Leaving Htee Wah Doh

The day they found Naw Hser Mo, the villagers of Htee Wah Doh understood that even their bribes could no longer protect them. Her body lay on its side beside the car road, nude, her wrists bound, her thighs bloodied. Around her neck hung a placard of bamboo, into which the Burmese word for “terrorist” had been carved. She was fifteen years old.

They gathered their rice and cookpots, and sent their children to plunder the orchards and fields. They sliced the necks of roosters and threw them into sacks with the loaches and turtles of the day’s catch. They dressed themselves in their finest clothes, and then layered their second and third finest atop them.

They left behind them bananas that had yet to ripen and coriander yet to bloom. They left stockpiles of pumpkin seed and the burnt corpses of hogs and buffalo. Saw Gay Ler left his guitar, Saw Lay Taw his fishing boat, and Saw Eh Moo his orchard ladder. Naw Eh Mwee left the bicycle that had carried her and her vegetables to market, and Naw Hsa Khee Lar left the eel traps of her missing husband. Naw Blu Paw left a sack of rice, and beneath it, an armed landmine of bamboo and gunpowder. And before the soldiers could return with the dawn, the people of Htee Wah Doh took their children by the hand, lifted their elderly onto their backs, and disappeared into the forest.