End Time in the Sunshine

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Brian sat still and stared ahead. Perhaps more unnerving than the landscape was his stoic face-absent of all affect, tensed by some unnamable sadness. He held himself immobile, as if his chiseled profile were part of the tour: an expression of shame I had never before seen.

He and his people, perhaps unknowingly, had sold off their motherland. It had been done gradually, by accretion, and amid the joy of sudden wealth. There are probably rationalizations and explanations, yet it's an incomprehensible thing to see it and feel it. Imagine destroying the 40 states from West Virginia to Nevada so the remaining 10 could be temporarily wealthy. Imagine France paving Bordeaux, Israel salting Jerusalem. Brian said he hoped one day I'd get the chance to eat a noddy bird, and then, in a spent silence, he drove me back to the post office and dropped me off.

After I returned from Nauru in 2000, I learned that the president would be visiting New York City to address the United Nations during the Millennium Summit. Bernard Dowiyogo had served in this office four times in the previous decade (and would serve a few more times in the new millennium). He'd been tossed out of power in 1999 after he'd told his constituents that they would have to rein in their lifestyle. His replacement was a phosphate-mining executive named Rene Harris. Since then the politics of Nauru had essentially revolved around these two men. Harris tolerated the most brutal form of capitalism: Sell anything and everything. Dowiyogo had tried to steer the country toward some sort of moral economic reform, hoping the West would reward him for his virtue. So far, he'd been disappointed.

A courtly man, Dowiyogo invited me up to his Park Avenue hotel room for breakfast. We were joined by the country's ambassador and two other officials. Dowiyogo greeted me with the solemnity of a man whose acquaintance with smiling seemed as remote as Brian's.

As we ate, he explained that the plan to rehabilitate the interior of the island would take 20 years and $300 million. It wouldn't be easy. Geologists who had studied the limestone pinnacles said they were so hard that knocking them over to fill in the labyrinth of channels on the island (which is the bulk of the rehab plan) would require bringing in the most powerful land mover in the world. But since there is no topsoil left, their plan to reforest the island couldn't possibly work.

'One of the ideas we have in mind,' Dowiyogo said, 'is that part of the dug-out area should be left as it is, so that future generations can see what it was like.'

'Like a museum,' added the ambassador.

So maybe there is a new economy ahead: reverse ecotourism. Instead of seeing the environment at its most lush, you'd see it at its most debauched. Which is why I keep up with Nauru. The details arrive as pathos and then quickly turn into bathos.

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