HIP SHORT STORY
Elvis on the Irrawaddy
By Dave Young
Since his untimely death in 1977 there have been many claimed sightings of Elvis Presley in the most unlikely places: Kalamazoo, Stockholm, Luton. But surely not on the Ayeyarwady River in Myanmar?
As the sun rises in the pollution-hazy pink sky and our boat chugs upstream from Yangon to Mandalay I can definitely detect the lyrics of ‘Heartbreak Hotel’. The sound isn’t coming from the river’s edge, where local people are laundering their clothes and cattle drink. Nor from the bridge, where the captain assiduously concentrates on avoiding the many mud banks caused by falling water levels.
I check out my fellow upper deck passengers and there, a few rows back, is Elvis. The Native American cheekbones have disappeared, the face is fuller, but the slicked-back, jet black hair and sideburns are unmistakable.
Elvis looks to be in his late teens and is happily singing – word perfect – along to the sound of Las Vegas residency era Presley on his laptop.
Having drunk only Green Tea, I’m not hallucinating. Elvis is on the Ayeyarwady. Why is a contemporary teenager crooning the music of his parents’, possibly grandparents’, generation? Spoiler alert: I never find out.
“Hi I’m MJ,” he announces, “from Chicago; my dad’s over there, probably talking politics.” Mixed race, like his musical hero, MJ has the confidence and, less fortuitously, abundant puppy fat of a typical young American. Unimpressed by his picturesque surroundings – he slept through the sunrise – MJ ignores Buddhist temples, birdlife and breathtaking scenery in favour of this Macbook. Social media does so much to enrich our lives…
His dad, Jim, in contrast, is very keen to converse. If ‘converse’ means he talks, you listen. Firing off rhetorical questions, Jim outlines a well-informed, albeit partisan, view of Myanmar’s geopolitical future.
His antecedents are an American GI, his Burmese bride and a career in the US Navy. In Jim’s world-view US foreign policy is a major force for good – but he thinks his adoptive home country will struggle to resist Chinese expansion in SE Asia. Burma, he explains, is the classic buffer state and, should strategic ambitions collide, could host a possible rerun of the Vietnam War.
Now retired, Jim is accompanied by ‘the Pole’, a large, shaven-headed man in dark glasses, resembling a character from the movie Apocalypse Now. Back in Chicago Jim claims to know the Obamas; plausible, the Windy City is their political powerbase. In Burma – which he visits frequently – Elvis’s dad is apparently visiting Aung San Suu Kyi’s brother – for whom the Pole has been doing some ‘interior design work’.
I’m in no position to judge if the story is true – but it’s certainly surreal. Then MJ punctures the moment by playing ‘Hotel California’. My era, but I hate the bloody Eagles, why can’t he serenade our cruise with some Burmese hip-hop – the most popular music in modern Myanmar?
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