Under the Dragon by Rory Maclean Page B

murky workshop. A row of weavers, each wearing dark glasses, laboured in the shadows, repairing broken multi-coloured plastic shopping baskets with cane strips. ‘We can fix them for half the cost of a new one.’ He walked across the room, knowing its measure without a stick, and took hold of a restored shopper in his pudgy pale hands. ‘Feel that quality.’ The weaving felt neat and exact, but it was too dark for us to see any detail. ‘Maybe you’ve watched our ads on television?’
    The government promoted the mission’s work around the time of International White Cane Day. In return the blind craftsmen and women offered to renew the generals’ wives’ baskets. The offer was not taken up, because Louis Vuitton and Hermès did not sell plastic shoppers. Nevertheless the generals showed their appreciation by arranging for the craft workers to be fed for a week or two.
    ‘Our repairs are only meant to be ordered through government shops,’ Saw Taung explained to us, his right hand twitching in the dark, ‘but if you have brought a shopper all the way from England then I could make an exception.’
    We thanked him and told him about the real object of our quest. ‘Not plastic, then,’ he said, disappointment in his voice. ‘We like working with plastic because of the wonderful colours.’
    ‘This one is yellow and orange,’ volunteered one of the blind workmen. A poster pinned above him read, ‘Make money from the happy eyes and compensate that money to the blinds.’
    Katrin described Scott’s basket to Than, who translated the details. Saw Taung listened carefully and nodded. ‘It sounds traditional,’ he said flatly.
    ‘It was found over a hundred years ago.’
    ‘Then I am sorry. Such work takes too much time. No one can afford to make such a complicated piece any more.’
    On the drive into town we felt disappointed, as well as drained by the heat. The Colonel on the other hand seemed delighted, humming to himself a few bars of ‘Rule Britannia’. “You should be thankful,’ he said cheerfully. ‘Everyone recognises the basket.’
    ‘But no one can place it,’ sighed Katrin.
    ‘You must not want this too much,’ said Than, slipping seamlessly from imperialism to Buddhism. ‘It is not good to pray and ask for anything. One has to do good deeds and transmit pure, clean radiation to all corners of the earth, below and above.’
    ‘Radiation?’ I asked.
    ‘ Mettá , we call it. A sort of loving kindness. A universal kindness.’
    We turned onto Prome Road and drove into a traffic jam. The SLORC traffic policeman had turned his back on the waiting cars. An ice lorry fumed at the head of the queue, its load melting away in the afternoon sun. Grey clouds of exhaust puffed from an idle Win cigarette bus. Two girls yawned under parasols in the back of an ancient pick-up truck. It was 27 March – Armed Forces Day – and distorted martial music warbled from a distant loudspeaker.
    ‘I am sorry, my dears,’ apologised the Colonel, ‘but the delay is because of the parade in Resistance Park. “The Tatmadaw Shall Never Betray the National Cause,”’ he quoted, without a hint of sarcasm. But when our driver stepped out of the car to light a cheroot Than hissed, ‘This lot had bugger all to do with our liberation.’ Once called Resistance Day to celebrate the start of the campaign to expel the Japanese, the date had been hijacked by the regime to substantiate its erroneous claims of legitimacy. ‘They stole it, like every damn thing else in the country.’
    A fruit vendor working the queue offered us grimy bagfuls of sliced papaya. Then a gleaming khaki Jeep with a flashing red light and four yellow-kerchiefed, rifle-toting soldiers escorted a black Mazda VIP 929 saloon around the snarl. Our driver slipped back behind the wheel.
    ‘Listen please, Burma is a faithful country,’ Than told us now that he could again be overheard. ‘We try to refrain from all evil, to do what is good, to