That didn’t please him at all. “Taik, taik,” he implored, and I was trying to guess what the word meant when I realized he was speaking English, insisting I take the thing.

“Oh,” I said, taking it, and thanked him politely: “Amyah ee jay zu tin ba day.”

He nodded and bowed and ran off.

Shit, I thought. I set the caged bird down beside me and looked at my watch. It was ten minutes to five, and I’d have given up on my contact, but suppose he’d waited while the kid gave me the bird? I ought to give him a few more minutes. And so I waited until five o’clock, not really expecting anything, and nobody came within five yards of me, or took any real notice of me at all.

I stood up, bent to work the cramps out of my legs, then straightened up again. I could come back same time tomorrow, I thought, or I could say the hell with it. The latter course seemed the most likely, but I had a whole day to make up my mind.

I started walking, then remembered the bird cage. I could leave it there and let someone else knock a few spokes out of the wheel of rebirth, but maybe it was time I earned a little merit myself. It seemed to me that it had been a while since I’d done anything the least bit meritorious. Since I’d just paid one hundred and twenty times the asking price for this poor benighted white dove, the least I could do was let him loose.

I unlocked the cage door, reached in, got hold of the bird. He did what birds do, although they generally do it on statues, or women who’ve just had their hair done. “Shit,” I said, and I wasn’t talking about the price, either.

I lifted him out and let him go, and my spirit might have soared along with him but for the souvenir he’d left behind. I didn’t have anything to wipe my hands on, and I was damned if I was going to part with another ten dollars. I wiped them on my pants.

Now what was I going to do with the cage? Just set it down, I thought, and let it be somebody else’s problem. And I was in the process of doing just that when I saw the envelope.

Well, actually, I’d seen it earlier, but I’d just assumed it was a piece of scrap paper of the sort you’d use to, well, line the bottom of a bird cage. The bird had evidently made the same assumption, and had acted accordingly, and in abundance. Perhaps he’d assumed the little boy was speaking English when he recited the price, perhaps he’d regarded the word as an exhortation, a command. Or perhaps he’d merely had the benefit of a high-fiber diet.

Whatever the cause, his output had been prodigious, and he’d pretty much covered the cage’s paper liner. But now I got a look at it and saw that it was in fact an envelope, and I took a closer look and saw that something was written on it.

“Eight,” I said, in Burmese.

I reached in, gripped the thing carefully between thumb and forefinger, and drew it out. TANNER EVAN someone had penciled on the front of it, in block capitals. The flap was unsealed, just tucked in, and I untucked it and removed a single sheet of paper, folded twice. I unfolded it and read the message, in the same awkward capital letters as my name:

GET OUT OF BURMA OR YOU DIE.

Chapter 8

Just about everybody wore the longyis. They looked entirely unremarkable on the women, just long tight skirts that would have been appropriate anywhere. One was less accustomed to seeing men in skirts, but you got used to it, at least among the Burmese. Here and there, though, I saw a male tourist gamely sporting a souvenir longyi, and they all looked embarrassed, and rightly so. When they got home to Frankfurt and Antwerp and Keokuk, I had a feeling those longyis would go straight into the closet and stay there.

But not every Burmese wore a longyi. The cops and the soldiers, I saw, were dressed like cops and soldiers anywhere. They had short-sleeved khaki shirts with epaulets, and they had square-toed brown half-boots, and they had squared-off peaked caps. And they were wearing pants, either black or khaki.

I guess a longyi wasn’t sufficiently military. I guess they figured the blood wouldn’t go gelid at the sight of a horde of men in skirts charging down a hill at you. I guess nobody ever told them about the Scottish Highlanders.

Still, I’m not sure it would work without bagpipes, and I didn’t even want to think what Burmese pipers might sound like. What I did know was that the fellow standing in front of me looked very military indeed, and efficient, and quietly intimidating.

“I am so sorry,” he said, in excellent English. “You would not want to walk down this street.”

“I wouldn’t?”

“It is no street for sightseeing,” he assured me. “There are many fine things to see in Yangon. Have you been to Shwe Dagon Pagoda?”

“I’ve just come from there.”

“Then you must go to Sule Pagoda,” he said. “Shwe Dagon is the soul of Yangon, and Sule is its heart. A hair from the Buddha is preserved there.”

“I see.”

“And Botatamy Pagoda. Also a hair of the Buddha!”

“He must have had a lot of hairs,” I said.

“And the Bogyoke Aung San Market. So much to see there! So many things to buy! Perhaps you will have a longyi made for you, so that anyone who sees you will think you are a native of Myanmar.”

He laughed, so I would know he was joking, and I laughed, so he would know I got it. He named other tourist attractions – he was a regular Insight Guide – and I just stood there and nodded and smiled.

“If you wish to go to any of these places,” he said, “I will be most happy to provide directions.”

“I have a map,” I said.

“I could trace the route for you,” he said.

I told him that was very kind of him, but actually I just wanted to walk down this one particular street.

“You would not like it,” he said. “There is nothing to see, nothing to do. No shops! No pagodas!”

“Even so-”

“No restaurants! Perhaps you are hungry, you would enjoy a meal. There are many fine restaurants in Yangon. Most people like the Chinese restaurants the best, but there are also fine Myanmar restaurants. Do you like Myanmar food?”

“Very much, but-”

“Or there is Indian. Or other cuisines.” He smiled broadly. “But there is not a single restaurant on this unimportant little street.”

The trick, I could see, was to keep me out without quite saying so. I had read about this particular ethnic tic, and the Burmese even had a word for it. An-ah-deh, they called it, and it means never giving no for an answer by convincing you 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’m not sure whether they do it to avoid losing face or to keep you from losing face, but this fellow was certainly doing it, and trying to win the argument with him was beginning to seem a lot like trying 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 know where you can find a woman. Very young, 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 man of refinement such as yourself, certain arrangements can be made. But you could never find a boy on this poor street.”

“I don’t want a boy.”

“Then you are a normal man! I am delighted 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 come to the front door and talk to people, but she no longer does this.”