A man approached me with the typical “Hello! Where you come from?” line, which in Mandalay is usually the opening come-on to an annoying sales plea of some sort, from trishaw or taxi rides to money changing. Warily, I told him “America.” He said he had a niece in New York. He asked if I was a student and I said no. He told me that he was a journalist. He still hadn’t let go of my hand from our initial handshake. I asked him who he wrote for, and he told me. I asked him what he wrote. “Not the truth,” he said. “I don’t write with freedom. If I tell the truth…” and he let go of my hand and extended his own two, wrists together, in the universal symbol for handcuffs. “You understand?” Then he walked off.
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