Sun Ray!
With thanks to Burma VJ, and its ragged handful of Burmese video journalists, I'm provoked tonight to miss terribly a friend whose code name inadvertently mirrors his spirit as much as it serves to deflect from his true identity. The last time I saw him he had transformed from dynamic rising political star into that classic of Burmese opposition activists - a fugitive in his own country.
We met late, near the Strand Hotel, colossal Rangoon monument to British colonial excess, with 24-hour butler service for the lucky few willing to dole out $450 a night. He had declined my invitation for a drink at the empty bar where I waited for him, poring through a leather-bound tome of the 1910 Rangoon Times: The Christmas Edition (Freeman's Cholordyne! The original preparation! For colic afflictions anywhere in the Empire!)
I found him outside lurking in the shadows. He was barely recognizable in a pair of spectacles, a vast anorak and a hairnet that masked his dark mane.
"How are you?" I asked as we plunged away from the hovering doormen into the total dark of a side street.
"Actually, I am not fine," he said, each syllable inflected with urgency.
And so he began. His tale framed our meanderings to a deserted jetty, to a kareoke bar, and finally to a beer parlor where we chatted until closing time -- time at last for him to slip unnoticed into his refuge for the night...
Why? Who? What? Where? When?