Saving Fish from Drowning - Heal Burma

AMY TAN
they hung bamboo-lattice hammocks in the trees where they sat and
slept. It was then that the SLORC soldiers came. They could ap­
proach a whole settlement from behind and catch them on the wrong
side of a raging stream, unable to escape except into the water. The
soldiers, some of them boys of only twelve or thirteen, would stand
on the shore, aim their rifles, and laugh when they hit a target and its
arms stopped flailing. Sometimes they would toss in a grenade that
exploded and sent lifeless bodies and fish floating to the top and then
swirling in eddies like lily pads. A few of the people at No Name
Place had lost their entire families this way. It was a miracle and a
misery that the Great God had spared them.
But this was the dry season. This was when the hunter soldiers
were lazy, getting ready for the good times of Independence Day. The
numbers of soldiers had been fewer at this season the year before,
but there was no sure pattern to anything that SLORC did.
Black Spot ran ahead of my friends, as they wearily plodded
onward. Another hundred yards lay in front of them before they
reached No Name Place.
Earlier, while they had rested by the fallen log, Grease had
sprinted up the mountain and into the camp to announce that the
Younger White Brother and his retinue were coming. The inhabi­
tants of No Name Place stood still. This was the miracle they had
prayed for. For three years, they had given offerings that this might
come to pass.
“This is true?” an old grandmother finally said.
“Kill one of the chickens,” Grease said. “They’re expecting a
feast.”
And then the tribe members ran in different directions. There was
barely enough time to ready themselves. Women pulled out their best
clothes, black boxy jackets woven with checkerboards of red and
gold diamonds. The old women dug out of the ground the last of
their silver bangles. Some ladies covered their chests with a profusion
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