Saving Fish from Drowning - Heal Burma

AMY TAN
mostly they disappear when I don’t want them to. But now that the
Younger White Brother has come, he can teach them how to dis­
appear properly. It’s time they learned.
Why am I still here? I have no divine powers. No such thing for me.
I think the Great God kept me so I can watch over Loot and Bootie,
and that is what I do, my eyes never leave them.
He also wanted me to live so I could tell this story. If I didn’t tell it,
who would? And then who would know? I’m past the age when most
are gone, so that’s proof, too, of the Great God’s will. He told me to
bear witness of what I know—just the important parts, and not
about the old girls and how pretty they looked. But that’s what I re­
member, too, that and no sounds. Why no sounds?
The important part I am supposed to tell is everything I didn’t see,
what happened after the river took me away. I now know this: Some
they shot as soon as they came ashore. And others, they tied their
hands behind them, poured hot chilies in their eyes, and covered their
heads with plastic bags, then left them in the sun. They pounded
many with rifles and our own threshing tools. To the rest, who wept,
they shouted, Where are your rifles hidden? Who is the leader of the
Karen army? They took one man and cut off both hands and all his
toes. They dangled the babies to make the fathers talk. But we did
not show them the rifles. No one did. How could we? We had no ri­
fles. So a soldier showed a man his rifle and shot him dead. They shot
all the men who were still living. I cannot tell you what they did to
the babies. Those words won’t come out of my throat. As for the
women and girls, even the ones who were only nine or ten, the sol­
diers kept them for two days. They raped them, the old ones, too, it
didn’t matter how young or old, six men to one girl, all night, all day.
The screams never stopped for those two days. The soldiers called
them pigs, they pierced them like pigs, told them they screamed like
pigs and bled like pigs. With those who tried to fight them off, they
cut off their breasts. Some of the girls died from bleeding. As for the
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