Smuggling podcasts into a Burmese prison

If you want to get a letter out of a Burmese prison, do not give it to the guards.

Perhaps this is obvious, but when they told me I could write two a month — one to my embassy and one to Juliana — I was naive enough to try.

“All night,” I wrote to Juliana.

“A fluorescent flood light illuminates the clouds of mosquitoes feasting on me, which makes it hard to sleep, and when the mosquitoes retreat, the ants crawl in — in pulsing veins along the cell wall and floor, over every inch of skin all day.”

I filled every centimeter of the official letter form they gave me.

“But it’s all fine. I’ve already gotten used to it by now. I just want to see you.”

Three days later…

“Write bigger. And don’t say there are ants here.”

So I tried again.

“Ju-
I love and miss you so much. I am doing well physically and feeling more or less healthy — but mentally things are obviously rough…”

“No.”

And again.

“Sorry.”

I first landed in Myanmar in early May 2019, just in time for World Press Freedom Day.

A decade earlier the country’s military leaders had begun a partial democratization process that notably included the end of pre-publication press censorship.

After elections in 2015, in which the military government had been trounced by the now-fallen democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi, they’d began handing over chunks of government to her quasi-civilian administration.

Though representative, Suu Kyi’s administration proved nearly as intolerant of its critics as the military had been, even if it still maintained wide public support.

When I arrived, Reuters journalists Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo had been sitting in the city’s Insein Prison for two years.

The year they were arrested, in 2017, I was earning $12 an hour reporting for a rural Louisiana newspaper…

…while our newly elected president channeled fury toward press pools at the back of his convention halls.

American journalism was facing its gravest threats, pundits were saying, and it wasn’t even paying a living wage.

I came to Myanmar because, if our worst fears were coming to pass, I thought its journalists might have something to teach me.

If I had come to Myanmar looking for lessons, Juliana had come hoping to simply grin and bear a consular posting that was not her first choice.

We met on the apps.

“Hi Peidão*”
(*person who farts a lot)

On our first date, over a shared bottle of beer, we lamented the rise of a global far right, and pined for the lost optimism of our youth.

She quoted Gramsci and Marx, and I pretended to have read them. I rushed the bill as soon as the beer finished, nervous about showing my ignorance.

On our next date, we both confessed we’d wanted to order another bottle that night.

Juliana lived alone in an airy, three-bedroom apartment paid for by her country’s foreign service.

I lived downtown with a 6’3″ Brit who taught English three days a week and spent the other four ranking his all-time favorite black metal albums in YouTube videos.

We stayed mostly at hers.

Despite the deteriorating press situation, it seemed like a time of great hope.

On May 6th, 2019, after 511 days in the country’s infamous Insein Prison, Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo were released.

“I can’t wait to go to my newsroom now. I am a journalist. I am going to continue.”

And in 2020, nationwide elections were deemed fair and credible by foreign and domestic observers.

It felt like a tide was shifting, in Myanmar and the US.

Juliana’s lease was coming to an end, and despite the pool and the sleek appliances at her compound, the thrill of downtown still pulled at me.

We found a secret palace hidden amid the shambles of the historic Muslim quarter…

…where sunsets poured bronze light through the kitchen window and the muezzin call would metronome our days.

We were giddy…

…and in love.

“Baby there’s room in here… just enough for two in here. Baby there’s…”

Breaking News: Myanmar leader is detained amid coup. Military declares state of emergency.”

On February 1st, we were inundated with links. The coup had been unintentionally livestreamed and went viral.

“Have you seen this?”
“Wait… what?”

“She was just filming a workout video.”
“STOP.”
“And there’s THE COUP right behind her!”

Together we watched the dozens of videos — from all corners of the internet — superimposing the infamous Myanmar Coup Dancer over history.

After the coup, at precisely 8pm each night, seemingly everyone in Yangon stepped outside and slammed together pots or pans — any blunt objects close at hand — an ancient means of warding off evil, now a sign of resistance to military rule.

The protests were joyful at first.

Signs: “My ex is bad but Myanmar military is worse.” “Ah shit here we go again.”

Until…

“Weeks of relatively peaceful protests turned deadly on Feb. 20th when two unarmed protesters were killed by security forces in the city of…”

The military began raiding newsrooms.

Including my former employer, the investigative news site Myanmar Now, among the country’s most staunchly anti-militarist outlets.

Our Western friends were leaving.

“Can we help Lorcan give away his books?”

We considered doing the same.

“We can fly to Detroit, stay with my parents for a bit, and then road trip out to California.”
“I get to meet the family Peidões?”

One night in April, just after 8pm.

An eerie hush settled over our street.

“Danny! Get back!”

A soldier’s flashlight flooded our apartment.

I booked a ticket to Detroit.

Text to Consular Official: “Hi, my name is Danny Fenster. I’m an American journalist working for Frontier Myanmar. I’m sure I don’t have anything to worry about, but I did use to work at Myanmar Now, and I’m going to be flying out of Yangon on May 24th. I just wanted to let you know in case there was any cause for concern.”

“Hi Danny, thanks for letting us know. We don’t have any indication that there’s reason to worry,
You’ve given them ten days’ notice so you should be fine.”

Text to Juliana from the airport:
“lol these covid outfits
got a pic w the ipad will send later
can’t send pics with the burner phone”

Texts from Juliana:
“can’t wait to see it
miss you”

“Ahem… Could DANIEL JACOB FENSTER please report to the…”

“Daniel Jacob? We have a few questions for you, related to…

…an ongoing criminal investigation.”

Text to Juliana: “babe not joking call the embassy.”

PEN America Demands Myanmar Release US Journalist Danny Fenster
“Managing editor of one of the few independent news outlets was detained while attempting to board a flight out of the country
Some 4,000 other people have been detained by the authorities in recent months…”

The Washington Post
Democracy Dies in Darkness
Asia & Pacific
“American journalist is detained by Myanmar regime while trying to leave country
Fenster, 37, is the fourth foreign journalist detained in Myanmar since the military seized power in a coup in February.
The military government routinely publishes lists of “wanted” journalists, accusing them of affecting “state stability,” and has detained more than 70 journalists in total, according to media watchdogs.”

Committee to Protect Journalists
“Myanmar arrests US editor Danny Fenster at Yangon airport
Myanmar authorities must immediately and unconditionally release Frontier Myanmar managing editor Danny Fenster and allow him to travel freely outside the” (text is cut off)

The Guardian
“US journalist detained in Myanmar while boarding flight home
Family of Danny Fenster voice concern for his welfare after he was held by authorities in Yangon international airport”

They’d taken my electronics and my books.

“Noon. Quiet Hour.” <click, lock>

Yet somehow, they’d missed the sepia notebook I’d been keeping since January.

The hardest thing in those initial days was the boredom. I had no news of the outside world to distract me. Nothing to fix my attention on.

So l scribbled to myself.

“FRIDAY, 1pm
Afternoons are the worst. Right now it’s 1pm and I’m locked in my cell for ‘nap time.’ Every day from noon to 1:30pm
it’s quiet hour. We have to go lie down in bed and be quiet, which is actually quite fine by me. I try not to sleep so l’ll be more tired at night. It’s hard enough to fall asleep: they make us sleep with the light on, on top of a wooden pallet with a couple of blankets for padding. And then there are the mosquitoes biting and the ants…”

I noted the endless rain…

“Sheets of rain pouring down outside these bars, out into the yard, the pool that was a garden yesterday — filling the stone basin and my drinking water jar”

…and my insect companions,

“Drifting always to the corner, its legs splayed akimbo, forming an X with its limp antennae, legs dangling, at ease, any tensions having fled, it looks like underneath, on its insect face, it must be smiling at its oblivion, although of course it may have died in a drowning suffocating panic, but now it’s free.”

…my small victories,

“‘Tidied’ after interrogations today. Dirty laundry bag, hung shirts, turned clean clothes into a sweatpant-leg pillow.”

…and my mounting dread.

“2 sachets of coffee left, no toothpaste. Gotta wash some clothes soon.”

And then one day…

Juliana’s package was my first indication that anyone knew where I was. It had taken several days to pass inspection.

I’d heard there were books too, but the prison translator had to first certify that they contained no political content.

Journal entry: “Just reflecting on how brilliant my wife is. She near telepathically included just about every essential item I’d been wanting. And she included a (new?) air-tight tupperware container, to keep the bugs out. Most of this she must have intuited. I also imagine her asking coworkers etc., ‘What to pack into a prisoners parcel.’”

The days passed…

punctuated by the same routines,

and occasional gifts.

(And then one day:)

Letter from Juliana:
“Yangon, June 2nd, 2021.
Danny, babe.
You have no idea how much I miss you. I want you to know that everything is fine. Rose and Bud are well and healthy. Bryan is being a true warrior and is doing everything he can from the States. I am also doing the best I can in here.
I spent the last nights alone at our apartment, looking around. It hasn’t been long that we have moved in, but I feel like we have lived here for years. I LOVE this place. I love the beams on the ceiling, the open kitchen. I absolutely love the office — I have sat there a few times to talk to your family, with the fan on my face, and I understand why you like that spot so much. There was a power cut the other day — 4 hours in the heat — I think this is one of those things about living the full Myanmar experience. I saw a gecko two nights ago in our bedroom. I am 99% sure there is a rat in the kitchen (I know I have said that before, but now the noise is more constant. I have to record it for you). I am also observing the pigeons for you. I think there are less birds on our windowsill though — they might’ve heard that you were travelling on holidays. I don’t go to the balcony in the mornings so often anymore, but I always go there in the afternoon. I have this image of you coming back home in the beginning of the evenings, so I go there every now and then and wait. I see the men going to the mosque for the afternoon prayers, the sandals — dozens of them! — aligned by the entrance. Everything and everyone so alive. Life passing busy as usual while we wait for good news, while I wait for you.
Every single thing at this apartment reminds me of you, of this chapter of our lives. I love you so much.
Please promise me that you’ll be strong. I’m trying my best on my side, and I’m doing alright, I promise. A tiny bit of craziness, but I think it will add to my charm.
Love you, peidão! I love you more.
Ju.”
After the guards rejected my third attempt at official correspondence with Juliana, rumor spread of a pending deal: two members of an armed ethnic insurgency in my ward would soon be released.

I abandoned my written detente with the prison censors and scribbled out a long rambling note to Juliana.

“Also what’s going on in int’l news? In the US?
Any big stories?

P.S. plz send me some pictures of you!
Things: fucking cashews!
P.S. — Some additional books, if you can find them! “What Is History” and “Homo Deus.” The first is at Dom’s & the second is either also at Dom’s or at your place. Also, “This Thing of Darkness,” or something like that, is a book Lorcan gave me before he left. I think it’s in that suitcase he gave me. These would be good ones. Do you think the US embassy has “Grapes of Wrath”?
Being able to listen to podcasts and my own music would make all of this infinitely more bareable too — podcasts especially. Alas, I’m pretty sure headphones & electronics are banned. (frowny face)
I love you so much.
See you soon. Xoxo, Danny”
The insurgent spoke no English. I willed him to understand me.

“Please, take this to my wife.”

It felt like casting a bottled letter into the ocean.

—

It wasn’t long before the guards found my notebooks. Paper and ink were declared contraband in my ward.

<click, lock>

If I couldn’t record the experience, what did any of it matter?

I was being forced — possibly for the first time since the advent of the iPhone — to sit, for hour after unending hour, from one interminable minute to another, with nothing to occupy my mind.

of all the terror and discomfort l endured in prison, it was this —

boredom

— that nearly broke me.

There was a TV in our ward, but programming was limited, and all of it in Burmese anyway.

A Buddhist monk, one of the only English speakers there, told me they used to watch BBC and Discovery Channel. But on the morning of the coup, the TV signal was cut completely.

When it came back on, only state broadcasts remained.

“That’s how we knew the military had taken back control.”

One day, I noticed a prisoner fiddling with something.

The monk explained that for just a few thousand kyat or a handful of betel nuts, guards brought prisoners USB sticks full of Chinese action movies and Bollywood musicals, or TikTok reels of people being kicked in the nuts. Some even had small MP3 players they listened to illegal music on.

l began scheming immediately.

When I’d packed for Detroit, I’d left on my desk a Zoom H1n recorder with a microSD card inside.

I scavenged the prison ward for paper, and, using a contraband pen, I wrote a note to Juliana describing the recorder’s exact location. I made lists of all the podcasts I wanted to hear.

When another detainee was paroled, I forced the notes on him with another map of the city.

And then I waited.

…

“Monk?”

“Sit.

Focus your attention on the tip of your nose….

…the sensation going in and out of your nostrils.”

For fifteen minutes, the monk watched me struggle.

It felt impossible.

“Do this upon waking each morning, and for five minutes at the start of each hour, at least for the first few hours of the day…

Then, when this becomes easy, up these hourly intervals to ten minutes, then fifteen.”

Slowly…

…a tolerance for boredom pervaded my waking moments.

I could watch my thoughts

move

from one to the next.

I thought about the circumstances that had brought me to Myanmar. I’d wanted to learn from journalists standing up to unimaginable repression.

But I was also questioning the point of journalism altogether. Our problems did not stem from a scarcity of reliable reporting or facts.

Moving abroad was my last-ditch effort to salvage some meaning from the work, so l might stay at it.

But when I arrived, I mostly felt overwhelmed by Myanmar’s politics, home to more than 20 ethnic armies and several times as many militias even before the coup, each plagued by their own internecine power struggles. I’d felt inexpert and ill-placed.

Who was to be telling the story of this place?

So l’d fallen into the role of editor, helping local writers and reporters tell their own stories to the English-speaking world.

But on my worst days, I still wondered if any of it mattered.

Meanwhile..

Post:
“@amykurzweil

On Monday 5/24, my cousin Danny Fenster was imprisoned by the military in Myanmar for the “crime” of being a journalist. None of us have been able to communicate with him since. Here’s how you can help:

1) Spread the word! Spread the image! Share mine, or draw your own portrait of Danny! Post with the hashtag #BringDannyHome.

2) Sign the petition linked in my profile. We’re calling on the highest levels of office to…”

I’d become a Myanmar story.

(A collage of social media posts featuring art of Danny’s face and the hashtag #BringDannyHome)

One day, in a makeshift military court inside the prison, a sympathetic translator surreptitiously flashed me a screenshot.

“@RELIABLESOURCES CNN
PARENTS OF DETAINED AMERICAN JOURNALIST SPEAK OUT”

Facebook post:
“Bryan Fenster is with Cara Quinn and 2 others
Day 66. An overdue update, and one I wish were more positive. Yesterday morning we learned that Danny had a hearing on Monday, that neither the U.S. Embassy Rangoon, our family, nor his lawyer knew about. He was remanded once again to the prison, and there are still no official charges.”

“Bryan Fenster is with Buddy Fenster and 2 others
Day 92. Another hearing has come and gone, and again we wait. Danny remains in prison..”

“Bryan Fenster is with Ethan Kurzweil and 4 others.
Day 100. Today we hit a painful milestone, it marks the 100th day since my little brother, Danny Fenster, was wrongly detained in Myanmar, apparently, simply for being a journalist. Today, like every day, we are calling on the military in Myanmar to release Danny on humanitarian grounds and allow him to come home to us.”

(A series of comments from social media)

“Dominic Horner
Sending lots of love to you and your family”

“Jane Gleeson
Sending continued prayers and love!”

“Julie Muszynski
I’m so sorry for all of you…”

“Kim Maher
Praying (praying hands emojis)”

“Linda Finkelburg
Stay strong. Your efforts will prevail.”

“Lisa Harris
(praying hands emojis)

“Nathan Maung

(A larger collage of dozens of social media posts featuring art of Danny’s face and the hashtag #BringDannyHome)

On days when the rain let up, I would spend the evening looking out toward what I guessed was my and Juliana’s apartment.

I imagined what she might be doing just then.

If I concentrated hard enough, I thought I could actually communicate with her.

…

“Delivery.”

(A faceless guard hands Danny a care package from Juliana. He opens a bag of coffee to find a hidden note inside one of the packets.)

Note: “Granola bar. TAL. Love you.”

(Danny takes out the box of granola bars, opens it, and dumps the wrapped bars out. He examines and touches each bar, clearly looking for something hidden. He looks dismayed, and then peers inside the empty box to discover a small microSD card taped inside.)

It took several days of begging and bribing before another prisoner was able to help me set the terms of an hourly lease on an MP3 player from one of the other detainees.

I walked as casually as I could back to my cell.

<slide>
(Danny inserts the microSD card into the MP3 player and turns up the volume.)
<click>
<tap tap tap>

“Baby there’s room in here…
Just enough for two in here…”

It was Juliana’s voice.

“Ain’t nobody but you and me in here…”

I replayed it again. And again.

“…yea, what can we do in here…”

“I love you babe. I miss you so so so much.”

Drawing on paper:
“I had no luck with the pictures so I will try again with Amy’s drawing.
I love you babe. So so much.
Stay strong, for me, for us!
LOVE YOU,
Ju”

Somehow, Juliana had also downloaded the entire thirty-year archive of my favorite podcast and stuffed it all on that mircoSD card. As soon as I stopped replaying her singing, I heard another familiar voice…

“From WBEZ Chicago… It’s THIS AMERICAN LIFE. I’m Ira Glass… stay with us…”

For whatever reason (which Juliana would later claim was not intentional), the first episode to play was from 2011, Episode 448:
“Adventure!”

In Act One, an expat Minnesotan named “Luke” gets pulled into a minor street brawl in Shenzhen, China, then flees. A few days later the police come asking questions, and then they lock him up.

“It was, like, a Tuesday I think. I went in, and they’re like, ‘We’ll be back on Friday to let you know what’s going on.’ And honestly, at that time I thought I was going to be released on Friday…

“… I was thinking, OK, three nights, four nights, this is no problem. I’m kind of an adventurous soul. At this point, I’m still fairly calm. Like, well, I’m in a Chinese jail, this is crazy, but what a story.”

“And in the end, how long did you end up staying in this detention center?”

“Eight months…

Eight months.”

“The cell was a rectangle, 10 by 15 feet… During storms, you couldn’t hide from the rain blowing in, so everyone would get drenched…
…up at 7, then breakfast…
…thin rice water broth…
… nap from 11:30 to 1:30…
…The days became all the same — boredom punctuated by the occasional spasm of extreme emotion.”
“In classic adventure stories, like The Odyssey, there isn’t much fun. There’s pain, fear, and death, and occasionally, if you’re lucky…
…small transformations.”

On a Friday afternoon that November, in a military court within the prison compound, I was found guilty of a slew of arcane crimes, including causing offense to the military, and sentenced to eleven years with hard labor.

I was marched to the prison office, stripped of my street clothes and dressed in prison blues.

By the time I made it back to my cell, the others had been locked in for the night. I spent that evening desolate and crying, trying to comprehend the weight of eleven years.

That proved impossible, and so by the morning I’d convinced myself that, actually, I had to be convicted in order to be pardoned.

“Why else would they give you a Covid test?”

Sure enough, on Monday morning, I was awoken earlier than everyone else.

<unlock> “Pack up.”

I never got to say goodbye.

By that evening, Burmese police were handing me over to a scrum of men, including the late Bill Richardson, former New Mexico governor, who’d made a second career negotiating the release of Americans detained abroad. They said they had a chartered jet taxing outside for me.

It had been six months.

Foreigners not deported directly from prison had to book tickets ten days before their departure so the government could monitor comings and goings.

Danny on phone: “Hey babe… Oh, nothing much… What’s new with you?”

November 15th, 2021: Juliana booked her ticket that night.

I thought I’d gone to Myanmar to learn how to defeat dictators, but Burmese journalists knew all along that such defeats are never final.

“The New York Times
U.S. Journalist Danny Fenster Is Freed From Myanmar Prison
The release was a rare positive development in the country, which has been torn by violence since a February coup.”

“The Detroit Jewish News
Home Free: After Six Months in a Myanmar Prison, Journalist is with His Family in Huntington Woods”

“Deadline Detroit
With Hugs And A Haircut, Danny Fenster Readjusts In A Familiar Home Near Detroit – His Family’s”

“MICHIGAN
Fenster after being freed from Myanmar: ‘I’m really happy to be on my way home’
Detroit News staff and wire reports”

“BBC
Danny Fenster: US journalist freed from Myanmar jail”

The lesson is to keep reporting anyway..

“Bryan Fenster is with Amy Kurzweil and 4 others.
November 17, 2021
Day 178. Home Sweet Home. #BringDannyHome”

to record for tomorrow…

…the stories that today’s victors would prefer we forget.

“Hey Dan?
Can you baste the turkey? I’m going to spin class.”
“OK.”
“And the Rubins are downstairs – they want to say hi.
The Detroit Jewish News will stop by at 4. They just want a picture, then they’ll leave us alone.”
“OK, Ma—”
“What time does she land?”
“Soon.”

Because to suffer sucks, so you simply tell…

“Danny!”
“I can’t believe you’re home!”
“You lost the man bun!”
“You made it!”
“We’re so happy you’re here.”
“Mmmmwah! So handsome!”
“Phew!”

“Hey Dan… Dad’s waiting for ya in the car.”

And sometimes, if you’re lucky…

…you, find, in the telling…

…that suffering transformed.

(Danny and Juliana are reunited at the airport, embracing.)