Far and Away: Reporting from the Brink of Change

How did Romania relate to Jews, to the mentally ill, to gay people, to Gypsies? Many of the groups I represent in one way or another have attracted prejudice there at some point (as they have at other times, in other ways, in my own country). I had not intended to set off a scandal, nor had I anticipated my resonant sadness at this aspect of the six-day trip. I had likewise not imagined the surges of joy beneath those cherry trees and at New Europe College. The supporters of social liberalization in a conservative, deeply religious country do not constitute the mainstream, but neither do their opposites. Romanian is a Latin language, and Romanians blend the warmth of Italians with the combative spark of Slavs. Various Romanians pointed out that, because my grandfather was born there, I could get a Romanian passport, and some asked me to do so. I’m contemplating it. I understand why Aunt Rose characterized Romania as a horrible place we were lucky to escape, but it’s also a wonderful place and I’m glad that I returned.

I learned in 2015 that Andrei Rus, the professor who had arranged for my lecture to take place in the National University of Theater Arts and Cinematography, had come under attack from the Ethics Committee there. His contract was terminated for “ruining the University’s image” with his “gay propaganda and homosexual agenda”—which is particularly striking given that he is not gay himself. His colleagues asked that I write a letter of support for him, which I did; in the end, he was sanctioned but not fired.

MYANMAR

Myanmar’s Moment

Travel + Leisure, November 2014

My assignment for Travel + Leisure was to describe Myanmar’s most fascinating sights and most luxurious lodgings. I had recently been elected president of PEN American Center, an advocacy organization supporting freedom of expression, which gave me access to a group of writers who were forming a PEN center in Myanmar. So my month in the country long known as Burma seesawed between luxury river cruises and interviews with ex–political prisoners. The contrast was not as extreme as it sounds; the luxury was far less opulent and the prison alumni far more upbeat than one might have imagined. This essay examines Myanmar’s social, political, and economic life in greater depth than was pertinent for Travel + Leisure.

I had anticipated a time of hope in Myanmar. In the eighteen months prior to my visit in January 2014, eleven hundred of the country’s political prisoners, including the most celebrated ones, had been released; censorship of the media had eased; limited parliamentary elections had taken place; and most international sanctions had been lifted. Foreign investment was beginning to invigorate the economy. Opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi, winner of the 1991 Nobel Peace Prize and an icon of courage in the name of justice, had been freed in 2010 after two decades under house arrest and was campaigning for the presidency; her National League for Democracy (NLD) party had finally won seats in the legislature. The country seemed to be progressing economically and socially.

What I found instead was an extremely cautious neutrality. No one denied that things were better, but no one thought things were fixed. The exuberance of transition was tempered by the majority Buddhist philosophy of a people who had seen too many guttering flickers of hope extinguished. The population had been optimistic, perhaps, in the lead-up to independence in 1948; they had been optimistic again in 1988, when student uprisings promised a new justice; they had even had a streak of optimism during the Saffron Revolution of 2007, when thousands of monks rose up against the government only to be brutally crushed. By 2014, the people had eliminated such buoyancy from their repertoire of attitudes, and they were merely waiting to see what might happen next.

Neither were they bitter about their painful history. I had anticipated that former political prisoners would rant about their appalling treatment while incarcerated, but few of them did. Many said they were grateful for their experiences. In prison, they had had time to develop their minds and hearts, often through meditation. Most had set out knowingly to do things that would land them in jail, and they had marched to their cells with heads held high. When they were released, their heads were still held high. The writer and activist Ma Thanegi, who spent many years in jail because she had been Aung San Suu Kyi’s personal assistant, told me that the best way to oppose the regime was to be happy in prison. “It’s like spitting in the face of the military,” she said. “They wanted us to be miserable, and we were not going to oblige them.” If they could be happy there, then their punishment had failed, and the regime had no power over them. As she explained it, their adamantine cheer was both a discipline and a choice.