The writer is a development professional who is now studying abroad.

Leaving Myanmar during the coup was always going to be a sword with multiple edges.

Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.

As a politically active person,  both on social media and in work, I knew staying in Myanmar after the coup would have been very dangerous and I felt it everyday: the anxiety, the fear, the guilt of feeling fear, the anger, the denial of my anxiety and fear, the sadness, the grief, the confusion. The list goes on. Even with all the languages and dialects in the world, there aren’t enough words to describe the feelings.

No young person deserves to have to grow up in these conditions and feel this sort of fear because of the decisions of arrogant and narrow minded “adults” who are in a tug of war of power all over the country and claim that they want to “help the next generation”.

Yet it was hard to leave, especially during the devastating Delta wave of COVID-19 cases. Everyone remembers this period – at least one person we knew was dying everyday. I lost family members and other people I knew, like my childhood math tuition teacher. After about half a year and amid the devastating third wave, I started trying to figure out with my friends how to leave the country and go to the West like many other young Myanmar people were doing.

When I left, I did so knowing that I wasn’t going to look back (at least for the foreseeable future). I vividly remember that day. The Tatmadaw troops had blocked the road leading to the airport with barbed wire. There was only one small path to drive through so they officers could stop and check license plate numbers and driver licenses. My uncle, who was driving, showed his license and we continued. 

When we arrived at the airport, police officers were swarming both inside and outside. A small group of them was standing in front of a lecturing senior officer as if they were taking orders. As I was entering the airport, the officials wouldn’t allow my sister to come in because she wasn’t a passenger. Technically, I never got to properly say goodbye to her and even though we still talk everyday, it still made me sad. Also, the key thing was that these were new rules - before, families were able to accompany passengers until the travelers finally had to go through immigration.

My heart was pounding when I finally arrived at the immigration counter. This had been the cause of my extreme anxiety for months. I knew that the moment I made it past immigration, that was it, I would be good to go. Everyone I spoke to had strictly instructed me to delete the photos on my mobile phone, that the immigration officials would check them, and that if they found any political content, I would be in big trouble.

For all of my anxiety though, I had refused to delete my photos because I had many photos and screenshots of coup related events (that would get you in trouble with the Tatmadaw) and I was simply too lazy to clear them all out. Fast-forward five minutes, well, I discovered everyone was wrong, or at least for me. No one checked my phone. A friend of mine, a doctor who had taken part in the Civil Disobedience Movement (CDM) and refused to keep working in government healthcare after the coup, was also on my flight. Thankfully they did not check his phone either.

We found out later that only high profile activists and high ranking officials who were part of the CDM movement, like the head of a hospital, were thoroughly inspected.

Before we got into the plane, Myanmar National Airlines made us get into full Covid-19 PPE outfits, including wrapping our shoes with plastic and putting our hair into shower caps. It was tragicomic - the military authorities performing their pandemic precautions in their typical manner, by emphasising things that aren’t really important while completely destroying the things that are actually important.

I got a window seat on the plane. As soon as I put my stuff away and sat down, I looked out of that window and told myself I would not take my eyes off my country until I couldn’t physically see it anymore.

You see, I wasn’t just saying goodbye to one home. I was saying goodbye to three.

My heritage is both Shan and Karen, so I was saying goodbye to Shan State’s mountains, the tofu, the noodles, the clean air, the wide open spaces, the Pa-O aunties at the market who always give us extra food, my childhood friends, and above all my family.

And I was also saying goodbye to Karen State and its hills, the spicy food, the big wooden huts, crossing over to each other’s houses, and again, above all my family there too who lived in warzones. I didn’t know when I would ever see them again.

And ultimately I was saying goodbye to my country, Myanmar, which was disappearing beneath the clouds as the plane rose further into the sky.

Tears were already streaming from my eyes as the plane took off and they continued streaming till my country finally disappeared from view. I cried until we landed in our destination country.

When will the time come when our country stops soaking in our tears?

Illustration - JC