29. Moustache Brothers, laughing against the regime

By Filipe Morato Gomes	Where is Mandalay?
I arrive in Mandalay with very clear goals in my mind. I'd like to visit the eccentric U'Bein Bridge, in Amarapura, do a boat trip until the extraordinary Mingun Pagoda and feel the irreverent spirit of the Moustache Brothers, the most famous troupe of comedians in Myanmar. It's time to laugh against the military regime that rules the country.

There was an atmosphere of secret meeting among the foreigners. The ground-floor of the house had been transformed into a small show room, with an old microphone mounted on a stage, on the left, and two dozen plastic chairs spread along the cubicle. The walls were covered with marionettes, photos of the Peace Noble Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi and cuts of international papers about the history of the group. On the front wall, a plate announced: “Moustache Brothers - top banana, comedian, clown, jester, buffoon, harlequin”.

During a Moustache Brothers' show

The show would start in forty-five minutes. I sat outside the house around a fire, talking with one of the family's teenagers. He seemed to have about 18 or 19 years old but he already had the same fighting spirit of the elder ones. The modest house of the three Moustache Brothers, located just in the centre of Mandalay, might be one of the rare urban places, in Myanmar, where you can talk freely about politics. “They [the military committee] do fear us, because we tell the truth. We fear nothing at all”, he told me all of a sudden. But the Moustache Brothers have already suffered in their own skin the consequences of their creative rebellious action. Par Par Lay, the eldest of the brothers, has spent five years and seven months in Mytkyina jail, and was also given forced works. “Breaking stone and building roads”, he explained to me. He was arrested while asleep, after a show near the residence of Aung San Suu Kyi, and sentenced without trial for the crime of “helping the country to fall apart”. During all that time the family could see him only for thirty minutes, in just one occasion.

Time passed quickly and the performance was about to start. Zu Law, the second brother of the group, started the show with a provocative joke: “if KGB (nickname for the military police) comes here we'll flee from the rear door and they will arrest the tourists”. In the past, it was common for the police to turn up with film cameras to try to get the gist of the political jokes, hidden in apparently innocent metaphors. “But don't worry”, he continued, a bit more seriously, “they like your dollars, no one will disturb you”.

Locals crossing U'Bein bridge, Amarapura

A long time has passed since the military has last showed up in a Moustache Brothers' show. The group is now too well-known abroad. Dozens of papers and magazines from all over the world had already written about its subversive activity. Even Hollywood has dedicated a scene of a film to Par Par Lay prison, which had Hugh Grant as the leading character. That visibility has granted them, in the last years, complete immunity. In spite of that, they make part of a black list of unwanted organizations and so no one can hire their comedian services. Their performances are confined to that ground-floor. Political jokes, interaction with tourists as well as traditional dances made part of the show for which each person paid about two euros. By the time the show finished, I had already decided I'd go there again.

In between, I went to the old city of Mingun in a small motor-boat. A very interesting trip where I could observe the daily life activity on the banks of Ayeyarwady river with people caring about their hygiene, others washing clothes, fishing or mending fishing-nets, and children playing on the sandy edges. The whole life of these communities is in the river. The village itself worth a visit because of the unfinished Mingun Pagoda, craved in a huge rocky formation which lifts from the soil. Impressive. But around it, dozens of sellers tried to sell paintings, sculptures, marionettes, clothes and thousand other things with doubtful utility, in a too much persuasive way to be considered pleasant.

A burmese young girl, Mingun

It was already late afternoon when the boat came back to Mandalay. I hired a taxi-bike and headed for Amarapura to appreciate the sunset on the extravagant U'Bein bridge. It is a wooden 1200 metres long bridge looking clumsy and little safe, mounted on wooden sticks, and it is one of the main attractions of the region. Monks of all ages wait on the bridge for the opportunity to practise their English with foreigners that go there everyday to appreciate the landscape and photograph. In fact, U'Bein, under the warm colours of a cloudless sun-set, is a strange and very photogenic sight.

Some days later, I went back to the Moustache Brothers' house, curious to see what changes take place in each performance. Surprisingly, the show was exactly equal to the one I had seen before. And it has been like this for almost nine years, everyday, without any interruption. “We will never give up. Democracy will come to Myanmar one day”, said, smiling, the same young boy I had talked to the first time.

(originally written in Portuguese)

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