The Moustache Brothers

Myanmar, with a long history of political oppression, has an equally long history of political dissent. Aung San Suu Kyi is well know for her efforts to bring democracy to Myanmar. For her troubles, she has received the Nobel Peace Prize - and a lifetime of house arrest. She is kept prisoner in her own home in Rangoon, unable to leave or receive visitors.

When Deb and I were in Rangoon, we unexpectedly found ourselves in her neighborhood. We had gone out of the tourist district by city bus to take care of some problems with our passports. When we got done, we wanted to find a place to eat lunch, which wasn't easy since we were now in an upscale residential area. But our guidebook map showed an Indian restaurant about a mile away on the main road. It also showed that if we walked there, we'd pass right by Aung San Suu Kyi's house. We quickly decided that vegetable curry and dal sounded like a pretty good lunch.

I have to admit that I naively though that maybe we could go up and knock on her door, just to say hello. I wasn't so foolish as to think that she's invite us in for tea (or curry) but maybe we could just leave a message with whomever answered the door. At least we'd see what her house looked like.

A mile is a long walk in the mid-day tropical heat, especially when you don't know where you're going. But we didn't have to walk the whole mile because about halfway there, we came to a card table by the side of the road, the kind of setup where a couple of kids might be selling lemonade. Except that at this roadside table in Rangoon there were three adult men, and one of them was carrying a machine gun.

We weren't even close when one of them (unarmed) got up and walked directly towards us. He was friendly and polite, and quite insistent that this road was closed to foreigners. We told him our intention was simply to eat lunch at the Cafe Bombay. He politely accepted this white lie and just as politely mapped out a detoured route to get us there. We quietly decided that maybe we could do without the curry after all.

We had more luck meeting another group of occasionally jailed dissidents, known professionally as the Moustache Brothers. This is a vaudeville troupe of singers and dancers, headed by three comedians, who are not all brothers, and who do not all have mustaches.

Once again, our meeting was unexpected. We had spent the afternoon wandering in a Mandalay neighborhood noticeably more down-scale than Aung San Suu Kyi's. Pant-less children sat listlessly on railroad tracks next to piles of garbage, while their mothers sold decaying meat and vegetables. Flies covered everything.

This is not the kind of place where you want to be a tourist, so when a cheerful, barrel-chested man with a graying handlebar mustache excitedly called out to us, we felt relief. "I am Moustache Number 1!" he proudly announced, "Come here, come here!" I knew about the Moustache Brothers from our guidebook but I had not expected to meet them. They have a history of poking fun at the government, with puns and slapstick humor. Like loudmouth wise-guys in high school, being funny often gets you into trouble. Unlike high school however, trouble in Myanmar gets you seven years of prison camp hard labor.

Moustache Number 1 also goes by the name Par Par Lay. In 1996, he and his troupe were invited to perform at a party thrown by Aung San Suu Kyi, during one of her brief periods out of the house. As usual, the act included lots of satirical jibes at government corruption and mendacity. Unfortunately, the audience included several members of the secret police. Par Par Lay and one of his "brothers," Lu Saw, got arrested. They were sentenced in a swift closed-door trial and sent into the jungle, shackled with a ball and chain and leg irons.

Nobody saw or heard from them for over five years. Amnesty International made repeated demands for their release, and in 2001, the Brothers' family got a surprise phone call from Par Par Lay; he and Lu Saw were out of prison.

After an ordeal like this, you might think it was time to go into a new line of work. But like vaudeville troupers everywhere, the Brothers decided that the show must go on. Not surprisingly, the government had other ideas. While the Moustache Brothers had, for 30 years, taken their show on the road, performing everywhere from the smallest villages to the capital city, appearing at festivals, weddings, grand opening business parties, and the occasional political rally, they now discovered they were blacklisted. Before booking an act, a person throwing a party has to get a permit. Permits that requested the Moustache Brothers were being systematically denied.

But the show must go on! The Moustache Brothers determined that if they couldn't take their show to the people, they could still invite the people to their show. They turned their house into a theater, and regardless of whether the audience is big or small, they perform every night.

With a story like this, how could we miss the act? Because we had time to kill before the show, one of the non-performing "brothers" (maybe it was Zeppo?) led us to a restaurant for dinner. We walked down darkening streets, past open sewers and straw shacks, seeing along the way the occasional random wandering livestock and a few small fading hand-painted billboards advertising other performing troupes. Our guiding brother explained that this part of the city was the heart of the performance district, where in the teahouses, deals got struck for the country's top-end performers. "It is just like Broadway" he boasted.

We finished dinner quickly and got back early, to be sure of getting front row seats in the Moustache Brothers' theater. Actually, all of the seats were front row seats in the Moustache Brothers' theater. What was more surprising than the fact that there were only 15 chairs was the fact that by showtime all of them were filled. There were tourists from Austria, Norway, Germany, and Switzerland. The word on the Moustache Brothers gets around!

I wish I could say the show lived up to the hype. The Brothers and their remaining dancers, consisting now of siblings and wives, have been doing this for over 30 years, and in 30 years, things get a little stale. To western ears, one-liners about hen-pecked husbands would sound tired even if you weren't expecting political satire. Dancers get past their prime after raising a family and gaining a few extra pounds. Some mild barbs directed at traffic cops for extorting pay-offs doesn't sound like the transgressive humor that lands you in jail.

But maybe that's just the point. Myanmar is a country where the leaders are so insecure, so fearful that their illegitimate regime will be exposed, they feel the need to imprison middle-aged shtick artists. The opposition is so fragmented and frightened, all they can do is stay at home and go through the motions of dissent, which once seemed so powerful. It's one thing to arrest Lenny Bruce, but can a government really be brought down by Henny Youngman?

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The hall resounded with the peals of laughter, Which led those to a laughable decree That fell upon the boys the morning after And gives a sober sense to the jaded free. They had a knack for making others laugh In ways that left their very lives to chance; They gambled as a comic makes a gaffe, But theirs foreshadowed fateful circumstance. Enchained by those whose power is the lie, They walked a tortured, years-long mile, And for their crime they paid a silent cry, The price to make their grateful brothers smile.    How funny are those, seeming strong, yet weak,    Who so greatly fear a little moustache tweak. Copyright 2004 by Gregory Hugh Marshall. All rights reserved.