Abdul: Part 1
Trip Start
Unknown
1
5
Trip End
Ongoing
Medan, Sumatra, Indonesia
Saturday, September 4, 2010
—Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono,
President of the Republic of Indonesia
The prophets of her dream vanished on awakening. She didn't quite know where she was; the vibrancy of the dream—the trees of many-colored fruits, the animals that could talk, the hut on stilts in the midst of a steaming jungle—still clung to her being like filaments of spider silk.
Sara rubbed her head. The thud of music from the nightclub down the street tore the last strands of the dream away and lay the night bare. Outside the Glass Onion, drunks picked fights with each other and hooted like animals. She tensed up in her bed, waiting for the sound of gunshots. A young girl, only 20, had been shot to death just a month before, trying to break up a fight on the sidewalk. For her good deed, her life had been stolen.
Sara turned and twisted in her bedsheet, trying to get some sleep before the alarm would inevitably ring. But the more she tried to sleep, the more the clock stared at her with its implacable face, arms swinging in circles with increasing speed. 3:00: the drunks, still carousing, eating hot dogs at the roadside carts. 4:00: cars screeching down the road, drag racing in a display of macho bravado. 5:00: a woman sobbing in the next apartment, her husband hurling curses at her.
At 6:00 the sky grew a shade lighter; the birds roused from their nests, chirping sweet songs. Sara groaned. Time to get up for work. Beside her, Gary lay like a lump, blissfully snoring. She looked at him with a sharp pang of jealousy at his peaceful ignorance. Gary could always sleep through anything.
* * *
The branches rustled gently. Large, fat raindrops fell off the edge of the dinner-plate sized leaf, curled in her hand so it made a tube. The cool water moistened her lips and tasted fresh on her tongue. She stirred in her nest. Her baby was firmly latched to her side, legs strong and warm at her belly, holding on with an insistent grip. Slowly she reached out an arm, holding her baby with the other. She pulled the branch toward her to get some of the tasty fruit at the end of it.
At that moment a cracking sound came from below. Something hit her, as small as a wayward honeybee, beneath her heart. But it was not a honeybee. An explosion of warmth burst inside her, flowering crimson in her chest. Her head began to spin, forcing her to let go of the branch. Her hand opened and released the small red fruit she held in her palm; silently, it dropped into the abyss below.
A hornbill croaked from its perch as the air took her. The mottled brown leaves of the forest floor whirled fast in a circle, coming closer and closer. In the middle of the circle was the last thing she saw: the face of a creature that seemed familiar, but dark as an overripe fruit. He was watching, waiting for her to fall.
The last thing she felt was her baby, still holding on securely to her body.
Then, nothing.
* * *
Sara dragged herself out of bed and left the sleeping Gary a snoring lump, out of a job and oblivious to the world. Eyes burning from lack of sleep, she got ready for work and drove downtown to her job as the art director of one of America’s top lifestyle and home décor magazines. The traffic was bottlenecked on the bridge again. Her knuckles turned white on the steering wheel and her heart beat faster as frustration welled up inside her like an unbidden flood.
High up in her glassed-in office with a bird’s eye view of the city, Sara stared into the computer screen, coffee at her elbow. She blinked, heavy-lidded. Yet another empty-eyed model to airbrush. The familiar feeling of restlessness began to creep back into Sara’s veins, made her reach for her coffee. She had studied so long, worked so hard to get this job, the envy of all her friends. Yet now she had got what she wanted, an uneasy feeling of dissatisfaction left her feeling hollow. She wanted more. She couldn’t quite put her finger on what. But she knew it was more than this high-profile job that seemed more glamorous than it actually was. More than the baby Gary wanted so badly but was unable to support. More than a life of the same dull, boring routine day after day that left her feeling empty. It was all so safe. Once she had a baby she would be locked in. There would be no freedom for another 20 years.
* * *
He wouldn’t let go of her. Hands like his mother’s, but smaller and weaker, grasped him around the middle so he could barely breathe. They were pulling him away from her soft, warm body. He cried, not understanding. His mother’s eyes were open but she didn’t look at him. She was looking at the sky. He saw the treetops in her eyes. She didn’t move.
Terror froze his belly. He shrieked as the spidery hands pried him away from the only security he’d ever known, suspending him in midair. He kicked his legs out and found nothing to hold onto. Then the tall brown creature, strangely familiar yet shamefully hairless, clasped him roughly to his side. He clung on to the stiff material that covered the creature’s body, but it was little comfort.
There was a sound, a terrible sound. A snarling roar, like a tiger’s but higher, somehow even more frightening. It grew louder. More of the creatures were on the ground. They held machines in their hands that ate the wood and spat it out. The smell of tree blood was everywhere.
He looked up at the sky. The tree that was his home swayed and groaned. The top, where his nest was with his mother, swayed in the blue sky. Then it went down, crashing into other trees, green arms waving goodbye.
His world was falling down around him. Yet his instincts told him that the ground was a very dangerous place to be.
* * *
Dexterously she scrolled down, clicking hyperlinks with her index finger. She should have been working on the latest photo spread of exotic wood furniture that was all the rage lately. Still, the dream that came in the middle of the night haunted Sara’s thoughts, and she was unable to focus on or tick off any of the countless tasks she had written into her day planner: 1) Airbrush pimples off model’s chin 2) Select photos for furniture spread 3) Direct in-house photography of accent lamps (for living rooms nobody ever lived in). And so on.
Instead Sara wandered aimlessly through the countless hallways and open doors of the Internet, buzzing on coffee and countless random facts. With a click, another door opened; behind it, a photo of a group of children with sweet brown faces and big eyes. Another click: a blond girl swimming with a turtle in a sea of cobalt blue. Sara’s finger paused; she lingered awhile. The site highlighted opportunities to travel and do something good for the planet, like volunteering at an orphanage in Cambodia or helping conserve sea turtles in Thailand. Some of her friends had taken such adventures and returned to their jobs, the envy of the office. Maybe doing the same thing would give her life meaning, a sense of direction. Yet the photos, however vibrant, didn’t quite match what she saw in her dream.
Then, another door. Sara opened it. Her hand froze on the mouse. Maybe it was the soft brown eyes, filled with light and innocence. The comic gentleness of the face. The cute tuft of hair on its head. Something about the photo of that young orangutan instantly captured Sara’s heart.
According to the United Nations, by the year 2020 orangutans would be extinct in the wild due to illegal logging and poaching, the website said. In Sumatra, they were particularly endangered—only about 7,000 were left. Sara had seen documentaries on orangutans in Borneo, but this was a totally different species, rarely on the public radar in North America.
Where was Sumatra anyway?
“Sara. The meeting’s already started and we’ve got a lot to get through today.” The harried editor of American Lifestyle was peeking around the side of her office door, eyebrows furrowed above the metal frames of her glasses.
“Sorry. I’ll be there in a minute.” Sara’s eyes lingered on the picture of the orangutan. When the editor’s face disappeared, she set it as her wallpaper and got up to pour her fourth cup of coffee. She would need it to get through the next few hours.
* * *
The road through the jungle was bumpy and full of potholes. The little orangutan bounced around inside the bars of his cage. His stomach turned violently and his leg hurt from the fall. The smooth metal bars looked like tree branches, but felt cold and leafless. He stuck out his tongue to try one. It tasted a little like the blood that had dried on his lips.
The orangutan felt like throwing up, but there was nothing in his stomach. His throat and mouth were parched and his tongue felt thick. He tried to curl up to sleep, but his mind was whirling and his body hurt too much. Besides, he was curious about what would happen next. If he craned his neck he could see out of the window at the treetops. They were not the treetops of his home. They were a different kind of tree, with branches like the feathers of giant birds, thick with clusters of orange fruit at the top. He wished he could have some, he was so hungry.
Sick and weak in the heat, he gripped the cool bars and rested his head against them. He felt a deep ache. It was the ache of loss.
* * *
“No no no. I want this photo,” the editor said. Tensing her mouth, Sara dropped it in the page layout. The model’s face gazed out from the screen, petulant, because that’s how models are supposed to look. Happy smiles and laughing eyes were definitely not cool. The eyes, smudged with dark grey makeup, looked hollow and hungry, the pout like that of a spoiled child.
Sara’s nimble fingers used the eraser tool to scrub out the three pimples that had appeared like a constellation on the adolescent girl’s chin. God forbid there should be any imperfections. She must be the perfect replica of a skinny heroin addict, minus the bumps, bruises and scars because that wouldn’t be quite so stylish.
As soon as the editor left, Sara clicked on the symbol of the red fox in the upper left corner of her screen. Up popped a new door and she entered, opening more doors and peering inside at the new world that continued to make itself known to her, images of what once was a piece of heaven become a kind of hell: orangutans and tigers languishing in cages, elephants with their legs wrapped in chains; forests burnt or cut to the ground.
Indonesia has among the highest tropical forest loss rates in the world, with no signs of slowing down. At current deforestation rates,, an estimated 98 percent of the country’s rainforests could be gone by 2012. That is roughly the size of six football fields disappearing every minute, every day.
During her student days at art school, Sara and her friends had joined other protesters in blocking the logging roads to Washington’s great redwood forests. With their bodies, they formed a physical barrier against the logging trucks, even chaining themselves to the trees to protect the redwoods—the tallest trees in the world—from being logged and exported to make new houses and furniture. It was all over the news that summer, and Sara got some great photos of the protesters and loggers in an emotional standoff. Later she sold them to the local papers.
Sara was following the example of her parents, who had protested America’s involvement in the Vietnam War in the 1970s. Yet something had happened to them over the years. Her hippie parents, who had once believed so strongly in the fight for peace, were now oblivious to an even graver problem dawning for new generations to come: they were driving not one but two oversized SUVs they didn’t need, adding to the billions of tons of carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere every year. While the world started to cook, they seemed more worried about the return they would make on their latest stock portfolio investments or buying the right shade of tile for their new kitchen floor. When Sara had pointed this out to her mother, she merely replied with a wistful smile: “Oh, darling, you remind me so much of when I was your age. Besides, we do recycle, you know!”
Sara searched herself. She wasn’t sure if she was any better for selling out and promoting a lifestyle that could not be sustainable for much longer. Then a thought came, unbidden: Why not go to Indonesia? Do something to help the orangutans survive. More unbidden thoughts came, not from her mind, but her heart. You could really break free and learn how to live. Not just for a couple of weeks but for however long it takes. Sell all you have and go.
Then the counter thoughts came, this time from her head: What, are you crazy? Fly away—alone—to a country, a culture, you know next to nothing about? Give up your status and everything you have worked so hard for just because you had some crazy dream?
“Cute cover model.”
Sara’s hand flew off the mouse and went to her heart. The in-house photographer was standing over her shoulder, gazing into the computer screen.
“God, don’t scare me like that!” She laughed, out of guilt at being caught slacking off. “Isn’t he cute? Look at those eyes. So human.”
“I’ve always wanted a monkey for a pet,” he said.
“Me too. But actually, I’ve learned that monkeys should never be kept as pets. It supports illegal trafficking of wild animals. Besides, this isn’t a monkey, it’s an orangutan. For an infant orangutan to be kept in captivity, its mother is shot from a tree and killed, and more often than not the baby dies in the fall too. Orangutans are apes, like chimpanzees and gorillas. Did you know that we share 96.4 percent of the same DNA?”
The photographer looked at her with a raised eyebrow and held up his hand to halt the barrage of too much information. “Um. Okay,” he said, and moved away.
Maybe she really was crazy. For a moment Sara forgot her dream and returned to her work on the cover model, adding light to warm up the emptiness of the eyes. All ego where soul should be.
