If Sardine In Yangon

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Most people in Myanmar have never eaten a sardine. They know the word, and maybe they’ve seen a tin of them in some foreign movie, but sardines don’t belong here. Everyone knows that. A sardine is the last thing you’d ever expect to find in Yangon.

My name is Ye Nanda Yazar Wathone Mg. It’s a long name. Most people just call me Wathone. I’m twenty-five, and I’ve lived in Yangon for as long as I can remember.

My family is fine. My two brothers are away at university in the US, and my mother is away on a trip, so these days it’s just my father, my younger sister and me at home. My father is one of the highest-ranking generals in Myanmar’s military. He loves my mother, and he buys us things, which I suppose is how he shows he loves the rest of us. I have a good life. A really good one. I don’t do much with it. I watch movies, mostly action, read when I’m bored, and spend my nights in bars and clubs. My sister keeps telling me to try the Korean dramas everyone here is obsessed with, and I have, a few times. Too much crying over nothing.

That day, there was a cosplay event at the mall downtown, and the next day was my birthday. I knew my dad would buy me something, because he always does. It would probably be another car. I’d rather have a motorbike, but honestly, it didn’t matter much either way.

Outside, Yangon was doing what it does best, which is being hot, the kind of heat that glues your shirt to your back before you’ve taken ten steps. Good thing I’m not poor. People here like to say that politics is only bad for poor people, and from where I’m standing, they’re right. Either way, it isn’t my problem.

I got dressed and went downstairs.

* * *

In the living room, my sister was stretched out on the sofa with her phone in one hand and a bag of chips in the other, watching one of her dramas with the volume far too high. On the screen, a man was crying in the rain, and she was crying a little along with him. Above the TV, her shelf of anime figures looked down over the room, every one of them still sealed in its box.

“You’re going out again?” she asked without looking up.

“Yeah.”

“If you’re going to the mall, bring me back an anime figure. The new one from that shop on the third floor. You know the one.”

“Sure.” I patted her head as I passed. She slapped my hand away and laughed, her eyes never leaving the screen.

Down the hall, my father’s door was closed. I could hear him on the phone behind it, his voice low and clipped, the way he talks to his officers.

“Dad, I’m going out,” I called. “I’m taking my car.”

“Okay, okay.” The door stayed shut. I was almost at the front door when he covered the phone and added, “Don’t be late tomorrow. Your mother will be back for dinner. And I have something for you.”

“Okay,” I said, and by the time I reached the garage, I had already forgotten about it.

* * *

The mall isn’t far, but the traffic downtown is always a mess: horns, packed buses crawling bumper to bumper, red betel juice spat across the pavement like old bloodstains. I don’t like being late, and my friends were already waiting, so the traffic annoyed me more than usual.

The city is developing. At least, that’s what it looks like. But not everyone is keeping up, and you see the ones who aren’t at every red light, weaving between the cars with flowers and bottles of water, knocking on windows that mostly stay shut.

At the light on Sule Pagoda Road, one of them knocked on mine. She was an old woman with strings of jasmine hanging over one arm, her longyi faded almost white and her rubber slippers worn thin at the heels. Sweat ran down her face, and her hands were shaking.

I rolled the window down, and the heat came in with the smell of jasmine and exhaust.

“Two thousand kyats, son,” she said. “Fresh jasmine. For your shrine at home. Good merit.”

I bought two strings and handed her a ten-thousand-kyat note. “Keep the change, grandmother.”

She stared at the note for a moment, as if she didn’t quite trust it. Then she pressed her palms together and bowed to me, right there in the middle of the traffic, thanking me three times. “May you be blessed, son.”

“You too,” I said, and I even smiled.

I tossed the jasmine onto the passenger seat. When the light turned green and I pulled away, I watched her in the side mirror, bent over in the heat, counting my money with those shaking fingers. And I found myself wondering, the way you might wonder about the weather, what it would feel like to put my hand over that small, grateful mouth and keep it there until she stopped moving.

I tapped the tip of my nose with one finger.

The car behind me honked, and I drove on.

* * *

Twenty minutes later, I pulled into the mall. A group of girls in costume walked past my car, laughing at something on one of their phones, and one of them glanced back at me as they went.

I don’t like it when girls stare at me. It makes me feel shy and small, and I hate that feeling. I know where it comes from.

In middle school, there was a girl in my class who liked me. She teased me all the time, poking my arm, giggling with her friends, saying my name in a silly voice. I had no patience for it. One day, when she reached over to tease me again, I stabbed her hand with my pencil.

I was never a bright student, not even in high school, but the teachers always treated me well. They barely ever hit me, even though they hit the other kids all the time, and some of them seemed to enjoy it. There was only one teacher I really hated. After what I did to that girl, she pulled me aside and told me that I must never hurt a girl, no matter what.

She was fired the next day. I had told my father about her.

* * *

I walked through the cosplay crowd without really seeing it, past the shop on the third floor, and by the time the event ended I had lost the others, so I called Thura.

“Where are you? Where’s everyone else?”

“They’re coming, man. Relax. We’re almost there.”

“Fine. I’ll wait at the restaurant downstairs.”

“Okay, bro.”

I took a table by the window and watched people pass until they showed up about five minutes later. Thura came first, as always, sunglasses pushed up into his dyed brown hair and a gold chain over his shirt, already talking before he reached the table. Naing Oo trailed behind him, still half in his costume with his face paint smeared at the edges, blowing sweet vape smoke at the NO SMOKING sign. Kyaw Paing came last with his eyes on his phone, scrolling through a betting app, and he only looked up when Thura kicked a chair out for him.

Thura snapped his fingers at the waiter without looking at him, ordered for all of us, and then turned to me. “Wathone. You coming to the club tonight?”

“Yeah. Sure.”

Before anyone could say anything else, Naing Oo leaned across the table, grinning like a kid. “Thura. What about that girl? How’d it go when you took her to the hotel?”

“She was fine, dude.” Thura stretched like a cat and put his feet up on the empty chair. “We were at it all day.”

“You recorded it, right?” Kyaw Paing asked, finally putting his phone down.

“Hell yeah. I always do. I’ll send it to you guys later.” He grinned. “They never know. By tomorrow it’ll be in the group. Men pay good money for the new ones.”

Kyaw Paing clinked his glass against Thura’s, and the three of them laughed together. I didn’t. Sex has always bored me. While they talked, my mind drifted somewhere else, back to the backyard of our house, where I used to kill birds when I was a kid and bury them in holes I dug myself, one for each bird. I still remember every one of them.

“Wathone.” Thura snapped his fingers in front of my face. “What about you? Any girl you’ve been seeing?”

“No.” I shrugged. “I’ve been lazy. I’m interested in something else right now.”

“Like what?” Naing Oo asked.

I thought about how to put it, then decided not to bother.

“I want to kill someone,” I said. “Open them up and see what’s inside. Then take their skin home with me.” I thought about it for a second. “And take a selfie with the body.”

The table went silent. Naing Oo looked down at his phone, and Kyaw Paing picked up his glass, then set it back down without drinking.

Then Thura laughed, too loudly. “Haha. Dude, you’re talking stupid again. Don’t joke around like that.” He pushed back his chair. “Come on, let’s head to the club. It’s already evening.”

I nodded without a word, and we all walked out to my car.

To be continued...