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"Very much, but-"

"Or there is Indian Or other cuisines" He sle restaurant on this unimportant little street"

The trick, I could see, was to keepso I had read about this particular ethnic tic, and the Burmese even had a word for it An-ah-deh, they called it, and ityou that what you want – and can’t have – isn’t worth having in the first place, and that you don’t really want it I’ face or to keep you fro it, and trying to win the argu to blow out a lightbulb

"I was told," I said, "that a certain woman lives on this street"

"If you would like to have a woman," he said, "this is not the street for it You would not find a woman on a street like this, and if you did you would not care for her She would not be clean" He leaned forward, lowered his voice "I knohere you can find a wo, very pretty, very exclusive"

"I don’t want a woman I-"

"You prefer a boy? I don’t blame you Of course there is no homosexuality in Myanmar, but for a ements can be made But you could never find a boy on this poor street"

"I don’t want a boy"

"Then you are a norhted to hear it"

"I believe Aung San Suu Kyi lives on this street"

"Ah," he said He looked disappointed in me

"And I would like to see where she lives," I said

"There is nothing to see," he said "She is all the time inside her house Before, she would coer does this"

Because SLORC wouldn’t let her, I knew

"Because it is not safe for her," he said "So many patriotic citizens of Myanmar wish to do her harreat hero," he said soleht back ideas that are not what the people of Myanmar wish Thus she stays inside for her own protection"

"It would be interesting," I said, "just to walk by and look at the house"

"But it is not interesting," he said "I have seen it, and it is a on, where there is so et the picture, and so did I The street was closed to traffic, and this felloas on hand, a holstered automatic on his hip, to deny access to pedestrians He see no, but I didn’t want to test his commitment to an-ah-deh to the limit Sooner or later he would run out of patience Sooner or later he would haul out his gun and shoot hts legislation, before the sit-ins and the protest marches and the Mississippi suenious ways to deny the vote to black citizens The literacy test was a popular one, and in one Georgia county, so the story goes, a black ious Northern university, presented hiister to vote "All you have to do," the local official explained, "is read a paragraph or two of this here newspaper and tell us what it means"

And he handed him a Chinese newspaper

The prospective voter looked it over "Well," he said, "I can onna be voting in Georgia this year"

The story ran through my mind as I s street with nothing to recommend it"

"It is precisely that," he said

"I thank you," I said, "for saving me from a pointless and unpleasant walk I can oda"

"An excellent idea," he said "It is said that there are three things a man must do before he has fulfilled his purpose in life"

He paused, and I obligingly asked what they were

"He ought to take a wife," he said, "and father a son And then he odas as you can," he said "But remember – no shoes!"

There was another way around to Suu Kyi’s house, but I didn’t even bother to check it out They wouldn’t seal off the street at one end and leave it open at the other And, if by soh, hoould I explain myself if I happened to run into my little an-ah-deh h to save face for both of us, and I could see how I’d be hard put to explain myself

I walked for a while, and wound up on Maka Bandoola Street, past Sule Pagoda (which really was at the heart of the city) and the city hall A block or so beyond it I gave up waving away the ers and let one of theed a hundred dollars’ worth of FEC into kyat (They e three hundred dollars a person on arrival at the airport, but the official exchange rate is robbery However, you can take dollar-value Foreign Exchange Certificates instead, and later on you can change those quite openly on the black et a better rate with less chance of getting ripped off if I changed e hotels, but I had another reason for doing business with a street-level entrepreneur I could ask hilish was serviceable He had a li accent, so he was not in the saun on his hip On the plus side, he didn’t have a gun on his hip And he wanted to do a deal with me, not stop me in my tracks and shine me on

We did our business, a process that was not made any easier by the curious denominations that kyat come in In addition to the bills you expect theot a forty-five-kyat and a ninety-kyat note This stems not from a disdain for the decimal system but because one of their Gallant Leaders believes forty-five or ninety (I forget which) to be his lucky nuly