Nadi,
Fiji: Christmas Day
By Ian Fohrman
“Someone was lying. Looking
back, it’s hard to know whom – maybe everyone.”
Rachele and I stared blankly, as travelers often do,
at the unfamiliar movie poster encased in smudged
Plexiglas. We had been warned about walking around
Nadi on a holiday. “Nothing but drunks and bad people”
we had been told, and the streets seemed to prove
the advice wise. If not for the humid tropical heat,
you would expect tumbleweed to bounce past the boarded
shop fronts and staggering drunkards.
My first instinct is always to be
suspicious- to question motives.
When I try to decide where this
instinct comes from I choose to attribute it to the
never-ending onslaught of warnings and cautionary
travel tales. This is a far more pleasant conclusion
than believing that I am a distrustful, pessimistic
person. However, questions of psychology and fear-culture
were deep below the surface when the toothless tattooed
man appeared from nowhere and joined us in staring
at the poster.
-We don’t want any. I revealed
my suspicion and distrust with a foreigner’s stare.
The man directed his outstretched
and heavily tattooed arm to the movie poster encased
in opaque Plexiglas. “This is Indian movie. Not in
English. Only Hindi.”
“Then why are the catch-lines and
credits in English?” I asked, caught off guard and
redirected my examination back to the poster, “Even
the title.”
“So people like you will pay and
go in.” He said, casually dropping his arm back to
his side and looking at Rachele. “What do you do today?”
I had already prepared my excuse
for why we didn’t want to get in a cab or buy his
drugs.
Before I could preempt his sales
pitch, Rachele informed him of our mission for Fijian-crafted
gifts. And with that, I would never know his initial
motivation for approaching us.
“You must come, friends. I know
traditional Fijian shop. Only village-owned shop in
Nadi.” He said, beckoning with dark spider-webbed
hands and already walking.
We followed, unsure of our destination,
and listened to a patchwork history lesson filled
with tourist-pleasing exaggerations.
“The last cannibal-king. You know
him? He’s on Fijian money. He would eat tourists and
sailors,” the man said over his shoulder without fully
looking back or breaking stride.
When we arrived at the shop the
man stood proudly by the door, and ushered us inside.
-How much commission will you
get for this? I seriously doubted that there
could be only one Fijian owned shop in the second
largest city in the country.
The men in the back of the shop
stopped their revelry and put down their drinks. They
stood and approached us, immediately bombarding us
with salesmanship and fake friendship.
“Friends! Sit down. Drink kava before
shopping. This is Fiji-time.” The man with the best
English handed Rachele a half coconut shell and began
the instructions for properly drinking kava. We knew
the instructions before we were told.
After a few drinks, we passed the
allotted time for friendliness and pushy salesmanship
commenced.
“Look friend, this is a fine club.
It was used by cannibals to crack skulls. Very nice
craftsmanship. I give you good deal,” the man caressed
the wooden club. Each item was showcased Vanna White
style.
After much bargaining, some yelling
and too many cannibal stories, we paid the men and
took our bootie into the empty streets. We stood for
a moment, exhaled and tried to escape the fight or
flight tension of the store. The air on the street
was no less anxious, full of vague danger. It was
a feeling from which we would not get relief for hours.
“Friends. What do you do now?” again
the man with the dark toothless smile had come from
nowhere.
-Friend… we have spent all our
money. You have won. Let us be.
“You join me for smoking?” He pinched
his spider-web tattooed fingers together and held
them up to his dry lips.
Rachele and I looked at each other
for an excuse or maybe confirmation that the other
was not worried – but we were. With raised eyebrows,
a tentative crooked nod and a shoulder shrug we agreed
to follow in the name of adventurous travel.
Again we followed the tattooed man
without any real idea of where we were headed. This
time he spoke very little and walked more briskly.
We passed an empty market filled with broken empty
crates, in front men were laying in gutters. With
each block my chest grew tighter. We passed dogs without
owners and escaped chickens. When the man finally
turned around we were standing in a parking lot full
of abandoned cars. He opened a car door and spoke
quickly in Fijian to a man whose presence we hadn’t
noticed. He motioned us inside.
Again Rachele and I looked at each
other for confirmation, this time more frantic, but
there was none. Against all better judgment and for
no reason other than the lack of any acceptable excuse,
I entered the boxy, rust-colored car. The cloth upholstery
was stained. Rachele followed and gave me a nervous
look.
-At least we have a bag full
of brand-new cannibal weapons. I surveyed the area
for escape routes, gripped my newly purchased club
and thumbed the polished wood.
Rachele shot me another nervous
look as the cab, or friend’s car, or whatever, wound
through the potholed packed-clay streets. The road
uncoiled uphill between earth colored houses without
doors and makeshift clotheslines. My chest became
increasingly tight, filled with the empty dull feeling
of unsure fear. Periodically I would return Rachele’s
nervous looks with a slight shrug, raised eyebrows,
and an “I don’t know either” crooked jaw.
When we arrived at what seemed to
be our destination the man spoke to the driver quickly
and in Fijian, and the driver sped off leaving us
alone in an unknown neighborhood with the toothless,
tattooed man.
“Come.” The man said and beckoned
us toward the small angular house, smiling his dark
bottomless smile.
The inside of the solid clay, boxy
house was more inviting than I expected. Family pictures
and Fijian flags shared the wall with framed newspaper
clippings and CD jackets with worn edges. The collage
feel of the room was filled with vibrant reds and
greens contrasting soothing tropical blues. The smiling
people in the picture frames calmed my busy head but
my chest would not let go.
-Serial killers have families.
Would they hang pictures of smiling people? I
eyed the room for alternative exits
A single adjacent room sat ominously
in the background, colorless and unwelcoming. A heavily
worn mattress sat naked on the cold floor.
While the man crouched by the surprisingly
new stereo and turned on old Eagles songs, I made
eye contact for the first time with a young woman
sitting by the stove. Her presence had gone curiously
unnoticed, and I wondered why she had not been introduced.
“Hi, my name is Ian.” I said reaching
an open hand in her direction.
“Hello.” She said quietly. Her eyes
met mine only briefly as she spoke. I would say they
were filled with a frustrated disapproval of our presence,
but they were more filled with nothing. She looked
back to her folded hands.
“This is my girlfriend. She will
you make something to eat,” the man said briefly pointing
to the young woman, then returned his attention to
the stereo.
“You like the Eagles?” the man asked.
“What do you do for dinner? I think you should eat
with us. We will drink beers and my girlfriend will
cook us chicken curry. You like curry?” The man alternated
eye contact between Rachele and me. He was excited
and looking for approval.
Again Rachele and I were forced
to speak silently with eye motions and facial contortions.
After another hesitant consensus to yield to the whim
of circumstance, or fate, or whatever, we said we
would join him, but we had to go to the hotel first
to pick up my medicine and some money.
***
As the man’s house shrank into the
distance my chest released momentarily. We decided
we would save a few dollars by having the cab drop
us off downtown; we would take the local bus the rest
of the way to the hotel.
Sitting about 15-feet from the bus
stop was a Fijian man, or boy, he looked about 18.
He had the kind of look that makes women hold their
purses tighter as they pass. His glazed eyes did not
leave us from the moment we stepped out of the cab.
We sat for a moment glancing over our shoulders before
an older man approached us.
“Hello friends! Where are you from?
You take the Quantas flight here? I know this flight.
I used to travel with the UN. I’m kidding. I was a
flight attendant. I’ve been to Chicago, Portland,
L.A., New York.” His tone was jovial but his eyes
were dead serious with a kind of lucidity that was
out of place.
Then he drastically changed the
tone of his voice to match the urgency of his eyes.
He shifted his stare directly toward the boy sitting
near the bus stop. He tilted his head toward the boy
subtly and widened his eyes.
“You must be very careful in Nadi.
There are bad people. They will steal and rape.” His
eyes still pointed at the boy. He looked back at us
to be sure we understood.
I must have given the impression
that I did not quiet understand his message. He grabbed
both my wrists with startling quickness, “Do you understand
friend? There are very, very dangerous people out
today.” Again his eyes pointed at the boy. “These
people will steal and rape!” He made a thrusting motion
with his hips in case something had been lost in translation.
Immediately another man approached
us and asked where we were going. He offered us a
taxi ride at half the usual price. We understood his
good intentions and immediately agreed, leaving the
glazed, malicious stare of the boy with haste.
Back in the crisp, dry, air-conditioned
air of our hotel room I exhaled. My chest released
for the first time since the movie poster. Rachele
and I shared a look of relief.
“Holy shit.”
“I know.”
There was a pause and Rachele went
into the bathroom to wash her hands. The ability to
breath freely only lasted until man’s dinner invitation
dawned on me.
“So are we going to go back tonight?”
I asked, hoping for a concrete no.
“I don’t know. What do you think?”
she asked, maybe hoping for the same.
After weighing the pros of sharing
dinner and beers at a local Fijians house against
the cons of being robbed, raped or worse, we chose
to procrastinate.
“Lets just shower, think it over,
then we’ll decide. We have two hours!” I said cherishing
the relative safety of the hotel.
***
In the cab I reminded Rachele,
“we’ll tell the driver to take us all the way to the
house and make sure he knows to pick us up in two hours.”
-This will do us no good. If
the man is going to hurt or kill us it will be too
late.
-At least someone will know where we are.
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