Why Does the Wind Blow?

“Why would you leave Ban Mesi, Duong? Live here is good, isn’t it? What more could you want?” asks Nuot.

“Yes, it’s good – of course it’s good. But… you don’t ever think that there could be… more to life, do you? We’ve never left, so if we are missing out on something, we wouldn’t even know, would we?” I ask, in response.

“More? If you run to the city, there are no trees, are there? There’re too many people to know them all, aren’t there? If you run to Phnom Penh, you would be alone, in the middle of two million people,” says Nuot.

Nuot is my older brother. We live in Ban Mesi, in the Mondulkiri province of Kampuchea. My people have lived in a Khmer empire for as long as we know, but we aren’t Khmer – we are Bunong. If you read about the country in an encyclopedia, we’ll just be listed as: “other.” When we are talked about, which isn’t often, words like “phnong” (savage) or “samre” (hick) are usually used, and they’re not especially nice. Even so, I wonder…

“You’re probably right, but I can’t know until I actually try it, can I?” I say.

“You can know because father and mother and all the elders tell us so,” Nuot says.

“You remember Quinn, don’t you?” I ask.

“Of course. And he would agree with what I’m saying, wouldn’t he?

Daniel Quinn was an old white man who had lived with us in Mondulkiri for many years. Everyone just called him “Quinn,” but the way the villagers said it, it sounded more like “Keeun.” Quinn had taught us English, but he was always far more interested in having us teach him about nature – something he thought that he was ignorant about, and felt he needed to learn before he died, which he did, in Ban Mesi, about two years ago.

Before he did that, he thanked us – the whole village, for sharing our way of life with him. The whole village was proud that a white man from across the world should choose to die in our humble little corner of Kampuchea. His funeral was given special attention. Before he died, he told us he trusted us to honor him right and left the responsibility up to us. It was a responsibility the village took seriously. Some wondered if any changes to funeral rites were needed to properly honor a foreigner, but ultimately he was given a typical Bunong funeral – the same as any other, except with more people in attendance.

But before Quinn died in Ban Mesi, he arrived here.

It took us a very long time to realize that Quinn was not an English teacher at all, as we had all thought, but a writer of some kind. Quinn asked many questions and would restate what we told him in some sort of summary. We all thought he did this because he was confused, but after a while I realized it was because he was very interested in putting our ideas clearly into words – which is something we are acutely not interested in. To us, thing just are. We know it. Do you ask the wind why it blows?

Quinn did.

When the old man walked into town, Nuot thought he would collapse and die right then and there.

“Silly barang, doesn’t know what he’s doing, does he?” Nuot asked.

“We should go help him, shouldn’t we?” I asked.

“Yeah,” Nuot replied.

We walked over to the man and offered him some water. He didn’t speak any Bunong or Khmer, and we didn’t speak any English. He raised a large jug of water to tell us he didn’t need any. Nuot and I looked at each other, surprised.

“Hello, old man, what are you doing here?” Nuot asked in Khmer.

Quinn stared blankly at him.

“What is your name?” Nuot asked.

“Chmuah? Chmuah Quinn,” Quinn replied.

“Keeun,” I said, trying to see if I could repeat the sounds he had made.

“That’s right. Bong chmuah ey?” Quinn asked.

“My name is Duong,” I replied in Khmer.

Quinn looked at my brother and asked him the exact same question. He told him his name. He repeated it much like I had repeated his name – feeling the oddness of the sounds in his mouth.

Nuot asked him again what he was doing here.

“Clearly, that’s all the Khmer he knows, isn’t it?” I said.

“Well, it was worth trying,” said Nuot, switching back to Bunong. “What do we do now?”

“I don’t kn-,” I was saying until I stopped, as Quinn had nodded and started walking into the direction of the wilderness.

“Hey, old man, where are you going? You shouldn’t go there,” Nuot yelled in Bunong, just hoping the tone of his voice would carry his meaning. Quinn turned, and showed a half-smile on his face, and gave a mild wave that was more like a shrug than anything and kept walking.

Nuot and I took off after him, but kept a healthy distance behind him. Now, we were curious – just what was this old white man up to?

It turned out, that he was up to nothing. He moseyed around a stream, stopping often to sit and peacefully look around – at nothing – with his little half-smile. Nuot and I were fascinated.

“Just what is he doing?” Nuot was saying.

“I have no idea.”

After watching this old man for a long time, it finally hit me – and once it did, I felt stupid for not seeing it before. “Nuot, he’s listening to the spirits of the forest.”

Nuot snapped his head quickly to look back at the old man, who was now sitting by a stream. “No! An old white man couldn’t know about that, could he?” Nuot asked, his eyes fixed on the old man. Nuot didn’t speak for about a minute before he pronounced, “Yes. You’re right. He’s listening to the spirits. He’s communing with the forest.”

We watched the old man in silence, who in turn was watching the whole forest in silence.

“What’s this called?” I asked in English.

“A creek bed,” said Quinn as we stood over a dry creek bed. “But if it has water, you’d just call it a stream or a creek.”

It seemed like half the village had started learning English from Quinn. No one in Ban Mesi had any reason to learn English, as we all stayed in the village and there were no tourists that stopped by here like there were in some parts of Mondulkiri. I think people just wanted an excuse to talk to Quinn – or at least try to. For a long time, he was the most interesting thing in the village.

He would sit in his little hut that he had constructed himself and point to some old books he had acquired, to things in the text, and have people repeat them. He was very convincing. I’m not surprised we never suspected that he wasn’t an English teacher, but a writer working on some story. Actually, I’m not even sure he was really working on a story – maybe he was always just looking for a good place to die.

At any rate, after he had taught me enough English to express myself, he immediately flipped the conversation, and began asking me to teach him about Bunong spirituality. He was intensely curious.

“And in your eyes, the trees themselves have a soul, don’t they?” Quinn asked.

“And the dirt.”

“Then everything does, doesn’t it?” Quinn asked.

“Yes. Everything natural, and some things unnatural. Some spirits are good, some are bad. I’m making sense, aren’t I?” I said.

“Yes. You’re speaking very lucidly. Go on,” said Quinn.

“You’ll tell me if I’m not, won’t you?” I asked.

“Yes, of course. Now, go on.”

“Okay, and it’s not just physical things that have spirits. Even words and ideas can have souls. Since I have been learning this new language, I have encountered new spirits simply from speaking it.”

Quinn thought about this for a long time. “I’ve not considered that before.”

We strode through the jungle, along the banks of the stream where Nuot and I first watched the old man. He seemed to be happy.

“What do you consider to be important for living a happy life?” Quinn asked.

I thought a moment and said slowly, “In my culture you first need family, second you need friends, third you need nature, and fourth you need to take care of the village.”

“That’s all?”

“That’s enough, isn’t it?” I asked.

Quinn looked at me silently with his permanent half-smile, and nodded.

“Duong?”

“Yeah?”

“You said that nature was the third most important thing in Bunong culture,” said Quinn.

“Right,” I replied.

“But, the longer I’m here, the more it seems to me that nature is the most important thing, isn’t it?” Quinn asked.

“I don’t think it’s the most important. But, I think it’s far more important to us than it is you your people, isn’t it? – but I’ve never been to your land before, so I can’t say for sure,” I replied.

“Yes. I’d certainly say so.” Quinn took a long pause to look at the nature surrounding us, and drink it all in. Quinn took to the forest like a little Bunong boy. It was something the whole village had noticed, and occasionally you’d hear the older women trade passing comments about it.

After he’d finished looking at the peaceful jungle, he looked back at me and made a request, “Tell me more about nature.”

I sat quietly, thinking about what to say. “I’m not sure what to say, Quinn. We don’t normally have much to say about it. It just is.” I look at him, and he seems disappointed. “You wouldn’t ask the wind why it blows, would you?”

“No, I suppose I wouldn’t. But, humor me. Tell me why the wind blows,” Quinn replied.

“Okay, I’ll do the best I can,” I said. Quinn looked at me patiently. Finally, I started, “In your country, you and I would be equals – peers, wouldn’t we?”

“Yes.”

“Well, here we are peers with the spirits of the trees, the spirits of the vegetation, and all the other spirits of the forest. We each have souls, and ours are no better than theirs,” I said. I waited for Quinn’s reaction to see if I was making any sense. He seemed interested, so I went on, “We hear about what is happening to the world – climate change, as you called it. We’ve heard about this before, and we don’t understand how the rest of the world can let it happen. It’s so clear to us what is happening. But, the rest of the world, well, they’re like a frog in boiling water. The water gets hot so slowly that the frog never even notices it is getting burned. Just the same, the change in the Earth is happening too slowly for them to see it’s changing at all.

“Ahh, yes. Creeping normality, that’s what that’s called. Go on,” Quinn said.

“But, it’s not happening too slowly for us to see it. We don’t understand it – how someone could not see it,” I said. “But you said this is normal?”

“Not exactly, no. Creeping normality is when something changes so slowly that it just starts to feel normal, and people never react to it.”

“It doesn’t feel like it’s happening slowly, does it?” I said.

Quinn doesn’t answer. He just looks out at the jungle, thinking – about what, I’m not sure.

“Your people are very good at forgetting from all I hear. I would call it ‘the great forgetting.’ Your people cannot seem to remember that for almost all of human history, people lived together with nature, by hunting just enough animals to survive, and gathering the foods the forest provided,” I said.

Quinn didn’t disagree. “It’s a shame, isn’t it?” He said.

“It is what it is.”

Quinn and I kept up our talks and our walks. We only seemed to talk in the forest. It was where we both preferred it, and it was mostly what we talked about as well. We talked until Quinn felt like he understood the Bunong views of nature, and then we talked less, and we both listened – not to each other, but to the spirits of the forest.

We listened, and we walked together; me, the young Bunong man, and he, the old western one. We found a steady peace through this, and it slowly became our new normal. One day, we were on our usual walk, when we – to our heartbreaking surprise – we came to the end of the forest. Instead of the forest that was once there, there was emptiness. There was only tree stumps and logging equipment.

“It’s finally here, isn’t it?” I said.

“What’s that?” Quinn asked.

“The end of all nature.”

“Of course. And he would agree with what I’m saying, wouldn’t he?” Nuot asks me.

“No, I don’t think he would,” I replied.

“What makes you say that? Quinn loved the village, and the spirits of the forest loved him, didn’t they?” Nuot persists.

“Well,” I start. “Shortly before he died, Quinn was with me when we discovered what the loggers had done to the forest.”

“Yes, I know that.”

“I declared it to be ‘the end of all nature,’ and Quinn agreed. Shortly after that, he died. I think it was the sight of the missing forest that killed him,” I say.

“Oh,” Nuot says, and looks down, finally understanding. After a long silence he says, “It’s a hard time to be alive, isn’t it?”

I left Ban Mesi today without knowing what lays ahead of me. I only know that with nature disappearing, there is no future for my people to live our lives in the way we always have, is there? I have to go into the world and find a new way of living, don’t I? There is no room anymore for my old life, is there? Maybe slowly I will change, and one day it will all feel normal. Maybe it will, but you or I don’t really know, do we?

Questions

PART 1

· Look at the underlined sentences, and try to figure out the grammar rules of the question tag at the end of the sentence, without looking them up.

o There are only 3 rules, and they are quite simple.

PART 2

· What do you know about the Bunong people? Have you ever met one?

· Do you think it’s wrong for people to cut down forests in Cambodia? Why or why not?

· Do you ever worry about climate change?

o Do you think it will affect the world within your lifetime?

o Is it already affecting you?

· Why did Duong leave Ban Mesi?

· Do you think Duong will find happiness by leaving Ban Mesi, or was it a mistake for him to leave?