A Fortune-Teller Told Me: Earthbound Travels in the Far East

A Fortune-Teller Told Me: Earthbound Travels in the Far East
Tiziano Terzani

Warned by a fortune-teller not to risk flying, the author – a seasoned correspondent – took to travelling by rail, road and sea. Consulting fortune-tellers and shamans wherever he went, he learnt to understand and respect older ways of life and beliefs now threatened by the crasser forms of Western modernity.William Shawcross in the Literary Review praised Terzani for ‘his beautifully written adventure story… a voyage of self-discovery… He sees fortune-tellers, soothsayers, astrologers, chiromancers, seers, shamans, magicians, palmists, frauds, men and women of god (many gods) all over Asia and in Europe too… Almost every page and every story celebrates the mystical and the unknowable. It is a fabulous story of renewal and change… Terzani is already something of a legend. He has written magnificently all his life. Never better than now.’Yes, the fortune-teller did save him from an air-crash in Cambodia. Looking back afterwards, Terzani reckoned that ‘I was marked for death and instead I was reborn.’

A Fortune-Teller Told Me

Earthbound Travels in the Far East

Tiziano Terzani

For Angela, always

Table of Contents

Cover Page (#u30a456c0-f085-5757-bc47-5dc895feb8ee)

Title Page (#ucde3ad79-9d56-58fa-a7ff-ed108b655868)

CHAPTER ONE A Blessed Curse (#u4e87d18a-1219-5e79-ae7e-a1740f74d035)

CHAPTER TWO A Death that Failed (#uf3d123cb-76ea-59c6-b614-ffbbd54a8a48)

CHAPTER THREE On Which Shore Lies Happiness? (#uc8bbf39e-a329-5a21-ac5e-bdde9d3b9337)

CHAPTER FOUR The Body-Snatchers of Bangkok (#ude6f93bc-4e27-5c88-b434-fa56e8bc2fa2)

CHAPTER FIVE Farewell, Burma (#u73fb30f5-f364-5d07-ab4b-2c1139f1bb84)

CHAPTER SIX Widows and Broken Pots (#u9c54c852-05a5-52eb-ac0b-50eda3e5b45f)

CHAPTER SEVEN Dreams of a Monk (#ub4a6641c-d4d0-5b5f-abc9-79f7e33ac7df)

CHAPTER EIGHT Against AIDS? Raw Garlic and Red Peppers (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER NINE The Rainbow Gone Mad (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER TEN Sores Under the Veil (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER ELEVEN The Murmurs of Malacca (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER TWELVE An Air-Conditioned Island (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER THIRTEEN A Voice from Two Thousand Years Ago (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER FOURTEEN Never Against the Sun (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER FIFTEEN The Missionary and the Magician (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER SIXTEEN Hurray for Ships! (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN The Nagarose (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN Buddha’s Eyelash (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER NINETEEN The Destiny of Dogs (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER TWENTY A Ship in the Desert (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE With my Friend the Ghost (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO The Peddlers of the Trans-Siberian Railway (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE Better than Working in a Bank (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR The Rhymeless Astrologer (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE TV for the Headhunters (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX New Year’s Eve with the Devil (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN The Spy who Meditates (#litres_trial_promo)

EPILOGUE And Now What? (#litres_trial_promo)

Index (#litres_trial_promo)

About the Author (#litres_trial_promo)

By the Same Author (#litres_trial_promo)

Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)

About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER ONE A Blessed Curse (#ulink_f9561ce6-a268-55fd-bd2c-a5fb3e7010b5)

Life is full of opportunities. The problem is to recognize them when they present themselves, and that isn’t always easy. Mine, for instance, had all the marks of a curse: ‘Beware! You run a grave risk of dying in 1993 – You mustn’t fly that year. Don’t fly, not even once,’ a fortune-teller told me.

It happened in Hong Kong. I had come across that old Chinese man by sheer chance. When I heard his dire words I was momentarily taken aback, but not deeply disturbed. It was the spring of 1976, and 1993 seemed a long way off. I did not forget the date, however; it lingered at the back of my mind, rather like an appointment one hasn’t yet decided whether to keep or not.

1977…1987…1990…1991. Sixteen years seem an eternity, especially when viewed from the perspective of Day One. But, like all our years (except those of adolescence), they passed very quickly, and in no time at all I found myself at the end of 1992. Well, then, what was I to do? Take that old Chinese man’s warning seriously and reorganize my life? Or pretend it had never happened and carry on regardless, telling myself, ‘To hell with fortune-tellers and all their rubbish’?

By that time I had been living in Asia solidly for over twenty years – first in Singapore, then in Hong Kong, Peking, Tokyo, and finally in Bangkok – and I felt that the best way of confronting the prophecy was the Asian one: not to fight against it, but to submit.

‘You believe in it, then?’ teased my fellow-journalists – especially the Western ones, the sort of people who are used to demanding a clear-cut yes or no to every question, even to such an ill-framed one as this. But we do not have to believe the weather forecast to carry an umbrella on a cloudy day. Rain is a possibility, the umbrella a precaution. Why tempt fate if fate itself gives you a sign, a hint? When the roulette ball lands on the black three or four times in a row, some gamblers count on statistical probability and bet all their money on the red. Not me: I bet on the black again. Has the ball itself not winked at me?

And then, the idea of not flying for a whole year was an attraction in itself. A challenge, first and foremost. It really tickled me to pretend an old Chinese in Hong Kong might hold the key to my future. It felt like taking the first step into an unknown world. I was curious to see where more steps in the same direction would lead. If nothing else, they would introduce me, for a while, to a different life from the one I normally led.

For years I have travelled by plane, my profession taking me to the craziest places on earth, places where wars are being waged, where revolutions break out or terrible disasters occur. Obviously I had held my breath on more than one occasion – landing with an engine in flames, or with a mechanic squeezed in a trapdoor between the seats, hammering away at the undercarriage that was refusing to descend.