Memories of Meikhtila - fiction excerpt from K.M. Kaung's upcoming novel Wolf -

Memories of Meikhtila - here is an excerpt from my upcoming novel Wolf -

I just happened to be editing it today -

"My childhood was both ordinary and extraordinary.  When I was five, Father stopped going on operations.  He never rose to a post higher than lieutenant, but he got a nicer position in an army truck depot in Meikhtila.  Ko Ko, Inn Inn and I could visit with one of Father’s cousins named Korea.
Uncle Korea was in a trial marriage with a woman and had a small grape plantation.  It wasn’t the custom to try things out this way, but Uncle Korea was modern and was trying living with a woman to see if he liked her. 
Meikhtila was a big town in central Burma where all the vegetable and fruit trucks came down from the Shan Plateau.  Rice grew in the paddies of Kyauksè nearby, which had been famous since the eleventh century; the time of the first Burmese kings as the great granary of Burma.   We always had enough to eat.  As we lived on the big military base, there was never a problem with things like getting petrol, burglary or security issues.   All of us went to a good school on the base.
One of Mother’s cousins was head of the tank corps.  We were poor compared to the commander, U Ah Par.  But U Ah Par’s wife, a doctor, allowed me and my brother and sister to come and play in their house and garden in the tank corps compound.  Sometimes we were even invited to meals.
I liked it best when Uncle Ah Par was at home, got drunk and told us stories about tanks."

Based on real people, but they are all dead and the names etc. are changed - it is of course not my own story, but the "life" of a fictional 1988 character named Wolf.

copyright Kyi May Kaung - a.k.a. K.M.Kaung