A Fortune-Teller Told Me: Earthbound Travels in the Far East

by Tiziano Terzani

After a few miles Andrew told the driver to stop near a pile of timber at the side of the road. We had scarcely got out of the jeep when we heard a strange clanking sound from the brushwood, like chains being dragged. Yes—chains they were. They were around the ankles of about twenty emaciated ghosts of men, some shaking with fever, all in dusty rags, moving wearily in unison like an enormous centipede, with a long tree trunk on their shoulders. The chains on their feet were joined to another around their waists. The two soldiers accompanying the prisoners made us a sign with their rifles to drop our cameras. “They’re missionaries. Don’t worry,” said Andrew. It worked. A couple of cigarettes added conviction. The prisoners put down the trunk and stopped. One of them said he was from Pegu, another from Mandalay. Both had been arrested five years before, during the great demonstrations for democracy: political prisoners, doing forced labor. It is strange to stand before such an atrocity, be obliged to take mental notes and discreetly snap a few photos, trying to avoid risks and not to give those poor devils more problems than they already had; and then to realize that you have not even had the time to feel compassion, to exchange a word of simple humanity. You suddenly find yourself looking into an abyss of pain, you try to imagine its depths, and all you can think of asking is, “And those?” pointing to the chains.