Abdul: Part V
Trip Start
Unknown
1
5
Trip End
Ongoing
Medan, Sumatra, Indonesia
Friday, November 26, 2010
The orangutan died on the floor of the hut. Sara's stomach turned to stone as she watched his eyes slowly glaze over and his breathing grow slow and labored. Then his eyes turned to glass and he was gone.
The German vet, the only one in the area, had come to the Orangutan Protection headquarters immediately to operate, but it was too late. "The pellet tore his aorta," he said. “The damage was too great. There was nothing I could do.”
A flame of anger flared in Sara’s heart. They didn’t have to shoot him. They could have shot into the air to scare him away instead. Or played a xylophone out of key like the owner of the local inn when he wanted to shoo away orangutans who came to pilfer toast and eggs from his guests. Music, badly played, proved to be a strong deterrent to orangutans who wandered out of bounds.
Sara’s anger and despair hardened into resolve. She would continue to research the political and economic issues surrounding palm oil, and to explore and learn about the Indonesian rainforest and its inhabitants. Then she would share this information with as many people as she could.
Aware of herself as a guest in Indonesia, Sara was cautious not to judge people too quickly for their behavior. Like everyone, she was still learning. Yet she felt an urgency that time was running out. She had already seen her own country screw it up badly, and she wanted to stop others from following in the same path. Indonesia’s rainforests, the lungs of the world, were disappearing because of the human desire for convenience. Eventually, everyone on the planet would pay the price.
Aziz focused on the more practical matters at hand. He went to the truck for a shovel and dug a hole under a nearby palm tree. He placed the orangutan in the hole and covered it. The soil was the same color as the orangutan. Sara saw the orangutan’s wizened, winkled face, his closed eyes, the thin line of his mouth, the whiskers on his chin, disappear under the rich orange earth.
* * *
Abdul opened his eyes. His heart leapt at the startling sight before him: a pair of luminous green eyes looking into his own, like a tiger’s flashing. Once, in a distant memory, when he was still attached to his mother’s soft belly, he remembered feeling her sudden panic, the sharp intake of her breath and the tension in her body, at the sight below.
Under the silver moonlight that filtered through the forest canopy glowed a pair of fierce green eyes. They had looked up at him and his mother, found them unerringly in the dark. His mother stopped breathing; she didn’t move a muscle. The tiger’s whiskers glowed white. She licked her lips and stared at them a long time. Then she turned, her stripes of brilliant orange, a color like his own, burning bright. Muscles rippled in her slender haunches as she slipped silently between the trees.
When she had disappeared into the darkness, she gave a roar so fearful that his mother’s body—the entire forest around them—trembled with its power. Hers was infinitely more powerful than the growl of the tree-eating machines that came later, though the machines were far more dangerous. But most dangerous of all were the orang. In their hands, the machines had the power to kill all. He knew that now.
But these eyes were soft. They blinked. A sharp pain twisted though his stomach. He remembered he had been eating the delicious new fruit with the heavenly scent.
“Durian,” the orang said. Her mane of banana colored hair hung around her face, sticking to her skin in the heat of the newly fallen night. Besides the strange tiger eyes and protruding nose, she had a nice face. It had wrinkles in it, beautiful wrinkles, like his mother’s. The image of his mother peered at him, as if a window had opened in the sky. Even further beyond, the smooth brown face of the young girl who had held his hand through the bars of his cage.
He liked girls. Yes, Abdul liked girls.
The sound of purring enveloped him, rocked his body gently. Outside, the dark forms of haunted trees held their arms out to him, yearning to hold him again. The trees were frightened. They did not have much time left.
Abdul yawned. He was cradled in sleep, but too curious to let go. He wanted to know what would happen next.
The woman was holding a silver box. It gave forth a silvery beam of moonlight that shone on her face. She was looking into it. Then she turned her eyes to him.
“Abdul,” she said. She showed him the box, and he took it and held it. The box held a picture of an orangutan with a round face, small but shining eyes, and a wide smile. His arm dangled in a comely fashion as he hung off the tree.
Suddenly, another memory cut through the mist of encroaching sleep. The green eyes belonged to the orang with the banana colored hair that smelled like a flower.
“Abdul,” she said again, and this time he recognized himself. Rather handsome, he had to admit. And though his stomach hurt so badly and he regretted eating that fruit, the corners of his lips went up. He felt happy. A part of himself lived in the box.
A man’s voice murmured in the background. “I think he could make it,” he said. “It’s too soon to tell. But if he doesn’t stop clowning around and touching people, it will get him in the end. It is much, much safer for him to be afraid of people. Very afraid.”
Abdul didn’t understand what the man said, but the voice comforted him. He knew he wasn’t alone, even though he often liked it that way, just him and the forest for company. He closed his eyes, and in his dreams he was transported back to his home among the trees, back to where fruits and flowers grew, birds sang and tigers roared, and he once lived in peace with his mother.
* * *
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