meemalee

My aunt on my father's side is the physical opposite of me. Willowy, slender and beautiful, with the fairest skin and the glossiest ebony hair. She didn't get married till she was in her forties though - for the most part because her parents, my grandparents, thought no one was good enough for her. I confess I didn't take to her new husband U Thein Han for similar, arbitrary reasons - he wasn't handsome or tall, he was a Muslim whilst we were Buddhist, and he was divorced with children. I was selfishly filled with a sense of what the Burmese call " n'myaw " - roughly translated as feeling their marriage was a terrible waste of my aunt's loveliness. He grew on me though (and maybe I grew up too). He was a lawyer, like me, but unlike me he really seemed to love his job. This passion permeated every part of his life - he was mad about Manchester United (whose games you could only see via "cracked" satellite in Burma) and he was clea