The Furthest City Light (23 page)

Living in the tropics, though, it changes you.

Sometime during that first week, I popped open the childproof cap on my bottle of malaria pills and discovered a million tiny insects devouring the contents. There’s no privacy in the third world; it costs money to keep things out. Privileged people can barricade themselves against noise, heat, insects, animals, neighbors and invading armies, but in a country like Nicaragua, there’s nothing you can do. It’s like being pummeled continuously by a relentless bully who never gets tired. Somehow, you have to develop a thick skin and learn to ignore anything less than a fatal blow.

***

One morning during breakfast, Sonia told me that her nephew Jorge, who was only seventeen, was fighting up north near Ocotal. After one of his childhood friends was killed and two others were kidnapped by the Contras, he’d volunteered to go on a dangerous patrol during which his jeep had almost hit a landmine. Every day she prayed for his safety.

“He’s my sister’s only child,” she said. “I remember the day he was born. It was taking too long and we were very worried. When he finally came, everyone started laughing, even the doctor. And that’s why Jorge was such a happy baby.”

“How can you stand it?” I asked, pushing my plate away.

“The war?”

“The war, the embargo, the threat of a United States invasion, the lack of food and medicine. How can you go on day after day when there’s no end in sight?”

“It’s hard,” she said, rubbing her temples with her fingertips, “but the Nicaraguan people have infinite patience, and so we wait for peace.”

“What if you have to wait a very long time?”

“There’ll be nothing left. But in the meantime, eat your breakfast before it gets cold.”

I picked up my fork. “Yesterday, Amelia mentioned you weren’t feeling well.”

Sonia drank some water before answering. “Don’t worry about me,” she said. “Amelia’s the one who is sick. If you go to the dollar store, she needs vitamins.”

I nodded, unconvinced. “I’ll get vitamins for both of you.”

“If you insist,” she said, then stood up to clear the dishes.

I stood up, too. “Just tell me what kind you need, and anything else. If they have it, I’ll get it.”

A few minutes later, Tomas—who didn’t seem to live anywhere—wandered into the house and she gave him something to eat. He looked disheveled, as if he’d been up all night drinking. There was a fresh bruise on his forehead. As soon as he stumbled out, Sonia turned to me and said, “It helps to have faith.”

“In what?” I asked.

She looked astonished, as if I’d suddenly torn my clothes off. “In God, of course.”

Ordinarily, I would have argued that even if God existed, He obviously wasn’t paying attention to the plight of the Nicaraguan people, but I could already tell how stupid, mean and thoughtless that would sound. It takes less than a week in the third world to understand that faith is a paradox; it may cost nothing, but only rich people can afford not to have it.

Another speedy realization: once I understood that the lights and water were subject to the whims of unseen agencies making unpredictable decisions about who got what, I abandoned all efforts to plan ahead. Like everyone else, I learned to be in the moment. Buddhists in the United States, I decided, should stop trying to explain this concept and simply ship their students to Nicaragua. If the water came on, I took a thirty-second shower or washed my underwear. If the lights went off and it was dark, I lay down and tried to sleep. After a while, it seemed perfectly natural. Forget the caves in India, the forests of Burma—plan your next meditation retreat in the rubble of downtown Managua and camp nearby in sunny
Barrio Maximo Jerez.

On the other hand, Sonia and her neighbors, fed up with being in the moment, were constantly on the lookout for large plastic containers to fill with extra water. In fact, containers of any kind, not just buckets, were highly prized. One morning at dawn, I wandered into Sonia’s kitchen and noticed an empty pill bottle near the sink. Curious, I picked it up and realized it was the bottle of malaria pills I’d tossed in the garbage a few days earlier. Sonia had retrieved it, emptied out the insects, and washed it clean. After that, I threw nothing away without first showing it to my host.

By the end of our first week, it was obvious that the United States’s embargo was a rip-roaring success. After Reagan took office in 1981 and declared Nicaragua under the Sandinistas (total population 2.9 million) a communist enemy, an economic embargo was instituted which prevented the country from obtaining food, medical supplies, world loans, machinery and other essential goods from its usual sources. For the vast majority of Nicaraguans, luxury items such as toilet paper, shampoo, sheets, new shoes and denture cleaners were unattainable. Supposedly you could buy these products at the dollar store, but no matter when we showed up with our dollars, the store was always closed. After three unsuccessful attempts, we wondered if it was just an empty storefront stocked with imaginary items that Sonia and her neighbors liked to dream about. Toilet paper, vitamins and sandals: mythical symbols of a better life in the unforeseeable future.

Thanks again to the United States there was very little fuel. Gasoline, especially, seemed to be in great demand; everyone talked about who still had any, where to find it, and how much it cost, like the way we talked about marijuana in the sixties. Most of the trees around Managua had been stripped bare by all the new refugees living in shantytowns who cooked on wood stoves. Anything made out of wood had long since been dismantled and burned up. I was about as likely to find a piece of plywood to shove between the mattress and sagging springs of my cot as I was to find a brand-new Cadillac parked in front of Sonia’s house.

The food shortage, however, was the most alarming. Every morning, on the way to the language school, we passed long lines of people waiting outside the supermarkets. Sometimes the lines wound all the way around the block. Sonia told me that many of her friends got up before dawn to stand in line. I told her that teenagers in the United States did that too when tickets went on sale for a rock concert.

***

On Saturday, we were supposed to visit an agricultural cooperative, but the bus wouldn’t start and the driver needed a few extra parts to fix it. We could possibly leave by noon, he told us, if the parts weren’t too difficult to find. We all nodded and after a quick vote decided to take the rest of the day off. When the others had left, Allen, Liz and I chose to head downtown with no particular destination. We walked for miles—there were no street signs anywhere—eventually ending up at the Plaza de la Revolución in front of the Managua Cathedral. On the way, we passed through the earthquake wreckage of various neighborhoods, gazing at the concrete shells of buildings where dozens of people lived. Ragged clothes hung across formerly ornate entryways. In the center of the city, cows grazed in empty lots between buildings. On a number of street corners, we saw women cooking food over fires, serving the fare on banana leaves. We bought some kind of meat but decided not to eat it.

From a distance, the Managua Cathedral had looked impressive but up close it was obvious we were staring at the ruins of a building that was once a grand 18
^th
century church before it was destroyed by the earthquake. The inside was gutted. Since the revolution, a huge canvas portrait of Sandino—the original Nicaraguan revolutionary who defied the US Marines back in the thirties—had been draped over the entrance, which sounds incongruous but was actually classy, like good modern art.

On our way home, we wandered into a large
supermercado
. By then, the store was empty and there weren’t many products left on the shelves. I picked up a can of Del Monte fruit cocktail and checked the expiration date stamped on the bottom: October 1983. I showed it to my friends.

“Isn’t that against the law?” Allen asked.

“That’s not exactly their biggest problem,” I said.

We strolled down a few more aisles and found three cans of black olives, a can of mushroom soup, some Coppertone suntan lotion (SPF 4) and a whole shelf of Purina cat food.

“I guess things could be worse,” Allen said, staring at the cat food.

“I suppose so,” I said, “although I don’t see any dog food.”

“It’s pretty depressing,” Liz agreed. “And next week I heard the government is going to reduce everyone’s ration of rice, sugar and beans.”

“Jesus,” Allen said, looking upset. “That’s all my family eats. The four little kids are always hungry. Half the time, I pretend I’m full and give the kids the rest of my meal. But they need milk. Don’t little kids need milk? Do you see any milk?” His Hawaiian shirt was soaked with sweat.

Liz put her hand on Allen’s arm. “It’s good to care,” she said, “but don’t get too upset. It doesn’t help.”

 “But kids need milk,” Allen repeated.

We walked down a few more aisles and found a carton of grapefruit juice (August 1984), a great selection of plastic cups and silverware, and a can of condensed milk tucked behind some TV dinners that had expired before the revolution in 1979. Allen bought the milk and put it in his backpack.

As we were exiting the store, Allen said, “I feel so ashamed.”

“Because we’re North Americans?” I asked.

He nodded. We turned left, and then began hiking down the hot dusty highway toward
Barrio Maximo Jerez
. In the distance, the Intercontinental Hotel, shaped like a giant beehive, loomed above the flattened city.

“Look, I understand,” Liz said, “but it doesn’t help. At least you’re here, not back there.”

Allen shook his head. “I still feel ashamed. My country’s funding the war, which is making everyone miserable and all the people I meet are so nice to me. I can barely stand it.”

“But it’s useless to feel bad,” Liz argued. “Once we get up to Jalapa, we can make a real difference. Doesn’t that make you feel better?” She stared hopefully at both of us. Somehow, her cotton blouse and matching skirt looked as if she’d just put them on. My clothes, like Allen’s, were drenched.

“I guess so,” Allen said, and then looked at me. “What about you, Rachel?”

I shrugged. “I agree with Liz. It’s self-indulgent to feel ashamed. It’s a waste of energy.”

“Exactly,” Liz said, nodding.

“But I feel ashamed anyway.”

Allen grinned at me.

Liz sighed. “You’re both too sensitive.”

“It’s because we’re Jewish,” Allen said.

“Do you think that’s it?” I asked, and decided he might be right.

Liz was walking between us. She put her arms around our shoulders and we continued down the highway. “It’s a good thing you both have me.”

Allen and I nodded to each other. Without Liz’s cheerful pragmatism, her unsentimental determination to make a difference here, we might have both succumbed to the hopelessness and despair that was constantly nipping at our heels.

A bus crammed with over a hundred passengers, many of whom were hanging onto the windows and doors, rumbled past us, leaving a trail of thick black smoke in the air. We coughed for a few seconds, but kept on walking. It takes less than a day in Managua to learn the Nicaraguan shuffle, the most efficient way to walk when it’s unbearably hot and you don’t want to use up any more energy than necessary. To do it correctly, no part of the body above the knee moves at all; the head, shoulders, arms, trunk, hips and thighs remain relaxed but still, as if you were standing in the same spot and little rollers under your feet were propelling you forward.

“Rachel,” Allen said, “tell us a story about being a public defender.”

For a moment, I recalled the metallic sound of handcuffs closing over Emily’s wrists and shook my head. “To tell you the truth, I’m sort of trying to forget I was a public defender.”

“Oh, come on,” Allen pleaded. “My feet are killing me. I need a good story to distract me.”

I sighed. “Do you want a funny story or a sad one?”

“Funny.”

I thought for a moment. “Actually, all the funny stories I know are also sad. Maybe Liz can tell us a funny story about people dying in the emergency room at the hospital.”

Liz punched me in the shoulder. “Cut it out, Rachel. Life isn’t as grim as you think.”

Both Allen and I stopped shuffling and stared at her. Allen’s face, and probably mine as well, was streaked with dirt from the bus.

“Okay,” Liz relented, “maybe it is, but the world is bigger than that. There’s beauty all around us to balance things out.” She raised her arms to indicate all the beauty that Allen and I were missing.

We continued to stare, waiting to be convinced.

“Come on, guys. Nature, love, friendship, those are all beautiful things. And there’s also laughter, courage and people who want to help out and make a difference in the world. Those are the things that make life worthwhile.”

“Will you be my guru?” Allen asked.

I started to laugh, but stopped when I saw her face.

“Knock it off,” Liz said, sounding genuinely aggrieved. “Both of you.”

“Hey, I’m sorry,” Allen apologized. “Really. I was just embarrassed to admit those are the kinds of things that make my life feel worthwhile too. Forgive me.”

“Me, too,” I said, “although I’m in more of a waiting-to-feel-that-way-again mode.”

Liz hesitated, and then put her arms around both our shoulders again. “You are really lucky to have me.”

Amen, we thought.

***

For Sunday, Tim and Estelle had set up a visit to the Managua headquarters of AMNLAE, the national women’s organization. At noon, our refurbished bus dropped us off at the entrance. A solemn young woman in her early twenties named Scarlet was waiting to take us around and answer any questions. When she stood up from behind her desk, we noticed she was missing part of her left hand.

Over the next few hours with Estelle interpreting, we learned that before the revolution there were no labor codes or civil rights for women, and as bad as it was now, the tradition and culture of machismo had been much worse. Women couldn’t ask for a divorce and had no say in their children’s futures. In the workplace, women were forced to take pregnancy tests before being hired, and often their wages were paid to their husbands or fathers. Prostitution was big business—Somoza and his thugs ran hugely profitable prostitution rings.