There was only one person in the food-stall who knew exactly what that sound was rolling in across the plain, along the silver curve of the Irrawaddy, to the western wall of Mandalay's fort.

What I saw in my great-great-aunt Uma's bedroom remains the most tender, the most moving sight I have ever seen, and from that day when I sat down to write this book--the book my mother never wrote--I knew that it was here that it would end.