No one was sure why the soldiers roamed the neighborhoods of Aye Myat Thu’s well-kept wooden houses, each painted in a cheerful tone, sprinkles of bougainvillea adding more touches of color.
Mr. Soe Oo took a coconut from the family’s palm and cut it carefully so as not to spill the fresh water. It seems that the burst of fireworks echoed in the foggy heat.
Yes Myat Thu grabbed his coconut slice. The popping noises pulled her along the path to her home. In addition to the trees, a camouflaged presence lurked, according to other residents of the neighborhood. No one in the family saw him.
The bullet hole was so small that Mr. Soe Oo said he could not understand how it extinguished the life of his daughter, another random victim of a military man fired on the trigger.
“She just fell,” he said. “And she died.”
The funeral was the next day. Buddhist monks sang and the mourners gathered around the coffin, raising their hands in the three-finger salute of “Hunger Games” that has become the symbol of the protesters’ challenge. Garlands of jasmine framed the girl’s face, the bullet still lodged somewhere in her skull.
“I want to strip the soldier’s skin for revenge,” said U Thein Nyunt, his uncle. “She was just an innocent child with a good heart. She was our angel. “
Around the body, the family placed some of Aye Myat Thu’s favorite belongings: a set of crayons, some dolls and a purple rabbit, some Fair and Lovely cream, a Monopoly board and a Hello Kitty drawing. that she had done two days before was killed. On paper, beside the cartoon cat, Aye Myat Thu had written his name in careful English letters.
“I feel empty,” said Toe Toe Lwin, his mother.
Shortly after the funeral, Aye Myat Thu was cremated, the flames burning her treasures with her. In other parts of the country, soldiers stole the corpses of the people they killed, perhaps to hide the evidence of their brutality. In one case, they exhume a child’s grave.
The family did not want the same for their daughter.