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The Ghost Road (Cont.) THE NEXT MORNING, the desk clerk asks me how my night was. I look him in the eyes. He looks at me. He's on to me. I realize I've been endangering the people who shared their stories with me. That night, to reduce suspicion, I decide to go drinking with the trishaw drivers. We end up in a bar, a dark, low-ceilinged place where women walk out on a little stage and sing pop songs under a ghoulish red light. When I'm ready to go back to the YMCA, my companions insist I have one more drink. A toast. It doesn't taste good. I drink some and spill the rest down my neck. Something starts to happen with my eyes. Things begin to slide. My glass glides off the table and I reach out to catch it and knock it onto the floor. It shatters into little pieces that turn into cockroaches that scrabble away. I can't move my feet properly; they spill and flop like fish. Someone is slapping me, and I stand up swinging, screaming, spinning around. I open my eyes. Nothing. Darkness everywhere. There's a bird over me in the dark, flapping. I wake. My head is sideways. I try to focus. Lift my head. I'm naked, bloody, and filthy, covered with feces and dried urine. It's broad daylight. Two wide-eyed little boys are looking down at me. I sit up. I'm in the alley behind the YMCA. I make it back to my room and fall asleep on the floor. The next time I wake up, I crawl into the shower, wash off the blood, and look at my bruises and cuts. Just beat up. Then I notice the words written in black ink on the palm of my right hand: LEAVE OR DIE. ADVENTURE IS A PATH. Real adventure—self-determined, self-motivated, often risky—forces you to have firsthand encounters with the world. The world the way it is, not the way you imagine it. Your body will collide with the earth and you will bear witness. In this way you will be compelled to grapple with the limitless kindness and bottomless cruelty of humankind—and perhaps realize that you yourself are capable of both. This will change you. Nothing will ever again be black-and-white. I spent a year of my life trying to complete the Stilwell Road, but I gave back the advance and didn't write the book. I wasn't ready. To this day, my arrogance, ignorance, and selfishness appall me. Adventure becomes hubris when ambition blinds you to the suffering of the human beings next to you. Only at the end of my odyssey did I fully accept that traveling the road didn't make a damn bit of difference. That wasn't the point. It wasn't about me. It was about Burma and the struggle of its people. And I plan to return the day the junta falls. Since 1989, Aung San Suu Kyi has spent more than eight years under house arrest; according to Amnesty International, 1,850 peaceful demonstrators have been taken into custody, interrogated, and, in many cases, tortured as political prisoners. IN MAY 2002, after 20 months of house arrest, Suu Kyi was released by the junta. She immediately picked up where she'd left off, guiding the nonviolent democracy movement in Burma as much through her defiant, selfless bravery as through her words and speeches. "In physical stature she is petite and elegant, but in moral stature she is a giant," Archbishop Desmond Tutu said, in 2001, on the tenth anniversary of Suu Kyi's Nobel Peace Prize. "Big men are scared of her. Armed to the teeth and they still run scared." On May 30, 2003, while Suu Kyi was on a lecture tour with members of the National League for Democracy near Mandalay, her small convoy was ambushed by members of a pro-government militia. Four of her bodyguards and some 70 supporters were reportedly killed, and hundreds injured, including Suu Kyi herself, who suffered face and shoulder wounds. Suu Kyi was arrested and held incommunicado at an undisclosed location. In late July, Red Cross officials met with her but were not permitted to give any details of her detention. "Courage means that if you have to suffer for something worth suffering for," Suu Kyi told reporters prior to her recapture, "then you must suffer."
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