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don’t think ‘badly off’ describes it properly. Most people are poverty-stricken. And oppressed. Hungry for many things.”
    Her tortoiseshell eyes search my face. “Do you think they are? Is it really possible to be hungry in the tropics? There is so much fruit everywhere.”
    I swallow a sip of my bottled water.
    She continues, “A doctor I met in the North said that he has neverseen the infant mortality rate so high. I agree—that is really awful. But, in a way, it’s a natural form of birth control.”
    I wonder if this woman has ever had a baby, and watched her baby die of diarrhea or dysentery or malaria. Those are the common killers of small children and babies born in Burma, ailments often complicated by severe malnutrition. Three in five Burmese children are malnourished.
    I finish my water. The food has come, but my appetite has left me.
    “And the people are always smiling!”
    “The Burmese are very hospitable. That’s why they smile at us.”
    “There seemed to be a lot of people with bad eye diseases in the North, and even they laughed a lot.”
    What can I say?
    “I’m an idealist, but if democracy came all at once the country would disintegrate! It can’t come too quickly.”
    “The people of Burma already voted in a democratic government. There were elections in 1990. The NLD, Aung San Suu Kyi’s party, won by a huge majority, but the military refused to hand over power.” She must know these details from her guidebook.
    “Voting for freedom is one thing, living with it is another. A rapid transition could destabilize everything.”
    “The situation in Burma is hardly stable. The currency is a farce, corruption is rife, the military makes deals with drug lords, and most people can’t afford to live on what they make because inflation is so high. Even the electricity doesn’t work. People die after operations because the hospitals cannot afford proper sterilization equipment.”
    She looks at me condescendingly. “Journalists exaggerate the situation.”
    “I haven’t been talking to journalists. I’ve been talking to Burmese people. Students, doctors, artists, women in the market.”
    “Hmm,” she says, chewing a mouthful of chicken breast. “It’s not bad,” she adds approvingly. After another bite and swallow, she asks with alarming intensity, “What are
you
trying to do for the Burmese people?”
    “Nothing.”
    “But you said you would not come here only as a tourist. So what are you doing here, then?”
    This is a good question. I consider it. “Talking. And listening.”
    “Aren’t you trying to accomplish the freedom of these people?”
    I laugh out loud; her statement is so lofty. We sit at this table in Burma, talking about the Burmese, while the waiters stand at the dining-room doors like sleepy sentinels. They might understand everything we’re saying. Or nothing, which is worse. “I don’t pretend anything like that,” I say. “It’s too presumptuous. Only they can accomplish their own freedom. I am … hanging around. I will write about what I see here. That’s all I can do, unfortunately. It’s not much.”
    “Don’t you think you will contaminate your writing if you become political? Art in the service of politics can only be propaganda.” She smiles at me. Bitchily.
    “But I probably won’t write much about politics. I will write about people.” This is a cowardly feint on my part; we both know it. But I’m tired of the conversation. Why are artists in so many disciplines afraid of being political? If an artist creates a work that defies oppression and violence, or offers an alternative view of history—like Ma Thida’s short stories—is that propaganda?
    I’m about to tell her that I disagree with her when suddenly she starts to speak again, with her earlier intensity. “You know, I have tried to talk and smile as much as possible. To let them know that foreigners are not threatening. It’s absolute hell up in the North, where there