Saving Fish from Drowning - Heal Burma

AMY TAN
“Why is it such an honor?” Wendy said peevishly. “Not everyone
wants to be an American.”
Although Bennie was annoyed, he laughed. Walter, ever the diplo­
mat, said to Bennie, “Well, I’m flattered that you consider me to be
one of your own.”
On their way out, they passed a pile of shiny carp, the mouths of
the fish still moving. “I thought this was a Buddhist country,” Heidi
said. “I thought they didn’t kill animals.” A few yards to the right
was the bloody carnage of a dead pig. Heidi had glimpsed it and now
would not look that way.
“The butchers and fishermen are usually not Buddhist,” Walter
said. “But even if they are, they approach their fishing with rever­
ence. They scoop up the fish and bring them to shore. They say they
are saving fish from drowning. Unfortunately . . .” He looked down­
ward, like a penitent. “. . . the fish do not recover.”
Saving fish from drowning? Dwight and Harry looked at each
other and guffawed. Was he joking?
Heidi was unable to speak. Did these people actually believe they
were doing a good deed? Why, they had no intention of saving any­
thing! Look at those fish. They were gasping for oxygen, and the sell­
ers who squatted nearby, smoking their cheroots, hardly possessed
the caring demeanor of emergency doctors or hospice workers. “It’s
horrible,” she said at last. “It’s worse than if they just killed them
outright rather than justifying it as an act of kindness.”
“No worse than what we do in other countries,” Dwight said.
“What are you talking about?” Moff said.
“Saving people for their own good,” he replied. “Invading coun­
tries, having them suffer collateral damage, as we call it. Killing them
as an unfortunate consequence of helping them. You know, like
Vietnam, Bosnia.”
“Those aren’t the same thing,” Bennie said. “And what are you
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