Saving Fish from Drowning - Heal Burma

AMY TAN
that all plans would run as smoothly as the second hand on his
Rolex. The bed seemed awfully hard, but he would sleep well, no
doubt about that. On the plane, he had been forced to stay awake be­
cause there were no electrical outlets for powering up the continuous
positive air pressure machine he used for his obstructive sleep apnea.
He had feared he would fall asleep and snore loudly or, worse, stop
breathing while flying at thirty-nine thousand feet over the Pacific.
With transfers in Seoul, Bangkok, and Kunming, he had gone ages
without sleep, and when the plane touched down in Lijiang, he was
hallucinating that he was back at the San Francisco airport and late
for his departure.
Now that he was safe and sound in the hotel, he slipped the sleep
mask over his face, adjusted the CPAP machine to the high-altitude
setting, cranked the pressure up to fifteen, then lay back with his
head in a horseshoe-shaped neck brace. He silently thanked me for
my wisdom in suggesting that the group sleep in late the first morn­
ing, then leisurely rise to enjoy “A Taste of Winter Delicacies” at a
picturesque local restaurant. I had chosen the menu myself: sautéed
ferns, pine needles in a spicy sauce, north-wind mushrooms with
their tiny caps, cow-liver mushrooms, large and smooth black, oh,
and best of all, a lovely braised white reed whose texture is some­
where between asparagus and endive. Bennie was happy to transition
from sleep to food.
Dwight had other ideas. At seven a.m., he managed to roust Rox­
anne and Heidi, as well as the young and the restless, Rupert, Esmé,
Wyatt, and Wendy. They went jogging through the old town, where
they risked ankle wrenches while dodging Tibetan spaniels and
Pekingese lying on the uneven stone-paved lanes. Rupert and Esmé
zoomed past Dwight. Rupert had the same coloring and features of
the local kids, Dwight noticed. I would say, however, that Rupert’s
height and his earrings, two on the upper part of one ear, were glar­
ing signs that he was not from these parts. But Esmé could easily
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