I have the flu. Normally that wouldn’t raise more than a sympathetic eyebrow, but these are not normal times. With an atypical pneumonia virus paralyzing Singapore and Hong Kong, there’s tendency to take what may be an ordinary bug pretty seriously.
It started the night before Nyepi. This is the one night of the year when tout Ubud turns out in the football field to socialize, admire the ogoh ogohs and drink in the pure Balinese energy of the celebration. Usually I love it, but this year I felt overwhelmed. The crowds and darkness, the rafts of roaring men and huge lurching demons made me dizzy. I went home early.
This was my first Nyepi in my new house. It was very quiet in my street, everyone was at the crossroads. Trailed by the puzzled dogs, I strolled around my dark garden banging on a saucepan to drive away any bad spirits. It was purely symbolic; there were no bad spirits here. I sat on the platform in the middle of my sleeping pond and counted my many blessings. A house of my own. A huge garden. Wonderful friends. Wonderful staff. Interesting work. An interesting life...
I was still dizzy. I went to bed and fell into a strange embrace of aching bones, aching skin, heat and chill, bizarre and busy dreams. Nyepi passed like a hallucination. I managed to feed the birds, feed the dogs, then slept, did some email, checked some SARS websites, slept again. Another night passed. I woke to see Wayan’s concerned face at the door.
"Saya sakit," I explained. "Flu."
Wayan has a television in her compound (I have none) and was perfectly cognizant of the implications. "Mungkin SARS."
Well, it could be. I had recently returned from Singapore, where I’d stayed with a friend just off the plane from Hanoi. And I really felt quite ill.
But my research indicated that it was pretty much guesswork whether one had SARS or not. There was no test and no treatment for it yet. They seemed to be deciding on the basis of where you’d been and how quickly you fell ill. The mortality rate seemed to be under 5%, and confined to people who’d had close exposure to the very ill or who were elderly. It didn’t appear to be virulently contagious. Lots of people who’d been exposed to sick people hadn’t developed SARS at all. Most of those who got sick eventually got better.
There was no sense getting into a flap about it. If I had SARS the most sensible thing was to quarantine myself, rest and eat chicken soup. I wasn’t all that sick, given that I could still check my email. I conveyed all this to Wayan, with the suggestion that she wipe down everything I touched with bleach just in case. She gave me to understand that she thought this was a load of nonsense.
From the bedroom window I watched her go into the garden and return with a basket of roots and leaves. There were sounds of chopping and pounding in the kitchen and the electric blender whirred. Then began a daily procession of cups, glasses and bowls of Balinese traditional medicines, lovingly prepared with herbs from my own garden.
First was the jamu, a tangy concoction of juiced turmeric root, honey and lime juice. Turmeric has been scientifically proven to be such a potent natural antiseptic and antibiotic that one American pharmaceutical company tried to patent it. We often have a big bottle of jamu in the fridge and now I began to consume it in quantity. Sometimes it had slices of young coconut in it, cooling to the throat.
Next came a traditional boreh. Wayan pronounced me hot, though I didn’t feel particularly feverish, and produced a small blunt root. "Kencur," she announced. "Mahal sekali." Luckily we had it growing wild in the yard. She pounded it in the mortar with raw red rice and a little water, then plastered my face, chest, throat and legs with it. The boreh felt cold going on, then began to burn intensely as it dried. Only when it was completely dry and flaking off was I allowed to shower. Oddly, I did feel better after that, though I resisted sleeping in it.
The first batch of bubur she made for me was dynamite in a bowl. The thick soup was brewed from chicken, red rice, vegetables, the leaves of the cinnamon tree (which I didn’t even know I had) and lashings of garlic, ginger and chillies. By the time I finished the first bowl my sinuses were completely clear and stayed that way for hours.
After the coughing started she made up an odd drink from the leaves of the areca palm, which seemed to relax my chest.
Days passed as I drifted in and out of deep, strange sleeps, rubbed joints that ached abominably and went through a box of tissues a day. Every time I woke up there was a bowl of steaming soup or a glass of jamu by my bed. Friends kept phoning to ask if they could bring me anything but I had no appetite. It was a full time job just keeping up with the obat.
The whole family showed up on Saraswati Day in full temple gear, with its many complex offerings. Sunday, her day off, Wayan arrived with a jar of holy water and gave me detailed instructions for using it after my bath. She also left a bungkus of rice and chicken from the day’s feasting.
In moments of lucidity I contrasted all this with the kind of care I might receive as a suspected SARS case hospitalized in Singapore or Hong Kong. There would be needles, IV drips, masks on every face. A cold room without a view, fluorescent lights. No freshly made jamu, no messy borehs. No herbs plucked from the garden to make medicines and soups just for me. No birdsong at my unglazed window. No prayers, no holy water. No dogs under the bed....
A week has passed. I have a pesky cough and don’t have much energy but the worst is over. Perhaps it was SARS, perhaps it was a less exotic bug. Anyway, I feel better now.
