In Jakarta, Juliana's journalist housemate told me about covering the gory and atrocious secession of East Timor from Indonesia, and later the civil strife in Aceh. Normal codes of conduct do not apply during these upheavals. You may attract hate simply because there is unspent hatred; they may kill you just because they have unfired weapons; you may find a whole island burned or burning. There are corpses everywhere, no one can be trusted, and confusion reigns. Paul is a brawny, bibulous Canadian. His machismo recently had him trying to sweat out a torrid fever in a second-rate Indonesian hospital. He finally agreed to fly to Singapore and see a Western doctor, who said Paul probably would have died of cerebral malaria after a few more days without treatment. And this is how big Paul described his method of assuring his safety while away from home: "Whenever I travel, I carry a thousand dollars. US. Cash. And no one's gonna fuck with you."
Of all the souvenirs I brought back, most of which I gave away as gifts, somewhere in San Francisco I lost what I treasured the most, and which cost nearly nothing: the crinkled, worm-eaten bills I saved from Cambodia and Laos. The ink was bleeding and fading, the designs were colorful and ornate but poorly executed, the market values exiguous. They may have seemed a treasure only because I am American and so my spirituality is inextricable from money; but as I traveled, those tattered notes did seem to purchase me a slender solace.