Everything Is Broken Read Online Free

compound had a dejected feeling that seemed to imply nothing much could ever happen there. As the plane taxied down the runway, I saw only two unused passenger planes and a lone soldier clad in the standard olive-green uniform. The soldier’s crumpled shirt was open at the neck, and he leaned against a tree, smoking a cheroot and gazing at the plane through lazy, half-closed eyes.
    The atmosphere inside the airport terminal was no different from how it had been on previous trips I’d made. The Burmese people getting off the plane were laden down with the usual array of duty-free goods: boxes of chocolates, makeup, and whiskey. The handful of foreigners, most of whom were probably undercover journalists or aid workers slipping into the country on tourist visas, waited silently in the immigration queue, perhaps all sharing the same worry: I hope they don’t know what I really do; I hope they don’t kick me out before I even get in . Beyond the high glass walls that separated the immigration checkpoints from the greeting area, there was the familiar tight throng of people waiting eagerly for returning family and friends.
    The immigration officer stamped my passport without even glancing up at me, and within minutes I had collected my suitcase and was sinking into the mildewed backseat of a battered Rangoon taxicab. The drive into the city used to be one of my favorite journeys. It was about a thirty-minute ride along tree-lined boulevards that skirted one of the city’s picturesque lakes, circled roundabouts with sculpted floral centerpieces, and passed the gardens that surround the majestic golden presence of the Shwedagon Pagoda. Alongside the newer Chinese-style buildings, which had increased in number over recent years, there was still the architecture of bygone times. There were dark wooden houses half hidden behind forests of trees, ornate monastery buildings with strips of paint peeling off the domed roofs, and brick-walled colonial homes set at the end of overgrown driveways. The thick covering of greenery along the drive had always given the city a hushed and secretive atmosphere.
    After the skyscrapers of Bangkok, driving down the low-rise leafy streets of Rangoon felt to me like slipping back in time, which, in some senses, it was; my trips to Burma always meant relinquishing the modern-day technological gadgets I rely on at home. There is no international roaming service in Burma, and my cell phone was useless there. Internet providers are heavily monitored by the regime to prevent antigovernment material from getting into or out of the country, and access through the city’s cramped and crowded Internet cafés was often irregular and infuriatingly slow. Unable to distract myself with sending SMS texts or calling people during the cab journey into the city, there was nothing to do but sit back and watch the streets. And, always, there was the particular smell of Rangoon rushing in through the taxi’s open windows—a familiar dank and musty odor, like a room that has been shut up for a long time and is in need of a good airing.
    But this time, even during the short taxi ride, I could see that the cyclone had totally transformed the city. Enormous hundred-year-old trees had been uprooted and tossed onto their sides. Telephone and electricity poles lay across the pavement, tangled up with wires and broken branches. Parts of the roofs of old houses had blown away, leaving behind gaping holes. Advertising billboards had been wrenched out of their moorings, though some shreds of the posters remained—among one set of twisted iron poles, a well-manicured hand held a steaming cup of coffee and a white-toothed smile fluttered in the breeze.
    Before my arrival I had tried to book a hotel room, but with communication systems down after the cyclone, I had been unable to get through or even to ascertain if any hotels were still operating. Foreigners visiting Burma are not allowed to stay in Burmese homes, where all guests