Hey! Is that it? Twenty years!

2 September 1994, Insein

It is my twenty-eight birthday today, the second that I have spent in prison. From where I lie, flat on my back with my arms under my head, I can see a pocket-sized sky. The window is set high in the wall and through its iron grills and the roll of barbed wire I watch the clouds shift and the sky darken as day turns to night. It is the time when the Shwedagon shimmers like burnished gold and the smell of freshly fried fritters fills the air. I think that is what I miss the most – the colours and smells of my town outside.

I think of my other birthdays when we would start the day with a visit to the monastery and my siblings, friends and relatives would crowd in into our already crowded apartment at Sanchaung. But now the nest is empty – a brother is in Taiwan, trying to keep the family afloat with his meagre pay and the youngest – Win Aung – the last of the brood, everybody's favourite, is imprisoned here with me at Insein, accused of substance abuse. And my ageing parents…

Suddenly the walls of my cell seem to close in on me. I feel angry; beads of sweat dotting my forehead. I pace the cell in closed circles, my breath catching in my throat.

…I suppose I am yet to learn to think like a prisoner. And yet I have spent most of last year in this cell, in this 12×8 bit of space where life is measured out in tiny tin cups while the ocean roars outside! Imperceptibly one day of my solitary confinement slides into the next as I watch the rats scuttle from one hole to another and ants share my scanty rations.