.amazon.com/Holidays-Hell-Intrepid-Reporter-Travels/dp/0802137016/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1290091349&sr=1-1
P.J. O'Rourke's Holidays in Hell is a funny, cynical and sometimes harrowing jaunt around the world, replete with descriptions like this:
"[Syrian] paratroopers wear shiny gold jumpsuits and crack commando units have skin-tight fatigues in a camouflage pattern of violet, peach, flesh tone and vermilion on a background of vivid purple. This must give excellent protective coloration in, say, a room full of Palm Beach divorcees in Lily Pulitzer dresses."
In a similar vein, P.J. describes a Philippine army officer as "powerful-looking in a short, compressed way, like an attack hamster."
But O'Rourke knows when to get serious, too. His description of a spot in Central America where the bodies of political murder victims (often teenagers) are dumped is enough to give you the shakes. Better than anyone else, he makes palpable the terror of living in countries haunted by midnight death squads.
Edited on Nov 18, 2010 at 7:23am