Saving Fish From Drowning (60 page)

When the series got under way, predictions were fulfilled. The TV

ratings went sky-high in just the first two weeks—number one among reality shows airing in the United States on Thursday during prime time. The ratings dipped a bit the third week, but were revived when two guests on the show, Mark Moffett and Heidi Stark, revealed they had discovered a new species of plant.

During that episode, Moff recounted the thrilling moment that he, or rather, Heidi and he, discovered and prepared the specimen in 4 3 5

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its habitat and documented its secret location. The rare plant had a bulbous shape on top, like “W. C. Fields’s proboscis,” as he circumspectly described it for general audiences, right before the shocking image was flashed on screen. A botanist at the California Academy of Sciences had already confirmed that the plant was not in the taxonomy, and he coauthored a paper with Moff, which was sent to a respected journal for peer review. After the paper was published, Moff said, the plant would officially be known as
Balanophora moffettorum
, named after both Heidi and him, who were soon going to marry. Moff proudly published a scientific article in
Weird Plant
Morphology
, and
Weekly World News
did a huge spread on the discovery, complete with testimony from happy middle-aged women.

The episode of
Junglemaniacs!
on which Moff and Heidi appeared was widely watched; the night before it aired, they had been on
Late Show with David Letterman
. Letterman had started the interview by remarking that Moff and Heidi looked positively “radiant.” He leaned in close, as a confidant might. “Could it be the aphrodisiac plant you’ve just discovered?” Moff laughed and said there was no scientific evidence that the plant had any effects on libido, performance, or stamina. But a bit of probing from Letterman led him to divulge that some people, in service to science, had bravely subjected themselves to experiments over a period of two months. The “empirical findings” were merely anecdotal, hardly scientific; however, they suggested—did not
prove
, mind you—that consumers could enhance and maintain “reproductive-oriented activity” for days, and most interesting of all, the plant was equally effective for women, if not more so. Headlines in the media ran the gamut from “Women Say: It’s About Time” to “Church Leaders Fear Rise in Infidelity.” To assess potential medical benefits, a start-up was formed with venture capitalists, and some of the profits were promised to the tribe. “God is great,” chanted the twins. “It’s a miracle,” cried their grandmother.

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Ratings for
Junglemaniacs!
rose again, although not quite so spectacularly, when botanists who went to study
Balanophora
in its native habitat stumbled across a new species of sweet wormwood that contained the compound artemisinin in highly concentrated amounts
.
They had chanced upon two old tribal ladies giving the medicine to the show’s Burmese boom operator, who had contracted malaria and lay in a sweaty, senseless heap. Days later, the boom operator was practically swinging on vines through the jungle. This newfound wormwood, the initial findings showed, was a highly effective antimalarial, possibly up to a hundred times more potent than the plants that were being cultivated in other parts of Asia to provide antimalarial compounds. Amazing to tell, this species was also effective against drug-resistant cases. What’s more, it grew faster, maturing in nine months instead of eighteen. And in contrast to related and less effective species, it did not require much sun, filtered or low light being sufficient, or perhaps even necessary, and a good soak from a monsoon every now and then was beneficial.

Damp rainforests, instead of sunny fields, were the best environment for this particular species, ideal for rampant growth in the millions of acres of uncultivated jungle.

A ready cure! Naturally, people in tropical countries were overjoyed to have a cheap and ready remedy. In Africa alone, three thousand children were dying each day, a million a year. The pharmaceutical companies were the only ones not pleased. No research or complicated extraction process, no clinical trials, no FDA approval required for use in other countries. Just an old Karen grandmother was needed, to show people how to distill the plant into a tea. The Lord’s Army would reap millions, even billions, by selling their supplies to the World Health Organization. “God is great,”

chanted the twins. “It’s a miracle,” cried their grandmother.

The newly renamed State Peace and Innovation Network—

SPIN—took a benevolent interest in the plant. A new law would be 4 3 7

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ruthlessly applied. No more deforestation of teak forests! No more clearance of rainforests for pipelines! No more cutting of trees for heroin cultivation! Those who harmed the environment would be tortured and then executed. Moff commented with a sardonic laugh:

“Where ecological conservation has failed, commerce prevails.”

Happy days and high ratings reigned a bit longer. But if miracles are like rain after a drought, then greed is the flash flood that follows.

Heroin growers and fortune hunters, who had bribed SPIN members, came with AK-47s and shovels. They raped the hills until there was hardly a tendril of
Balanophora
remaining. The military’s consumption of the plant led to a resumption of rape of ethnic tribal women, which some military leaders justified as a natural way to assimilate tribes, for who could wage civil war with a new generation of mixed-blood babies? The junta, declaring the destruction of the plant’s habitat a “mismanagement situation requiring intervention,”

took control of the land, so that damage would not extend to the valuable wormwood. No one was allowed to pick so much as a leaf of the plant, not even the tribe. A small outcry rose from human rights groups around the world. But by then,
Junglemaniacs!
was no longer prime-time but relegated to the less popular seven a.m.

Sunday-morning slot. The SPIN council explained that the Karen tribe had never really
owned
the land. The regime had granted them

“responsible use” of the land, and the tribe surely understood that, since, as all Burmese knew, there was no private land ownership in the country. The land belonged to the people, the junta said, and thus in the interests of all Burmese, the members of the junta had to step in and protect their assets. They felt that the Lord’s Army, being patriotic people, should understand this completely. Some of the military brass met with them to confirm that this was true.

Another month passed, by which time the ratings for
Junglemaniacs!
had plummeted to the depths of a sinkhole. Not even the tragic deaths of a few members of the tribe from untreated malaria 4 3 8

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could resuscitate it. The show was canceled, having never earned a single red cent or Burmese kyat and having spent huge sums on publicity and miscellaneous.

Soon after, the stars of
Junglemaniacs!
disappeared as suddenly as their American guests had on that Christmas morning. Meanwhile, the names of my friends appeared in a few magazine articles—

“What’s In and What’s Out,” “Where Are They Now?” and “Fifteen Seconds.”

A few months after the Lord’s Army dropped from sight, they

resurfaced in a refugee camp on the Thai border. In preparation for death, they had begun their trek to the border in their best clothes, items given to them earlier for use as product placement on the TV

show: T-shirts from Bugger-Off bug spray, jeans from Ripped & Ready, and baseball caps from Global News Network. The grandmothers carried the singing shawls. In doing health checks, doctors in the camp ascertained that the twins Loot and Bootie were not seven- or eight-year-olds, as my friends had thought, but twelve-yearolds stunted by incessant cheroot-smoking. An American psychiatrist visiting the camp diagnosed the twins’ grandmother with posttraumatic stress disorder. Ten to twenty-five percent of the refugees suffered from the disorder, he claimed. In the old woman’s case, it stemmed from having seen one hundred and five members of her village being killed. This, he said, had led to her “magical thinking” that the twins were deities. The twins admitted they had gone along with their grandmother’s “make-believe” stories to keep her happy, and also because they were given as many cheroots to smoke as they wanted.

A few NGOs worked briefly with the tribe to counsel them on

ways they could become self-sufficient. Among the suggestions: creating a business doing satellite-dish installations in remote areas, running a bicycle-generator franchise, or opening an eBay store selling the interesting emerald beetle singing shawls with the “secret 4 3 9

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knots.” Black Spot explained that the tribe’s desire was simply to find a scrap of land where they could plant their crops, preserve their stories, live in harmony, and wait for the Younger White Brother to find them once again.

At the end of the summer, the Thai government decided that not all the Karen people in the many refugee camps were refugees. Those who had not fled from persecution faced no danger and had to go back to Burma. As far as authorities could tell, fifteen hundred fell into this category, including the Lord’s Army, who not only had not been persecuted but had been given star treatment. They were taken to the other side of the border, where a military welcome party was waiting for them. Some feared the regime would retaliate against these runaways, but they need not have worried. Thus far, none of the people deported has been heard to complain, not a single one. In fact, they have not been heard from at all.

While being transported, a terse military report later stated, the hill-tribe insurgents, once known as the Lord’s Army, escaped and then drowned when they foolishly jumped into a swollen river.

My American friends were devastated when the news reached

them, months after the incident. They had not seen one another since their return home, and they called for a reunion. There were hugs and tears all around. What had happened to Black Spot, Grease, Salt, and Fishbones? Where were the cheroot-smoking twins Loot and Bootie and their loony old grandmother? Did they really drown, or had they been shot in the water? Were they alive but now porters, pipeline workers, or land-mine sweepers? Were they in the jungle right this minute, hiding quietly as soldiers walked by, hunting for goats?

With the Mind of Others, I could see where they were. There is a place in the jungle called Somewhere Else, a split that divides Life from Death, and it is darker and deeper than the other ravine. They lie on their mats, all in a row, and they stare at the tree canopy that hides the sky.

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When the sun is gone and there are no stars above, they turn to their memory. They hear a hundred bronze drums, a hundred cow horns, a hundred wood gourds in the shape of frogs. They hear flutes chirp and bells echo. They hear the gurgling brook music any god would love. Together, they sing in perfect harmony: We are together and that is what matters.

LET ME first confess that I was wrong about Heinrich. I had never been able to discern his true feelings. He was a master at subterfuge, and I had made up my mind that there was nothing more I wanted to know about him.

But gossip had it right: He was indeed a former CIA agent. In 1970, he disagreed with U.S. policy on Vietnam, and if you must know, it was the Phoenix Program, when National Liberation Front members were classified as Vietcong and then killed. He left the service a disillusioned idealist, and since his cover had been as hospitality consultant, he saw no reason why he should not continue in that capacity in Bangkok. Oh, and the accent was fake, at least it started off so. He was born in Los Angeles, the land of movie stars, to a Swiss German father and an Austrian mother, and by familial ear he was able to affect the accent, using it so constantly that it was second nature to him, even when he was drunk. The alcoholic stupor, however, was not a cover. Heinrich was a sad and angry man who was happiest when absent from his senses.

What surprised me was his connection to the hill tribe, specifically, the Lord’s Army. He had met Black Spot during the boatman’s many forays bringing in resort guests. In Heinrich, Black Spot found a friend in spirit. He had heard the German utter hateful words about the regime. Eventually, he and Heinrich made a pact, one that Heinrich kept from his own staff. Heinrich would buy supplies for the resort and then—cursed bad luck!—they would be “stolen.” In recent 4 4 1

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times, it was a bicycle and a television set, a satellite dish, a bicycle generator, and car batteries. Food often went missing, especially spices and fermented fish. But Heinrich
never
said that Black Spot could “steal” his satellite phone. And he most certainly never said that Black Spot and his friends should steal his
guests.

Well, looking back, he saw that perhaps he had
inadvertently
said this. He recalled the day Black Spot told him with great excitement that they had found the Younger White Brother. They spoke in Burmese in front of the guests. See him there? The tall young man kicking the caneball? Soon, Black Spot predicted, they would reunite him with his followers up in No Name Place. Heinrich sought to discourage the delusion. The boy was merely an American tourist, he counseled, not a deity. But he did magic with the cards, Black Spot said. Back and forth they tussled over Rupert’s qualifications as god versus tourist. To underscore the futility of getting Rupert to go to No Name Place, Heinrich remarked: “The only chance of that happening is if the whole lot of them agrees to come along for the fun of it.”

And now he recalled Black Spot saying, “Thank you for your

wisdom.”

When the tourists didn’t return on Christmas Day, Heinrich tried not to show that he was concerned. He had to steer the military away from the truth, as well as he could. If the authorities learned they were all in cahoots, that would be a death sentence for the tribe and possibly him. And he had to get that bastard Bailley to stop stirring up the waters. When Black Spot next came to the resort for supplies, Heinrich collared him. The white brothers and sisters are fine, Black Spot assured him. They
love
their Karen people. They said so on their movie camera. And they are very, very comfortable, so this is not a problem at all. They think it is a great adventure to sleep in trees. At each meal, they praise the unusual food, saying they have never eaten so many unknown delicacies and tasty insects. Heinrich was astounded that the tourists believed that cockamamie story 4 4 2