Smoking Poppy by Graham Joyce (the read aloud family .txt) 📕

the diameter of your average domestic rainwater drainpipe. Blue clouds of smoke wafted around her as she puffed contentedly.

‘Opium?’ I gestured at the pipe.

‘Tabac,’ she said. ‘Tabac.’

I squatted next to her, tapping myself on the chest. ‘Me Danny. Danny.’

She got the idea, and told me her name was Nabao, though she never did seem happy with my pronunciation. Laying her stove-pipe aside she led me into her hut.

Inside it was wonderfully orderly and the dirt floor was neatly swept. Some bits of furniture – stools, small tables – were rustic and improvised but there were incongruous objects like a modern chest of drawers – flatpack, possibly – and a wardrobe. The strangest article was a plastic Fred Flintstone clock; it hung on the wall telling the correct time from inside the transparent plastic sleeve in which it was first purchased.

Nabao took a cloth bracelet from the table and tied it to my left wrist. Chattering constantly she attached a small metal disc to the bracelet. She squeezed the bracelet and made sure the disc couldn’t come adrift. I got the impression it was some sort of lucky charm.

Under a table I spotted a small fluorescent strip-light wired to a car battery. Since it was still connected I assumed the car battery was drained. I tapped the battery. ‘No good?’

Nabao rubbed her fingers together to indicate the cost of replacing or recharging the battery. It occurred to me to give her the money to get someone to replace it, but then I had a better idea. The cable from the generator to the radio ran behind her hut. There was that bit of spare wire I’d seen beside the cartons of Calpol. It would only take me a few minutes to take a spur off the main cable and she wouldn’t need a car battery.

Twenty minutes later we had illumination. I had to shut down the generator for a couple of minutes, but when I started it up again and came back to her hut, Nabao was shrieking and spinning and dancing like a teenager. She squeezed my arm and chucked my cheek and slapped her knees. I wished all my customers at home could show half the gratitude for a bit of light.

It was the best thing I ever did in that village. It was also a big mistake.

28

You will have noticed that I have failed to report certain details concerning the attributes and customs of the hill tribe with whom we spent those days. The omission is deliberate. Over the short period in which I lived in that remote village I came to respect its small population and to view its activities from a different perspective. Even now I fear for the survival of the village, and I want to give nothing away which might act as a clue to its precise location and identity.

For this reason I have said little about the traditional costume worn by the villagers, or I have planted one or two misleading details. About the construction of the houses I may have lied. One or two names might be unreliable. These people live hand to mouth, raising the poppy out of the dust by the labour of their bent backs; I don’t want to be the one who tipped off the Thai government forces who come to torch their crops.

It was from Jack that I learned quite a bit about opium growing in the region. The Americans in Vietnam, through the good offices of the CIA, built links with the minority tribes in the border regions of Thailand and Laos, particularly with Hmong guerrillas. Soon the CIA had an army of three hundred thousand mountain-conditioned guerrillas trained to battle the Lao communist forces. In the mid-sixties, to help the Hmong and to encourage loyalty, the CIA made available the services of its own airline, Air America, to ferry Hmong opium to transit points for distribution further afield.

Most of this opium was processed into what Jack called top-grade Number Four heroin and shipped to Saigon. From there it was transported by corrupt officers of the South Vietnamese government to the USA, creating the heroin epidemic of the 1970s.

The opium bandits currently operating out of these hills had prospered directly out of that wartime activity. If I was looking to lay blame for Charlie’s plight I could always find a place for the CIA high on my list.

But of the hill tribe with whom we stayed, what shall I say? That in the cultivation of the poppy their prowess and knowledge rivals even the Hmong. That they match the Akha or the Yao in silversmithing, or that their embroidery skills outstrip the Kareni. That some of the women file their teeth to sharp points, and that polygamy is permitted. That they divide into sub-groups, like the Lahu. And that they originate as a people from Tibet, as do the Lisu.

And that they believe in spirits.

I tried to take a photograph of Nabao next to her new electric light, but even in her happy state, almost delirious with gratitude, she resisted most strongly. She turned her back, she waved me away. I was sorry to let the moment pass, but I had to respect her wishes.

Another time I tried to take some pictures of the villagers working the poppy fields. They became extremely agitated. At first I thought it was because they didn’t want incriminating photographs of themselves to fall into the hands of the police, but I learned that their fear of the camera was of a much more spiritual cast. They were perfectly happy to let me take a few snaps of the poppies in flower, or of the village huts; which I did, and which I still have.

My early notion, that the tribesfolk feared that their soul was being stolen along with their image, was inaccurate. It was a fear of who or what might want to get in the shot along with them. They did not want their image, Jack