by Tahir Shah
I sipped a tall blended drink on the porch of a restaurant called Fitzcarraldo. It had once been home to the legendary rubber-tapper and explorer of the same name. Werner Herzog’s film Fitzcarraldo had made a great impression on me years before. I never thought that one day I might be sitting in the rubber-tapper’s headquarters, looking out over the swollen waters of the Amazon.
Fitzcarraldo’s story echoes the trailblazer spirit and the wild excesses of the rubber boom years. Born Brian Sweeny Fitzgerald, the eldest son of an immigrant Irishman, he was known in the jungle as Fitzcarraldo. He fled into the Amazon in his early twenties, after being accused of spying during the war between Peru and Chile. Two years later, in about 1877, he had made a fortune as a rubber-tapper, and was one of the richest men in Peru. The money was soon spent.
After watching Enrico Caruso perform at Manaus’ £400,000 opera house, Fitzcarraldo swore he’d lure the great tenor to the Peruvian jungle. His dream was to bring opera to the natives. What better way to entice Caruso, he thought, than to build an opera house to match the one in Manaus?
To raise funds, Fitzcarraldo came up with a plan. He would make use of the vast rubber-tree forest on the Ucayali River, where 14 million trees lay untapped. To succeed, he first had to get a boat beyond Pongo das Mortes, the Rapids of Death. Everyone said he was mad, which he probably was. He sailed his steamship up a parallel river and forced his laborers – all of them Shuar – to haul it over a hill and down to the Ucayali.
Once the steamer was on the Ucayali, Fitzcarraldo and his companions celebrated with drink. As they did so, Shuar laborers cut the mooring ropes, sending the boat charging towards the rapids. From the start they had planned secretly to sacrifice the vessel, to appease the spirit of the waterfall. The boat plunged over the rapids. Somehow, Fitzcarraldo survived but never lived to build his opera house. He died soon after, in 1889, drowned in the Urubamba River. He was just thirty-five.
Night falls quickly over the jungle. The patina of dusk diffuses into darkness, a signal for the nocturnal world to wake. In Plaza de Armas the street-lights seethed with insect life; mosquitoes, moths and hornets among them, hurling themselves at the orbs of brilliant white glass. The restaurants and bars, bright with neon lighting, were haunted by them. No one but me was in the least bothered.
The only place in Iquitos free from insects was Ari’s Burger. Every few minutes one of the bubbly waitresses would float through, spraying poison gas from an aerosol. I sought refuge there, preferring the gas to the bugs outside.
Even before my backside had met the chrome chair, Florita was standing over me. She had missed me during the afternoon, she said, but would miss me even more later in the night. Three other guys had already asked her to the disco, but she’d rejected them in favour of me. She exclaimed that she would never look at another man. Murmuring more excuses, I ordered another banana split.
I closed my eyes as the poison gas rained down. When I opened them, a robust-looking man was sitting across the table. His skin was tanned, his hair expertly cropped and parted at the side. He had an honest face that seemed out of place in Ari’s Burger.
“Iquitos is the best kept secret in the world,” he said in a west-Texan drawl, “but there’s a lot of bad people down here. But we’re cleaning it up.”
I was on the lookout for conmen, I said.
The Texan tapped his index finger on the raspberry vinyl.
“Don’t let down your guard,” he replied. “The bandits see tourists like you as game... game to be hunted.”
FIFTEEN
Big Bug Business
An Englishman buttonholed me in the corridor of Hotel Selva. Dark circles lined his eyes; his face was as white as Dover chalk. In a Liverpudlian accent he asked me what I thought of the hotel.
“There’s no electricity, running water or glass in the windows,” I said, “the mattress is rotting, and the bathroom’s full of chickens. And there are a pair of nymphomaniacs in the next room.”
“Why don’t you find somewhere else?”
Making a fist, I rammed it into my palm.
“I’m going into the jungle,” I said. “Going to need a lot of toughening up. Even the jungle couldn’t be as rough as room 102.”
The Liverpudlian walked down to the reception and asked for a room just like mine, leaving me to wonder what kind of lunatic he was.
Later that day, Xavier strolled into Ari’s Burger and winked.
“Got you a guide,” he said.
“Is he brave?”
“Like a kamikaze pilot.”
“Bring him over, and we’ll have a chat.”
“He won’t come to Ari’s,” said Xavier, winking again.
César was squatting behind the door of his friend’s house, in a shanty town called Punchana. As a successful jungle guide he was, he said, hiding from bad, jealous men – the very same kind of people he’d protect me from were I to hire him.
“If you’re going to protect me, you’re not going to be able to hide behind doors,” I said.
César paced over to a rocking-chair, made from steel construction poles. He was about thirty, chubby with a big head and a nervous twitch. From time to time his face would erupt in a broad, anxious smile. The more he smiled, the more he twitched. Rocking back and forth nervously on the chair, he told me of his life.
“My brother was killed by Sendero Luminoso,” he began in a voice inspired by gloom. “His body was dumped in the river near Pucallpa, and was eaten by piranhas. Then three months ago my sister died of cancer. My three brothers and I carry on the family name, living however we can.”
“What experience have you as a guide?”
César revived from his fit of melancholy.
“I’ve been taking tourists into the jungle for twenty years,” he said, ‘since I was a child. I speak eighteen languages – German, French, Arabic, Japanese... and I can navigate by the stars.”
“What about ayahuasca?”
He smiled, then blinked as if a bright light were shining in his eyes.
“Taken it hundreds of times,” he said. “I’m a shaman. I was taught by a maestro on the Napo River.”
“When were you last up in the Pastaza region, with the Shuar?”
“Shuar?” he mouthed. “Yes, I know the Shuar. If you look them in the eye they’ll slit your throat. If you see their women they’ll hack off your head with a machete. And if you show any signs of illness, they’ll drown you.”
“Dangerous people, the Shuar,” said Xavier, wincing.
“Only last month a group of missionaries flew up to the Pastaza in a seaplane,” said César. “They landed on the river. When the Shuar elders came out, the missionaries greeted them. The tribe seemed friendly, so the Christians camped on the river-bank. But in the night the Shuar warriors attacked and killed them all. They chopped off their heads for trophies, and cut up the bodies.”
“Why did they murder them?”
César rocked back and forth tersely.
“No gifts,” he said. “They came with empty hands.”
Although his nervous disposition worried me, I hired César as a guide. His good English, claimed knowledge of Pastaza, ayahuasca and jungle medicine were the credentials I was after. We negotiated a fee and a budget for equipment and gifts. It was a lot of money. Xavier said I could rest assured, for I was hiring the best in the Upper Amazon. César suggested I employ his three younger brothers as porters, for an additional $600. All the money, a total of $3,100, would have to be paid in advance, he said. I handed over a wad of used banknotes.
To save time and fuel, César proposed that we take a river ferry up from Iquitos to San Ramon, at the base of the Pastaza. The journey up the Amazon and its headwater, the Maranon, would take about ten days. We would take food and supplies with us, as well as a small outboard motor and fuel. Upriver we would hire a dugout and fix the engine to it.
César was just about to write me a receipt when there were shouts from the street. Without flinching, he r
an out the back door and over a neighbor’s fence, taking my money with him.
“What’s the problem? That man was shouting ¡La policía!”
Xavier lit a cigarette and inhaled.
“Someone must have got robbed,” he said. “The crime’s terrible in Iquitos.”
*
My head was heavy on the foetid pillow that night, under which was the magic cob of maize. I had a dream in which César was laughing demonically. He was about to say something when I woke up, startled by the sound of the bedhead banging on the other side of the wall. I stumbled into the bathroom where the chickens were roosting, and tried to coax a single drop of water from the tap. As usual, it was bone dry.
The cook started slaughtering chickens early the next morning. Over the racket, I heard the manager’s wife screaming for me down the corridor. César had sent his brother, Gonzalo, to meet me. I noticed at once the familiar trait of delivering a blink with a smile. He had instructions, he said, to take me to the floating market at Belen.
As we walked the mile or so down Calle Putumayo, Gonzalo told me tales of evil, depraved men, who were hell-bent on destroying his family.
“Iquitos is a dangerous place,” he said. “People will rest only when you are dead. They use black magic to make you ill, so you die slowly, and with pain.”
“Who are these people?”
Gonzalo blinked, but he was not smiling.
“They are the Mahicarís, the Devil Worshippers,” he said.
Beneath the tranquil veneer of daily life, there lurks an underworld of sorcery and superstition. The entire Latin continent is founded on a bedrock of magical belief. But nowhere else, except perhaps for Manaus, had I come across such a fear of the occult. The Brazilian Amazon has a history of Macumba, a religious system blended from West African belief and Catholic iconography. African slaves were never brought to the Upper Amazon, and so Macumba, and its sister faith Santeria, are unknown in Peru.
Instead, a shamanic tradition has grown up, which touches every member of society. It heals illness when people are sick, and solves problems; for, as I was constantly reminded, everyone in Iquitos had problems.
I asked Gonzalo about the Devil Worshippers. I wanted to meet them.
He bit the corner of his lip and blinked.
“You can’t go to the Mahicaris,” he said. “You have to wait for them to find you.”
Belen was buoyant with activity, even though the shops on Calle Putumayo still had their shutters closed. The market area extended down to the sludge-brown water and the floating village. Thousands upon thousands of balsa wood shacks were slotted together. When the water was high, as it was then, the houses simply rose on the tide. Children were splashing, avoiding lumps of raw sewage; their mothers busy washing clothes, and everyone else was doing their ablutions.
In the market, all kinds of products were for sale. We pushed through the crowds, peering at the merchandize, which was offered on makeshift stalls. Meat was being sold at the first area. Fresh caiman legs and jungle pig hooves, chunks of water eel, giant snails, and turtles hacked from their shells, sold along with their eggs. There were other creatures from the river, too, including a piraruca, a giant, prehistoric, freshwater fish.
We pushed forwards through the crowds and came to a line of stalls selling live jungle animals. There were three black spider monkeys tied to a pole, $3 each; a young ocelot pacing in a cage ($35); three toucans with yellow bills ($15); a baby anteater ($20), and a curious species of primitive turtle, called a matamata ($4).
Gonzalo led me to an area roofed in blue polythene, where chonta, the heart of palm, was being shredded into what looked like tagliatelle. No meal in Iquitos is complete without a great pile of it. Beside the chonta was a line of tables selling mapacho, black tobacco, used in every shamanic ceremony. The leaves are brought from the deepest regions of the jungle, rolled tight into cylindrical batons, like candlesticks at church. The stall keepers, all women, sat on high stools clipping the tobacco and rolling it into oversized cigarettes.
A little further on a teenage girl with red hair and freckles was selling guajes. These fruit are best described as looking like rust-colored hand-grenades. The flesh beneath the carapace, a popular snack, is light orange in color. It’s said to have thirty times more vitamin C than citrus fruit.
Beyond the blue polythene roofs was another market, where medicaments were sold. We always hear in the West how the Amazon is an untapped storehouse of remedies. It’s undoubtedly true. But not until you walk through an emporium of raw jungle medicines, can you comprehend the range of plants involved.
Piled high on the tables there were roots, barks, oils and tinctures, each with a specific use. Gonzalo held up a section of uña de gato, a vine celebrated for its ability to stop cancerous tumours. Beside it was a heap of coja bark, used for arthritis; and beside that siete raíces (seven roots) a bronchial dilator and aphrodisiac in one. At one stall the owner held up a jar. In it was a boa constrictor’s head pickled in brine – a remedy against rheumatism. Another table was arranged with dozens of miniature bottles filled with beads – amulets as powerful to the believing as any drug.
Before we left Belen, Gonzalo took me to meet a friend who sold guajes at the water’s edge. His table was in the shadow of an impressive bandstand, designed and built by Gustave Eiffel, in the good old days. Gonzalo’s friend employed a woman whose face was hideously disfigured. She was shy, reluctant to give the usual sales banter. As we looked for a motocarro to take us back to Plaza de Armas, I asked Gonzalo if he knew what had happened to her.
“Everyone at Belen knows the story of Rosa,” he said.
“What story?”
Gonzalo wiped his mouth with his hand.
“She used to be the most beautiful girl in Iquitos,” he said. “Every schoolboy dreamed of having her. Then, when she was about fifteen, a maestro said he had seen a vision, in which Rosa was raped by five men. The dream was a premonition.”
“But what happened to her face?”
“Rosa’s mother didn’t want the dream to come true,” continued Gonzalo. “The maestro said there was only one thing to do – to turn her beauty into ugliness. So one night Rosa’s parents dipped her face in acid.”
At noon the next day César sent word for me to come to his friend’s house in Punchana. As before, I found him crouching behind the door. This time he said he was looking for beetles on the floor. The sitting-room was now filled with equipment and goods. There was enough stuff to kit out an entire shop.
Rocking back and forth on the chair, César publicized what he had bought for the trip: “Eighty pounds of sugar and two hundred bars of soap,” he said, “eighty cans of tuna fish, sixty of sardines, thirty tins of butter, three hundred rolls of toilet paper, two hundred pounds of cooking salt, and forty of salt for preserving fish; a sack of rice and another of flour, a box of detergent for washing clothes, two boxes of bleach sachets, twelve dozen eggs, six gallons of cooking oil, a box of cocoa, coffee and tea, forty fishing hooks, three propeller blades and three sacks of used clothing.”
“Why do we need so much stuff?”
César smiled wide and blinked twice.
“Gifts,” he said. “Without gifts the Shuar will butcher us.”
When he had finished with the manifest, César asked me for an extra $600. He had overspent on the food and was running short. Cash was still needed to hire a 15-horsepower outboard and to buy fuel. I went into the corner and unzipped my money-belt. Only the emergency money was left.
“Sorry, but I don’t have any more dollars,” I said.
César rocked up and down a couple of times.
“Then we won’t be going anywhere.”
I handed him the emergency money, and again asked for a receipt. Another excuse was knocked back at me.
In addition to taking clothes, fishing hooks and food, César said the Shuar would expect other things. He hadn’t budgeted for these, but advised me to go to the market and get what I coul
d. Gonzalo would accompany me and, afterwards, we could pick up an antidote for snakebites.
“What gifts shall I get?”
“The Shuar like shiny things,” said César. “Combs, mirrors, beads, that sort of thing.”
Back at Belen, Gonzalo and I trawled through the hardware shops. Like the ones at Nazca, they were piled floor to ceiling with Chinese-made merchandize. I bought a box of plastic combs and another of hand held mirrors, with colored backs. After hearing Cesar’s story of the empty-handed missionaries, one couldn’t be too careful.
When the adventurer Lewis Cotlow went into the jungle in the early 1950s, he took lipsticks, mascara, and elaborate cosmetics. Warriors, he said, always needed warpaint for their faces. After Cotlow came a New York socialite, Nicole Maxwell, who spent years in the Peruvian Amazon. She hit upon a novel gift item. Before leaving the United States, she bought dozens of glass eyes in her own eye color. Indian chiefs were amazed when she brought them out. I thought hard to come up with something as original as glass eyes.
It was then that I remembered the film The Gods Must be Crazy, in which a Coca-Cola bottle finds its way into a remote Botswanan village. For the Khoikhoin people the bottle was an invaluable tool. They used it as a rolling-pin, a musical instrument, for pounding grain and even as a weapon. Eventually, fights broke out because everyone wanted to use the bottle. The only way to ensure peace was to take not one Coke bottle, but two dozen.
Gonzalo thought it was a ridiculous idea. He said the Shuar would hit us over the heads with the bottles and then slit our throats. It worried me that any story told by Iquiteños, involving the Shuar, ended with everyone getting their heads hacked off. I had a gut feeling that the Coke bottles would go down well. After hunting for more than an hour, we ended up with twenty Fanta bottles. They would have to do.