Everything Is So Political (21 page)

–
Prisoners
—a voice whispers from the seat behind me, a man chewing segments of an orange—
Them prisoners by the army. You know…politics
—A fleck of orange catches his lip.

* * *

The lights suddenly flicker on. Across the street, cheers and applause from the men smoking at the teashop, their seats already saved for the game. The television screen, no bigger than a book, hums to life and the flames of lighters ignite fresh cigarettes.

The owner goes out onto the street and switches off the generator. Then the restaurant is just the quiet silt of night air, quiet except for oil in the pan.

–Every evening now—I say—since I've been here.

–They deal with it well, though.

–The army drains it all to Naypyidaw. They keep every road lit, even in the middle of the night.

–We heard there would be military on the way to the lookout. Is that true?

–On the far side of the valley there's a barracks. You can see it.

–We heard it was a college.

–You mean the one in Pagan.

–That's a horrible story…—Jake continues.

–Yes, but go on. You should tell him—Seth says.

–You know you can take a boat from Mandalay to Pagan…

–That's right.

–On our boat there were soldiers who were escorting a prisoner of some sort. They kept him in a cage on the deck.

–A prisoner of what?

–I don't know, but there were soldiers guarding him.

–There were two. And they had rifles. He must have been political. They said they were transferring him to a prison in Pakokku. But it's a tourist boat, so there's all these backpackers around him. And an Austrian woman asked one of the soldiers why they were taking him, what had he done.

–She had guts.

–Yes, and listen to this. We're sitting there, you know, wondering what this was all about. And then Seth here noticed the man was mumbling to himself.

–Mumbling what?

–He was saying something under his breath. We couldn't understand it at first. But then we started recognizing English words and then realized he was talking to us, but quietly so he wouldn't get caught. He was being forced to kneel so he couldn't look at us, but he was saying something about foreigners in Burma…

–That's right—Seth said—
Foreigners must know what's happening in Burma
. That's what he said…

–He was a professor.

–Right. From the University of Yangon.

–Yes. And there was an older French lady who took his picture and passed him food through the bars. She wanted to do something.

–Food?

–She only had some bananas.

–Some Germans tried to give him dollars when the guards weren't looking, but the prisoner said he couldn't take the dollars. Said dollars were useless to him in prison.

–He needed kyat.

–But then the guard spotted us and said we shouldn't give him money. We could give him food, but no money. He had a few thousand kyat tucked under his feet from the French couple but then the soldiers searched the cage and found it.

–They took it from him and told us we could only give him food.

–They spoke English?

–The guards didn't but we knew what they meant.

–The prisoner actually spoke very well. Seth thought so.

–The guards weren't happy his English was better than theirs.

–The man could talk to us and the guards couldn't understand, you see.

–The soldiers got angry and they put a tarp over the cage.

–It was this big plastic sheet.

–The French couple was really moved. The woman was, wasn't she, Jake.

–Yes. She started crying when they covered the cage with the tarp. She couldn't stop.

–You couldn't say anything?

–The Germans tried. But the soldiers said it was their job.

–And the French woman was crying because she couldn't believe it. She said it wasn't fair and couldn't she couldn't bear it. We were stuck on the boat, you see…

–Yes, I think so.

Then the angular guy's face locks on the doorway. All of us turn as a green-uniformed soldier steps into the restaurant, a slender woman in a
longyi
traipsing behind him. The patrons are quiet as the officer speaks to the owner then is seated near the far wall, the gazes of the other diners lowering to the plastic tablecloths printed with soccer balls. The officer has the darkened skin of someone who spends his time outdoors, probably in charge of a battalion or two. His forehead appears devoid of creases until it furrows when he looks in our direction. The woman's face is a smug doll with tiny, bitten lips.

* * *

The flashlight is completely dead now. I'd laid it somewhere on the bedding so when I rolled over it dropped to the floor with a cold, cylindrical thud. Hope the bulb didn't break. I'll buy new batteries tomorrow if the shops have them. Seth and Jake, both pleasant guys, hiking to Inle in the morning and starting early. My trek to the lookout was stunning. My guide Harry knew everything about the landscape, the bark of the trees, how the water buffalo follow exactly in each other's footsteps so they won't break their legs. He knew about the poppy farms near the Chinese border you could only get to by truck—four days into the mountains by road. Knew about how the traders smuggled opium in the rectums of cattle and how the army oversaw it all. We stayed the night at a farm on the lookout and could gaze down into the dusk-filled valley and hear the tea harvesters talking by their distant echoes, their tiny shapes shifting on the far surfaces of the slopes as they picked. The farm grew every kind of food—a sky-forest Eden in perpetual harvest: Squash vines, papayas, citrus, beanstalks, fields of snap peas, marigolds, and roses. Goats and squadrons of chickens patrolled the yard. I took a shower using a bucket and cold water from a trough, naked and looking out over the valley as the sun set. Harry said that on a clear day you could see all the way to Mount Popa near Pagan. That's a hundred kilometres away I said and he said yes, but you can sometimes see it. A warm woolen blanket and dinner waited for me inside the smoky hut and at night the stars pierced through the black canopy—a billion of them, like there was more of them than sky. And they had a depth too; not just a flat surface but a space you could actually see into
,
like you could tell which of the light had traveled from farthest away. Across the canopy of stars, a satellite drifted like a beacon, white and blinking, tracing the curve of space.

* * *

The officer looks over at us, his thick lips cushioning a toothpick. He leans over and says—
You are American, no? Three Americans in Burma…

–We're British—Jake says.

–Canadian—I say.

–
Americans…come to Burma…for trekking—
his ruddy face drops, drunk, like searching the racks of his brain for some lost vocabulary. He calls over to the owner in Burmese and repeats his demand to him. The officer gestures to us.

Then the owner, fear-faced, translates—
He say, it very dangerous for everyone in Burma when the foreigner talk about politics…

–No—I say—We didn't talk about politics. We don't even care about it really.

–We came for the trekking—Jake says.

The owner translates back and then from the soldier to us again. His hand trembles beside the pocket of his Levi's.

–
He wants to know where you stay. What guesthouse
.

–Don't tell him that, Jake. He doesn't need to know.

–I won't.

The officer pushes his chair back from the table, keeping his eyes somehow on all three of us at once and then the owner with that look on his face like he was going to be in for it if we didn't leave. Across the road, a ball is kicked into a net and the men at the teashop jump up to applaud the T.V.

–
Again he ask
—the owner says—
You stay what guesthouse?

–
Don't tell him—Seth says—It's none of his business…

–I won't. We'll leave, it's okay.

Seth and Jake stand from the table and reach for their wallets to pay. The woman in the corner lays the baby on the table and starts to calculate the bill on the pad. But the officer puts his hands out, mutters to the woman with tiny lips and they both stand ready to leave. The officer stares at the owner, a long dark glare the colour of a lie. He drags a slow finger across his throat. The restaurant is a rectangle of silence as they turn and leave.

–We weren't even talking about politics—I say—Don't know what his problem was.

–He was listening to us, from outside…about the boat ride.

–I don't know.

–That must have been it.

Then the restaurant plunges back into darkness. Across the road, the men watching football cry out as the television snaps off. Moments of pitch black at the plastic-covered table, silent except for the shouts from the teashop then the sudden pull-start of the generator and the feeling that everything in the country had been kicked in the gut but was determined to get up again like it had a thousand times before.

* * *

I say goodnight to the British guys and wish them luck on their trek. I close the door to my room and feel around for the flashlight in the dark, my room where my backpack lay open on the second bed looking in the shadows like the mound of a sleeping body I was finally coming home to. It was a shame the men across the street couldn't finish the game. Their dejected footsteps picked across the shattered sidewalks ahead of me, the beams of the oncoming headlights blinding us.

The Spanish couple is silent now. I curl beneath the blankets thinking about what Seth had told me about the prisoner. That was tough to hear, especially after the officer left the restaurant with the wife having done what he did. I hope the owner is alright. But that's how these places are, I think, as I pull the blankets over my head. Beautiful but dangerous. The owner had to translate to us and we could see on his face he didn't want to but had no choice. All of us understood and were on his side. And then the frustrated shouts from the men across the street where the T.V. had gone out.

Maybe I should have stayed in Thailand, stayed swinging in hammocks next to beach bars, not venturing out into the wilds of Asia just to suffer this loneliness. Like at the lookout when I stared across the valley feeling fresh after my shower and the water buffalo were called home by the bells of their owners as the sun set. The huts on the valley floor beginning to smoke from their evening fires and the children chasing their dogs and the hills glowing purple in the dusk and then beyond them just the trees.

Credits,

for previously published works.

“Stray Dogs” appeared in
Riddle Fence
#10 in November 2011.

A different version of “The Brothers Wolffe” appeared under the title “The Wolffe Brothers” in
Kudzu Review
, Issue One, Volume 1, Winter Solstice 2011.

“The Briefcase” appeared in
Spinetinglers Magazine
, Ballygowan, England in 2009 and in
Moonlight Tuber Magazine
, Australia, in 2010.

“Elephant Air” appeared in the Spring/Summer 2011 issue of
FreeFall Magazine
as the winning entry of FreeFall's 2010 Prose and Poetry Contest with guest judge Douglas Glover.

“The Extremists” was commissioned for, and given a public reading at, the Calgary edition of Wrecking Ball 2011, a national event to raise awareness of arts issues in advance of the federal election of that year.

“A Year of Coming Home” appeared in
The Lounge Companion, Volume 2
from Lion Lounge Press, Oxford, England, 2010.

About the Contributors

Sherveen Ashtari
is of Persian and Arab background. She has been published online and in print in several magazines, including
Thrive in Life, Off the Coast, Persepolis, re:moved, Canadian Immigrant
and other publications. After spending many childhood summers in Tehran and experiencing firsthand life under the Islamic Regime and comparing that to the stories she heard of pre-revolutionary Iran from her mother, she decided to write this story, which is part of larger work. She currently lives and works in Vancouver.

A native of Thunder Bay,
Joan M. Baril
has had short fiction published in
Room
,
Prairie Fire
,
Other Voices
,
The Orphic Review
,
Ten Stories High
,
Canadian Stories
,
The Copperfield Review
,
The Artery
,
The Story Teller Magazine,
and other journals and newsletters. For ten years, her columns on women's and immigrant issues appeared in
Thunder Bay Post
,
Hot Flash,
and
Northern Woman's Journal
. Her blog
(
www.literarythunderbay.blogspot.com
) follows the Thunder Bay literary scene.

Chris Benjamin
is the author of
Eco-Innovators: Sustainability in Atlantic Canada
, winner of the 2012 Best Atlantic-Published Book Award and finalist for the Richardson Non-Fiction Prize, and the critically-acclaimed novel,
Drive-by Saviours
, winner of the H.R. Percy Prize and shortlisted for Canada Reads 2011 and a ReLit Prize. Chris' creative works have appeared in, or been heard on,
VoicePrint Canada, Descant, Arts East, Third Person Press, Nashwaak Review, Pottersfield Press, Rattling Books, The Society
and
The Coast
. His website is
www.chrisbenjaminwriting.com
. He is married to Miia, who makes the world a better place for young people. They have two kids.

Catherine Brunet
has lived in Ottawa, Toronto, the Northwest Territories, and rural Ontario. She currently teaches high school in the Ottawa Valley and lives with her partner, Sean, and their bulldog. Catherine has always been interested in using language to explore questions of history and identity. Her poetry has appeared in Canadian literary journals including
Queen's Quarterly
and
Vallum Magazine
.

Michelle Butler Hallett
is the author of the story collection
The shadow side of grace
(2006), and the novels
Double-blind
(2007, shortlisted for the 2008 Sunburst Award),
Sky Waves
(2008), and
deluded your sailors
(2011), all with Killick Press. Her short stories have appeared in the anthologies
The Vagrant Revue of New Fiction
(2007) and
Hard Ol' Spot
(2009). Butler Hallett is working on a third novel set in her alt-history Republic of Newfoundland and Labrador. Upcoming projects include a historical novel trilogy about faith, treachery, art, and politics. Butler Hallett lives in St. John's.

Ethan Canter'
s poetry and stories have appeared in magazines and anthologies in Canada, America, England, and Australia. His debut novel,
here, there and nowhere
, was published in Canada in 2006. Ethan holds degrees in writing from both Canada and England.

R. Jonathan Chapman
is a playwright and author from Calgary. In 2008 he won the Grand Prize for the Alberta Playwriting Competition for his play
The Wall: Berlin, 1973
. In 2010 his play
Kingdom of Three 
was produced by Sage Theatre as part of the Ignite! Festival of Emerging Artists, and
Romeo and Hamlet
 (co-written with Kevin Stefan) was produced in New York City as part of GAYFEST NYC 2010. His first political involvement occurred as a policy writer and copyeditor for the 2011 Nenshi for Mayor campaign.

Jim Conklin
is a graduate of the MFA program in creative writing at UBC, and has published his writing in magazines and books such as
Razorcake
,
Fugue
, and
Wreck
. He lived in Colombia for five years, and now lives in Playa del Carmen, Mexico.

J. Paul Cooper
, originally from Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, has a Bachelor of Arts in political science from Saint Mary's University. He now lives in Calgary and is a member of the Writers Guild of Alberta. His articles and essays have been published in magazines, newspapers, and anthologies. His short fiction was included in
Next Stop Hollywood: Short Stories Bound for the Screen
(2007) and
Canadian Tales of the Fantastic
(Volume 1, 2011). 
Fluffy: A Cat's Tale
, a novel for young readers, was published in 2001.

Michael Donoghue
grew up in a rural Nova Scotian fishing village and now resides in Vancouver. In between he lived in the UK where he met many interesting people and held various jobs. “The Problem of Being Really Good with Names” is based on some of these experiences. Michael has had more than fifty very short stories in publications such as
Nanoism
,
Thaumatrope,
and
Neo-Opsis
. You can follow him on Twitter at
twitter.com/mpdonoghue

Born and raised in Philadelphia,
David Fleming
has lived in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, his entire adult life. He is a writer, student, and parent, as well as a marathon runner, beard wearer, and lifelong Phillies fan. Though his preferred mode of transportation is the bicycle, he owns a minivan, and often takes public transportation. David was greatly inconvenienced during the Metro Transit work stoppage of 2012.

Jack Godwin
grew up in Vancouver and enjoyed teaching history and English until he and wife Ann moved to Naramata, an idyllic village in British Columbia's Okanagan Valley. Jack is the songwriter and lead singer for The Kettle Valley Brakemen, a heritage act that tells stories and sings songs about B.C.'s colourful steam rail history. In the past, Jack has contributed to educational journals and musical publications and for three years was a columnist for
North of 50°
magazine. He is a member of the Naramata Writers Group and “Gotcha!” is his first published work of fiction.

Shane Joseph
is the author of three novels and a collection of short stories. His work
After the Flood
won the best futuristic/fantasy novel award at the Canadian Christian Writing Awards in 2010. His short fiction has appeared in international literary journals and anthologies. His latest novel,
The
Ulysses Man,
was released in 2011. His blog is widely syndicated. Shane divides his time between Toronto and Cobourg, Ontario, where he plays guitar for a rock band, writes, and scoots off from every year to travel.
www.shanejoseph.com

Fran Kimmel
was born and raised in Calgary. Her stories have appeared in literary journals across Canada and have twice been included in Journey Prize anthologies. Her debut novel,
The Shore Girl
, was published by NeWest Press in 2012. Fran writes and teaches in central Alberta, where she currently lives with her husband and overly exuberant silver lab.

Bretton Loney
has had short stories published in
Toward the Light: Journal of Reflective Word & Image
,
subTerrain, Between the Lines: The Canadian Journal of Hockey Literature,
and the 2011
Canadian Tales of the Mysterious
anthology
.
Loney is a former member of the board of the Writers' Federation of Nova Scotia and is working on a collection of short stories. A native of Bow Island, Alberta, he lives in Halifax and works as a communications director with the Government of Nova Scotia.

Matthew R. Loney
is a novelist, poet, and short story writer based out of Toronto. Loney's writing has been published widely in North American literary journals and his short story “The Stampede
' 
was included in Clark-Nova's inaugural anthology 
Writing Without Direction: 10 1/2 short stories by Canadian authors under 30
.
He has recently breached the Asian continent, publishing in Mumbai's 
Nether Magazine
and Hong Kong's
Cha Magazine
.
View more of his work at
www.matthewrloney.com

Susi Lovell
lives and writes in Montréal and Québec's Eastern Townships. She came to fiction writing after a lifetime of performing and teaching movement and physical theatre, and a spell writing on dance for the
Montreal Gazette
. Her stories have appeared in
Grain
,
Fiddlehead
,
Kudzu Review
,
Blue Lake Review
, and
FictionBrigade
.

A. S. Penne
is the author of the creative nonfiction memoir
Old Stones
(TouchWood Editions, 2002), an excerpt from which was shortlisted for the 2002 Western Magazine Awards. Several stories from Penne's short fiction collection
Reckoning
(Turnstone Press, 2008)
have won awards on both sides of the Atlantic, most notably the UK's acclaimed Ian St. James Award and the USA's Writers' Digest award. Penne has published numerous fiction and nonfiction works in North American and UK literary journals, periodicals and anthologies. In 2011,
Coming Back,
her first stageplay, won a professional development grant from Access Copyright. A. S. Penne is a graduate of the UBC MFA (Creative Writing) program.

Lori Pollock
lives with her husband and five-year-old son in Saskatoon, where the punishing prairie winters offer a brilliant excuse to stay inside and invent individuals with a knack for making spectacularly poor choices. She has a Ph.D. in literature from Queen's University and runs a freelance writing company, but also enjoys getting her own characters into and out of—and back into—trouble. Her work has previously been published in
Spring
and online by Red Claw Press.

Andrew F. Sullivan
was born in Peterborough, Ontario. He received his MA in English in the Field of Creative Writing from the University of Toronto. Sullivan's debut short story collection A
ll We Want is Everything
is forthcoming from Arbeiter Ring Publishing in Spring 2013. Sullivan's fiction publications include work in
Joyland
,
EVENT
,
The Good Men Project
,
Little Fiction
,
Grain
,
Dragnet Magazine
and a number of other journals, both online and in print. Sullivan no longer works in a warehouse, but is currently the associate fiction editor for
The Puritan
.