Saving Fish from Drowning - Heal Burma

AMY TAN
paid trip might be useful for “discreet information-gathering.” It
could be a humanitarian project, and a necessary one. Wendy might
masquerade as a pleasure-seeker, go along with the happy-go-lucky
tourists, and when the opportunity presented itself, she could talk to
Burmese students, have casual conversations with natives to learn
who among their neighbors, friends, and family members were miss­
ing. Free to Speak might later float her report as a spec piece for The
Nation. But Phil also underscored that she had to be extremely care­
ful. Journalists were prohibited from visiting Burma. If caught rum­
maging around for antigovernment views, they and their informants
would be arrested, possibly tortured, and made to disappear into the
same void into which thousands had gone before them. Worse, the
government there would deny that it detained any political prison­
ers. And there you would be, invisibly imprisoned, forgotten by a
world that had secretly concluded you must have had some degree of
guilt for getting yourself in such a jam. You see what happened to
that American woman in Peru, Phil said.
“Keep the rest of the group ignorant of your activities,” he cau­
tioned Wendy, “and no matter how strongly you feel, don’t engage in
activities that would jeopardize the safety of others. If you’re wor­
ried, I might be able to rearrange my schedule and come with you.
You said there were two tickets, didn’t you?”
Their conversation drifted from lunch into dinner. Phil made sug­
gestive remarks, picking up on the flirtation they had had while
housemates, which Wendy never acted on. She thought he looked
spongy, like a Gumby toy with bendable limbs and no muscle. She
liked hard bodies, tight butts, chiseled jawlines. Bad Boy Scout was
her version of sexy. But the more they talked and drank, the more
impassioned Wendy became about the plight of other people, and
that impassioned sense transformed into sexual passion. She saw
Phil as an unsung hero, a freedom fighter, who would one day be as
admired as Raoul Wallenberg. With these heroics in mind, she let
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