Ten-Year flashback in Flame Tree

They had been visiting on the Burma border, a half-day's trek from their hospital. A birthday party for the village headman's daughter, the invitation had said. Actually, it was a dedication ceremony for a new refugee village, but the Thai Border Police could not have looked the other way for that. George had been out walking with a village guide in the early morning when the top general of the whole Karen Insurgent army, Bo Mya, had appeared on the path ahead.

The supreme commander was a man about his own age of fifty-seven, heavily built, mustache curving down around his mouth. He wore a brown leather jacket and appeared out for a stroll except for the hunting rifle under his arm. His only companion wore forest camouflage, carried an automatic weapon and a backpack sprouting a radio antenna. When George glanced back at the village, he saw armed men poised silently at several points where no one had been moments before.

He had thought at first that the war in Burma was spilling over into Thailand, but as it turned out, the general had received an invitation to the village ceremony too.

At the feast in the village hall later that day, the general's adjutant had sat down at George and Vienna's table. "The general regrets that he does not speak English or Thai," the officer explained. "He wishes me to tell you that his rear guard will arrive soon, escorting a group of Burmese refugee students seeking asylum in Thailand." He looked out at the door where two soldiers stood at ease, rifles slung over right shoulder. "Some need medical attention, and he asks if you would have a look at them. The village clinic will be at your disposal, of course."

George poured more strong tea from the battered pot on the table. He looked up again. "Students. From Rangoon?"

"Exactly. The Burmese arrested them in the student uprisings and have been using them to carry army supplies." The officer cleared his throat modestly. "We, ah, distracted the Burmese unit in a skirmish last week, long enough for them to escape. Our intelligence staff has debriefed them and they appear to be genuine refugees."

"Of course I'll give them any medical treatment I can, Major, for as long as I'm here." George thought it good to raise a point of diplomacy. "To be frank. I'm not really certain what my relationship to the Karen army should be. I used to work in Burma a long time ago. But as a guest in Thailand, I should stay neutral if possible."

"I'm sure we have no problem with that, Doctor," the major said, "although I think you may discover the Burmese government different from what you remember, even hostile to outsiders now. Our people have been happy to have you nearby this few months. Colonel Bridgestone's wife was especially pleased with her gall bladder surgery"

George had only removed one gall bladder during his time in Thailand, and the patient had appeared to be a hill farmer's wife. Apparently nothing could be taken at face value out here. But it might explain the invitation to the birthday party.

As the major rose to return to his own table, George saw a stir at the door where two small grubby boys were shouting something to friends inside. An eager exodus of children and a few adults went to watch more soldiers passing by. The village headman leaned over from the next table. "This is the rear guard arriving," he said. I will show you to the dispensary." George and Vienna retrieved their sandals from the clutter of footwear outside the meeting hall and followed the headman to the dirt road that served as village main street.

The small boys from the meeting hall were strutting alongside a military drum corps passing down the street, bamboo fifes piping, drummers beating a tattoo on homemade drums of horse-hide.

Lagging behind the marching troops, a small procession had turned aside to limp up the path to the village clinic. Their gaunt exhaustion and ragged clothing contrasted with the clnic's small garden. Eight refugees in all, two of them carried piggyback by soldiers, another on crutches. Two soldiers carried yet another in a hammock litter slung on a stout bamboo pole. George surveyed the four sickest, laid on the treatment room floor.

One of the refugees identified herself as a senior medical student from Mandalay University, Ma Pyone Hla. She was a small slender Burman woman of twenty something. A scar creased her right cheek; Her English came out of a textbook, but the village midwife helped translate.

"What about the unconscious one?"

"He became sick two days ago with fever and headache, Doctor. I think, perhaps, malaria?"

"Any cough or diarrhea?" George knelt and checked the man's neck for stiffness.

"None."

He looked in the man's eyes and throat, listened to his chest. He probed the abdomen. Skin hot, spleen enlarged; probably the student's diagnosis was right. The little clinic had no lab equipment to confirm it, but malaria was common in these hills. "Let's get an intravenous line in, with a quinine drip." He looked up from the comatose man's side. "If it's cerebral malaria, he'll need I.V. glucose too. Vienna, see what's in the supply room, please."

Now what about these other three?" He indicated the next one in the row. "What's wrong?"

"He says his legs have no strength," the medical student answered.

"What did the Burmese feed you people?" He checked the man's emaciated legs.

"Rice, doctor. Sometimes with a few pieces of gourd sliced into it. They didn't have much food themselves, especially when their platoon was on the move." She lowered her head. "There were twelve of us at the beginning," she said in a small voice. "Two were beaten and left by the side of the trail to die when they couldn't carry their loads. Another died from an infected foot. And one was killed when he stepped on a land mine. My friend with crutches was hurt in the explosion."

"Doesn't the Burma army have minesweepers?" George's voice was soft.

"They used us as minesweepers. They made us walk in front of them."

"Well, let's look at them." He squatted by the young man with the crutches, whose pain was obvious. "Behma natheleh?" (Where do you hurt?) Obligingly, the student bared his right hip. A large swollen red area surrounded a small wound. George felt it carefully, noting the signs of an abscess under the skin. "Has he had any antibiotics?"

"The Karens gave him two sulfa tablets three days ago."

Not nearly enough, George thought, but maybe that's all they had. "Explain to him, please, that I must let the pus out so that the wound can heal." The young man took this information stoically, watching George do the minor surgery with local anesthesia and a scalpel blade, releasing greenish pus to flow into a small basin. He winced only once as George packed the wound open to drain and applied a bandage.

The major looked in at the door. "I think these other two have beriberi," George told him. "Starving people haven't enough vitamin B, and their muscles get weaker when they are fed." He stood up. "The clinic has medicine they can use."


"I think they probably did set us up that day," George said now, as he poured more coffee, but I'm glad we were there. I remember that young medical student from Mandalay, Pyone Hla. She looked completely worn out when she entered the village, but somewhere she had found a flower to put in her hair."

"She said there were twelve of them," Vienna said, "Four had died, and Pyone Hla didn't even want to remember how many times she had been raped. I wonder what's become of them."

"So, what do you think/" George asked. "If we go teach village health in Burma, we can leave all this hassle behind for a month or two. But will that just strengthen the dictatorship in Burma - Myanmar as they call it now - or will we be helping the hill tribes reach peace?'

"It used to be such a beautiful, prosperous country. If we can help it bloom again, let's go."

"Or I could go, and leave you with the grandchildren in Seattle, George said, "Burma may be opening to tourists but I don't like to take you where things could turn dangerous."

"I'll see the grandchildren and Burma, thank you. And before we come home we can stop off and work at the mission hospital in Mae Hong Son again. That way, we can give Jerry and Wilma Judson a month off, and I'll get to shop in Thailand."

"Got it all figured out, have you" George tipped his chair backward, balancing.

"I always have it figured out," Vienna purred.