Karen Connelly is a Canadian essayist, novelist and poet. Her last book is The Border Surrounds Us.

For months after I see them, the long earthen faces of the Buddhas of Pagan return to me in dreams. Pagan, where the villagers call themselves the slaves of the temples. Sometimes written Bagan; the first a is short. I repeat the word to myself as I wander, slack-jawed, from holy place to river to holy place again. The immense heat-shimmering plain is scattered with over two thousand pagodas and temples, countless toddy palms, many black and white goats. I chat with the boy shepherds before they go to pray; their wooden slippers clack on the flagstones. Inside the pagoda, the coat of lime is gone, revealing the Buddha’s countenance as deep red, the same colour as the bricks the people bake near the river’s edge, but eight hundred, nine hundred, almost a thousand years old now, naked of the gold and gems that made them so famous.

Before I left Rangoon, Ko San Aung gave me an obscure little book which describes the magical history of this place, the lavish courts of King Anawratha, grand battles on the plains, fates decided by strange dreams and numbers, a crocodile called Rain Cloud, alchemic preparations. Pious noblemen and women, kings and queens built the extraordinary temples in their dedication to Theravada Buddhism, hoping to make merit for their next lives. This golden age lasted from 1044 to 1287, when King Narathihapte fled from the Mongol invaders. Time and wind have eaten away the palace and pagoda walls. The crumbling hands of the statues remind me of living people. The hot dust and hotter stone remind me, at every turn, of Greece.

I think of the poet Seferis: These stones I have carried as long as I was able. All the young women here with bricks on their heads, they make eighty cents a day. The children slide down the hill to a water hole, struggle up the hill with the buckets hanging off the ends of the thin poles. I pick up one of these buckets and gasp. The girls and boys are so young, eight, ten, twelve; their sharpness is so sharp. One of them looks me up and down as if she has the street-smarts of a kid from Brooklyn. The toddy palm-smarts of Pagan.

We come and go, the tourists, the well-wishers, the do-gooders, I have come and I will go, visiting, seeing, taking these stories, photographs of these places. The people who live here will remain. They drive their cattle and fill their tin water buckets; they sell rice and fall in love. They write, they push through the labyrinth of silence, they wait. Daw Aung San Suu Kyi said, emphatically, rather insulted, "We are not waiting. We are working."

They do work, the hounded politicals, the people who believe in the possibility, the inevitability, of change. I have never met such dedicated, generous men and women. The children work hard, too. Their labour is ubiquitous all over the country. Every day, no matter where I am, I sit in a tea shop at a low wooden table and watch kids washing dishes, loading crates, mixing the great, steaming vats of tea. Children also build roads, mix cement, and carry stones. Like most child-labourers, their relatives live far away and are very poor. The children are sent to work in the cities and towns.

Without words, they speak of the great generals. All children raised in a traumatic poverty communicate in a language filled with silences and omissions, as though their vocabulary were written with an eraser. What they do not have dictates who they are and who they can become. The lucky ones have attended school for three or four years; the unlucky ones have not, and never will. Though I use the words lucky and unlucky, none of this happened by accident. The narrow lens of the children’s existence can be turned to focus clearly on the corrupt wealth of their rulers.

This morning, I watch the smallest boy in a tea shop retinue; he perches on an overturned stool, scrubbing away at his pile of dishes. When he gets up to drag in another load of cups and plates, I notice he already has the gestures and jaunty swagger of the bigger boys. His suffering is understated, not yet embittered with anger or condemnation. But as he grows, he will understand more than he does now about why he has so few options, why he cannot read, why he is trapped this way and who has trapped him. He is only one of hundreds of thousands of poor children. Every morning, before I finish my tea, he teaches me a few words in his language.

Cup. Table. Sweet. Lizard. Child.

His name is Hla Win. He is nine years old. One morning, as I’m leaving, he calls out to me, with the spontaneity of a songbird, "Chit-day!"

I love you.

There is only one other person staying at the hotel above the river. She is an artist from Spain. On the evening before her departure, we dine together. She has a pressing need to explain herself.

"I'm an idealist like you. I really am. I grew up in Spain, you know. I remember what it was like, during Franco’s time. My parents were always telling me not to get involved in the politics, it was very dangerous. Really, I am an idealist, and I think it's terrible that these people are so badly off."

"I don’t think badly off really explains it. They are poverty-stricken, malnourished. And oppressed. Hungry for many things."

"Do you really think they are? Really? Is it really possible to be hungry in the tropics? There is so much fruit everywhere. When I was in the north, there were two children sitting outside my restaurant with empty bowls, so of course I gave them some of my food. But someone else would have fed them if I hadn't. They wouldn't have gone to bed hungry."

I swallow a sip of my water, bottled water.

She continues, "A doctor I met up there said that he has never seen the infant mortality rate so high. I agree, that is really awful. But in a way, it's a natural form of birth control."

I want to ask this elegant, beautiful woman if she is on the pill. She was educated at one of the most expensive art schools in London. Has she ever had a baby, and watched her baby die, slowly, of diarrhoea? Dysentery? Malaria? Food poisoning? Those are the common killers of babies born in Burma, ailments often complicated by malnutrition. I finish my glass of water. The food has come but my appetite has left me.

"And they are always smiling! I really don't believe they're so miserable. They're always so happy."

Surely she will hear the exasperation in my voice. "But that's part of being Buddhist. Many people, especially the poor, accept the conditions of their lives, and they revel in whatever life is around them. The Burmese are a deeply hospitable people, too: that's why smile at us."

"They look so happy. There seemed to be a lot of people with bad eye diseases in the north, and even they laughed a lot."

Awkward pause. What can I say?

"I really am idealist, but if democracy came all at once to Burma, this country would disintegrate! It can't come too quickly."

"But the people of Burma already voted in a democratic government. There were elections in 1990. The NLD, Aung San Suu Kyi’s party, won by a landslide. The military refused to hand over power." Surely she must know these little details from her guidebook.

"Well, voting for freedom is one thing, but living with it is another. If it comes too quickly, Myanmar will disintegrate!"

How can she not see? She is a painter; her vocation is in her eyes. "But the country already is disintegrating. Nothing works here. The currency is a farce, corruption is rife, the military makes deals with druglords, and the overwhelming majority of people cannot afford to live on what they make because inflation is so high. Even the electricity doesn’t work. People die after operations because the hospitals cannot afford proper sterilization equipment!"

She looks at me squarely, condescendingly. "Journalists exaggerate the situation."

"I haven’t been talking to journalists. I’ve been talking to Burmese people. Students, doctors, artists, market women."

But the doubt remains plain on her face, tightening her lips. "I know how bad it is. But if democracy comes too quickly ..." Her voice trails off. She begins to eat. I move my food around with a fork.

Strange, the fork. Lately I’ve been eating Burmese-style, with my hands. There is something intensely pleasurable about touching the food one puts in one’s mouth. Messy, but fun.

The Spanish artist looks up from her curried chicken with an alarming intensity and asks, "What are you trying to do for the Burmese people?"

This question takes me by surprise. I think for a moment, but can’t decide how to reply. I feel acute embarrassment. Flustered, I say, "Nothing."

"But you must be trying to do something."

I raise my eyebrows, searching. "Um. No. I'm not."

"Why did you come here then? You said you would never come here only as a tourist, so what are you doing here then, if not trying to accomplish something?"

"I'm just talking and listening."

"But aren't you trying to accomplish the freedom of these people?"

I laugh out loud; her statement is so lofty. I am embarrassed and uncomfortable that we are sitting at this table in Burma, talking about the Burmese, while the waiters stand at the dining room doors like sleepy sentinels. They might understand everything we’re saying. Or nothing, which is worse. I want to apologize to them. I want to flee. "I don't pretend anything like that. It's too presumptuous. It sounds silly. Only they can accomplish their own freedom. I am… hanging around."

"But you've been going on about how terrible the government is here, and how much all these people you've met have suffered, and how powerful this place is for you. Don't you want to do anything? You must be trying to do something. Why don't you just say it?"

"I just want to write about what I see here. That's all. That will do whatever it can do. All things considered, that will be very little."

Now it is her turn to sip water. Oh, let the meal be done, let this be over. In other circumstances--in a gallery in Madrid, for example, drinking sangria in a bar in Segovia, I know I would like her. It is foolish as well as fraudulent for me to stand on the moral high ground, though the natural birth control comment was appalling. But we all say appalling things sometimes. It’s the nature of being white, or powerful, or simply human. I have Gorky to temper me: By then I could see that all people are more or less guilty before the god of absolute truth, and that no one is as guilty before mankind as the self-righteous. The sharpening edge of defensiveness in her voice comes from a guilt which has nothing to do with me. I want to say, "It's unnecessary, please don't feel that way," but I just listen to what she says next with a small, pained smile on my face.

"I really feel that I have done a lot for them. I have tried to talk and smile as much as possible. You know, I’ve tried to let them know that foreigners are not threatening, not awful people. And it's absolute hell up in the north where there are no other tourists. The locals won't leave you alone for a second. It's hard work, to be up there, wandering around, trying to get to places they won't let you get to, and all the people are mobbed around you, and there's no other white people. I kept calm the whole time, never lost my temper, always just smiled as much as possible."

I smile myself. The news is coming on. Out of respect, or perhaps out of curiosity to catch more fragments of our conversation, one of the dining room attendants turns down the volume. Conversation wanes in the presence of the silent news; we turn, along with the young Burmese waiters, to watch images of a fine mango crop on screen, box after box of the small, sweet spheres lined up and glowing like orange gems. Surely it is impossible to be hungry in the land of a million mangoes. Now come the obligatory scenes of a military leader inspecting a new factory. Then a whole troop of soldiers marching on some road somewhere in the jungle. Shot after shot of automatic weapons, belts heavy with ammunition. They are very serious, very thin young men, every jaw bone a study in angles, clenched muscle. The Spanish woman turns away from the television and talks more about the difficulties of being a tourist. I nod slowly, suddenly tired. White-shirted waiters come, take away our plates. With great concern, the younger one asks, in Burmese, why I have eaten so little. "I am not hungry." He is aghast, despite my attempts to reassure him. When the table is cleared and the poor waiter becalmed, the Spanish artist and the Canadian writer stand up. "Perhaps we will meet again some day in Madrid." Perhaps. We exchange Buenas noches.

Oddly enough, as I get ready for bed, I think about the Basque country, Euskadi: northern Spain, but not Spain exactly. And so very far from Burma, another world, another lifetime. But every country shares history, just as every human being does. If I know one thing, it is the ultimate meaninglessness of borders. A decade ago, I lived with a woman, also a painter, who was still a child when the tyrant Franco was pronounced dead. As soon as this news came, the children of Euskadi were turned loose from school. The most vivid memory of Maru’s childhood was made that day, when she ran through the village streets with her classmates, crying joy.

Returned to Mandalay, I listen to the sound of Burma waking: a man crushes ice on a rare piece of sidewalk, cars honk, bicycle bells ring, a woman's voice sings her wares. I pull the curtains and push my nose against the screen to see straight down. The singing woman is selling mangoes from an enormous plate balanced on her head. When she passes into the next street, I still hear her plaintive voice praising the sweetness of the fruit. Now the man is shovelling the crushed ice into two enormous rusted barrels, and two other men help him load the cargo into a very small truck. The trishaw drivers are lined up in a row in the shade of the corrugated tin wall, a wall which stands for no other reason than to give them shade. They each spit betel nut at regular intervals, even though four of the seven appear to be sleeping.

Betel nut juice. Dark red streaks of it everywhere on the ground, in the gutters, on the steps, on the lower walls, dribbling down or dried, crusted. One cannot help but think, obviously, of blood. I have wandered through the streets near Sule Pagoda, where many protestors were shot in 1988. 8/8/88. August eighth: millions of people began a nation-wide strike to protest military rule and demand a return to multi-party government. A few hours after darkness fell, the soldiers stationed in the streets opened fire. This happened in many different towns and cities during a period of several months. Bodies disappeared. Thousands of people were murdered during the 1988 demonstrations; as many were imprisoned. Thousands more left the country to become political dissidents and revolutionaries.

Many of the protestors were students. Students began the demonstrations, orchestrated the strike. One of them, who now lives on the Thai border and belongs to a small guerilla army, told me that if you enter certain streets near Sule Pagoda after midnight in the month of August, you will hear the ghosts of the dead still screaming, voices rising from the ground where their bodies fell. I find myself here in the month of May. Tant mieux. I do not need to hear screams. Girls with thanakha dabbed on their cheeks, girls still dressed in their school uniforms--white blouses and green sarongs--fell in crumpled heaps on the road. Bayonets killed people, bullets killed them. Also wooden clubs: it was not physically difficult for a soldier or a riot policeman to bash a hole through the fine flesh and bone of the face.

There are pictures of the bodies, in books. Sitting for many hours in Chiang Mai and Bangkok and Mae Sot, hands filled with uselessness, I stared at the photographs, I studied them. They taught me all I need to know about our common, ironic weakness, and that is the fragility of the human skull. Even the heavy, capable jaw bone is easily shattered. The photographs speak and speak. They scream, like the ghosts in the roads around Sule, they cry. Yet they are completely silent. Their silence demands, furiously, a response. But you will not find a word of reply in any language. You will just weep.

Listen. Hear the sounds in the street. See. Feel it, too, but not easily. You who know so little, do not utter a single proclamation. How to just see and hear? The world we live in doesn’t teach us to see and hear well. It teaches us all kinds of other things, labels, theories, expectations, vocabularies, opinions, judgements, the extended measure of our fine intelligence. But to shut up and see: next to impossible! It’s like meditating. Breathe in, breathe out, follow the breath, draw the mind away from thinking. The formula is so simple, yet how difficult it is to quieten the ever-loving, ever-chattering brain. I've read too many books and know the truth. We think we are walking beside it, but in fact the truth is a step ahead of us, or flying with a ragged wing somewhere above. I forget this, or become dishonest, secretly thinking I am quite clever. Atrocious: how often I know what I'm talking about. Only a short while later, I remember what has come out of my mouth and I cringe, look for a rock, a bench will do: but there is nowhere to hide.

God, I think. Buddha. Jesus Christ. Even Allah lives in this city. At five o’clock--or was it four?--I awoke to the cries of the muezzin calling the faithful to worship. The darkness in my narrow room was like heavy blue water. Where on earth was I? I had no idea, just a heart beating very hard, legs tangled in starched sheets. A nightmare hovered in the ebb of the unconscious, but the muezzin washed it away. I lay there rocked by the swell of voices; the sound was dream-laden, disturbing, verging on chaotic. Or grief-stricken.

Very slowly, I understood. Oh, yes, here I am. Mandalay. The mosque in the next street. Prayers as deep as ocean pouring out the doors. The men were chanting in Arabic.

But it is Burmese I am trying to learn now.

Broken heaven, broken earth. Broken country.

And, God, I learn so slowly.