Everything Is Broken (22 page)

Supernatural powers are attributed to
yahanda
, such as the ability to read minds, become invisible, and even to fly. By extension, those in possession of
dat-taw
may also be able to acquire certain powers. It is not surprising, then, that the generals are said to take a keen interest in
dat-taw
. Rumor has it that the generals are putting together a collection of the
dat-taw
of nine monks from around Burma. In an interpretation of the historical practice of burying sacrificial victims to protect the citadel, the relics will be buried at various points around Naypyidaw; once all nine have been sunk into the earth, the generals believe they will have the power to rule Burma forever.

Pho Yaza, the scholar who studied shamanistic practices, was as dismissive about the cult of
dat-taw
worship as he had been about the
ket kin
word magic, explaining that such relics have no traditional merit in Burmese culture, and that the actual stones were nothing more than gallstones or metal chelates trapped in the body after death. He did, however, think that the story was perfectly plausible. The fact that the case of Thamanya Sayadaw’s stolen corpse had yet to be solved was evidence enough for him. “Their eyes are everywhere,” said Pho Yaza of the regime. “If someone so much as sticks up an antigovernment poster in the middle of the night, the authorities will put all their resources toward finding out who did it and, more often than not, they will succeed in finding that person. They can catch the players who stick up a poster, but they cannot catch the organized gang of soldiers who stole the body of one of the most famous monks in all the land? I don’t believe it!”

I once went to see the
dat-taw
of a revered monk at a monastery in Rangoon. For the monk’s followers, these remnants of his time in human form were a direct link to his life and teachings. Small miracles had been happening since the monk’s death. During his cremation, two pythons slithered into the monastery compound and stayed for the duration of his funeral ceremony. The area around the
dat-taw
shrine had been arid before but was now fertile. The tree of a strain of mango linked to the royal palace had, for the first time in living memory, begun to bear fruit.

The relics themselves were rather unimpressive; there were smooth bluish pebbles, white crystal toothpicks, and a green ball that looked like a marble. But they were housed in an ornate structure, mounted high on a large golden plinth. Each
dat-taw
had been placed in a little glass cylinder perched on a red velvet stand and topped with a tiny pagoda. Twinkling with gold and silver spires, the display was like a miniature mythical kingdom.

The monastery custodians were taking no chances with their precious legacy; the entire shrine was locked behind a sturdy metal grille with multiple padlocks.

The Uppatasanti Pagoda in Naypidaw was consecrated in a grandiose ten-day ceremony in March 2009. Each stage of the religious ceremonies was led by one or all of the top generals, depending on the importance of the ritual. Monks recited prayers for five continuous days. Extensive offerings were presented to monks by the generals and their wives. For the public, there was a fun fair, a bouncy castle, a Ferris wheel, a live circus, and dramatic performances at an outdoor theater each night.

The festivities culminated in a ceremony to raise the
hti
, or finial crown, on top of the pagoda—a ritual conducted, of course, by Than Shwe himself. With much pageantry, the
hti
was hoisted on a gilded rope pulled by Than Shwe and his wife, Kyaing Kyaing, along with close family members. Like the
hti
on top of the Shwedagon, this one was similarly studded with gems, jewelry, Buddha images, and minuscule replicas of famous pagodas carved from precious metals.

The
New Light of Myanmar
dutifully stated that paying homage to the Uppatasanti was just like paying homage at the Shwedagon. But, for all the fanfare and finery, the new pagoda seemed tawdry and tainted by its makers. The kings of Burma built pagodas to atone for their sins, and there was no doubt in people’s minds that the Uppatasanti was Than Shwe’s attempt to wipe his spiritual slate clean. The ambitious grandeur and scale of both the pagoda and the city that surrounds it was clearly an architectural statement of dominance and longevity. The hulking constructions of Than Shwe’s vision had been writ large upon the central plains of Burma and looked as if they were built as a stronghold intended to last for generations to come.

On the evening I visited the Uppatasanti, there were few worshippers at the pagoda. Most of the people circling the platform had come as sightseers to inspect the mammoth construction that had formed a new, glimmering mountain on the landscape. No one seemed to stay very long, but that may have been because the surrounding plains were darkening and the storm that had been hovering on the horizon had begun to head toward Naypyidaw.

It was already raining when I left the interior of the Uppatasanti and decided to head back to my hotel. As I hurried to the stairs, I saw that the golden pagoda was reflected on the glistening tiles of the platform and had cast an astral glow beneath my feet. I was momentarily reminded of the unholy magic that may have been employed in the construction of the Uppatasanti and the mysterious forces that were believed to emanate from the deep recesses beneath the pagoda.

I reached the stairwell and started to climb down alongside other fleeing visitors. The rain fell more heavily. Bolts of lightning snapped across the sky, accompanied by cataclysmic claps of thunder. But we were unable to speed our descent, as the marble steps had become slippery with rain. Together with the other visitors, I gripped the metal handrails and made my way slowly down to ground level. By the time I looked back up at the pagoda, its brilliant form had been almost completely enshrouded by the dark and delirious fury of a monsoon storm.

AUGUST 2008

S
een from above, the Irrawaddy Delta is a patchwork of varied shades of green. There are swaths of velvety moss green and areas of pale jade, a color so translucent it is hardly green at all. The latticework of waterways that draw random patterns through this greenery is laid with tangled carpets of water hyacinth and spill over into the spiky neon-green expanse of the paddy fields. Villages of thatch houses are nestled within the curves of larger rivers, partially hidden beneath groves of palm trees. The entire landscape seems to undulate softly, rippling as if the surface of a pond were being disturbed by a light breeze, and it is impossible to distinguish land from water; seen from above, the delta seems to be both land
and
water.

Even three months on, the path of destruction carved by Cyclone Nargis is still clearly marked. The verdant green gives way to brown, and the delta’s fertile lushness is replaced by a dying landscape. In the cyclone zone, the waterways course sickly gray and dark, brackish water seeps across the paddy fields and plantations. There are no more cozy clusters of huts and palm trees, only the remnants of villages—the hint of a dirt road beneath stagnant floodwater, the tilted skeleton of a rice warehouse that has no walls or roof, slight indentations where homes once stood. Though the original villages are gone, there are signs of rehabitation—tarpaulin tents and scrap-wood shacks—dotted here and there. But there are fewer people living in these areas since the cyclone and, beyond the tiny squares of orange and blue tarpaulin, the empty villages spread out in a ghostly imprint of life that is no longer there.

It was in this bleak and barren stretch of the delta, in early August 2008, that I visited Pyay Chaung, a village that had stood directly in the cyclone’s path. The storm surge triggered by the cyclone was high enough to submerge all but the tallest palm trees in the area, and the fearsome deluge swept away the entire village and everything in it; all the people, all the houses, the wooden school building, and the jetty that once marked the entrance to the village. Even the monastery, the only structure made of concrete, crumbled beneath the weight of the water. When the flood finally receded, after twelve long hours, there was nothing left. All signs of life and habitation were gone. Pyay Chaung had, quite literally, been wiped off the map.

I had traveled to Pyay Chaung together with a Burmese aid worker and, when our boat docked at the waterfront and the boatman cut the engine, it was eerily quiet. There were no other boats and the area looked as if it had been abandoned. Once I climbed up out of the boat, though, I saw a narrow strip of frail, tentlike huts strung out along the riverbank. As I stood uncertainly on the bank there was some slight movement among the huts. Tarpaulin sheets were folded aside and people began to emerge from their dwellings. They walked slowly toward us and, before long, we were surrounded by a crowd of silent, staring villagers.

The Burmese aid worker I was with had been to Pyay Chaung before and identified the village leader, explaining to him that I wanted to hear people’s stories and find out what had happened to them after the cyclone. The headman told us that there had been around 360 people living in Pyay Chaung, but the cyclone had killed over 200, more than half the population. He pointed to a dark-skinned, barefoot man standing at the edge of the crowd and told us that twelve members of the man’s family had perished in the storm. The crowd parted slightly so I could get a better view. The man bowed awkwardly toward me. Not knowing quite how to respond or what to say after such an introduction, I bowed back.

Then a woman in a ragged and faded red
tamein
was singled out. She had lost her husband and only child. Her baby had been just ten months old, one villager said. When I looked at the woman, she quickly pulled down the edge of the broad-brimmed straw hat she was wearing and hid her face.

A farmer told me that his wife and daughter had been killed. He explained that he had one surviving daughter but she was living elsewhere, farther north. He had no family left in the village and was unable to muster the will to begin working his fields again. “I am trying hard to overcome this,” he said, “but I’m not sure that it’s possible.”

The introductions continued. It was a miserable litany of loss and I found myself wishing it would stop, but the villagers kept on pointing out the bereft. There were parents who no longer had any children and children who had lost both their parents. There were individuals who were the sole remnant of their entire family. And there were fifteen families with no survivors at all. The villagers had erected their shelters on the same land each family had lived on before the cyclone, and they ushered me along the narrow dirt track to show me the gaps; the plots that belonged to families that no longer existed.