This new campaign would work very well, the generals and the ministers agreed. Most important to its success was the demonstration that every effort was being made to find the missing people. The tourism office would be in touch with the military police to create a methodical plan. The world would be shown how hard the warm-hearted people of Myanmar were seeking the group’s whereabouts—searching high and low among the two thousand two hundred sacred temples and beautiful stupas of Bagan; in the intriguing monastery outside Mandalay, with its world-astounding collection of Buddhist statues; on a jetty taking in the most scenic part of the Ayeyarwaddy. When the cameras were turned on southern Shan State, where the tourists had last been seen, they would zoom in on photogenic “giraffe-necked” Padaung women in native costume, a dozen choker rings pushing down on their shoulders and giving them that elongated look—all tourists marveled at this. And the ladies, who would have been rehearsed in expressing concern for their foreign friends, would bob their heads gracefully above their ornamented throats as they waved, or rather, wept.
And if the tourists were found to be dead—not that this was likely—it would be explained in an acceptable way, that it was misadventure, for example, that it was the tourists’ own fault, but the good people of Myanmar did not blame them.
The officials with the Ministry of Hotels and Tourism decided to bring in an international public relations expert—not, however, the firm that helped them devise the failed “Visit Myanmar” campaign in 1996, or the one that helped give them their new, friendly name. The ministry found a consulting firm based in Washington with an impressive list of clients: Samuel Doe of Liberia, Saddam Hussein of Iraq, and Rwandan president Juvénal Habyarimana. The consultant would help create a multipoint plan to saturate the news with positive images.
The consultant arrived, and at first, the ministers were skeptical. He was a fairly young man, who smiled all the time, so who could take him seriously? He also made some insulting remarks about their standing in the world. And then he came up with an astonishing suggestion: Plant the words “the new Burma” and associate the phrase with “Myanmar.”
“The situation, as we now know,” the young man said, “that is, from discussions with high-level tour operators in other countries, is one of inadequate understanding of your country and its tourism potential.” He cited research figures showing that upward of ninety-five percent of people polled outside Asia had no idea where Myanmar was. They did not recognize the new name of the capital, Yangon, whereas they still recalled Rangoon.
He went on to point out that such people were, of course, uninformed and behind the times, and thus did not associate Myanmar with the famous glories and beauties of its past, all worthy of many visits and the spending of discretionary income. They did, however, remember the old name, Burma. To Western tourists, “Burma” sounded fun, friendly, and romantic.
One of the ministry staff added, “In that terrible way associated with British colonialism.” They had already spent vast sums to promulgate the idea that “Myanma” had been the first name and a more egalitarian one, whereas “Burma” referred to the Bamar ruling class. Damn those people who said “Myanma” and “Bama” were merely variants of the same word! And it was a lie that most Burmese considered “Myanma” to be associated with the old ruling class. Where were those Burmese liars who said so?
“The research doesn’t lie when it comes to public perception,” the young man said. “That is why I suggest a bold strategy—and that is to go backward to keep step with the backward world perception, and in this way, you can then lead the world forward into the new Myanmar. Start with the tagline: ‘The new Burma is Myanmar.’”
This proposal was met with silence. Everyone glanced about to see how to answer.
But then the senior man who oversaw propaganda nodded with a bland face and said, “It’s unorthodox, yet well reasoned, forward-thinking even. The world is backward, and we must get them to follow us. The new Burma is Myanmar. That is the message. I like it.” Loud bursts of acclaim sounded in the meeting hall. “The new Burma!”
The senior man fell into further contemplation and scratched his chin. “Or did you say, ‘The old Burma is the new Myanmar’?”
Everyone grew silent as the boss thought about this. He nodded. “Yes, that was more the idea.” And the room burst into fervent accord. “The old Burma is the new Myanmar! Excellent! A very wise refinement, sir.”
And thus began a campaign by the military regime to recruit Harry as their spokesman for tourism. And of course, the visas for Mary Ellen and other members of the search party were granted forthright. But you already knew that.
HIGH IN THE RAINFOREST, Marlena, Vera, Heidi, and Moff tended to the sick. Marlena and Vera were in charge of Esmé, Bennie, Wyatt, and Wendy. Heidi cared for Roxanne and Dwight, and Moff hovered over his son. The past few days had shaken them to the depths of their souls. For a while, it seemed impossible that they would be able to provide any relief beyond water, which they poured over their senseless charges to quell the brain-damaging fever. And when their patients’ fever was exchanged for bone-shaking chills, they wrapped their arms around them, and rocked and cried. There was nothing more they could do.
While returning from the loo one day, Heidi caught two old grandmothers feeding Wyatt and Wendy a strong-smelling liquid. One of the women explained matter-of-factly what she was doing, but Heidi understood none of it. The woman drew out some leaves from a pouch, pointed, and smiled, as if to suggest, “See? I told you. It’s only this.”
Heidi inspected the leaves. They were green and feathery, looking very much like parsley or cilantro. She took a leaf to Black Spot and asked him what it was. “It is good,” he said. “A plant, I am knowing the Burmese name, not the English name. But it is medicine for jungle fever.” Heidi next sought Moff, who was sitting quietly next to his son. The boy was unconscious and moaning. She dropped the leaves in his lap. “What do you think this is?”
Moff picked them up, looked at them, with their slim bifurcating stems, then smelled them. “Ah yes, the telltale balsamic fragrance. In the States, you see this growing around garbage dumps and along the sides of roads. Also known as sweet wormwood, Artemisia annua. There are many species of Artemisia, and this one I’ve never seen before, but the leaf structure is characteristic. Grows fast and turns into a plant the shape of a soft-limbed Christmas tree. The fragrance is also typical.” He put a leaf in his mouth and smacked his lips. “And the bitter taste. Where did you find it?”
“One of the old ladies made some kind of concoction and was giving it to Wyatt and Wendy to drink.”
Moff’s eyes lit up. “Brilliant! Dear God, she’s absolutely right. Artemisia annua does have an antibacterial property, maybe even antimalarial. Where is this woman?” He stood up. And then he and Heidi hurried off to find the lady with the herbs.
“ TO DAY, JANUARY FOURTH,” the Myanmar official announced to TV cameras and the crowd at the airport in Mandalay, “the unified people of Myanmar proudly celebrate our Independence Day, our liberation in 1948 from British colonial rule. Today we will feast, hold festivals, pay respects, and give offerings, as well as play music and dance in our native dress. We will visit our holiest of pagodas and our greatest monuments in our beautiful golden land. And today we welcome at the new and modern Mandalay International Airport our honored guests from America, who join with us in looking for their compatriots and family members.”
An interpreter translated the words into English for Mary Ellen Brookhyser Feingold Fong and Dot Fletcher. The two women were staggered by the size of the crowds. Were all these television cameras actually for them? They made Mary Ellen suspicious, but Dot was touched by the outpouring of concern from the Myanmar officials.
“Soon,” the speaker continued, “we hope we will be celebrating the happy whereabouts of your family members, who can resume their visit of our beautiful country.”
Dot Fletcher’s boyfriend was openly impressed. “Can you beat that?
” Gus Larsen said. And Saskia Hawley was happy to see that her two dogs had made it past customs without quarantine or even a glance at their health certificates. “They are search-and-rescue dogs,” she explained to the interpreter, and the deputy minister of information exclaimed, “Search! Yes, we want you to search our lovely countryside. Search everywhere. We will help.” And he pulled out brochures of some of Myanmar’s most scenic spots, at each of which a camera crew was waiting.
14
THE INVENTION OF NOODLES
By the end of the second week in No Name Place, my malaria-stricken friends were somewhat improved, enough to complain about the menu and the mosquitoes. They sat on two logs facing each other across a clearing that was grandly called “the dining room.” Their faces, arms, and legs had been rubbed with termite powder, which Black Spot had given them to prevent mosquito bites. The powder came from a bark or mineral that was also effective against termites, hence the name, or so they thought. It was actually the ground-up bodies of termites. Had they known, they still would have continued to use it. They did not automatically question the advice that the tribe gave them anymore. Every day, at every meal, they drank the wormwood tea.
They also drank the soup that was made especially for their health. A bland rice broth had been suitable when they were finally able to keep down a bit of nourishment. But now their San Franciscan palates were being restored and they yearned for foods with more variety. They did not complain to their jungle hosts—that would have been ungracious—but among themselves they lamented the thrice-daily offerings of rice and the deplorable fermented sauces and dried creatures. They figured the tribe had an underground larder where food supplies rotted to the precise degree of slimy nastiness. They were grateful, however, that there was plenty of food. As they ate, birds cried to one another, shaking the leaves as they fluttered about to claim a branch above potential food droppings. The branch above Bennie made for the best territory, since he often spilled things.
Loot and Bootie were hunched at the edge of the camp smoking cheroots, and the old grandmothers who had given wormwood tea to the sick were happy to see their foreign friends heartily eating the meal they had prepared with American tastes in mind. They kept an eye on the Younger White Brother, who was seated in front of them.
“I wish we had something different to eat for a change,” Bootie heard Rupert grumble.
“Like what?” Esmé said.
“Top Ramen,” he said.
“We don’t have noodles.”
“Then I wish we had noodles.”
A few minutes later, Bootie told Black Spot what the Younger White Brother had said. He nodded. He was on his way into town to get more supplies, the fermented fish and spices the grandmothers had asked for, betel-nut leaves, and cheroots. He would find noodles.
“THIS IS REALLY WEIRD, ” Rupert said that night at dinner. “I was just thinking about noodles, and here they are.”
It was probably one of the tribe’s staples, the others guessed, though it was curious that they hadn’t brought them out earlier. The noodles were delicious. Tonight the vegetables were better, too, fresh bamboo shoots and forest mushrooms. The fermented stuff seemed less rancid, and blessedly, nothing looked black, crispy, or eight-legged.
“Who invented noodles, anyway?” Roxanne said.
Marlena answered brightly: “The Chinese did, of course.”
Moff slapped his forehead. “Oh, of course. It’s always the Chinese influence. For a moment there, I was going to blame the Italians.”
“Marco Polo first ate noodles when he visited China,” Marlena added.
“I saw a movie with Gary Cooper as Marco Polo,” Wyatt said. “He’s talking to this Chinese guy, who’s played by Alan Hale senior and has this big ol’ Fu Manchu moustache and slanted eye makeup. So Marco Polo is eating noodles and he says, ‘Hey, Kemosabe, this stuff is pretty good, what is it?’ And Alan Hale says, ‘Spa-get.’ Ha! Like ‘spaghetti’ is what the Chinese call it. It’s hilarious. Spa-get, like the Chinese invented spa food as well.”
Wendy laughed until Dwight broke in: “Well, there’s another theory that the early ancestors of Italians invented noodles.”
“That’s not what the movie showed,” Wyatt replied.
“I mean it,” Dwight went on. “There are these Etruscan wall paintings that prove that noodles were around in eight hundred B.C., if not earlier. That means noodles are in the genetic heritage of many a modern-day Italian.”
“Excuse me,” Marlena said as evenly as she could. “The Chinese have been eating noodles for over five thousand years.”
“Who says?” Dwight countered. “Did someone unearth a Chinese takeout menu from the Ping-Pong dynasty?” He laughed at his own little joke.
He kept his eyes fixed on Marlena. “We can debate the origins of anything,” he said. “You make the case that all noodles originate from China. And to be fair, I say they likely evolved in different places around the same time, and that it may have been an accident the way they got invented. Doesn’t take much culinary evolution for a cook to run out the door during battle, leave the dough behind, and find it dried hard as rock when he returns. Midafternoon there’s a flash flood and—what do you know?—the dough is soft again. From there it was only a matter of time and refinement before someone discovered that cutting the dough into thin strips made it easier to boil up for a meal on the road. That’s what you might call an evolutionary spandrel, spandrels being the supports when a dome was built that later were used as decorative elements, unrelated to their original use. You create something for one purpose and it gets used for another. So it is with spaghetti, an accident made purposeful. . . .”
Marlena sat in stony silence. Spandrels, schmandrels.
“That’s what we need to find here,” Dwight went on, “if we want to get out of this place. Spandrel ideas. Something that’s here right now, which we can adapt to another purpose. Obvious and right under our nose. Look around at what we have here, think how we might use it. . . .”
Marlena knew she was right about the noodles. Noodles had likely been around since the start of Chinese civilization. She remembered that dumplings had been found in the tombs of emperors, so why not noodles? Both were made of dough. But then she did not know how old the tombs were in which the dumplings were found. What if the tombs were only two thousand years old? She thought about lying, telling Dwight that they were found as artifacts in Stone Age caves, maybe even in the excavation of Peking Man. That would make them six hundred thousand years old.
She wasn’t one to lie; it’s just that she became infuriated whenever someone tried to intimidate her. Inside she was a ball of static, snapping and crackling, but outwardly she presented the look of someone overly familiar with being dominated. This is not to say she acted cowed like the whipped and damned. Her posture remained erect, her neck long and regal. But she didn’t defend herself. She sat like a cat with its ears back, ready to spring at the next provocation. That was what she had done all her life, turned quiet when her father belittled or bullied her, quashing any of her ideas or desires. Later in life, she was able to gain expertise in contemporary art and could exert her opinion among the elitest of the elite in the art world. In that regard, she and I had a lot in common. It was how we met. Like me, Marlena rarely backed down in her ideas about art. She learned that confidence and strong opinions are vital in presenting oneself as a curator of any collection. That manner was a cultivated skill and not part of her psyche, so outside her profession, she reverted to insecurity. I often wished I could give her the umph in triumph. God knows I had plenty left over from the battles I had fought.
I prodded Marlena to stand her ground now, to look Dwight in the eye with a determined scowl to match his and tell him his conjecture was so faulty it did not bear further discussion. “Speak up!” I shouted. “What do you have to lose?” But all I could muster from her was more internal sputtering-muttering.
The only person who had the confidence to argue
with Dwight was his wife, and that was because Roxanne was smarter than he was and knew his specific deficits in logic, facts, and bluffing. Like the bit about spandrels: he was always inserting that term into conversations when he wanted to impress people into silence. They didn’t know what the hell he was talking about, but it sounded conceptual and smart, so they couldn’t counter him. Roxanne could have said in front of the others that the paradigm of spandrels, as the evolutionary biologist Stephen Jay Gould meant it, did not apply to dried-up dough turning into spaghetti. That was adaptation by accident, another form of evolutionary leap. Roxanne, however, never would have pointed this out to others. What—and show her intellectual superiority over Dwight once again? She had learned to not humiliate her husband in public. It was not an act of loyalty. He was insecure enough as it was, and she suffered the consequences. Once attacked, he fought with teeth bared, and if defeated, he would slink away and become remote and insular. She then had to bear the brunt of his wounded pride, his negativity toward everything, his anger beneath the surface. “Nothing’s wrong,” he would say, but the opposite was shown in even the littlest things. He would decline an invitation to go to the movies, telling her he was busy—couldn’t she see that? He would play solitaire on his computer for hours. He rebuffed her, but in ways she could not challenge, leaving her feeling cut off and alone.