The Braindead Megaphone (24 page)

It seems impossible he’s not dead. He looks made of stone, utterly motionless, as impervious to the night as the tree he appears to be part of. Can I see his breath? I can’t. Does his chest expand and contract? It doesn’t, not that I can see.

Because this night was hard for me, part of me expects it was hard for him and won’t be surprised if he stands up and announces he’s quitting.

But then I remember he’s already spent on the order of two hundred nights out here.

I take what I know will be my last look at him, hoping for…I’m not sure what. Some indication that he’s alive, that he’s operating within the same physical constraints as I am: an adjustment of posture, a clearing of the throat, a weary sigh.

Nothing.

I feel, to gravely understate it, the monumental distance between his abilities and mine.

Pilgrims begin arriving. They step to the fence, gape in wonder, dash off along the circular path, chatting loudly, speculating on what he’s doing and why he’s doing it.

In short, a new day begins.

I rejoin Subel at the Committee Tent.

“I salute you,” he says.

“I salute you,” I say.

Both of us are in a state of sleep-deprived paranoia. It has separately occurred to us that the boy must be dead or in a coma. When Subel brought this up last night at the fire, the brother’s only explanation was that since the boy sits leaning slightly forward, if he does die, he’ll topple forward. Subel asks me how long it takes a body to decay. We try to remember: Didn’t Prem tell us that he goes to the ditch every morning and checks to make sure the boy is breathing?

We are relatively sure he did.

The family, Subel tells me, desperate to prove that this is real, is livid with the government and the media for not arranging appropriate scientific tests. They will do anything to help; their only condition is that the boy not be touched, since this would interfere with his meditation.

We experience the deep delight of putting our shoes on again. At one of the stalls, we stop for tea. We have breakfast at another. We are escaped from the boy, from his asceticism, like guilty holidaymakers, lowering ourselves back into the deliriously physical, the realm where any discomfort is instantly reckoned with.

We drive back to Birgunj. Subel is thoughtful: He came out here doubting this boy, he says, but now thinks there is something there, the boy seems to have some power….

An early-morning fog is on everything. In the heavy traffic, we have several gravel-crunching close calls. But soon enough, we’re sleeping through even these.

Back at the hotel, under every blanket I can find, including the reclaimed emergency blanket, I sleep all afternoon, a deep, dream-drenched sleep: more O’Keeffe flowers; more secret communiqués from the boy; finally, a series of impossibly detailed
tangka
-like patterns in reds and yellows, constituting themselves into being from right to left. The patterns are intricate, encoded, terrifying in their complexity, full of love and challenge and cocky intelligence, beautiful and original in ways I wouldn’t have believed possible if I weren’t seeing it right in front of me, with my own eyes.

EPILOGUE: WHEREVER YOU ARE, I WISH YOU WELL

Two months later, on March 11, 2006, I get an e-mail from Subel: “A very bad thing has happened. The Buddha Boy suddenly vanished last night. He is not there anymore. There are so many reports and stories, but nothing is certain. He might have shifted to another location, but no one knows. The Committee has no idea where he might have gone. They have denied the possibility that he has been abducted. They are all, including the police and the local administration, looking for the boy.”

I’m kind of blown away by this. It occurs to me that I’ve developed a faith in this boy, a confidence that, years from now, he’ll have just finished his sitting, and I’ll be able to come back to Nepal and ask him what he learned, what I should do, what we all should do, based on what he’s learned.

Over the next week, more rumors: The fence was cut. His clothes were left under the tree. He was seen by a villager, walking slowly into the jungle. The boy turned, placed his hands together in greeting, continued. Hundreds of people were out searching for him but had so far found nothing.

Then, on March 20, the BBC reported that the boy had briefly reappeared for a secret meeting with the Chairman of the Village Committee. He said he was going into hiding and would reappear again in six years. He asked that monks perform purification prayers at the spot of his meditation. He was quoted as saying, “I left because there is no peace here. Tell my parents not to worry.”

So it’s a mystery, even more than it was a mystery before, when it was already pretty damn mysterious.

But I imagine him the night of his escape, making his way through the woods in the moonlight, weak on his feet from months of fasting and sitting, his eyes really open for the first time since May. The world, the beautiful world, is fleeing past, and he’s seeing it in a way we can’t imagine. He’s come so far and is desperate to get somewhere beyond the reach of the world, so he can finish what he’s started.

He hasn’t eaten in months, and isn’t hungry.

A PRESS RELEASE FROM PRKA

Now it can be told.

Last Thursday, my organization, People Reluctant To Kill For An Abstraction (PRKA), orchestrated an overwhelming show of force around the globe.

At precisely nine in the morning, working with focus and stealth, our entire membership succeeded in simultaneously beheading no one. At nine thirty, we embarked upon Phase II, during which our entire membership simultaneously did not force a single man to simulate sex with another man. At ten, Phase III began, during which not a single one of us blew himself/herself up in a crowded public place. No civilians were literally turned inside out via our powerful explosives. No previously funny person was reduced to a baggy pile of bloody leaking flesh, by us, during this Phase of our operation. In addition, at eleven, in Phase IV, zero (0) planes were flown into buildings.

All of this was accomplished so surreptitiously, it attracted little public notice.

During Phase V, just after lunch, while continuing to avoid the activities listed above, we were able to avoid bulldozing a single home. Furthermore, we set, on roads in every city, in every nation in the world, a total of zero (0) roadside bombs, which, not being there, did not subsequently explode, killing/maiming a total of nobody. No bombs, cluster bombs, or rockets were launched into crowded civilian neighborhoods, from which, it was observed, no post-bomb sickening momentary silences could be heard. These silences were, in all cases, followed by no unimaginable, grief-stricken bellows of rage and loss. No sleeping babies were awakened from sleep by the sudden collapse and/or bursting into flame of his/ her domicile, followed by the tortured screams of his/her family members, during Phase V.

In the early afternoon (Phase VI), our membership focused on using zero (0) trained dogs to bite/terrorize naked prisoners. In addition, no stun guns, rubber batons, rubber bullets, tear gas, or real bullets were used, by our membership, on any individual, anywhere in the world. No one was forced to don a hood. No teeth were pulled in darkened rooms. Drills were not used on human flesh, nor were whips or flames. No one was reduced to hysterical tears via a series of blows to the head or body, by us. Our membership, while casting no racial or ethnic aspersions, skillfully continued not to rape, gang-rape, or sexually assault a single person. On the contrary, during this afternoon phase, many of our membership engaged in tender loving sexual acts, flirted happily, and even consoled, in a nonsexual way, individuals to whom they were attracted, putting aside their sexual feelings out of a sudden welling of empathy.

As night fell, our membership harbored no secret feelings of rage or hatred or, if they did, prayed, meditated, or discussed these feelings with a friend, until such time as the feelings abated, or were understood to be symptomatic of some deeper sadness, at which time they made silent promises to continue to struggle with these feelings.

It should be noted that, in addition to the above-listed and planned activities completed by our members, a number of unplanned activities were completed, by part-time members, or even nonmembers.

In Chitral, Pakistan, for example, a new Al Qaeda recruit remembered an elderly American woman who had once made him laugh with a snide remark about an ugly lampshade, and the way that, as she made the remark, she touched his arm, like a mother. In Gaza, an Israeli soldier and a young Palestinian exchanged a brief look of mutual shame. In London, a bitter homophobic grandfather whose grocery bag broke open gave a loaf of very nice bread to a balding gay man who stopped to help him. A stooped toothless woman in Tokyo pounded her head with her hands, tired beyond belief of her lifelong feelings of anger and negativity, and silently prayed that her heart would somehow miraculously be opened before it was too late. In Syracuse, New York, holding the broken body of his kitten, a man wept.

Who are we? A word about our membership.

Since the world began, we have gone about our work quietly, resisting the urge to generalize, insisting upon valuing the individual over the group, the actual over the conceptual, the inherent sweetness of a peaceful moment over the theoretically peaceful future supposedly to be obtained via murder or massacre. Many of us have trouble sleeping, and lie awake at night, worrying about something catastrophic befalling someone we love. We rise in the morning with no plans to convert anyone via beating, humiliation, murder, or invasion. To tell the truth, we are tired. We work. We would just like some peace and quiet. When wrong, we think about it awhile, then apologize. We stand under awnings during urban thunderstorms, moved to thoughtfulness by the beautiful, troubled, umbrella-tinged faces rushing by. In moments of crisis, we pat one another awkwardly on the back, mumbling shy truisms. Rushing to an appointment, remembering a friend who has passed away, our eyes well with tears and we think: Well, my God, I was lucky just to have known him.

This is us. This is who we are. This is PRKA. To those who would oppose us, I would simply say: We are many. We are worldwide. We, in fact, outnumber you. Though you are louder, though you create a momentary ripple on the water of life, we will endure, and prevail.

Join us.

Resistance is futile.

I’m opposed to long gushy Acknowledgments. But life is short, and the older I get, the more grateful I am. So here goes:

I’d like to thank Geoffrey Kloske, the great Sean McDonald (the quiet master of the Excellent Counsel, an untiring advocate for my writing), Larissa Dooley, Heather Connor, Craig Burke, Benjamin Gibson, Rodrigo Corral, Michael Schmelling, Jennifer Eck, Kimberly Johnson, and everybody else at Riverhead Books, which is the literary home I dreamed of long ago when I started writing; At ICM: the great Esther Newberg, Josie Freedman, Chris Earle, Liz Farrell, Kari Stuart, Michael McCarthy, Buddy Thomas, and Kate Jones, who represent me as if they were me, if I were better at math and not such a pushover; David Remnick, Deborah Treisman, Susan Morrison, Rhonda Sherman, and my whole beloved extended family at the
New Yorker
; Jim Nelson, Andy Ward (my guide through the travel pieces, a phenom of generosity and positive vision), Ben Phelan, Greg Veis, Raha Naddaf, and everyone at
GQ
for making the last two years such a surprise and a delight; thanks to Caitlin Saunders for the author photo; all of the great people at Bloomsbury: Alexandra Pringle, Mike Jones, and Anya Rosenberg; Merope Mills and Bob Granleese and everyone at the
Guardian
; Meghan O’Rourke at
Slate
; the generous people, too many to name here, who helped me on my
GQ
trips, especially: (in Nepal) the wonderful Subel Bhandari and (along the Mexican border): Katie Founds, Dan Garibay, John and Abby Garland, Karen Spicher, Melissa Barkin, the “Rodriguez family” (you know who you are), Lupe Aguilar, Sam Tyx, Cynta de Narvaez, and the Minutemen, especially Al.

I’d also like to thank my colleagues and students (past, current, and future) in the Syracuse University Creative Writing Program: the greatest place to teach in the world, in no small part because of the unfailing support of the College of Arts and Sciences and our Dean, Cathryn Newton.

Also, I would like to thank the MacArthur Foundation, the Guggenheim Foundation, and the Lannan Foundation: it would be impossible to overstate how much your generous support has meant to me and my family.

On the personal front, I’d like to acknowledge and thank my sisters Nancy (who did such a great thing for NM) and Jane (my funny pal, aka Hane, who is very sentimental, and is probably crying right now as she reads this); Joe and Sheri Lindbloom, who did so much to teach me early on that ideas mattered, and especially my grandmother Marie Saunders, who has been, since my earliest memory, a model of loving kindness. I’d also like to thank my best friend, Pat Pacino. We’ve debated and discussed and developed many of the ideas in this book over the years, in various places and contexts, and I’m grateful to have such a dedicated, brilliant friend. Let us chicken-walk together, vigorously debating, to the grave, but not yet.

Finally, unending thanks to Paula, Caitlin, and Alena, who not only encouraged me to do the trips described in this book, but in one case even
forced
me (thanks, Alena), then listened lovingly to my incoherent ramblings afterward. These were beautiful, life-changing experiences that wouldn’t have been anywhere near as wonderful if I hadn’t known that the three of you were waiting for me at home, rooting for me.

And although I’ve thanked you above, and because I could never thank you enough: Paula, Paula, Paula. Odd to thank the air one breathes, but crazy not to.