The Complete Collection of Travel Literature

by Tahir Shah

  The chief’s wife took the empty bowl and filled it, and stirred the mixture again with her fingers.

  “Drink up,” said Richard sternly. “Every drop.”

  I put the rim to my mouth and took a sip. The moment it touched my tongue, I realized it was not milk. I couldn’t make out the exact taste, except to say it contained a trace of alcohol. Richard and the chief watched as I gulped down the bowl’s contents. When I had finished, I licked my lips.

  Richard smiled at the chief, and thanked him for the refreshing beverage.

  Soon after our arrival in San José, I discovered the cryptic process by which masato is made. The women peel and wash a number of yuca, manioc, at the river-bank. They then grate the roots and wash water through the coarse mixture, sieving it thoroughly. This removes a poison, a form of hydrocyanic acid, which occurs naturally in the tuber. After grating, it is cooked and crushed with a wooden spoon. Two or three women often sit around the pot, mashing while they chat.

  As they mash, they pull out handfuls, chew, and spit them back into the pot. The enzymes and bacteria in their saliva cause the yuca to ferment. After four days the paste has fermented. It’s mixed with water, then served. The drink, a weak alcohol, is traditionally consumed in enormous quantities. In Shuar society, masato is presented to guests before any conversation takes place. To refuse it would be an unthinkable insult.

  Once Richard and I had each downed a second bowl of masato, the chief introduced himself. He said his name was Enrique. It struck me as an odd name for the leader of a proud, head-shrinking tribe. He welcomed us formally to San José, and said he hoped we would stay in the village for many months. I pointed to the white nylon sack.

  “We have brought you a few things,” I said. “They are tokens of our gratitude.”

  My basic Spanish, and Enrique’s own unfamiliarity with the language hindered our conversation. But he smiled, bowed his head, and opened the bag.

  He pulled out the box of shotgun cartridges first, and held the box up to his nose.

  “Good,” he said, “they are dry ones, very good.”

  “They’re 16 gauge,” I replied, but Enrique was too busy looking through the sack.

  He pulled out the assorted packets of salt, rice, flour, tea, the cans of tuna fish and butter, the soap, loo paper, and fishing hooks. He praised each item for a moment, thanked us, and called for his wife to bring more masato.

  Then the Shuar chief thrust his right hand back into the sack. He fished out a small tub made of blue glass.

  “Vicks Vapour Rub,” I said. “I’ve heard you all like it.”

  Enrique narrowed his eyes, prized off the lid, and sniffed the oily cream. He asked what it was used for.

  “For coughs,” I said. “But I’ve heard you have another use for it.”

  I chuckled. Richard chuckled. But Enrique didn’t understand. I wondered whether the Scandinavian in Iquitos might have been having me on. I hoped not, as I’d spent a small fortune on thirty tubs of the mentholated cream. Enrique looked over at me quizzically, then sniffed the ointment a second time.

  “You know,” I said casually, pointing to my lap, “it’s for rubbing down there. It’ll make you strong.”

  To put an end to the awkwardness, I fumbled in the bottom of the sack, and pulled out one of the Fanta bottles.

  “This is a very special object,” I said, “with so many uses. It’s a rolling-pin, a pestle for crushing bananas, a musical instrument, and even a weapon.”

  The Shuar chief straightened his macaw-feather corona, and licked his thin tongue across his lips.

  “¿Pero de qué habla? What are you talking about?” he said. “That’s a Fanta bottle.”

  “You’ve seen one before?”

  “Por supuesto, of course,” Enrique replied. “The missionaries bring us Fanta whenever they come here.”

  Richard and I exchanged troubled glances.

  “Missionaries?”

  “They’re our friends,” said the leader. “They taught us about God.”

  “You’re Christians?”

  “Evangelists,” he corrected.

  “What about the ancient beliefs of the Shuar?”

  “The traditions were important in my childhood,” said Enrique, “but with time they disappeared.”

  He passed Richard more masato.

  “We used always to be at war with other tribes,” he said. “A Shuar would never sleep without his knife, or walk in the jungle without watching for attackers. Life was very dangerous. But then the missionaries came.”

  Enrique paused to take a draught of the white, creamy liquid.

  “They told us that killing was wrong,” he said. “God doesn’t want us to kill. He wants us to pray, to pray for Jesus.”

  When all the masato was over, a roasted paca was brought out. The creature, which had obviously been shot, was peppered with lead pellets. The Shuar don’t serve food until the masato has been finished.

  Enrique took us on a tour of the village. He showed us the water tank which the missionaries had built, and the rustic church at the end of the village. When we arrived, the villagers had been praying there, as they did every Sunday morning.

  Every villager received us with hospitality and more masato. As we drank it, they welcomed us with the same line: “We thank Jesus for sending you”. There was no mention of killing, feuds, war, or of shrunken heads. I wondered if these people really were the Shuar. Were they my fearless Birdmen?

  Unable to stand the suspense, I asked the chief about ayahuasca. Now they were evangelists, had they any use for it?

  “Natema,” he said, through his clenched teeth. “Es muy importante. That is very important. Of course we use it. How do you think we get into the other world?”

  “The world of the spirits?” I asked.

  “No”, said Enrique softly, “the world of Jesus.”

  Remarkably, the missionaries hadn’t outlawed ayahuasca. They must have known that its prohibition would have led to revolt. But the more I saw of their evangelistic faith, the more disturbed I became. In little over a generation the core elements of Shuar society had been stripped away. Virtually everyone I met in the region had a Spanish Christian name, although their spoken Spanish was frequently limited. From the loss of Shuar names to the knowledge of medicinal plants, ancient ways were disappearing fast. Perhaps it was right that the culture of taking and shrinking heads had gone. But to replace elaborate rituals with evangelism, or any alien religion, seemed insane. By making subtle changes, the old ways collapse, like a house of cards.

  With shotguns, there was no longer a need for fibrous shields, once carried by every warrior to protect against axe attacks; or manguaré, log drums, as a shotgun blast carries further over the jungle. Without tsantsa raids, there was no need for lookout towers either. Traditionally built on the roofs of houses, they doubled as missile posts when the village was under attack. And, with the cessation of tsantsa raids, there wasn’t a need for tsantsa feasts, which were crucial in transferring folklore and songs from one generation to the next. With the introduction of Western clothing, ancient methods of weaving died out. I asked if traditional textiles had ever been embroidered with designs of men with wings and trophy heads, but gained no definite answer. Even if there had once been burial chambers with textiles, there was little hope of finding them intact. Unlike the ultra-dry sands of the Atacama desert, anything buried in the Amazon jungle is devoured by its acidic soil.

  Enrique introduced us to his daughter and son-in-law, who lived nearby in a maloca overlooking the river. I recognized their son as the man who had brought down the monkey the night before. I thanked him.

  “Please stay with us,” said the man, whose name was Ignacio. “Your boat must be very damp.”

  Richard and I accepted the hospitality. Ignacio’s own son, José Días, took a message down to the boat for me. It asked Cockroach to send up a gift bag and a few of my things.

  Ignacio’s wife put her newborn baby into the h
ammock, suspended across the room. Like many of the other Shuar women, she wore a faded red skirt, and a tee-shirt. She welcomed us, saying they were honored to give strangers shelter in their Christian home. The Bible, she said, tells us to care for visitors as if they are your own kin. She hurried off to fetch a bowl of masato and some meat.

  Fifteen minutes later she returned with a gourd of the beverage and a shallow wooden tray, which held a large quantity of rodent meat. As before, the masato was drunk first. Then the meat was passed to me. Ignacio’s wife had a flare for cookery. She had decorated the rim of the dish with the rodent’s tail and feet. I wondered whether I was supposed to eat them. Perhaps, I suggested to myself, they had another purpose. We have all heard of how the Bedouin of Arabia serve camel and sheep eyeballs to important guests. The tradition of eating the eyes came about as a result of a misunderstanding. They were not a delicacy to be eaten at all, rather the eyes were an indication of the freshness of the meat. In a desert climate animal flesh goes bad quickly. A bright eye is a sign that the meat is fresh. British dignitaries visiting Bedouin encampments mistook the eyes for choice morsels, and gulped them down.

  Thankfully, everyone steered clear of the rodent’s feet.

  “Tonight we have a special prayer meeting in Church,” said Ignacio, once we had eaten, “we hope that you will join us.”

  At San José, the busy cycle of village life came to a halt on Saturday night, and didn’t start again until Monday morning. Sunday was for prayer, and prayer alone. Christian evangelism might have come to the land of the Shuar, but some things hadn’t changed. The young men would still creep from the village long before the sun had brought the dawn. With their weapons at the ready, and a little masato paste packed in a leaf, they’d go hunting, dogs at their heels.

  Although shotguns were the most sought after product from the outside world, they were expensive. And shot had severe disadvantages. It ripped the prey’s flesh to pieces, peppering it with lead. Worse still was the sound. One blast from a gun and all the surrounding wildlife was frightened away.

  Ignacio reached up into the rafters and took down his preferred weapon. It was a blowpipe, about ten feet long.

  “I use this to hunt monkey,” he said, holding it to his lips. “I tip the darts with curare, and make a notch just before the end. When the monkey tries to pull out the dart, it breaks there, leaving the poisoned end in the animal.”

  A quiver of darts could be made in a few minutes, tipped with curare and with a band of kapok as a flight. The high quality of the weapon was matched by the warrior’s accuracy. The Shuar are regarded as great masters in making and using blowpipes. Most can hit a bird or mammal at a distance of up to a hundred feet.

  One story tells of a prominent American ornithologist who was collecting jungle birds in the 1960s, for a museum in the United States. The local people were keen to help him catch specimens, which would later be stuffed. One morning they brought him a selection of dead birds. He refused them politely, explaining that he required specimens without dart holes. Next day the hunters returned with more examples. There were no marks on them at all. The warriors had shot the darts through the birds’ eyes.

  At dusk we escorted Ignacio and his wife to the church. My aversion to missionary practice led to a sense of unease. As far as I was concerned, an alien faith was eroding the traditions which had enabled the Shuar to survive for millennia. As we strolled down to the tin-roofed house of worship, Ignacio agreed that there was more illness now, than before.

  “In the old days,” he said, “with feuding between one tribe and another, only the strongest people survived. The Curandero could save some people with powerful jungle plants, but anyone with a very bad wound died. The missionaries told us not to use plants, but to take the pills which they bring. Now people are forgetting which plants cure which illness. And,” Ignacio continued despondently, “there’s so much illness.”

  I asked what kind of afflictions.

  “Last year tuberculosis came to the village, and then whooping cough,” he said. “More than ten children died. Soon after that, three more died from malaria.”

  Ignacio’s wife looked at the ground, and wiped her fingers over her eyes.

  “Our eldest son died two years ago,” she said. “He was so weak that nothing could save him.”

  We entered the church. A number of uneven benches were laid out in rows on the mud floor, facing the front of the room. Although there was no electricity in the village, an expensive-looking hurricane lamp was hanging from the central beam; a gift from the missionaries. As no one else had yet arrived, Ignacio took the lamp down and lit it. Outside, dusk was turning to darkness, and the jungle’s nocturnal creatures were readying themselves to feast.

  Gradually, as darkness cloaked the village, the congregation gathered at the church. The benches were soon crammed with honest faces. I could almost hear the missionaries bragging. They’d civilized a tribe of head shrinkers, and made God-fearing evangelists out of them.

  Dressed in their best clothes, some in Wellington boots, the congregation of San José began their evening service with a prayer. They asked that the Devil keep away from their community. Then they thanked God for sending Richard and me to them. That night, as every night, they praised the Lord, fluttering their hands in the air, crying, “Hallelujah! Hallelujah!”.

  With the hurricane lamp roaring in the rafters they ran about, jerking their arms hysterically, just as the missionaries had taught them to do. Only then, as a tambourine marked out a hypnotic rhythm, did they begin to sing.

  They pounded out one hymn after the next, some in their Shuar language, Achuar, others in Spanish. The parts I could understand, spoke of truth, justice, temptation and of Jesus. Pausing between hymns, they shrieked in unison, over and over: “Hallelujah! Hallelujah!”

  The tambourine stirred back into action. The church was soon resounding to a Shuar translation of When the Saints Come Marching Home.

  Sitting beside me, Richard rolled his eyes.

  “The ancient Shuar ballads,” he whispered...

  TWENTY-FOUR

  Trumpets of the Devil

  After late morning prayers Enrique took us to meet the village shaman. He lived away from the other houses, in a clearing on the edge of the jungle. It surprised me that such enthusiastic evangelists would still find a role for the maestro. Perhaps, I reflected, he was needed for his knowledge of ayahuasca. The missionaries had replaced natural remedies with little white pills, but had turned a blind eye to the Vine of the Dead. Mixing mind-altering flora with religion is nothing new. Many faiths throughout history have incorporated hallucinogens into their creed. Among them, the Zoroastrians of Persia, who once used the mysterious plant-based hallucinogen haoma in their rituals.

  Christianity has accepted hallucinogens, too. I’d heard of the Native American Church, which was founded on the ritualistic use of the peyote cactus. It has more followers today than at any time in its history. The Church’s practitioners believe that the cactus enables them to cure sickness and to speak to Jesus.

  Richard told me of a Christian ayahuasca-using sect, called Santo Daime.

  “It was started in the 1920s,” he said, “when a rubber-tapper called Raimundo Irineu Serra was invited to take ayahuasca by Indians in the Brazilian Amazon. In a vision he saw a beautiful woman. Supposedly she was the Virgin Mary. Irineu called her “Queen of the Forest”.

  “Through visions she taught him hymns,” he went on. “She told him to base a religion on her songs – which became his church’s doctrine. And she ordered him to spread her message to others. Santo Daime is enormously powerful over the border in Brazil,” said Richard. “It’s swept across the US and Europe, too.”

  “But the Shuar’s faith is different,” I said. “Evangelism and ayahuasca don’t mix, but coexist.”

  The Vietnam vet” swiped a furry caterpillar from his leg.

  “Those missionaries are clever as shit,” he said. “Ayahuasca’s been around
a lot longer than they have. Screw with it and they’ll be kicked all the way back to Tallahassee. They know that.”

  Richard’s emerald eyes shone with anger.

  “When they messed with the Shuar,” he said, “the Spanish and the Incas had their butts kicked. But the evangelists have won the battle, and without a single death. They didn’t need weapons. Theirs was a different kind of war,” he said, tapping a finger to his brow. “They fucked with their minds.”

  Bolts of sunlight ripped through the surrounding canopy, blinding me as I walked. A few feet into the undergrowth and I was gripped by the jungle thirst again. I put it down to dehydration brought on by the overpowering humidity. As I stared up at the light, I glimpsed a mossy branch of a carapanuaba tree. On it were growing a dozen orchids with rich yellow petals. Richard identified the alluring flowers as Mormodes rolfeanum. He said that each one represented a bird in flight. High above them, a nest of spider monkeys were calling. I wondered if it was their relative whose arm I had eaten two nights before.

  Enrique pointed to a long-house in the distance.

  “That’s where Alberto, the shaman...”

  Before he could complete his sentence, a slender man slipped from behind a cecropia tree. He was holding a sloth by the armpits. At first I didn’t look at the man, the shaman, as I was so captivated by the sloth. It moved in slow motion, wielding its wiry, hair-covered arms through the air like sickles reaping wheat. Its expression was haunting, wide-eyed with dimpled cheeks. Never had I come across an animal with a face so trusting, in circumstances so uncertain.

  As we tramped down the path towards Alberto’s maloca, I took my eyes off the sloth, and looked at the shaman. Like the other Shuar, his features were delicate and exact. Had I met Alberto, or any of the other villagers, on the Mongolian Steppes I wouldn’t have looked twice. The only difference was the ring of macaw feathers which crowned him. His face was typically East Asian, testimony to his ancient ancestors’ march across the frozen Bering Straits ten millennia ago. His hands were curiously scarred, their skin checkered with uneven lines.