Under the Dragon by Rory Maclean

sweating French oilmen and cool Taiwanese traders. ‘Charmed girl, may I introduce myself as someone who still maintains a soft spot for the British Royal Family and the people of UK.’
    ‘And of Canada,’ I reminded him, shouting above the screech of the next arriving aircraft.
    ‘Another nation to prosper from Imperial rule,’ he assured us, and whispered when Katrin turned away to pick up her rucksack, ‘If I may be permitted the compliment, your woman is a cracker. You are the luckiest man in the worlds.’
    ‘Thank you,’ I said. Than’s fine eye for ladies was at odds with his faulty ear for language.
    ‘It is never good for a man to be alone. I am glad that you are now wed,’ he continued with parade-ground projection. ‘If you would care to follow me our taxi cab conveyance awaits.’
    Colonel Than, properly Khin Mg Than, Colonel (Ret’d) Artillery Regiment, strode forth into the throng, his step purposeful, his back bent like a storm-lashed palm. His black umbrella, its tie broken, flapped wildly at his side. Ten years before, in the same arrivals lounge, I had stumbled off my mistaken flight and into his care. ‘It is my duty to offer a helping hand to visitors,’ he had announced, then added in a conspiratorial tone, ‘My dear, I have just had the good fortune to be graciously smiled upon by the Duke of Hussey’s daughter.’
    ‘The Duke of Hussey?’ I had asked. I would learn later that Than considered it his responsibility, as a former King’s commissioned officer, to scoop up lost anglophones.
    ‘Of course,’ he had replied, pleased to illuminate a colonial’s scant knowledge of the British aristocracy. ‘The Chairman of the BBC; Marmaduke Hussey.’
    We followed his short, rust-robed form past the hotel touts and German package tourists, out of the low terminal building and into the dazzling afternoon light. At the time of our first meeting the Colonel had been a devout Christian, exchanging Christmas cards with the Bishop of Rangoon and singing God’s praises as the senior chorister at St Mary’s Cathedral. But after the 1988 uprising he had converted to Buddhism, ‘because I need to know my people better’. Over the following decade we had become faithful correspondents, even though he could rarely afford the bribes demanded by the postman to deliver my letters. His outspoken missives on the other hand had always reached me, though in envelopes slit open by prying censors. The often incomprehensible turns of phrase must have baffled them, while preserving him, but they helped me to see how strong loyalties – like poignant memories – sometimes do not age. Instead they hold their value and leave their mark on the present.
    ‘I try to instruct the younger monks,’ he had once written in his stilted, archaic English, ‘by embracing and receiving with open arms any and every one who wishes on his or her own account to listen.’ It was a miracle both that he had survived the years of terror and that he had received word of our impending arrival.
    The humid Rangoon heat engulfed us in viscous air, turning our walking into wading, our city shoes into leaded diving boots. I smelt jasmine and diesel, heard cicadas and sirens. A boy with black mica eyes took hold of my sleeve and asked, ‘Change money? Sell clothes?’ A dozen children with shaven heads held out grimy hands and wailed, ‘Bic! Bic!’ Than swept them all out of our path with brash confidence.
    ‘Handicrafts aren’t my kettle of tea,’ he declared, uncertain of the sanity of our travelling halfway around the world in the hope of tracing a basket. ‘So my intelligence gathering will be cronky at best.’ He woke our driver, who was dozing beneath a vast hand-cut billboard. It read, ‘Enjoy the Distinctive Myanmar Quality: Smiles, Warmth, Peace and Abundance’. ‘All I know is that almost every occupation in our country requires baskets. We have a mess of different sorts. Drive on,’ Than told the driver,