The End of “Little Burmese Story” – Part One

 

© Geoffrey Hiller

The day Daisy died the sun, strangely, was bubbling on the golden pagodas of Yangon.

It was 4.30 pm on an afternoon in late July.

The high fever made her weak for over a week.

There was no medicine around. All kinds of drugs had been rounded up by the military in hospitals and pharmacies.

Civilians died in the house, often they could not even be cremated but were abandoned on the side of the roads.

Cherry Oo and her grandmother had to call a family friend who passed off as a doctor, but the feeling was that more than caring for her body he cared about for his wallet.

After he injected Daisy with a drug that he believed was supposed to make her fever go away, she died within hours.

Her face leaning on the sweat-damp pillow, supine.

Cherry Oo and the grandmother mourned her for a long time, cursing that rogue fake doctor.

 

Fortunately, they managed to cremate her body.

The daughter hung a sign in front of the wooden panel of the closed shop with which she informed of the mother's death, the day and time of her cremation.

It had started raining again on the streets of Yangon.

The heavy wheels of the military vehicles of the army, running on the puddles, threw buckets of dirty water on the passers-by.

The protests had never stopped but, slowly, they seemed to lose vigor, as if the rain drowned everything in daily resignation.

You get used to everything – it seems to be one of the greatest qualities of human beings.

Also to the oppression, to the control, to the violence.

On the day of the funeral Cherry Oo and her grandmother dressed Daisy's body in traditional clothes, in a vermilion red blouse; red and blue were her favorite colors because, as she often said to her daughter, red is the color of courage and for this reason, she loved to wear it.

The elderly mother painted Daisy's toenails with nail polish of the same color so that the charms she had had in her life would also accompany her on the journey to the invisible.

Her body was cremated in Yayway* Cemetery, located in North Okkalapa Township which is in eastern Yangon.

It was raining.

Sometimes it felt as if the pointed shapes of the stupas had been shaped by centuries of rain.

That day the monks could not come, which saddened the elderly mother very much; it was only the two of them who accompanied Daisy's body into the cemetery.

Before entering Cherry Oo turned in the hope that there were some friends of her mother, but at the end of the porch, there was only a man well dressed in dark that she did not know. She turned and walked in holding her mother's graduation photograph in her hands in a large gilt frame.

 

© Nandy

When they came out the man was still there, standing, with the rain behind him, while the chimney of the oven blew black smoke. As they approached the elegant man looked at Daisy's face in the photograph, then with the umbrella open, he stopped a few steps beyond the porch, next to Charry Oo and her grandmother under a single large umbrella, in silence, staring at the dense coiling of Daisy's ashes that turned rain and wind.

The daughter felt slightly relieved to see that, eventually, someone had come to the funeral, even though she had no idea who he was.

While the grandmother was drying her tears, Charry Oo turned to the young man and said in a thin voice: “Did you know my mother?”

The man looked down at the face beaded with drops on the glass of the photograph and then nodded slightly embarrassed.

“It's not that I really knew her well, but one day when there was a violent riot your mother took me out of danger. She was very kind, I have never forgotten it.”

Cherry Oo parted her lips in wonder.

What was this ?! May May* had never told her this episode, she thought with a mixture of curiosity and anger because she thought they had no secret.

“What will become of your mother's shop now?”

The man asked as they began to walk towards the exit of the cemetery, under the incessant drumming of the rain on the umbrellas.

Cherry Oo glanced quickly at her grandmother and then returned to observe the road so as not to sink into the puddles, while she clutched the frame tightly to her chest as if to protect it more than herself from the storm.

“I think we will have to sell it. Without May May it is no longer possible to keep it,” the daughter replied in a sad voice.

“Oh...” It was the only sound that came from the man's lips.

“Do you know the shop? Yet you don't look like a monk.” The girl said looking quickly at the man from her side.

“Didi! Don't be rude!” The grandmother scolded her in a voice that was not too harsh.

“No, no... It doesn't matter...”

The young man hastened to tell, then turned to the girl and asked in a polite voice: “I'd like to see the shop one last time, is there a chance?”

The girl nodded.

“Tomorrow afternoon, after school, around four o'clock, I'll be at the shop to pick up my mother's things; if you want you can come.”

The young man in elegant clothes was illuminated by a smile.

“Perfect! This is the perfect time for me when I get out of work. See you tomorrow then...”

He turned to the two women and with his hands folded bowed his face to greet them then, after passing the gate of the cemetery, he walked towards the street.

Cherry Oo searched for the rainbow in the clouds, clutching the flat surface of the photograph to her chest

The rain had subsided.

 

© Nandy

TO BE CONTINUED...

*Last home of many prominent Burmese, Yayway Cemetery also includes various ethnic and religious cemeteries, including those of Burmese Indians, Sino-Burmese, Karen, Japanese, Baháʼís, Hindus, Christians, Muslims, Parsis and Jews.

**May May is the nickname how the mother is called by in Myanmar.

Little Burmese Story 

Italian version