Far and Away: Reporting from the Brink of Change

Constitutional reforms that would have allowed Myanmar’s pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi to run for the presidency were blocked, but failed to prevent an NLD electoral victory in November 2015. Popular support for Aung San Suu Kyi had not dimmed since her party’s triumph at the polls in 1990. Her extended house arrest and the constitutional maneuvering designed to bar her from assuming the presidency served only to reinforce the impression that her ascendance was inevitable. The voting was so decisive that the generals declined to challenge it. Nonetheless, the military is still guaranteed one-quarter of seats in the legislature, giving it an effective veto. The interior, defense, and border security ministries remain under the aegis of the military.

Whether The Lady can be as effective at ruling as she was at opposing remains to be seen. It cannot be predicted whether a leader inclined to keep her own counsel to such a degree will succeed in delegating responsibilities to others. This icon of democracy has already asserted that while she is not president, she will rise “above the president” who “would have no authority”—an erosion of the office that has been denied to her. She has spoken of the constitution disparagingly, calling it a “very silly” document. While the constitution is highly problematic—not least because of clause 59F, which bars her from the official leadership of the country—such disregard for the processes by which bad laws are resolved smacks of authoritarianism.

Time will tell whether a party consisting largely of individuals with no experience in government can succeed in running a country; how the military and its moneyed allies will respond to policy changes that reduce its leaders’ economic advantage; and how a new Burmese government will address the country’s persistent interracial violence and the inhumane exclusion of lifelong residents from citizenship.

AUSTRALIA

Lost at the Surface

The Moth, 2015

This book starts with my travels as a child and concludes with my travel with a child. It begins with a dawning lust for adventure and ends with reservations about that impulse toward bravado. Intimations of immortality give way to the certainty of mortality. I grew up.

I was a frightened little boy. I did not like fast rides at amusement parks or scary movies or anything that was strange and unknown to me. I became anxious easily. When I was six, Mindy Silverstein’s mother took us both out for a bingo night and I was so nervous that I threw up and she had to bring me home. When we visited Uncle Milton and I was sent out to play with my tough cousin Johnny, I had a panic attack and ran back inside to my parents. Like many other frightened children, I lived in books instead of reality. I watched nature programs on TV and was especially captivated by Jacques Cousteau’s documentaries about life under the sea. I loved other people’s escapades, but I didn’t want my own.

When I was twelve, my mother took me out to lunch and, apropos of something I have long since forgotten, she ventured that I missed a lot by not being more adventurous. “But, Mom!” I said. “I just ordered eel for lunch!” She replied gently, “Being an adventurous eater is not the same as being an adventurous person.”

I decided to become adventurous through sheer will. Unlike the majority of people, who grow steadily more cautious as they get older, I’ve become less and less constrained in adulthood. I’ve gone skydiving and hang gliding; I’ve reported from war zones and disasters; I’ve faced the sometimes brutal exposure that accompanies being outspoken about my inner life.

Learning to scuba dive seemed like a good idea when I landed the assignment to traverse the Solomon Islands. A German friend was visiting us in New York prior to the trip, and we agreed to take scuba lessons together in a public pool on East Ninetieth Street, but then couldn’t make all the given dates. We nonetheless decided to try an open-water dive, for which we drove to a flooded quarry in Pennsylvania that had been festooned, rather creepily, with old school buses, so that candidates for diver certification would have “wrecks” to look at. We’d also have something to think about: drowning children. Misunderstanding our brute of an instructor, I plunged in before I was supposed to, and he ordered us out of the water and walked off the job. We went home having spotted only one submerged bus.