Letter from Burma (No. 15) by Aung San Suu Kyi

Mainichi Daily News
Monday, March 4, 1996

SAVORING THE PEACE OF A WELL-EARNED WEEKEND
"Days of Rest"

People ask me in what way my life has changed since I was released from house arrest eight months ago. One of the most obvious changes is that I can no longer keep to the strict timetable that governed my days when I lived alone. Then, it was important to establish a routine and to follow it strictly to avoid a feckless squandering of time. I rose at half past four every morning and turned the light off at nine o'clock at night. I did not have to wonder how many hours of sleep I would be able to grab. To introduce some variety that would divide my days into a pattern that reflected the ebb and flow of ordinary life I kept Saturday and Sunday significantly different from the rest of the week.

There was always a holiday feeling to the beginning of the weekend. Forty-eight hours of marvelous emptiness stretched before me to be filled with leisurely activity. I still rose at half past four in the morning and started with an hour of meditation as I did during the week, but once the meditation was over I let the day flow around me without any hurry. I would carry out little chores, such as putting the contents of a cupboard into order or sorting out the sewing box, which gave great satisfaction without exhaustion. And I would reread favorite books, savoring the passages that I particularly liked. Sunday was especially luxurious because I would boil myself an egg for breakfast. The weekend would pass all too quickly. Nowadays, too, weekends pass all too quickly but these are weekends of a quite different order from the ones I experienced during my years of house arrest. To begin with Saturday is a full working day. Every week my office staff and I discuss the possibility of arranging a lighter program for the next week and talk wistfully of a relatively free Saturday. However we have not yet succeeded in implementing such a program.

Happily, "No appointments on Sundays" is a strict rule. Well, at any rate it is a strict rule in theory. It just happens that sometimes something unavoidable crops up just on Sunday. But if there are really no appointments, Sunday morning is wonderful. I can linger over my breakfast cup of tea: I can even read while sipping my tea. I can bathe and wash my hair without haste and I can tidy up the mess that has accumulated over the week. I can savor to the full that lovely, leisurely weekend feeling. The weekend feeling actually ends on Sunday afternoon because preparations for the public meeting that takes place at my gate at four o'clock begin after lunch. The young men responsible for the public address system start to test the equipment. "Testing, testing, one, two, three, four ..." must be one of the most unattractive sentences in the world, especially when repeated in a monotonous tone through a microphone that emits shrill nerve jarring shrieks.

Although the quiet weekend air dissipates early on Sunday afternoon the holiday atmosphere continues. Friends and colleagues start arriving and it is very much like a family gathering. Some of the visitors come laden with food. The wife of U Kyi Maung, one of the deputy chairmen of the National League for Democracy, generally brings a large supply of steamed glutinous rice with both sweet and savory accompaniments such as tiny, crisply fried fish and grated fresh coconut. After the public meeting we sit out in the garden in small groups, drinking hot green tea, eating glutinous rice and exchanging news. An outsider witnessing the animation of the conversation and hearing the gales of laughter bursting out intermittently from each group would not have guessed that most of the people present worked together every day, voluntarily and without pay, under circumstances which were far from easy.

Most Sundays we manage to get through all that we have to do by about seven o'clock in the evening instead of eight o'clock, which is the normal time we end our working day during the week. When all the Sunday helpers and visitors have left, the weekend holiday comes to an end for me because there is usually a considerable amount of reading and writing to be completed before Monday morning. By the time I get to bed it feels as though I am already well into the new week and I often recall a line of a song that a very dear family friend would sing out in her magnificent voice at the conclusion of a busy day: "Rest from your labors, children of toil, night cometh over, rest ye awhile."

Journalists ask me from time to time whether it is not a great burden to be engage in the struggle for human rights and democracy in Burma under the restrictions imposed on the movements of political parties, especially the National League for Democracy. There are two main reasons why I do not find my work a burden in spite of the difficulties involved. First, I have dedicated and honorable (and good humored) colleagues whom I can trust and respect, and second, I gather strength from each day satisfactorily accounted for, including the brief days of rest which I would like to think well-earned.

(This article is one of a yearlong series of letters, the Japanese translation of which appears in the Mainichi Shimbun the same day, or the previous day in some areas.)