Saving Fish from Drowning - Heal Burma

AMY TAN
the mask of a martyr with a grimace of agony. He pictured himself
scaling temples and throwing bricks on advancing soldiers of the
regime. One day he would return to Burma and save his people. He
would make them invisible.
In the meantime, he practiced new card tricks and surfed the In­
ternet. Out of curiosity, he searched for references to “Younger
White Brother.” He was surprised to find mention of it in several
websites as a myth among the Karen hill tribes. He thought that
what those people believed was weird, but this was weirder than that.
It said the Younger White Brother would bring back the Lost Impor­
tant Writings and end their suffering. He did more searches and
found an article that was part of an unpublished memoir by the wife
of a captain with the Raj. In lively prose, she recounted meeting an
Englishman in “the wild part of the jungle inhabited by the Karen
hill-tribe.” He called himself a lord. But she could see he had “the mis­
taken arrogance of one raised to peerage, not through merit, but with
filthy lucre.” The hill-tribe people, she said, being isolated from the
modern world, believed this Englishman was the “fabled Younger
White Brother.” He went by the odd Christian name of Seraphineas,
and he fathered many children with his two dozen “perpetual virgins.”
Rupert spent most of the night searching like a dog on a scent trail
until he found a clue that made him shiver. His favorite book, The
Expert at the Card Table, was at one time called Artifice, Ruse, and
Subterfuge at the Card Table, and the author was S. W. Erdnase,
which was “E. S. Andrews” in reverse. I am not suggesting that Ru­
pert is indeed the Reincarnated One, as the Karen hill tribe called
him. I will simply remind you of Rupert’s own words: In magical
lands, magic can happen. But only if we believe. Rupert believed.
W ENDY AND W YAT T were no longer a couple. But you guessed
that already. Wyatt left her for a hero’s welcome in Mayville and
448