GEORGE BRILL

GONE FISHING

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It was around mid-morning when a group of young Batek invited me into the forest by way of Lee, the others still too shy to speak to me directly. A couple of the older girls and a few younger children came too, leading me down the shaded gravel track of the plantation towards the jungle. Far behind, the diminutive forms of the elderly sisters Changkling and Empeng trailed us—whether by intent or synchronicity I didn’t know.

 

Palm plantation gave way to bare, deforested hills, new growth sprouting with haphazard abandon about the mess of felled trees and broken ground. A hot sun beat on the dry yellow earth, and many of the children cut banana leaves to shade their necks and faces. Those who wore flip-flops soon removed them, tying them about waists with improvised belts of jungle creeper. Dark, bare soles pattered and squelched in rhythm, passing from the hot earth to thick mud and back as the trail undulated underfoot. The girls plucked flowers as they walked, heads gradually taking the form of ornate hanging baskets as they layered bloom after bloom, white and yellow, into their dark curls, interlaced with the pale shredded hearts of lowbeck shoots. Both children and adolescents walked hand-in-hand: a finger or thumb gently linked in another’s palm, or hooked at the elbow around a nearby arm. Lee took my hand firmly in his, and we walked in step all the while to the entrance of the jungle.

 

Inside, cool shade shrouded the understory. Trailing shrubs and thin spindly shoots populated the uneven forest floor in avenues and clearings between the great wooded pillars that held the arching vaults of a canopy far above; fragrance of dampness and life hung heavy and fresh in the air. Our little party soon came upon a giant bertam palm—the same as those used to thatch their hayak roofs: long slender sprays cut, split, and folded to lash as wide cobbles on a frame. Each of the young woman cut a frond and swiftly stripped it of leaf and thorn in a flurry of machete strokes. Within seconds they had fishing rods, tied and ready, furnished with twine and tiny metal hooks. Worms were dug from earthy banks and lines cast into the clear waters of a slow-moving jungle stream. Moments later the fish began to come, tiny and glittering, glassy black eyes and yellow fins upon white-silver bullets. We travelled upstream, fishing as we went, testing for bites on skewered worms. It was harder than it looked, and I had little luck, usually jerking up the rod too late. The Batek had better success, and fish were strung through the gills one atop the next, hanging like iridescent baubles on a knotted vine.

 

We walked for an hour or so, through tangled vines and thick bamboo thickets, up steep slopes of slick mud and along the pebble beds of the trickling stream. Unseen gibbons called in the canopy above and we entered a different realm, alone at the bottom of an ocean of towering foliage and muffled sound. Snacking on wild ginger bulbs we walked the tangled sea floor; the Batek went on rapidly, weaving around and up and down through the thickest jungle and steepest of slopes, hopping over branches and leaping over the little waterway as it wound through the undergrowth. Bare feet moved soundlessly through the water and over muddy banks as we passed in and out of forest and stream, following the latter’s winding flow.

 

It was all I could do to keep up, frantically crouching and sidestepping to avoiding thorns of rattan as my bare feet slipped and stuck in the thick jungle mud. On mountains far away I prided myself on my fluency for difficult trail, but here I was an illiterate, chastened by the casual confidence of these children half my height; almost they seemed to float, striding barefoot as if walking along hardpacked beach sand. Every so often one of them would stoop to pluck a small sapling from the ground or slice a sliver of bark from a passing tree. After a sniff and an inspection it would pass down the line, each party analysing the object in turn. They’d argue their claims at its identification, and, if in disagreement, the eldest of the young women, Amem, would be consulted for clarity. It was, I think, a game.

 

By now a couple of the older married women had joined us, appearing like matronly spirits from the jungle to our left. How they’d found us I had no idea, and nobody questioned their arrival. On we went, a few fish from each pool as we continued upstream, and, good for little else, I was assigned the job of fish-carrier, threading them by one-by-one onto the growing garland of scales and rattan vine. A moment later I receiving a fish hurled from the far bank by one of the older women—a surprised fumble and lucky save, much to the amusement of all. Then, just as I’d recovered my composure, the other of the pair reached her hands down under the muddy bank, felt around for a few seconds, and pulled up a couple of fish bare-handed.

 

When we did finally stop, upon a small rock-strewn bank in the cradle of a lazy meander, the children set to work, dispersing into the surroundings in little groups, each attending a job of their own. The young boys gathered firewood, swiftly hacking through dead trunks to get at the dry stock within. Others squatted in the stream, scaling and gutting our catch with fingernails, sharp pebbles, and practiced skill. Within a quarter hour a fire crackled merrily and our catch sat boiling in tubular pots of fresh cut bamboo, two tubes of bubbling rice lying propped alongside. Beneath us was spread a carpet of soft leaves, stripped and laid out by the youngest three children. 

 

As the fish cooked, one of the girls produced a chilli from a fold in her sarong, mashing it with the butt of a machete before adding it to the boiling broth. The children babbled excitedly with one another while older members of the party sat back against the bank and nearby tree trunks, soaking in the lazy buzz of insects and the humid heat of the surrounding jungle. From up on the far bank the elderly sisters looked on fondly over their curling pipe smoke, having arrived, as if planned it seemed, only once all the work had been done. The tang of woodsmoke permeated the air as it rose idly into the no-man’s land between forest floor and canopy, briefly lending body to ephemeral shafts of sunlight that arced in unbending columns from above. It was a familiar scene, a city park on a summer’s afternoon. This was their place—a playground and sanctuary; isolated and insulated from the tides of the world outside. I felt it too: a creeping contentment and timeless peacefulness; simple community in the place of its belonging.

 

Once we had eaten, the bamboo cups and cooking pots were deftly destroyed, left to burn on the dying fire. In time, the traces of our lunchtime picnic would fade, and the fast-pulsing lifeblood of the jungle would consume all signature of our moment in time.

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