Dangerous Songkran

Songkran is the lunar New Year water festival held in April, the hot season. It is celebrated in many countries in this region, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, Burma and Yunnan China, as well as far away Sri Lanka. Songkran is essentially a fertility ceremony offering water as a blessing for the upcoming monsoon rains in the hopes of an abundant rice crop. Scented water is poured over the hands of parents, teachers, and the elderly, as well as rose petaled water poured over the images of the Buddha. Lately however, at least in Thailand, the emphasis has changed from a gentle event into a raucous street party packed with drunken revelers throwing buckets of water on everyone. It is fun. It is also dangerous. For three days Thai music is played continually. Girls scream with glee, high powered water guns spray in water warfare. Open trucks drive by with hoses shooting those on the sidewalks. People put talcum paste on your cheeks. Children shoot sprays of water in to your face. The inebriated crash on the roadsides after being struck in the head with ice cubes.

My friend, his girlfriend and I were on Soi 22 at the corner of Washington Square getting soaked and throwing buckets of water. The girls look great in their wet tee shirts hugging their well rounded contours. Last year three teenage nubile dancers stood up on the back of a truck, stripped off their tops, egged on by the crowd and danced undulating glistening topless.

Now as we stand drinking beer, buying rounds, soaking wet in the hot sunshine, all of a sudden across the street, four or five swarthy Thai men come running down the sidewalk chasing another Thai man. They knock him down and begin kicking him in the ribs. Brandishing guns, they point the pistols in the air, blam, blam, blam, blam, blam. Everyone is paralyzed. Nobody moves. Some car pulls up like in a cheap "B" movie and they throw the guy inside and take off. One of the men, thick and serious, walks past us with his chrome pistol stuffed in the back of his belt. When it was over seconds later, everyone continued to drink and party as if it never happened. I pick up a 9mm copper casing off the sidewalk and plunk it in my pocket.

When I got back to my room, I took off my drenched black tee shirt which I noticed has a talcum powder hand print outlined on the back in white. I put the bullet casing on the void of the hand print and took these photos looking like something between the gangster John Dillinger meets Christ's last bathrobe, the Shroud of Turin.

Mayhem in Kataragama

The day we arrived in Sri Lanka, February 14th, Valentines Day, we heard news that some crazy Iranians accidentally blew the roof off their rented house in Bangkok fifteen minutes from our house with C4. Two guys ran out and one was caught. Then another staggered out, dazed and confused, he tried to catch a cab, but nobody would stop, so he lobbed a grenade at a taxi which exploded. The police came and he threw another grenade at them which bounced off a tree, ricocheted back, and blew off both his legs. Silly terrorist.

The news in Sri Lanka was that a road crew digging a new highway hit pockets of fine sapphire crystals near Kataragama and the gold rush was on. Thousands of ants marched to the honey jar. Fights broke out between the locals and the interlopers. Broken arms, bloody noses. My partner along with a minister went to have a look. They managed to get 415 ct.of glassy blue crystal before the army came in with rifles.

Today we drove back to Kataragama from Balangoda. Curiosity may have killed the cat, but it also put a man on the moon. We wanted to see the area of Thammannawa where the crystal came from. My wife and I as foreigners were not permitted to enter, and by recent court order our Sri Lankan friends found that neither were they.

All of the hotels in the area were full, from five star to no star, there was no accommodation. However, our friend, who is the Sri Lankan Ambassador to the Maldives, has a beach bungalow nearby Yala National Park, just a few kilometers from Kataragama. Yala has the largest number of wild leopards per land mass in the world.

Fifty meters from our friend's door is the warm Indian Ocean with shell covered white beaches. I found a cowerie shell with the top missing. All that was left was the bottom opening which looked like a toothy smile. Our friend unfortunately is away in the Maldives where they are having a coup after removing the president at gun point.

The bungalow is very funky with matching deer heads outside flanking the chairs on the verandah hung with kerosine lanterns and a monkey skull impaled on one long horn. The window slats are painted blue, yellow, red and green stripes. There is a black carpet of flies at my feet and needless to say the wife is not thrilled. The wind rips off the ocean but flies are tenacious.

Some of the boys walked to a local fishing village and bought 6 kilos of lobster. One friend won't eat them because he saw them crawling around on the porch. We drove back around sunset in a three vehicle caravan of high speed land rovers on thin roads through tiny villages when suddenly a pebble flew off the tire ahead at about 140 kilometers per hour, hit our windshield and cracked it. My partner slowed down and we lost the convoy.

"Anybody got a sapphire crystal" I asked. A strange question except with this group as, naturally, everyone did. I took one sharp crystal from Manju, got out and cut a circle around the crack to keep it from spreading. Unfortunately it didn't work as the glass was laminated and the crack increased like a spider web.

Things heated up in Kataragama as the court order was still in place barring entry to everyone. The government Gem Authority had the idea to auction off small parcels of land but that fell apart quickly. Our partner went out again with the minister who is from that area, and has clout. Yesterday the army was overwhelmed and withdrew. 25,000 people streamed in to the area and they expect that number to double. An article was published Thursday February 16th in a newspaper called "Lanka Truth" regarding our friend the minister titled "Wijeyamuni Soysa declares war to plunder a gem mine". The article goes on to say that he is infamous for gem rackets and is engaged in illegal gem mining in the area. Apparently the newspaper is communist.

Back in Balangoda, the minister lay outside in a hammock tethered to palm trees with his servant fluffing his pillow. My partner was sitting in a chair on top of a grassy knoll. I came out to join them, sat down sideways in another hammock and fell out on my back with my legs sticking straight up in the air. A moment to relish.

This morning my wife is putting on her makeup when a scowling fang baring macaque came to the open door upstairs, raising his intimidating eyebrows, and threatened to come in. She screamed and I chased him off. Got to get a baseball bat. Now at dusk the downstairs living room is filled with flying termites. The two German shepherds, Blackie and Bulla run around snapping at the air. If you google attractions in Balangoda, you will find there are none. No museums, no movie theaters, not even a damn bar. Each buffalo here seems to be assigned one and only egret as a personal valet to pick off ticks and other undesirables.


The government land auction for potentially gem bearing land is back on for tomorrow February 24th. My partner along with many of the major gem players will attend. The 49 allocated plots were auctioned off each being about 3,000 sq feet, some plots sold for more than $200,000 each. The plot that my partner bought was supposedly the lot where the land was first removed for the road, and the original blue crystal was found. The gem authority sold all the plots for a total of $2,700,000 dollars.

Now we wait and see if there is anything actually there. Since there is no source for water, the soil all must be moved to a place where it can be washed. We will know in a few weeks what if anything is found.

Sri Lanka

Sri Lanka, how easily it rolls off the tongue. Ceylon until 1972, before that Taprobane and also Serendib where the word serendipity comes from, meaning to find something wonderful unexpectedly.

Sri Lanka is truly a magical island. Hanging like a baroque pearl at the bottom of India. To the West is the Arabian Sea, to the East, the Indian ocean, and to the South the first land mass one would encounter is Antarctica.
In the south-central part of the country are the towns of Balangoda, Pelmadula and Ratnapura, literally Gem City. All are geologically rich gem areas yielding hexagonal crystals of sapphire in every color, stars, catseyes, zircons, spinel and garnets.

Much of this gem crystal has been washed away from the primary sources by millions of years of monsoon rains into rivers which, over the course of time, have shifted direction and left the alluvial water tumbled stones in gem bearing gravels called illam which are the sedimentary gem gravels. From this illam stones are mined.

King Solomon was said to have gotten his gems here as he wooed the Queen of Sheba. Marco Polo describes this gem land in his travels. Sinbad the Sailor was lifted high into the air by a giant bird called the Roc which left him in a deep valley with walls so steep he could not escape. This valley was filled with rubies. Gem merchants threw fresh meat into this valley where no man had ever set foot. The meat rolls over the precious stones which stick to them. Eagles pounce on the meat and carry it away in their claws to their nests. The merchants run to the nests, frighten away the eagles and collect the rubies.

Sinbad thought that he would never get out of this valley, but then he had an idea. He gathered the biggest rubies and filled his pockets. He went to the largest piece of meat in the valley and tied himself to it. An eagle came, picked up that meat in his strong claws and took him away to the mountain top and left Sinbad in his nest. Sinbad escaped the eagle's nest and in this way made himself rich.

Sri Lanka has an abundance of gems. In fact, Sri Lanka has the highest density of gems (compared to its landmass) in the world.

Earlier this year in August, I decided that I should get back into doing one of the few things I was really good at, gems. We traveled back to Sri Lanka to re-establish old contacts and become involved again in the business.

I first came to Sri Lanka in 1980 and met a very influential man and his father, both of whom were land owners and gem miners. At that time the influential man's son was an 8 year old boy in short pants. The grandfather built a beautiful ginger bread house with carved eves and moldings high in the foggy hills of Balangoda in 1924. Human bones of Homo Habilis found in caves near here prove that Balangoda has been inhabited for 70,000 years.

I was in Colombo, the capital of Sri Lanka in July 1983. In the north of the island near Jaffna, a Hindu Tamil girl had apparently been raped by a Buddhist Singalese soldier.
In reprisal, a convoy of Singalese soldiers was ambushed and 13 were killed. In revenge, the Singalese went on a killing rampage in Colombo, hacking Tamils dead in the streets, burning Tamil businesses, some of which had employed them. I saw a bus which had been petrol bombed with people at the windows screaming in flames. Horrible. That smell of burning flesh never leaves your nostrils.

The killing spree went on unabated for 4 days and nights without intervention. This was the beginning of a civil war which would last 26 years and claim at least 100,000 lives. The war was only ended in 2009.

The young son had moved his family away to Australia after a bomb had exploded near his family. They left for a few years to escape the violence and had only just moved back to Sri Lanka.
So, when I came back here to re-establish myself in the gem trade, the timing could not have been better.

The cut and polished end of the gem business had lost its allure for me. The stones that I was interested in, the really fine natural fantastic beauties that I loved buying and selling had become difficult to obtain and prices doubled and redoubled with new players coming into the market such as the Indians and Chinese flush with cash. Demand far out-striped supply.

Meeting the younger son's children, I had now known the family for 4 generations, and was in a sense a part of it.

Mining is exciting. It is the most exciting aspect of the business. You never know what the earth will release to you. Much of mining is luck, and my luck has always come from the earth.

The son introduced us to two of his partners from the nearby town of Pelmadula. They were young men of great luck who had uncovered 10 million dollars worth of sapphire crystals when they had excavated the foundations of their house.

In September, we all traveled together to Hong Kong for the Gem Show to view stones and develop a common gem language of color, beauty and what constitutes value. The slightest difference of hue can mean thousands of dollars of value and spell the difference between success and failure.

In October, my wife and I had been in Japan and only returned to Thailand in early November when Bangkok and our house was threatened by floods. Our house manager and other friends laid sand bags, as did most businesses and residences in central Bangkok to protect from possible floods, which had already inundated outer Bangkok with water up to 2 or 3 meters. By late November central Bangkok had been spared from the worst, and by early December we removed the sand bags to the shed, and returned to Sri Lanka.

December 10th 2011.

We woke up to the sounds of Buddhist chanting, rhythmic and continuous from somewhere far below the hills we were on top of in Balangoda. I pushed the mosquito net open and looked at the river down below which was swollen from yesterday's rains. From the verandah we are surrounded by fruit trees, jackfruit, guava, mango, and bananas. Birds flit through the branches like living jewels, orange, yellow and red. Some birds are so thick and fluffy as if covered in fur rather than feathers. Groups of macaques come to forage fearlessly and stare back at us. Then the drums begin. It is a full moon tonight and there will be an eclipse.

The dogs came in tonight after being outside by the river. Small pools of blood glistened on the white tile floor where thick grey leeches which had attached themselves to their paws, inch across the floor and looked for a way back to the foliage. A gecko on the ceiling, walking upside down, lunged at a luminous firefly but missed.

We drove out of Balangoda in the Landrover where many prehistoric monitor lizards scampered into the jungle. A long cobra slithered away. We stopped near a water fall below which were narrow terraced mud rice fields which we slowly walked over toward a river. Occasionally crystals of sapphire, blues, yellows, pinks, violets and the rare orange could be found on the banks of this river after heavy rains.

Huge circular wrinkled indentations showed where wild elephants came to forage at night. The miners had built a rather large concrete box shaped structure with a pit in the center which they jumped into and hid when challenged by marauding elephants. When the elephants trundled back into the forest, the miners raised themselves out of the pit with the help of over hanging branches.

Back in Balangoda, I showed my partner an old Dutch coin that I kept in the coin pouch of my thick ostrich skin wallet. I bought the coin in Colombo and it was dated 1791 during the time when the Dutch occupied Ceylon. My partner said that his father had dug up a clay pot with many coins like this and he wanted to show them to me. From the safe he brought out a bag weighing several kilos which he poured out jingling on to the table. They were all dated from the early 1700's to the late 1700's, the newest dated 1789. Many were covered with a green patina so thick that the dates couldn't even be read.

Late in the afternoon the marauding band of macaques swing through the trees, jump on the verandah upstairs and try and force open the doors of our bedroom. The sky explodes with thunder and rain as black as steel and make over ripe jackfruit, thorny and rotten red at the stem, drop to the ground with a mushy thud like swollen basketballs.

Early the next morning I noticed that there had been a migration of thousands of pure white egrets which had all landed together about a kilometer from here. Looking out at them, it was as if the jungle had been covered with snow.

A Man of His Word

Dennis Rosner was born in Rangoon in 1920 of German immigrant parents who were dairy farmers from the time of King Mindon (1853-1878). Few men have had such an impact on the Kachin State as Rosner. He was a farmer who introduced new crops to the state; he was a British soldier who led his troops into battle against the Japanese; and a teacher who taught thousands of students the English language. I have met young people from all part of Burma who speak flawless English because of his teaching, many of whom became teachers themselves.

In 1941 Rosner was commissioned in the British Army at Meiktila, south of Mandalay, in central Burma. That year the Japanese took Myitkyina, and by 1942 they controlled much of the territory in the Kachin State. At that time Rosner and 25 other officers were sent to Putao, where thousands of civilians were leaving for India to escape the war. The commander of Rosner's unit was a major H.N Stevenson, and he sent twenty of the officers west to India with provisions and money for other units. Trekking through the Hukawang Valley, the Naga Hills, and the Ledo Road, nineteen of the twenty died of cholera and the twentieth officer was court-martialed for desertion. Rosner and five others had been ordered to stay behind near Sumprabum.

Rosner was 22 years old in 1942, and his major said that they had better learn the Jinghpaw language because they didn't know how long they would be in the area. Rosner learned Jinghpaw and was promoted to captain, and all of the land from Sumprabum to the Naga hills fell under his command.

Rosner's scouts informed him that 150 Japanese were coming to attack his unit of fourteen men and himself, so they went with Bren guns to Kumon Pass in the Kumon Range and selected a spot above where the Japanese would approach. They dug trenches, aiming the brens in a crossfire ambush. suddenly, down from the mountains, came three Jinghpaw girls of fourteen, fifteen and seventeen years old. Rosner asked them where they were going, and they answered that they were going to get salt.

"You can't go. There are Japanese coming up the valley", Rosner said.
"Who are the Japanese?" the girls asked.
"they are our enemies".
"They are just people", the girls replied. "There is no danger from people".
"They will come and shoot us and you".
"Why? we haven't done anything to them".
"If you aren't afraid of the Japanese, there are tigers". One of Rosner's men had previously been dragged away by a tiger. His companion had shot the beast, but also killed the man.

The girls said, "We are not afraid of tigers. We will chop the tiger with our machete. Let us go and get salt".
"There are wild elephants", Rosner said.
"Elephants! We are used to elephants. We will climb a tree until they go away".
"Not afraid of the Japanese, not afraid of tigers or elephants..........
you come back tomorrow and I'll give you all the salt you want".

The girls went back to their village, and soon after that, Rosner and his men saw the Japanese coming up the valley with their provisions on two elephants and on mules. He instructed his men not to shoot the elephants. When the Japanese got to within meters of the ambush point, Rosner and his men opened fire, killing 85 of them in the first attack. The Japanese withdrew and Rosner's unit captured the elephants and went back to camp. Later, he was inside his tent making his report when the three girls arrived, asking for their salt.

"Sir, those three girls are here and they want salt", one of his men informed him.
'Yes, yes, give them all they want", Rosner replied.

Next day, the girls returned.

"Sir, those three girls are here again".
"Why?" Rosner asked, annoyed. "Do they want more salt? Didn't you give them their salt?'.
"No sir, it's not that. They have brought presents-baskets of pumpkins, eggs, rice cucumbers, and beer".
"Oh, well, ask them to come to come into the tent", Rosner said.

It struck him that these girls were both grateful and brave. The seventeen-year- old who was leading them wasn't afraid of the Japanese, nor of tigers or elephants. Rosner told his sergeant to tell her parents to come along and see him.

Two days later, a half dozen members of the girl's family came to inquire what was happening. Rosner told them that he wanted to marry her.

No, he was told. No white man had ever married a Kachin. "No, you will leave her". they protested.
"No", Rosner insisted. "I promise that I will stay. I will marry her for life".

The family discussed the proposal and said that if he married her, he would have to pay double the bride price. The dowry was to be so many buffalo, Chinese long coats, gongs, and guns.

"I haven't got buffalo or gongs, but I can give you as many guns as you want, and I can give you money", Rosner told them.

Rosner was paid 900 rupees per month as a captain, and that had not been paid in a year. His troops received sixteen rupees per month. Over the radio he asked to draw his money, and the silver rupees were airdropped by parachute. In 1943 Rosner paid 7,000 rupees for his bride. Buffaloes and pigs were sacrificed for the ceremony, and Rosner was married.

In 1948, at Burmese independence, Rosner was given the choice of going back to England or staying and becoming a Burmese citizen. He chose to stay. In 1950 he began to teach English at St. Columban's in Myitkyina.

One day he was on his bicycle when he met an Indian man who asked him if he wanted to buy a plot of land. The Indian took him to the land, which was overgrown with bushes.
Rosner asked how much, and the Indian asked for 300 rupees.
"I'll give you 250", Rosner replied.

The Indian agreed, and after they had signed the papers, Rosner asked the man why he had sold so cheaply.

"I have your money and you have my land, so I'll tell you the truth, and please don't get angry", the Indian replied. "Every night, three Japanese soldiers march by my window with their long swords dragging on the ground".

Rosner wasn't afraid of ghosts, and began to clear the land. Underneath the overgrown bushes he found bomb craters three meters deep. During the war the Americans had held Myitkyina's airfield and the Japanese had held the town. Rosner's land was in between the two, where many bombs had fallen. Clearing the land, he dug up 21 skeletons, which he gathered together and buried in one grave near a bamboo grove at the back of his land.

When I visited Dennis, he was growing strawberries, which he had introduced from Maymyo, near Mandalay; also many kinds of vegetables and orchids. I brought him tomato seeds from my father's own garden, which would yield him fruit of more than a pound each. He planted them the very next day.

Dennis spoke fluent Jinghpaw, English, German, and Burmese. He had twelve children, all of whom he delivered himself after his wife had prepared boiling water and laid down to give birth. His last two were twins. At each birth, his wife told him to measure the baby's umbilical cord to its knee, cut it with a sliver of bamboo, tie the end, and dip it in saffron powder with ground nutmeg paste and Kachin liquor.

Dennis had 33 grandchildren, 26 of whom lived with him on his productive farm. Of the twelve children and 33 grandchildren, all looked like Jinghpaw, except one, a granddaughter, who looked like Dennis-a lovely little girl with curly blonde hair and blue eyes.

At the age of 77, Dennis still rode his bicycle every day from his farm into Myitkyina town, wearing his old straw hat, to tutor his students in English, to say a prayer at the church, and to sit down for a welcome cup of tea in one of the teahouses.

To The Virtue of a Prostitute

Delicious strumpet. Most worthy and most ancient profession, I salute you. Your perfume lingers on my fingers. I have been pondering your fortitude, self-denial, justice, ethics, simplicity and excellence since lately, whores form my most intimate circle of friends and are the class of people with whom I generally choose to spend my precious time, attracted as I am by the unmistakable knowledge of what the bargain requires.

True, with a harlot there can be few conversations and discussions of Shakespeare or of macro-economic trends in disadvantaged countries of sub-saharan Africa or of the relative merits of nuclear versus neutron bomb superiority in a scenario of mutually-assured destruction, but these subjects make me puke, and anyway, I would much rather know what that girl, shifting her ass on that bar stool needs to spread her legs.

Prostitute: A woman willing to have sexual relations with men for money.
If that definition is reliable, then by that same definition, do not most women prostitute themselves, the only question being one of price? To paraphrase what George Bernard Shaw is said to have said to a woman sitting next to him at a dinner party:
"Madame, would you sleep with me for a million dollars?".
"Humm, a million dollars, yeah, I guess I would".
"Well then, would you sleep with me for ten dollars?".
"Sir, what kind of a woman do you take me for?".
"Madame, what kind of woman you are has already been established; what remains is just to agree on a price".

Jackie O says to Ari, supine on her yacht chair, "I'm a former First Lady, the nearest a person can rise to royalty in these United States of America. I am beautiful and a millionaire in my own right, perhaps the most desirable woman in the world, but ok, Ari, I will sleep with you, your ugly Greek, simian ass, for say, twenty million in Switzerland, and a bag of large diamonds".

Does that make Jackie a whore?

How about the girl next door in the blue gingham dress, which matches her sparkling eyes, and the golden corn-silk hair, pursed lips in the shape of a heart, who wouldn't let anyone near her 'secret place' and would probably deny even having one if somebody asked her, who winced when she had to touch it herself. She says nothing, but blushes red, but you know for certain that she will sleep with you at least once for forty years of marriage, emotional and financial support for life, and a degree of blindness on your part with regard to the cellulite that she will develop, as thick as a callous on the backs of her monstrous thighs.
How different is this from the honesty of a girl who offers to screw you for a ten-dollar bill?

Sigmund Freud had it all wrong with his theory of penis envy. Jack told Jill that he would show her his if she would show him hers. After seeing his dangling penis and inspecting the empty space between her own legs, she runs home distraught and cries to her mother a lament of her envy for his penis and how she wants to have one. Her mother, raising Jill's skirt, points to the dimpled mound between her daughter's legs and says, "Don't worry dear, with just one of these, you can have as many of those as you want".
In the seventeenth chapter of "The Book of Revelation", from that worn out, dog-eared supermarket rag known as the bible, the Great Prostitute is described as a woman sitting astride a red beast that has wicked names written all over it. The beast has seven heads and ten horns. The woman is dressed in purple and scarlet and covered with gold ornaments, precious stones, and pearls. In her hand she holds a gold cup full of obscene and filthy things, the result of her immorality. On her forehead was written a name that has a secret meaning, "the mother of all prostitutes and perverts in the world".
Until then I had not known that I had a patron saint.

With all the vagaries concerning the good girl or the bad girl, we are told that the good girl will only let you have it after marriage and not before. The bad girl
will give it to you or anybody else she fancies because she likes it as much as you do. Good girl, bad girl, the blur is as indistinct as a grey cat in the fog. I prefer to skip the ambiguity and hypocrisy entirely and to shoot fish in a barrel. True, the sport is missing, but the conclusion is sure. Let the deluded fool who said "money can't buy you love", spend some time with me and I will prove his conjecture to be as absurd and ridiculous as that of the fool who proposed the existence of phlogiston and the auto-combustibility of matter.

A prostitute's genius resides in her meritorious response to the legions of men in need of love and understanding. She, the dedicated lover who reveals more truth and illuminates more hidden chambers in the dark hearts of men than all the libraries of psychiatry.

Two Legs Are Better Than One

The ancient, abandoned capital of Pagan had flourished from about the ninth century until-as one theory goes-the armies of Kublai Khan overran the city and its one million inhabitants for not paying tribute, thus causing the entire population to flee. Whatever the true reason for Pagan's demise, the city's thousands of magnificent temples, stupas, and pagodas were left to stand abandoned, silently and intact, for many centuries. The huge city-situated on a plain as flat as a drum, and bordered by the gigantic Irrawaddy River on one side, and mountains on the other-remains one of the great wonders of the world.
I left Taunggyi in the Shan State heading for Pagan. There were at least 25 people crammed into every space of the truck. People hacked out the portals and they smoked nonstop, next to the gasoline drums; babies, held by their mothers, pissed from the tailgate and it flew back into our faces; and old ladies leaned on me and dug their bony elbows into my ribs. My ass felt as red and swollen as a baboon's from sitting on the truck's wooden bench for ten hours. All the while the eyes drilled me, and there were probing questions.

"Are you a tourist? Where is your group?"

"Have you been to Burma before? How many times?"

"Where have you been? Where are you going?"

I finally arrived in Pagan. Nearly two years before, I had ordered a lacquered table in five different colors from the best shop in Pagan. the table would take a full year to make, so I'd left a deposit of 1,000 Kyats. The lacquer ware of Pagan, in all of its applications, has been produced for centuries. The extremely dry climate is ideal for the drying processes, which must be undertaken for every layer of lacquer applied. Lacquer can be painted on teak furniture, applied to woven bamboo for utilitarian articles (such as monk's alms bowls), and even to woven horse hair that is so delicate and flexible that one side of a cup lacquered with it can be pressed to touch the opposite side. It can be etched and is waterproof. I paid the balance, and a final hand-polishing with petrified wood dust and teak charcoal made it gleam.

I invited a group of local friends out for dinner to feast on fresh river prawns.
One friend named Mya Mya had a sincere appreciation for Burmese arts and culture, and mentioned to me that several stone fragments of a Buddha statue dating from the late eleventh or early twelfth century had just been unearthed near the huge Sulamani Temple.

The next day Jizshe and I drove on a dirt track lined with cactus and thorny scrub brush that could only be eaten by goats. We plodded on along a rutted track until he pulled his sweat-glistening horse to a stop at a lonely enclosure within sight of Sulamani Temple. Here, a long wooden table was covered with chicken-wire to protect artifacts that had been unearthed from near the temple. A family lived near this enclosure, a husband and wife with two daughters, whose sold job was to guard the relics. Their house was more like a temporary shelter built of bamboo.

As I leaned forward to get a better look at the massive fragment of the Buddha's head-classic, with fine lines and curves, indicating that it was from the twelfth century-I noticed a girl with a radiant smile standing beside me. When I drew back to look at her, I saw that she used a crutch and was missing her left leg below the knee. I asked Jizshe to ask the family how this had happened, and they said she had simply been born that way. By the glow of her smile I could see that in no way did she see her condition as any particular impediment.

Hkay Ti Win was twelve years old and had huge sparkling eyes. Something in her spirit inspired me. So many people with no handicaps defeat themselves in life, while this girl, hobbling along on one leg, was filled with hope. I took some pictures of her, some with the Canon and others with the Polaroid, which I gave to her. She was attending school and was obviously a bright student. I could clearly see her family's love for her, as they dressed her in the best cloths they could afford, and her sister tied ribbons in her hair.

One of my dearest friends in Rangoon, then eighty years old, was Dr. Maung Maung Taik, who was the chief forensic pathologist in Burma. He estimated that he had conducted over 30,000 autopsies, in various cases, including one on his own son, who had died of a drug overdose years before, I couldn't even imagine a man conducting an autopsy on his own son! He had also performed the autopsy on General Aung San, Aung San Su Kyi's father, after he was assassinated in July 1947. Dr. Taik had trained hundreds, perhaps thousands, of doctors, and he was looked upon with the great respect that only a lifetime of service can merit. He was also a noted golfer, who still played several rounds a week. He used to play with General Ne Win, who in his paranoia, wore a metal helmet, even on the course, as he expected to be shot by his political enemies.

Dr. Taik drank a few glasses of single-malt whiskey every day, and was one of the best cooks I know. He probably spoke better English than me, and during my visits we often debated the origins of words, consulting a dog-eared dictionary several inches thick. He would often invite me over for a dinner, and during the frequent electrical blackouts in Rangoon, would start up his 100-year-old gramophone with a hand crank, and we would listen to thick scratchy records.

The beauty of the statue fragments I had seen in Pagan remained in my head, but Hkay Ti Win's family were the guardians of the pieces and I could never have compromised them because the archaeological authorities in Pagan would certainly have known about them. When I got back to Rangoon, I mentioned to Dr. Taik that I had met a girl of twelve years old near the Sulamani Temple, and that she had been born without the lower half of one leg. he asked me where the leg ended, and I told him just below the knee. the joint at the knee functioned perfectly and the upper tibia and fibula were present, ending in a blunt stump.

Dr. Taik mentioned that one of his former students was now the superintendent of the National Rehabilitation Hospital in Rangoon, and that he would be happy to introduce me, as they could provide a prosthetic leg for young Hkay Ti Win.

I immediately arranged to have her and her mother come to Rangoon for treatment. It was the first time she had ever left rural Pagan. the journey took twenty hours because the bus blew five tires on the way.

The hospital had open windows and overhead fans that didn't work. In a courtyard scores of patients awaited new limbs or learned to use their new prosthetics with nurses assisting them. Hkay Ti Win, her mother, and I were shown into the superintendent's office, where Dr. Taik introduced us to Dr. Min Lwin Ramu, who examined Hkay Ti Win's leg.

Dr. Min Lwin Ramu said that they would be glad to provide the new prosthesis and the training to walk on two feet. They would also provide lodging for Hkay Ti Win and her mom, as well as food. Dr. Taik said that if I didn't have the money, it wasn't a problem since they would provide all of this for free. I said thank you, but no, I was willing to pay. the entire cost was only a few hundred dollars, which I happily paid.

I learned later that Hkay Ti Win and her mom had stayed at the hospital for a few weeks, and Dr. Taik and some of my Rangoon friends visited often, bringing cookies and magazines. The cast for a new limb was being transformed into a new leg, which she would be taught to use by the staff. With her new leg cast fitted, Hkay Ti Win was soon able to run and ride a bicycle for the first time in her life. I asked her for only one thing in return-the well-worn, well polished wooden crutch that her father had made for her. I have that crutch now, in Bangkok.

Salome

This youtube video was made by a friend who shot me painting, one time each week, for the 3 months it took to complete the painting.