Everything Is Broken Read Online Free Page A

and overnight visitors must be registered with the neighborhood authorities, so a friend of mine had arranged for me to stay at a house temporarily vacated by an expatriate tenant. The house was a solid cement bungalow located in a well-to-do residential neighborhood and, apart from some minor damage to the overhanging roof, it had withstood the storm.
    I spent my first few days in Rangoon checking on friends and delivering the supplies of cash and medicine I had brought. Though I knew the city well, I became lost a number of times, as so many landmarks had been altered; towering trees were no longer standing and buildings once obscured by greenery now stood out in the open. Having gone to the trouble of getting myself to Rangoon, I felt disoriented and useless once I was there. When I had finished dropping off the items I had brought with me, there didn’t seem much for me to do. Being a foreigner I was conspicuous, so I wasn’t able to go down to the delta easily and report on events. I had few other skills applicable to a disaster zone, so, for the time being, I had to content myself with following events as best I could from within the city.
    The house I was staying in was almost unbearably quiet in the evenings. Without power and phone lines, there were none of the reassuring sounds of a home—no television, no music, no ringing telephone. The house was located some distance from the main street, so even the sound of passing traffic was absent. At nighttime, the darkness was absolute. Each evening I would put on my headlamp and wander from room to room in its feeble tunnel of light.
     
     
     
    FINDING RELIABLE SOURCES of information in Burma has always been difficult. The regime exerts control over the country in part by attempting to control the very reality in which people live. Everything that is published in Burma must first pass through a government censorship board. Each day censors are hunched over their desks sifting out sensitive news articles and searching for criticism of the regime that might be disguised in an allegorical short story or hidden within the rhyming couplets of a poem. To fill the gap left behind by the removal of independent news and views, the regime produces its own version of events, energetically rewriting the news in its favor and eliminating any contrary views.
    The New Light of Myanmar , a newspaper published in both English and Burmese language editions, is the regime’s de facto mouthpiece. Printed on coarse paper in cheap black ink that rubs off onto your fingers, the daily specializes in good news. Few people I know consider it to be anything other than pure propaganda, but I read it every day whenever I am in Burma, not so much as a source of news but as a window into the point of view of the ruling generals. News as it is portrayed in the New Light of Myanmar does not represent how things actually are; it represents how the generals want things to be. And, in the case of Cyclone Nargis, the New Light of Myanmar portrayed a singularly unique take on events.
    According to the official chronology of what happened after the storm, Burma’s prime minister, General Thein Sein, who was announced as the chairman of the National Disaster Preparedness Central Committee, convened a meeting in the new capital city of Naypyidaw at 8.30 A.M. on May 3, while the storm was still raging in Rangoon. State media reported that Thein Sein traveled south immediately afterward to begin overseeing the national relief operation. Almost every day the general was featured on the front cover of the New Light of Myanmar . When he was not pictured tirelessly briefing other soldiers in a never-ending schedule of meetings, he was shown inspecting government-run camps that had been set up for storm victims. According to the New Light of Myanmar , the relief effort was already a laudable accomplishment. Private citizens and the military had banded together in the country’s hour of need and, with the help of