February 12, 2008
EXHIBIT C:
THE CONDITIONS OF REFUGEE CAMPS IN WEST RALIA, 3 MONTHS AFTER THE FLOOD
West Ralia, while still mostly governed by various tribal leaders, was a burgeoning economic success story, a dream about to be fulfilled. Then the rains came. It was the first of a series of ecological disasters worthy indeed of the Old Testament. Within a month, more than two-thirds of West Ralia lay underwater.
Three months later it remains there. The surviving population has scattered to the isolated areas of land that still stand above the flood water—small islands crammed with humanity. Pictures of these refugees flooded the media. A great cry arose. The suffering! How could this have happened? First rain flooded West Ralia, then aid packages.But in the tide of current events, the disaster in West Ralia has been swept from our screens, and the aid, unlike the water, is drying up.
Oddly, I discovered on a trip to the floundering nation, the impact of this disinterest has been less than we might expect. West Ralia’s success has always come despite (because of?) a strict aversion to western culture. As I flew in by helicopter, I could see the silver aid bundles glinting like nickel-plated sharks in the water. While some surely fell there, many have simply been thrown.
Upon landing, I was greeted by my guide, Akwan Terra, and he led me towards the camp. A terrible stench emitted from the clustered mass of humanity gathered on the island’s edge. Yet, rather than be confronted by fly-covered natives, rail-bone thin, bellies distended by malnutrition, I was instead greeted by several swarthy men and women giving hearty cheers. Children played. Songs streamed in the air around me.
The source of the stench, Akwan revealed to me, was the tents the West Ralians lived in. These tents were made from the skins of enormous fish that had mysteriously appeared in the wake of the flood. The skin from just one of these fish is enough to produce a tent for one family. Several skins sewn together provide communal spaces, safe from the glare of the sun. The meat is most delicious.
”They are a gift from the Maker to the faithful,” Akwan told me, teeth yellow and twisted in his tan face.
Despite my fellow journalists’ talk of hostility among the West Ralian towards Westerners, I was treated warmly and shown around the—remarkably self-sufficient—community. It was as if I was observing a society with roots as ancient as our own rather than one improvised over the past few months.
The West Ralians were significantly less forthcoming, however, when it came to food. I expressed my interest in trying some of the fish, of which we had not seen any evidence, and I was, in no uncertain terms, refused.
”It is the food of the faithful,” Akwan told me once more.
I assured him that, as a good church-going Christian, I was quite faithful.
He laughed and said words could not prove my faith.
We could find no UN aid packets on the island. I spoke to my cameraman, Jack, and our pilot, and as we had brought only limited supplies, we decided to return to the mainland and return with more.
The helicopter would not work.
The fuel tank was full; the electronics seemed in perfect working order; the engine showed no sign of damage. The rotor blades would not turn. All attempts to start the helicopter were met with failure.
The West Ralians watched us, and we grew angry at them. I asked Akwan over and over again what they had done, why they had done it. I lost my temper in that peculiarly British way which expresses outrage and prompts only amusement.
”You have not proven your faith,” he said.
There was no threat from the West Ralians, merely mild, reserved interest, which, in hindsight, makes our panic seem more absurd. Nothing was as we had expected it, I suppose. We were hungry.
I begged Akwan for some fish.
”You have not proven your faith.”
I recited all the prayers, all the bible passages I could remember, my wedding vows.
”Take this,” Akwan told me, “if you would prove your faith.” He gave me a spear.
I laughed. I thought they were going to fight me. I thought, absurdly, that they were going to kill me.
It was not until the next morning, huddled in the shadow of the useless helicopter, that I realized what the spear was for. We saw West Ralians armed with spears going down to the water to fish.
Jack and I followed, one spear between the two of us. The pilot stayed behind, still convinced he could work out a solution to the problem.
At the beach, we saw the fisherman poised with their spears, but no evidence of the fish. When the fishermen saw us coming, they retreated from where they stood, waist deep in the water, back to the sands. Akwan was not there, and I couldn’t understand what they were telling me. In the end I simply walked down to the cold water.
Jack came to, but refused a spear. He photographed me standing there, spear hoisted in ineffective imitation of the West Ralians. I expected them to laugh at me, but they did not.
The fish took Christian first.
I didn’t see it coming, vast as it was. I simply heard his cry cut off by the splashing, the gurgling, the thrashing of his limbs, so quickly cut off. An instant later the water was still, only a slight red slick showed that he had ever been more than a figment of my sun-scorched imagination.
I made for the beach, a mad splashing, screeching dash. A ripple in the water stopped me. I watched the ebb and flow, my heart beating in my throat, stifling my breath. The true vast nature of the fish became clear. Wider and longer than a crocodile or alligator. It circled me at a distance of ten yards or so, mouth almost upon its own tail. In the shallows its spine-ridged dorsal broke the water, and I saw the tightly locked scales of its enormous back.
I pissed myself in the water.
With a vast contraction of muscle, it came for me. I jabbed desperately, futilely with my spear. Its point glanced off the beast’s tightly knit scales. I dived, not down, but up and away, over the slithering dampness of its constricting back. Its dorsal fin ripped my shirt and chest. I sweated blood. There was a searing pain in my foot, and I looked back in the instant before I hit the water. Its head was free of the water. Its jaw—a yard long at least, slung under the sloping bullet of its cranium—had sheared through my ankle.
Then into the water, into mad breathless confusion, into a tussle of limbs, all confusion, all blurred. I lost track of myself in there, of my place in things. Air and liquid, self and beyond—all was confusion. I was confusion. Water in my nose and mouth and lungs.
And then I breached the surface, hacking, choking, spewing. The spear was still in my hand. The fish bore down on me. I thrust out the spear stupidly, an empty gesture. The point skittered along its scales and then, with a gelatinous squelch, the serrated blade found a purchase in the fish’s eyes.
Momentum carried the beast on. There was a moment of slight resistance, and then my arm, still clutching the weapon, was buried in the purréd gray matter of the thing. The force of its charge barreled me over, dragging me through the water, but its jaw was already slack.
The fishermen dragged me to safety. They bound my leg with some of the skin of the fish. It is healing very well. They have given me a crutch made of its cartilaginous bones. I am quite well.
I have eaten its flesh.
Even now, I am disturbed by the emptiness I felt on that beach. I had proven my faith, and yet what proof was this? What happenstance? What dumb luck? I was filled not with divine power, but with water, and blood, and puke.
I was able to start the helicopter after I had eaten. It would not start for our pilot, but he showed me how to start it for him. He refuses to go to the water himself. And if I start the machine, it will stay working, and he plans to fly away from here soon.
I am sending this story with him. It will be the last I file. I will stay here. When the flesh of my fish runs out, I will return to the water. I shall try to prove my faith once more. Who knows if my luck will hold. But I shall stay, for I have eaten the flesh of the fish, and as its bitter salty taste soaked my tongue and my mouth, I came to know that there is no escape from this. I have seen how it ends. All of it. It’s right in front of me. There is no maybe, no perhaps. This is how things end. This is how things begin.
—From the Long Island Herald, filed by Terry King
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feyrieprincess said,
February 14, 2008 at 11:06 am
Wow. I really enjoyed this.
admin said,
February 17, 2008 at 1:38 pm
Glad you liked it!