Love is a Battlefield: Zaw Moe Kyaw's story

I must tell you all this story, because the words and images from it haven't been able to leave me, and maybe also in the spirit of Lia, to share something of my own.

In modern times there are no fairy godmothers, but sometimes there are wise former guerilla soldiers. I went to his apartment so we could finish a video project we've been working on about a young monk, one of the leaders of the Saffron Revolution last fall. "I told the soldiers that we were praying with love for peace for everyone, including you. But he said he didn't understand and that we must leave or else he would shoot."

Zaw Moe Kyaw made me some Burmese food before getting to work and we talked in broken Thai, Burmese, and English phrases - "kun chuap aa hann thai mai ka?" so that we would not forget these languages. He pulled out some old photos he found while moving, of him when he lived in the jungle. "These are my comrades" and he points to them, "yes he died later after being arrested in Thailand, and he died of malaria." He moves slowly as he turns the photos. Throughout the night he would pick them up and stare at each a long time, at him with long hair, at the photos of funerals, for that was the only time they really took photos.

He is sad I'm leaving for Thailand and wants to come to. He is done sitting in an office, done going into a tunnel then coming out then going into the hole of the RFA office, then coming out to only go into a hole again. He describes to me his dream life if Burma was free. "I want to have a lot of land, with some, how do you call them "orchards", is that right? And have some wildlife, maybe some of those deer about the size of horses, I saw them in the jungle often. (I tell him he needs a pet elephant). Lots of land where I can be a cowboy, and I'll wear the hat you got me in Texas. I also will be an MP for my town, and maybe start a college where people can go to school, you should come teach there."

Awhile later we spoke of love. I do that quasi-joking voice and I say, haha, how moving to Thailand will be good and will help me to progress, then I sigh as only an adolescent with a broken heart can sigh. He says "You must move on Thelma, life is like water. You are young, enjoy life!" And then he tells me his story, and I must tell you this, because hearing it has changed me.

He loved a girl in his hometown in Burma. "I would get excited just being near her." And then the revolution of '88 happened and by '91 the military regime was hunting him down, so he had to flee to the jungle. The night before him and his comrades were to leave he asked them to wait for him in Rangoon because he had to go to his town to say goodbye to her. She was young then, only 17. "This better be important what you have to say to me" she says "I have my big exams tomorrow." He tells her he is leaving but "please wait for me." The only things he takes with him are his ID card and her photo.

"For 10 years Thelma, I didn't have a girlfriend, I only thought of her. I would be hiking through mountain sides and be thinking of her. I would be out at night checking for enemy soldiers, marching through the dark forest and pretending to have conversations with her in my head." No contact with her ever.

After awhile he left life in the jungle and went to work with Burmese exile groups in Thailand, had his eyes opened and knew that it was time to move on. Got an American girlfriend, a British, a Thai one and eventually started working with his current girlfriend in the office of Burma's socialist political party, DPNS.

Four years ago he moved to the States and starting working for Radio Free Asia, which secretly broadcasts news inside Burma. Through this she, yes she, hears his voice and writes him a letter telling him that she has never married, that she waited for him. "But I had changed, life had changed. I told some friends in my town to take care of her, but what was I to do now?"

How could I speak after hearing this? I silently returned to fixing the subtitles, with pain changing U Gawsita's statement of 'I live in Maggin monastery" to "I lived in Maggin monastery."

"Thelma, in Burmese, the word for 'marriage' roughly means 'house arrest"

"No, you are joking."

"No, I am serious. Listen to me, you are young. Flexibility and freedom are amazing things, embrace it!" Then he laid on the floor, with his hands behind his head and I'm fairly certain he was dreaming of getting away from office life, or perhaps fighting again, or maybe just about his orchards.

A guerilla leader, named Moetheezun who now lives in Queens, NY, once put a sign in the camps in the jungle "Revolution is school." Zaw Moe Kyaw never was able to finish college, but he tells me this, and I'm sure that the monk that was on the screen in front of me knows this to, "love is when you want the happiness of another, even if it goes against our own desires."