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THEWINNERS PLEASE F o r t h e 6 t h y e a r runn ing , t h e C l in to n St. Q u a r te r ly h a s w o n a h e f t y t h e a w a rd s in t h e S o c ie ty o f P ro fess iona l Jou rna l is ts ’ (S igm a D e re g io n a l c o m p e t i t io n f o r n o n -d a i ly p u b l ic a t io n s . In e a c h ’ y e a r s w e h a v e w o n f irs t p l a c e in t h e Illus tra t ion e x c e p t io n . C SQ w in n e rs f o r 1985: ’RST ILLUSTRATION ILLUSTRATION / s h a re o f , - g m a D e l ta C h i) - in e a c h o f t h e p re v io u s c a te g o ry . This y e a r w a s n o MARLYSTONE HENKPANDER* RICHARDJ. BROWN REEDDARMON LEANNEP n " ^ Cl ^ LIM' . c ^ G Y LINDQUIST DAV IDMILHOLLAND4 STEWARTHOLBROOK KEITHABBOTT -Trr' ' I r r ^ . **«•<<* s HI iwlupiiurd' amiilh-rv miimwi inamnlnn, ...»iu l HIII .1 MIUII dk ilrhvmvkbr ne Ilului naniixl vadin. i hit ihn I tvjMKX'Jlx-ilklnNupamik w mwitlm amsniavU imu mmilhIulHuntnnI Iul Ixximk-nmre. muks*.ikiaMainlIn ilk'Iwaki M some niik'Avarmarriage handwassixteenamiharkii tlunwn UK I werede _^««l b««n s'«mn tltemwltes.i-'|kvialli Iharo I«a»IxvinnniginMi'|kMtlx1 reasonIk-lilt IXX.IUH- my^pe'fawa'i lieinukkti lumllcIm ixilx-m -IIKX Iul Ixvnpradkalh iibcp.irablvMikedx-na* 1 *a s a broc - lourulk-nlk-nkncdinnull IN llu. amlllkfaitiliatIhadlinalhdeckk-dIwasrealk ap u t llu lorallibiiH-k-NX-"amidlline".a-Ik-ahiai'pointedout. I Iul iowrite. Thaw*-- I Iu lbeenMeduplorweek' intheuikldarkcabinmi WwonKn^tetryingto"" nnpeiti' Thek-^s Ihougbwerebecomingmore ; • « moresotuu It seemed they •*” eiyhome I couldnI loretoween. thow<"- "Z ^ q In "‘^ . o,e« n 6" •*„ '"■"^ ”68' *^tn J to "Olo,^. . L i t R DAMMANN DENNISEICHHORN M IM I MADURO winner fo r the Clinton St. Quarterly. '«n- u : ^ e ^ o U s or eight years we've been knocking on your door with pitches from penguins, pooches, our founding fathers and the royal couple. Each was intended to tickle the funny bone on your check writing hand. We've always disliked the "alternative press" hqbit of crying wolf with boring regularity. Consequently, no matter how taut our financial tightrope has stretched, we've tried to keep a sense of humor. You have seen us through quite an evolution, as the CSQ has grown into a major magazine of the West Coast. Recent national recognition has brought in subscribers from the entire U.S. Your gift subscriptions to friends and family around the country will help spread the word about the CSQ. Attractive postcards will be sent to all those on your list. We can only be as good as the support we receive from the community. Your subscription as we wrap up our eighth year would be a major boost. With your vote of confidence the CSQ can continue to grow and prosper, for we have barely tapped the potential that this magazine can achieve. Thank you. Subscriptions are $16 for two years. 1. N A M E ADDRESS C IT Y STATE ZIP 2. N A M E ADDRESS C IT Y STATE ZIP 3. N A M E ADDRESS C IT Y STATE ZIP 4. N A M E ADDRESS C IT Y STATE Z IP ____________________ * AAAIL TO: CSQ, BOX 3588, PORTLAND, OR 97208
Original designs on quality apparel. New Market Village 50 S.W. 2nd Portland 221-0353 wishes to thank all its patrons &musicians for making Key Largo a live music paradise! 31 NORTHWEST FIRST AVE 223-9919 Have you been wanting to see the antique country pine furniture that is in all the major magazines? NOW Country Home Antiques has over 8000 sq. ft. of the finest, affordable antique country furnishings, accessories and country gifts from the countrysides of Denmark, Sweden, Germany and America. STOP BY, You’ll want to see that country home look brought to life in “Country Home’s” new showroom displays. fCOllNTKIllOMEl 7875 S.E. 13TH AVENUE IN OLD SELLWOOD ON ANTIQUE ROW ■ (503 ) 233-5070 ■ HOURS: 11 to 5 P.M., TUESDAY THROUGH SATURDAY 4 Clinton St. Quarterly
VOL 8. NO 4. WINTER 1986 S T A F F ^^o-ed itors David Milholland Lenny Dee Associate Editors Jim Blashfield, Michael Helm Paul Loeb Washington State Coordinator Judy Bevis Art Direction David Milholland Design Tim Braun Guest Designers Candace Bieneman Reed Darmon Cover Preparation Sharon Niemczyk Cover Photographer Bill Bachhuber M Sales—Oregon Dru Duniway, Rhonda Kennedy Ad Sales—Washington Judy Bevis, Deborah Goldhaft Ad Production Coordinator Stacey Fletcher Ad Production Jane Jovett, Joyce Fletcher Liz Towlll Camerawork Tim Braun, Laura Di Trapani Typesetting Archetype, Harrison Typesetting, Inc., Lee Emmett, 4M, Sherry Swain Office Assistant Michele Hall Contributing Artists John Callahan, Margaret Chodos-lnrine Keith Jellum, Stephen Lefiar Bruce McGillivray, Jack McLarty Barbara Sekerka. Carl Smool Contributing Photographer Jorge Garcia intern Lianne Hirabayashi Printing Tualatin-Yamhill Press Thanks Andy Allen, Dave Ball, Rachel Bishop Edward/Natalle Diener, Jeannine Edelblut Steve Hood, William Jamison, Craig Karp Deborah Levin, Peggy Lindquist Theresa Marquez, Melissa Marsland Doug Milholland, Kevin Mulligan Bill Nagel, Jan Micholson Oregon Arts Commission, John Pickett Laura Vemum, John Wanberg The Clinton 500 ON THE COVER Cover—Tom Cramer Artist Cramer lives in Portland where his totems and paintings can be seen at the Jamison- Thomas Gallery. Sketch by Stephen Lefiar. White Stones—Timothy Ryan A visit to Tunisia brings the desert world into new light. The Snap Revolution—James Fenton On the scene in Manila as Marcos falls. Was he tripped or did he pull the strings? The Clinton St. Quarterly is published in both Oregon and Washington editions by CSQ— a project of Out of the Ashes Press. Oregon address: P.O. Box 3588, Portland, OR 97208, (503) 222 6039; Washington Address: 1520 Western Avenue, Seattle, WA 98101, (206)682 2404. Unless otherwise noted, all contents copyright© 1986, Clinton St. Quarterly. E D I T O R I A L f he term neo-colonialism surfaced some 20 years ago, to describe the status of many Third World nations after the breakup of the European empires. Though Britain, for example, continues to hold such bastions as Hong Kong and the Falklands, the post-WWII po litica l reality is totally altered. Ex-colonies, however, soon found themselves dependent again on the very nations who'd ushered in their manumission, dependent more economica lly than politically. Thus neo-colonialism. A less-discussed form o f neo-colonialism has emerged in the twilight days of the Reagan era. Large sections o f the U.S. have fallen out o f the national co-prosperity sphere. Both producers o f capital-intensive manufactured goods (automobiles, farm equipment, major appliances) and raw-materials find themselves buffeted by international competition and high costs. Locales as disparate as Detroit, Houston and Portland are watching their basic economic underpinnings reel. And because most of the cap ita l investment is from outside these production centers, they too have become neo-colonies. The Pacific Northwest is sorely pressed to maintain wages and employment at national levels. Most o f its basic industries have floundered throughout the 1980s. Only Boeing, the military installations and those portions o f the computer industry strongly linked to the military buildup have escaped the long Reagan downturn. The wood products industry has waited for a trickle that never came. Few ag ricultural producers have stayed on top of credit and land costs incurred in the inflationary 70s. Commodity prices are stagnant. Outside of a growing service economy at low or minimum wages—concentrated in a few urban, suburban and recreation centers— most communities have slumped into a lingering malaise. No end in sight. Unions are being closed out of company after company, Sucharitkul Two brothers find themselves coping with alien invasions. Thailand has never been the same. Inside the Cage—T.R. Healey An examination of courage. Fluid Metal—Keith Jellum Sculptor Jellum describes the roots and aims of his work. A first-person piece sponsored by the Oregon Arts Commission. store after store. Many businesses, especially those owned by outside investors, have folded up shop. The rise of Japan, its allies in the Far East, and most of Europe to economic parity with the U.S. has opened our nation to competition it had not prepared to face. One popular effort to turn around the region's economy has been to search out investment from the Far East. Despite some success, the impact has been slight. Wages pa id are seldom even near previous union levels. True, the entire West Coast economy will increasingly reflect its proximity to the Orient. But the transition will be gradual. A more fruitful long-term strategy will arise in reaction to the growing fragmentation of the U.S. economy. To prevent ongoing loss of jobs and business, cap ital will have to be generated and controlled regionally. Though lega l structures to do this are not yet in place, we can already see that waiting for a national solution leaves us in far too precarious a position. Neo-colonies such as Oregon, Washington, Northern California (even British Columbia) are going to find links to eastern financial and governmental centers diminishing as they become more self-reliant and intertwined regionally. The first evidence o f this shift is still fragmentary. The region is at odds with national po licy on many fronts. One case in po int is the increasing dissatisfaction with the decision to Son II Season of the IJSFL—Sharon Doubiago A sequel to one of our most commented features. Pro-football and the mother-son relationship. The Emergent Economy—Paul Hawken Our declining industrial economy is being replaced before our eyes. This story helps us understand (and prepare for) its replacement. Health Care in Nicaragua—Andrew Himes The Seattle Connection. Nuclear Christmas—John Callahan Our favorite cartoonist gives us a glowing version of an old chestnut. Ad Index make the Hanford Nuclear Reservation a final candidate for repository for the entire nation’s nuclear wastes. Strong regional support has arisen also for the anti-nuclear positions of Seattle’s recently demoted Archbishop Raymond Hunlhausen. Such anti-federal, anti- papist dissent is but the tip o f the iceberg. It remains for us to develop a workable long-term strategy for turning such negative feelings into the backbone o f a po licy which provides full employment outside the war economy. With the exception o f parts o f Western Washington, our region exports a far greater share o f our federal tax dollars than come our way. If even a portion o f that money was creatively invested locally, we’d soon feel the difference. It takes more than lotteries and federal programs to keep our economy healthy. It ’s up to us, right here at home, to continually renew a world in which we a ll want to live. DM Clinton St. Quarterly 5
WHITE A TUNISIAN By Timothy Ryan Illustration by IT WAS THE SPRING OF THE R UM O R S OF D E A T H . VO ICES C O L D A N D DRY AS SPEAKERS ON SHIPS OR BUS STATIONS RANDOMLY AN N O U N C IN G THE FUTURE FROM THE REMAINS OF THE P R E S EN T. TH IS WAS IN 1983, WHEN THE OCEAN 'S VASTNESS REPRESENTED THE FUTURE TO ME, AND THE PECULIAR MELANCHOLY ATMO SPHERE OF AIRPORTS THE P A S T. MY TU N IS IA N H O L IDAY CHANGED ALL THAT. I S PEN T MARCH IN SICILY, WHERE THE PAPERS ' A C COUN TS OF T H E MA F IA'S DEMISE WERE SURELY EXAGGERATED. T HERE WAS KILLI N G ALL R IGHT , BUT THE PEOPLE DYING AT THE BLACK HANDS OF ANONYMOUS CARBOMBERS AND ASSASSINS ON VE SPA M O P E D S W E R E R ESPECTED JUDGES AND C O M MUNIST OFFICIALS. At this time I was a sales representative for a textbook company based in Athens and was travelling through Italy on business. I thought an excursion from Palermo to Tunis on the overnight ferry to see some old friends would be relaxing, a bargain vacation. I stayed the first night at the shabby Hotel Bristol in the heart of the capital—a spiral-staircased pension along the alley running in the shadow of the main thoroughfare, Rue Habib Bourguiba. The rumors in the city were of the President- for-Life’s impending demise. Frail, in his eighties, Bourguiba seemed to be “ losing his grip” and was expected to go very soon. What most worried the madam who ran this best little whorehouse in Tunis (with the miniskirted vinylbooted feather- boaed girls always in and out) was the gossip that Bourguiba had signed an agreement handing his country over to Moammar Gadhafi at the event of his death. I later heard this same stuff taken very seriously by U.S. Embassy people, and thought it the kind of diet that naturally feeds expatriate paranoia. Slipping off to sleep, I thought of the night before, sailing away from the empire of lights that is Europe and waking in the gray morning to mosques, sand, an alien tongue, the blue and white shores of ancient Carthage. I felt truly outside fam i l ia r cu ltu re , history, expe r ien ce. . .reflected upon the first time I left America for any length of time—how it felt to be outside the fortress of narcissism, the eternally self-reflecting mirror. For life on the outside seemed so clear-eyed and basic. The second day I stayed with friends from the embassy, Ted and Stevie Richardson. Stevie picked me up at the hotel in their red VW, telling me how lucky I was to come now—April was a perfect month to visit Tunisia. Unfortunately, her father had been seriously injured in a motorcycle accident in the States. She apologized, saying she had to leave the next day. But Ted, she said, would be around. Ted was the Agency for International Development Science Officer, a big bear of a man with a bushy black beard and eyes that seem to pierce all surfaces with the force of sheer curiosity. He was struggling with a recalcitrant scuba pump motor when we arrived. The Richardsons lived in a large house in La Marsa, Tunis’ diplomatic community of white-washed, blue-trim residences enclosed in fortified gardens above the sea. Ted’s avid, almost lurid interest in strange creatures—garish, I REFLECTED UPON THE FIRST TIME I LEFT AMERICA FOR ANY LENGTH OF TIME —HOW IT FELT TO BE OUTSIDE THE FORTRESS OF NARCISSISM, THE ETERNALLY SELF-REFLECTING MIRROR. FOR LIFE ON THE OUTSIDE SEEMED SO CLEAR-EYED AND BASIC. neon-vibrant macaws, a tarantula in a fishbowl, African beetles the size of boxers’ fists mounted on plaques—made the place even more exotic than it seemed at first. We went into the kitchen, poured a toast of red wine and set about making dinner. Ted talked about his work, energy surveys, the fragile condition of Tunisia; how its “ most stable Arab nation” epithet was a dangerous illusion. Tunisia’s future, he said, was oil and tourism. “At least it has a future, however precarious.” I complained about the hassles of incessant air travel, demanding sales managers, deadbeat customers. Then we talked about travel—Israel, Italy, the Greek Islands. At five o’clock Stevie switched on the black short-wave radio, the only thing in the room to distinguish this kitchen from one in the States. The clipped, comfortable tones of the BBC World Service issued forth, the thread of authority linking up the far-reaching web of the Western World. The sound of this deep, controlled voice created in me an ethereal sense of connectivity, at once familiar and repulsive, tenuous reassurance to those caught up in the siege mentality. The BBC voice reported a car bombing of the American Embassy in Beirut. More than 60 people were dead; Islamic Jihad had claimed responsibility. Ted and Stevie gasped, then tried to reassure themselves. It seemed they had two friends who had just been transferred to Beirut—one Tunisian, one American. Within hours we discovered their Tunisian friend had been killed and the task of notifying the family had fallen to the Richardsons. When they returned from this grim duty they were beside themselves. “Oh God, it was terrible,” said Ted, pouring a drink. “ They leapt all over us. ‘You did it to her, you filthy Americans,’ that sort of thing. My God, Jemilla was our friend too. Nothing I could say had any effect, which I imagine is unders tandab le . ‘The Americans are to blame.’ What could I say? We were the ones who transferred her. . . . They asked us if we were satisfied that we had killed their daughter.. . . ” “They said she didn’t want to go, but she went anyway,” said Stevie, her voice moving slowly in that measured space of shock and regret and loss. Her face was sprinkled with freckles and under normal circumstances it gave one the impression that her nature was relentlessly happy, upbeat. Now she just looked drawn. She passed her hands through the thick bush of her auburn hair, as if 6 Clinton St. Quarterly
STONES INTERLUDE Barbara Sekerka (for Will Jungkuntz) trying to rid herself of its weight, of something too heavy on her head. “ It doesn’t matter what they called us. They hold us responsible. Of course, in a way we are.” “ We d id n ’ t p la n t the bomb fo r crissakes—” And so on. The conversation devolved into a morbid post-mortem of past grievances by Tunisians against Americans and the Richardsons’ insecure but smug assertions that Tunisia was no different than any other Arab country—the Islamic Revolution and its attendant chaos and ruin could happen here too. Ted left the next day for Beirut. His former experience as an ordnance specialist for U.S. Army Intelligence had been called upon by the embassy in Beirut before. He hated going there. “ It’s a piece of my bloody past always coming back at me,” Ted shrugged as I bid them goodbye at the bus station. The bus rolled across the dry, patchy north Sahel dotted here and there with pointillist fields of blood-red poppies. I thought I’d take a brief tour, then head back to Tunis to rendezvous w ith the R icha rd son s when they returned. Four hours south of Tunis, near the cold, dusty town of Makthar, was a development program that Ted administered. He had arranged for me to have a look at it. When I reached Makthar, a Tunisian extension worker named Faisal took me by jeep some 60 kilometers into the hills to the site of the village project. In the midst of this overgrazed, desolate landscape, Faisal showed me how irrigation was pulling life and greenery from the trickling thread of a river. A weaving coop had also been established, along with rabbit-raising to increase the protein supply. Faisal cut a sharp figure next to his traditional, rather ragged countrymen: slim, very handsome, dressed in dark blue Levis and denim jacket, with soft gray Italian shoes. His face was smooth and unlined, intelligent but as yet un- cynical. We talked about development programs, mostly, and how hard it was for his government to get college-educated young people like himself to work in the countryside. But we also had a strange conversation about Jews, Hitler and South Africa: it seemed Faisal liked Gadhafi because, “ like Hitler,” he was a man with a vision. I told him where that kind of vision led. I mentioned South Africa and was absolutely astonished to discover he’d never heard of the slavery, racism and violence there. F AISAL LIKED GADHAFI BECAUSE, “LIKE HITLER," HE WAS A MAN WITH A VISION. I TOLD HIM WHERE THAT KIND OF VISION LED. I MENTIONED SOUTH AFRICA AND WAS ABSOLUTELY ASTONISHED TO DISCOVER HE'D NEVER HEARD OF THE SLAVERY, RACISM AND VIOLENCE THERE. As we left, we passed the mysterious heaps of rocks I’d noticed at the approach to the village. “You see the piles of white stone?” Faisal said. “Yes? It’s an ancient custom. Thousands of years old, no one knows how long. The people collected enough money between them to buy a cow, perhaps one a year. And they brought it to these ancient places, they sacrificed it, they divided the meat. These are places left from pre-lslamic times. Now they have the rabbits, so they don’t need to buy cows.” Later all I would remember clearly of this place, squeezed between the vast, oceanic sky and Arizona-sharp mountains rising up across the withered creek, were the ancient heaps of white-washed stones blackened by recent blood. The next day I reached the coast of that great shimmering ash-blond sea, the Sahara. At the edge were two small towns clutching a subterranean lifeblood. My first impression of Tozeur, the larger town, was that some ill wind from the north had blown in the detritus of tourism and the populace had hung on to it as if to a splendid addiction. Underground, thousands of springs fed a vast oasis that was quickly being bled dry by booming luxury hotels. I stayed one night and moved on the next day to Nefta, a smaller village some 20 kilometers out in the desert. Nefta was quiet, fragile, sitting on a hill amidst thousands of palms. It was a place where an ancient life streamed on touched only here and there by the relentlessness of modern times; a strictly delimited world, an amorphous organism with a hard, white-washed core to it. There was a single water-guzzling hotel perched on a ridge above the town, and only two or three other, far more modest offerings. I picked the Marhala, a rugged, desert-motif “ touring club” on the outskirts of town: a full pension was only twelve dollars a day. The center of the Marhala was an open-air courtyard with a bar undercover, and rooms facing off the square. Only the bus drivers and I seemed to be staying there. The afternoon was all slow, golden heat. I sat in the bar, had a bottle of the national beer as the flies droned, and chatted with Bertrand, a German geographer who had stopped in for a drink. I was bemused by the opening of our conversation, how it sounded like some espionage code, all formality and detail: “ You have been here long?” said Bertrand in fairly fluent English. “ I only just arrived.” “And you will stay?” His milky blue eyes coaxed me. “A few days.” “ You have been yet in Djerba?” The Island of the Lotus Easters; the well of Odysseus’ lost men. “ I’m thinking about going there, yes.” “ Don’t go. Too many hustlers, all rich hotels, it is horrible. You would not like it there.” “Ah, corruption.” “ Be ca re fu l in the no r th , to o— Bizerte—that is where some PLO went when they left Beirut. There is a camp there and they have stirred up much anti- American feeling.” I was amused at Bertrand’s concern for my safety, thinking foolishly that since I handily survived the streets of Naples, I was ready for anything. “ I came here pa rtly because my friends told me that palm wine is something I should try,” I said. “Oh yes, by all means. But you must go into the oasis to try it, I think.” “ I hear it is best in the mid-morning.” “ No, it is the best in the evening, I think. It cannot be bottled, you know.” Candace Bieneman Clinton St. Quarterly 7
“ So I heard. Tell me, what you are doing here?” The question need be asked only once. Bertrand spoke like a doctor, at first horrified and then inadvertently fascinated by a lethal diagnosis he had made. “ You have heard of khammessat, ‘the 5th part’ ?” I confessed I had not. “ This wine you wish to try, it comes from the palm trees, yes? 300,000 in Nefta. Twenty-five varieties of the best dates are grown here. But you must understand most of the landowners, they are in the north. Most of them never come here. The people of Nefta, they are the farmers. Under khammessat they get to keep one-fifth of the dates harvested. For supplying land, water and tools the landowner gets four-fifths.” Bertrand shrugged. “ It is a regressive, divisive system that keeps workers apart and landowners in power, I think. You were in Tozeur?” “ Briefly.” “You left quickly, that is good I think because over half the people in Tozeur are in the tourist business. Here, only 10 percent, at the most. Why? The dates, the palms, the oasis, the springs.” Bertrand stopped abruptly but I could tell he would go on if I was quiet. It seemed he was suddenly drowning in his own moist eyes. “ This is terrible, you know. These towns are dying. I study them for several years and I see it every time I come. This time, though, I have seen something else, something very frightening, I think. It is a report of the Ministry of Tourism. Perhaps 2,000 people a year come here now. They want to bring jumbo jets into Tozeur—a million people a year—and triple the number of large hotels in both towns.” “ How can they do that? Do the townspeople know?” “ No, how can they? They own no land, have no say, but will pay the price when it comes.” ‘‘Khammessat.’’ ‘‘Khammessat and more. There is a family I stay with here. Today I talked to the grandfather and he said: ‘It was just a few years ago I rode my ass through the oasis, carrying pails in my hands, filling them as I went.’ Now you see all the irrigation; the oasis is only calf-deep and the Nefta waterfall in the tourbooks—” “ It’s in my book—” “—is gone.” In effect, Bertrand said, the Tunisian government was planning to kill the very people and environment which they were counting on to bring in those tourists to save the economy. A perfect negative feedback loop of unregulated growth; a cultural tumor. At this point in our gloomy conversation a tall white apparition glided across the rough-hewn rock floor to the bar. He hung there, holding a long clay pipe and sending helices of smoke decorously into the heat. He was a remarkably tall, blond Westerner in a caftan and skullcap. Gold wire-rim glasses and a wispy blond beard playing about his cheeks and lips completed the studious appearance. He began to chat with the bartender in Arabic when Bertrand excused himself and approached him. They were speaking in German but I couldn’t make out the words. Momentarily Bertrand returned to my table. “You still wanted to taste palm wine?” He pointed with his chin. “Tonight he will take you into the oasis.” ii\*T 1 / 1 / ater is a thing of the past,” V V came the raspy whisper in a wreath of smoke through his parted lips. It was the first time he had spoken in my presence. Bertrand said I could call him Helmut, but that was not his real name. We were standing on a barren rise looking down at the oasis, speckled here and there with the first fall of pale moonlight. Beyond, in a sharp line that defined the horizon, the border of life, was the great salt lake, the Chott Jerid. Helmut tapped his pipe, tipped his head, and we followed him down the slope. Walking toward the lush thickening at desert’s edge just after sunset, watching the sky go ochre and violet above the sharp fingers of the trees, the distant barking of dogs grew ominous in our ears. As the darkness enveloped us, learning to trust our feet, not our eyes, we left the road to walk atop the low irrigation dikes criss-crossing the palm grove like scars. Having no flashlight, we followed the " Y o u SEE THE PILES OF WHITE STONE? IT'S AN ANCIENT CUSTOM. THE PEOPLE COLLECTED ENOUGH MONEY BETWEEN THEM TO BUY A COW, PERHAPS ONE A YEAR. AND THEY BROUGHT IT TO THESE ANCIENT PLACES, THEY SACRIFICED IT, THEY DIVIDED THE MEAT. THESE ARE PLACES LEFT FROM PRE-ISLAMIC TIMES." sound o f ou r g u id e ’s q u ic ken ed footsteps. Helmut’s caftan was as luminescent as the Chott Jerid, drifting ahead of us through the foliage like a phantom. Bertrand shuffled behind him in his pastel Arabic motley, tailored by friends in Nefta that afternoon. “ Does he always wear white?” I whispered to Bertrand. “ It is the Moslem color of mourning,” he said quietly. “ He came here from Germany seven years ago. He lived here five years, then converted to Islam. Two years ago he left to fight with the PLO in Lebanon.” Bertrand paused as if allowing me to transform this blond young man in the immaculate white dress into a nervous, frenzied commando who knew that at any moment he could be facing people he would kill without mercy. “ He was at Sabra and Shatila when the massacres happened. Hundreds of women and children slaughtered,” said Bertrand in a near whisper, as if the mention of it was enough to deflect us from our course. There was another long pause. We were still walking very quickly in the dark. “When he left Beirut, the PLO sent him here for some time to. . . rest.” The dogs sounded our approach to the workers’ thatched hut and when we reached the small circle of men hunkered down at their evening meal, it was pitch black. The ancient was with us this April evening, as the moonlight was shattered and broken by the trees. I felt as though we might be the first humans to strike a spark or to work our grunts and hand signals into a rude language. We shook outstretched hands and Helmut briefly introduced us in Arabic. Ragged, half-toothless smiles flickered around the circle. We squatted down, sitting back on our heels, and the workers offered us bread and tajine, the spicy stew of potatoes, peas, carrots and whatever else was at hand. There was no fire; fea tures were shrouded, but soon Helmut threw some palm fronds into the center of the circle and lit them. The flames danced up and threw shadowgiants on the walls of the forest around us. After the tajine, one of the workers reached behind him and brought out an unfired clay jug, stoppered with coarse palm leaves. The way the weight of the bottle swung his hand told me he’d already indulged. The jar was tipped on its side and liquid trickled out. An amber substance, fermented in the tree itself and tapped like maple syrup. As fleeting as the lives of the workers who drank it were traditional. Best at mid-day ADVERTISE IN CSQ 8 Clinton St. Quarterly GREAT GIFT SOLUTIONS Aveda Sebastian KMS Paul Mitchell Framesi La Coupe Mastey GIFT CERTIFICATES FOR SERVICES & PRODUCTS I UI ( 724 MW 21st AVE 228-5000 SIX DAYS A WEEK & EVEMIMGS BY APPOirtTMEMT
As THE CUP WAS PASSED AROUND I FELT SOMETHING RISE IN MY STOMACH, SOMETHING UNCOMFORTABLY ALIVE. IT WAS NOT A TIGHTENING IN ANTICIPATION OF THE WINE BUT A FEELING ARISING, A LENGTH OF XENOPHOBIC GUT EXCRETING QUEASY QUESTIONS ABOUT A WESTERNER PULLING A TRIGGER FOR THE PLO. was what I was told, sweet and thick; by evening it had grown stronger but was still very smooth. Never bottled, always changing, good only for the day it was drawn. As the cup was passed around I felt something rise in my stomach, something uncomfortably alive. It was not a tightening in anticipation of the wine but a feeling arising, a length of xenophobic gut excreting queasy questions about a Westerner pulling a trigger for the PLO. A young professor at the University of Munich gravely told me last year, “When you mention the work ‘nationalism’ to a German it means something completely different to him than it does to you.” It took no imagination to see the weight of recent history in the gaunt bones of Helmut’s face. I was afraid now that certain questions were about to spill out. I noticed he was not drinking. The cup mercifully came just then and I drank the twilight wine, sweet-gone-tart, and held the taste like a primal, elemental moment. A deep-rooted aspiration satisfied, to hold in my hands and my mouth a moment of birth and death. Iwas creating my own religious rite and now relied upon no one else. My very presence here was symptomatic of both this moment and this world’s undoing: “ Bertrand says you are a Moslem. How is i t y o u c o n v e r t e d , f r o m — Lutheranism?” Helmut’s head turned slowly toward me and I felt as though in some unaccountable way I had, as if stepping out of a crowd, signalled my own destruction. “Why did you become Moslem?” I asked again, suddenly passing the cup to Bertrand. “ Discipline and pride are good things for a people, don’t you think?” he said slowly in English. I wished he had not answered. Now I felt compelled to go on, because the thought had leapt into being and now must be uttered. Still, I phrased things carefully. “And you are with the PLO now?” No response as the palm fronds flickered into embers and our faces died into shadows. “Tell me,” I said, taking another tack. “ Do you think the PLO has a chance? They can only win in the media, can’t they, not against the Israeli Army?” I felt Bertrand staring.at me and then his gaze shifting slowly to Helmut. “The Palestinian people will win in the arena of world opinion because the Zionists will be defeated both morally and psychologically.” At that point my courage mercifully failed me. Given the fact that he was German the next question seemed overwhelming, but I confess I feared any answer I might receive. It took nothing at all, the image clamoring up unbidden, to strip him of the white and put him in the black of an SS uniform of not so very long ago. I sensed there was no danger; we were in some neutral emotional territory. I was still an abstract enemy, an American in name only, and not a symbol of oppression. I was momentarily returned to that pristine, almost mythic state of being “ innocent.” Such practical distinctions, of course, disappeared with the horror of Guernica, Dresden and H iroshima, though we still protest and pretend it isn’t so. If I were to see him six months hence in the gray, despairing light of an airport, standing in the line for my plane, would I acknowledge him, greet him? Did I really believe that one recognizable face would make any difference in what he might be about to do? Would I notify authorities? Would I change my flight? The day I left Tunis to fly to Jerusalem via Athens, I made the acquaintance of a Lebanese couple. We shared coffee in the echoing fligh t lounge. He was tall, trim, solid, a policeman from Beirut dressed in a blue blazer. In a city where the gun and not the power of the uniform held sway, he was a dashing illusion of exhausted authority. In fact, he looked remarkably like Yves Montand circa 1968; that same rakish jawline and smoky, seductive eyes, a casual and world-weary Marlboro ever dangling from his lips. I asked him for a light. His wife was terminally bourgeois, a bleached-blonde vamp plumped up in a fake leopardskin coat and gold-lame heels. She told me she was a nightclub performer on Tunisian television, commuting from Beirut. She pulled out snapshots—here she was on a stage; and another before the cameras, singing and dancing and heavily made-up. An air of genteel desperation hovered about them both, db if they knew they were doomed. “And your name is?” “ Don.” “ Dan! Tha t’s my husband’s name, Dan, Daniel!” clapping her hands and squeaking, TV teeth flashing. “We are on our honeymoon.” She seemed maniacally happy, relentlessly breathless, as if the romance was just beginning. When Daniel sat down, she showed me more snaps—this time of life in Beirut. Inside their apartment it looked like life anywhere—primping in a slip before a vanity; a stray shot of him, shirt off, every-present cigarette, surprised coming out of the bathroom; grilling lamb on a brazier with friends on their shell-shot balcony. There were no pictures of them outside, anywhere. Only in the far background, in the street below the balcony, could I see the scars of destruction. In their photos their existence was insular, hermetically-sealed, and now, mask-to- mask, they attempted to maintain that illusion of the indoors in their internal lives. They had no choice. Smiling, nuzzling one another like any other lovers, they put away the photos. “Will you go to Beirut?” they asked me. “ I’ve considered it, but it might be too dangerous for an American,” I said cautiously. “ Nonsense! Beirut is a beautiful city!” I bid them goodbye as my plane was called and I thought about them for weeks afterward. Was their apartment still there when they returned? Were they even alive anymore? Was her final appearance in the bomb-wrecked streets of Beirut on Lebanese TV? They had about them such a sad, exhausted sense of end-of-the-world revelry. I thought about them long after I stopped looking for Helmut on airport escalators and seaside bus trips up the Israeli coast to Haifa. Writer Timothy Ryan lives in Seattle. This story is dedicated to his “writing and cartooning collaborator of many years,” Will Jungkuntz, who died one year ago. Artist Barbara Sekerka lives in Portland. Holiday Stationery Choose from our se lec tion , or use our copy creation fac ilities to make your own . For Holiday cards that are truly a personal exp ress ion , i t s K inko’s. kinko's Great copies. Great people. SELF-SERVICE 1002 SW Jefferson Open 24 Hours 223-2056 The Big Blue Victorian A Charming Inn, in the Bed & Breakfast Tradition Private Baths Color T.V. 208 N. 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U a m e s Fenton, who was present at the fall o f Saigon, found himself drawn to The Phillipinesju s t as President Marcos called a “snap election. ” Though disappointed to be there with the rest o f the world press, Fenton pursued his own story and suddenly found himself a part o f the most exciting chapter o f recent Phillipine history. This excerpt is from the tail o f a much longer account which appeared in Granta 18, copyright ®1986, Granta Publications Ltd., 44a Hobson Street, Cambridge, England. Reprinted with permission. Maximum Tolerance 1 J arcos,” said the taxi-man, “ is in Guam.” “ Bullshit,” I replied. “ I saw him on the television late last night. About one-thirty. He can’t be already in Guam.” “ It was probably a recording,” said the taxi-man. He was the type I would normally have assumed to be working for the secret service. “So where did you get this information?” “Oh,” he said conspiratorially, “military sources.” He tuned in to the rebel radio. Unconfirmed reports, said a voice, have it that Marcos has been seen arriving in Guam. “ I think we’d better go to Malacanang as quickly as possible,” I said. The soldiers at the gates were wearing white arm-bands. Journalists had been asking them what these were for, but the soldiers weren’ttalking. Everyone looked faintly shifty. I met an old colleague I’d last seen in Korea. “ You’ve heard of course,” he said, “ Marcos is already in Guam.” He had some more convincing details. We asked the commanding officer if we could come in. By now a small crowd had gathered and the soldiers were getting nervous. They moved us gently back down the street as a couple of limousines came in through the gates. Then a very confident journalist arrived and said to the commanding officer: “ General Ramos has called us to a press conference here. Perhaps you will let us through.” The man let us through and through we rushed. “What was that?” we asked this fine man. “Oh,” he said, “ I made it up. I was just bullshitting him. Something very odd was happening. Where the vegetable garden had been (it had been planted on Imelda’s instructions, as part of some pet scheme), they were now laying a lawn. And the sculpture garden too—all the concrete statues were being smashed and carried away. The workers watched us as we passed. There were tanks by the next gate, and the security check was still in operation. “ It’s extraordinary, isn’t it,” someone said, “ the way they keep going on as if nothing had happened. That platform— they must have been told to put it up for the inauguration. Now Marcos has gone and they’re still putting it up.” As we came through security, a voice began to speak over the public address. It was giving instructions to the military to confine itself to the use of small arms in dealing with attacks. It was outlining Marcos’s supposed policy of the whole election campaign—Maximum Tolerance. “Whose voice is that?” I asked. “ It’s Marcos. It must be a recording.” We rpn up the grand staircase and turned right into the ante-room. And there sat Marcos himself, with Imelda and the family all around him,' and three or four generals to the right. They had chosen the ante-room rather than the main hall, for there were only a few journalists and cameramen, and yesterday’s great array of military men was nowhere to be seen. I looked very closely at Marcos and thought: it isn’t him. It looked like S om e b o d y asked Marcos whether he was going to leave the country, “bio,” he said, “as you can see, we are all still here. ” And as he said these words he turned round to discover that there was absolutely nobody standing behind him. Clinton St. Quarterly
ectoplasm. Like the Mighty Mekon. It was talking in a precise and legalistic way, which contrived to sound both lucid and utterly nonsensical. It had its left hand under the table, and I watched the hand for a while to see whether it was being deliberately concealed. But it wasn’t. So Marcos was still hanging on. Indeed he was back in his calm, lawyer’s frame of mind. I remember somebody asking him whether he was going to go ahead with his inauguration the next day, as planned. Marcos replied that it was his duty to do so, as laid down by the constitution. The inauguration had to take place ten days after the proclamation by the National Assembly. If he’d been pressed any further in the matter he would have started quoting acts and statutes. That part of his brain was functioning perfectly. The bit that wasn’t functioning, it appeared, was the bit that_should have told him the game was up. At first I felt embarrassed, as if I had been caught red-handed by Marcos, trespassing in the palace. Then I felt embarrassed because, there being so few pressmen around, I might be expected to ask the president a question. And I Back to Malacanang Clinton St. Quarterly couldn’t think of a thing to ask. People hovered around the microphone, and whispered to each other, “ D’you want to go next?” Very few people did. One journalist actually went to the side of the room, sat down and buried his head in his hands, as if overwhelmed by the irreality of the occasion. General Ver was quivering and in an evident panic. He stepped forward and asked for permission to bomb Camp Crame. There were two government F-5 jets circling over it, he said. (Just outside the palace someone had told me that the crowd at Camp Crame appeared to think that these jets were on their side, for they cheered every time the aircraft came over.) Marcos told Ver they were not to be used. Ver’s panic increased. “The air force, sir, is ready to attack were the civilians to leave the vicinity of Camp Crame immediately, Mr. President. That’s why I come here on your orders so we can immediately strike them. We have to immobilize the helicopters that they g o t . ” (Marcos had sent he licop te r gunships against the camp, but the pilots had come out waving white flags and joined the rebels.) Marcos broke in with tired impatience, as if this had been going on all through the night and he was sick and tired of Ver. “ My order is not to attack. No, no, no. Hold on; not to attack.” Ver was going wild. “Our negotiations and our prior dialogue have not succeeded, Mr. President.” Marcos: “All I can say is that we may have to reach the point we may have to employ heavy weapons, but you will use the small weapons in hand or shoulder weapons in the meantime.” Ver said: “Our attack forces are being delayed.” The Christian Science Monitor, at my elbow, said: “This is absurd. It’s a Mutt- and-Jeff act.” Ver said: “There are many civilians Y ) ^ looked very closely at Marcos and thought: it isn’t him. It looked like ectoplasm. It was talking in a precise and legalistic way, which contrived to sound both lucid and utterly nonsensical. near our troops, and we cannot keep on withdrawing. We cannot withdraw all the time, Mr. President.” All this was being broadcast live on Channel Four, which Marcos could see on a monitor. Ver finally saluted, stepped backwards and left with the other officers. I forget who they were, just as Marcos, when he introduced them to us, had forgotten all their names and needed prompting. Now the family withdrew as well. An incident then occurred whose significance I didn’t appreciate at the time. The television began to emit white noise. A soldier stepped forward and fiddled with the knobs. The other channels were working, but Channel Four had been knocked off the air. The rebels had taken the government station, which Marcos must have realized. But he hardly batted an eyelid. It was as if the incident were some trivial disturbance, as if the television were simply on the blink. For me, the most sinister moment of the morning had been when Marcos said that if the rebels continued they would be chewed up by our roaming bands of loyal troops.” Someone asked why the troops at the gate were wearing white arm-bands. They had said, he told Marcos, that it meant they would surrender to the rebels. Marcos explained that this was not so. The arm-bands were a countersign. A soldier in the audience said that the countersign was red, white and blue. The questioner then said, “ No, these were plain white arm-bands.” Marcos said, a trifle quickly, “ The colours are changed every day.” Somebody asked him whether he was going to leave the country. “ No,” he said, “ as you can see, we are all still here.” And as he said these words he turned round to discover that there was absolutely nobody standing behind him. s I came within view of the palace I saw that people were climbing over the railing, and just as I caught up with them a gate flew open. Everyone was pouring in and making straight for the old Budget Office. It suddenly occurred to me that very few of them knew where the palace itself was. Documents were flying out of the office and the crowd was making whoopee. I began to run. One of the columnists had written a couple of days before that he had once asked his grandmother about the Revolution of 1896. What had it been like? She had replied: “A lot of running.” So in his family they had always referred to those days as the Time of Running. It seemed only appropriate that, for the second time that day, I should be running through Imelda ’s old vegetable patch. The turf mda<?e Bieneman 11
looked sorrier than ever. We ran over the polystyrene boxes which had once contained the chicken dinners, past the sculpture garden, past where people were jumping up and down on the armoured cars, and up onto the platform from where we had watched Marcos on the balcony. Everyone stamped on the planks and I was amazed the whole structure didn’t collapse. We came to a side entrance and as we crowded in I felt a hand reach into my back pocket. I pulled the hand out and slapped it.-The thief scurried away. I t was absolutely possible to believe that, instead o f joining the revolution, Enrile and Ramos had hijacked it. And everyone was clearly still in the habit o f believing in the genius o f Marcos, however much they hated him. I t seemed to me that in every room I saw, practically on every available surface, there was a signed photograph o f Nancy Reagan. But this can hardly be literally true. I couldn’t believe I would be able to find the actual Marcos apartments, and I knew there was no point in asking. We went up some servants’ stairs, at the foot of which I remember seeing an opened crate with two large green jade plates. They were so large as to be vulgar. On the first floor a door opened, and we found ourselves in the great hall where the press conferences had been held. This was the one bit of the palace the crowd would recognize, as it had so often watched Marcos being televised from here. People ran and sat on his throne and began giving mock press-conferences, issuing orders in his deep voice, falling about with laughter or just gaping at the splendour of the room. It was all fully lit. Nobody had bothered, as they left, to turn out the lights. I remembered that the first time I had been here, the day after the election, Imelda had slipped in and sat at the side. She must have come from that direction, I went to investigate. And now, for a short while, I was away from the crowd with just one other person, a shy and absolutely thunderstruck Filipino. We had found our way, we realized, into the Marcoses’ private rooms. There was a library, and my companion gazed in wonder at the leather-bound volumes while I admired the collection of art books all carefully cataloged and with their numbers on the spines. This was the reference library for Imelda’s worldwide collection of treasures. She must have thumbed through them thinking: I'd like one of them, or I ’ve got a couple of them in New York, or That’s in our London house. And then there was the Blue Drawing Room with its twin portraits of the Marcoses, where I simply remember standing with my companion and saying, “ It’s beautiful, isn’t it.” It wasn’t that it was beautiful. It looked as if it had been purchased at Harrods. It was just that, after all the crowds and the riots, we had landed up in this peaceful, luxurious den. My companion had never seen anything like it. He didn’t take anything. He hardly dared touch the furnishings and trinkets. We both simply could not believe that we were there and the Marcoses weren’t. I wish I could remember it all better. For instance, it seemed to me that in every room I saw, practically on every available surface, there was a signed photograph of Nancy Reagan. But this can hardly be literally true. It just felt as if there was a lot of Nancy in evidence. Another of the rooms had a grand piano. I sat down. “Can you play?” said my companion. “ A little,” I exaggerated. I can play Bach's Prelude in C, and this is what I proceeded to do, but my companion had obviously hoped for something more racy. The keys were stiff. I wondered if the piano was brand new. A soldier came in, carrying a rifle, “ Please cooperate,” he said. The soldier looked just as overawed by the place as we were. We cooperated. When I returned down the service stairs, I noticed that the green jade plates had gone, but there was still some Evian water to be had. I was very thirsty, as it happened. But the revolution had asked me to cooperate. So I did. Outside, the awe had communicated itself to several members of the crowd. They stood by the fountain looking down at the coloured lights beneath the water, not saying anything. I went to the parapet and looked across the river. I thought: somebody’s still fighting; there are still some loyal troops. Then I thought: that’s crazy—they can’t have started fighting now. I realized that I was back in Saigon yet again. There indeed there had been fighting on the other side of the river. But here it was fireworks. The whole city was celebrating. That Morning-After Feeling Q ^ ^ i t t i n g at our table was a politician who had supported the Aquino campaign and who was now fuming: there had been no consu ltation with the UNIDO members of parliament about the formation of the new cabinet. He himself, he said, had told the Aquino supporters that he did not want a job. But they would find that they needed the cooperation of the parliament to establish the legitimacy of their new government. Parliament had proclaimed Marcos president. Parliament would therefore have to unproclaim him before Cory could be de jure as well as de facto head of state. She could have a revolutionary, de facto government if she wanted. But in that case her power was dependent on the military. She would be vu lnerab le . The po lit ic ian was haunted by the fear that corrupt figures would again be put in key positions, and that the whole thing would turn out to have been some kind or sordid switch. The television announcers were congratulating the nation on the success of People’s Power. But all three of us at the table were wondering how real People’s Power was. The previous night, Enrile had made a most extraordinary speech on the television. It had come in the form of a crude amateur video. It looked, in a way, like the plea of some kidnap victim, as if he were being forced to speak at gun-point. And what he had said was so strange that now, the morning after, I wondered whether I had dreamed it. So far I’d not met anyone else who had seen the broadcast. Enrile had begun, as far as I remember, by saying that Marcos was now in exile, and that he, Enrile, was sorry. He had not intended things to turn out this way. But he wanted to thank the President (he still called him the President) for not attacking the rebel soldiers when they first went to Camp Aguinaldo. At that time (and here I am referring to a partial text of the speech) “The military under his control, or the portion of the military under his control, had the firepower to inflict heavy damage on us.” But 12 Clinton St. Quarterly
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