Thein Pe Myint (27)

The following text and translation covers page 27 of Thein Pe Myint's short story "ငွေစိန် လှေလှော်ရင်း တက်ကျိုးခြင်း", which I have scanned from page 355 of "ဝတ္ထုတိုပေါင်းချုပ်သစ်" [A new collection of short stories].

Vocabulary:

ညံ့ ။ inferior; poor; not up to standard
မှတ်ကရော့ ။ interjection meaning "let this be a lesson to you"
နှိမ် ။ press down, degrade, belittle
ရေရွတ် ။ to vituperate
အရင်း ။ blood relation
စိရင်ချက် ။ judgement
တရားခံ ။ the accused, defendant, culprit
တရားလို ။ the complainant, plaintiff
ရှေ့ရပ် ။
နှစ်သိမ့် ။ console, comfort
လက်ထိပ် ။ handcuffs
ဆီးကြို ။ to meet or welcome
ကွင်းလုံးကျွတ်လွတ် ။ be acquitted
အသော့ ။ hastily

Translation:

At this time, a customer entered. Therefore, we did not continue speaking. I made as though I was going to leave and Ngwe Sein had the customer select sandals and reached out to me and [said]

“Sir, please stay calm. I am not inferior to them. I joined with people who defeated them and degraded them, of course.”

I wanted to swear “let this be a lesson to you” in my mind. While praying that the ways in which Ngwe Sein joined [with those people] were not intimate ways, I returned home.

In that way, it came to be the day on which the judgement would be passed.

The whole entourage with the defendant, the plaintiff, the lawyer and the ရှေ့ရပ် arrived together at the government court house. Ngwe Sein did not appear. As for me, I was quite worried. In order to happily welcome her husband whom she loved so much when he was going to be freed from handcuffs Ngwe Sein had worked hard to remove any difficulty. Maybe it was [due to] a difficulty that she was not able to remove. As for Htun Khin, he consoled himself that Ngwe Sein could not come due to work being busy. And as much as Ngwe Sein was busy with work, he believed that it was only for Htun Khin.

In accordance with the words with which I welcomed and spoke to them [who were] husband and wife Htun Khin was acquitted. However, poor him, he had to remain in custody from a month before Ko Ibrahim had given the pledge until six months after Ko Ibrahim had withdrawn the pledge.

“Okay, go on to your wife. Later, come and tell me about the matter.”

“Okay, sir. What time and to where should I come, sir.”

“Eh, as for you [who are] husband and wife, my case is not a normal one. Therefore, come at the time and place that you [two] want. And you can come to my house.”

“Okay, sir.”

I looked from behind at the form of him hastily leaving and I saw [him] like a bird that punctured [the sky] and flew off with a ‘waree’ [sound].