"Sienna, slow down!" people would
urge her. "You can't save the world!”
What a terrible thing to say.
Through her acts of public service,
Sienna came in contact with several members of a local humanitarian group. When they invited her to join them on a monthlong
trip to the Philippines, she jumped at the chance.
Sienna imagined they were going to
feed poor fishermen or farmers in the countryside, which she had read was a
wonderland of geological beauty, with vibrant seabeds and dazzling plains. And
so when the group settled in among the throngs in the city of Manila -- the
most densely populated city on earth -- Sienna could only gape in horror. She
had never seen poverty on this scale.
How can one person
possibly make a difference?
For every one person Sienna fed,
there were hundreds more who gazed at her with desolate eyes. Manila had
six-hour traffic jams, suffocating pollution, and a horrifying sex trade, whose
workers consisted primarily of young children, many of whom had been sold to
pimps by parents who took solace in knowing that at least their children would
be fed.
Amid this chaos of child
prostitution, panhandlers, pickpockets, and worse, Sienna found herself
suddenly paralyzed. All around her, she
could see humanity overrun by its primal instinct for survival. When they face desperation . . . human beings
become animals.
For Sienna, all the dark depression
came flooding back. She had suddenly
understood mankind for what it was -- a species on the brink.
I was wrong, she
thought. I can't save the world.
Overwhelmed by a rush of frantic
mania, Sienna broke into a sprint through the city streets, thrusting her way
through the masses of people, knocking them over, pressing on, searching for
open space.
I'm being suffocated by
human flesh!
As she ran, she could feel the eyes
upon her again. She no longer blended
in. She was tall and fair-skinned with a
blond ponytail waving behind her. Men stared at her as if she were naked.
When her legs finally gave out, she
had no idea how far she had run or where she had gone. She cleared the tears and grime from her eyes
and saw that she was standing in a kind of shantytown -- a city made of pieces
of corrugated metal and cardboard propped up and held together. All around her the wails of crying babies and
the stench of human excrement hung in the air.
I've run through the
gates of hell?
"Turista," a deep voice sneered behind her. "Magkano?" How much?
Sienna spun to see three young men
approaching, salivating like wolves. She
instantly know shw was in danger and she tried to back away, but they corraled
her, like predators hunting in a pack.
Sienna shouted for help, but nobody
paid attention to her cries. Only
fifteen feet away, she saw an old woman sitting on a tire, carving the rot off
an old onion with a rusty knife. The
woman did not even glance up when Sienna shouted.
When the men seized her and dragged
her inside a little shack, Sienna had no illusions about what was going to
happen, and the terror was all-consuming.
She fought with everything she had, but they were strong, quickly
pinning her down on an old, soiled mattress.
They tore open her shirt, clawing at
her soft skin. When she screamed, they
stuffed her torn shirt to deep into her mouth that she thought she would
choke. Then they flipped her onto her
stomach, forcing her face into the putrid bed.
Sienna Brooks had always felt pity
for the ignorant sould who could believe in God amid a world of such suffering,
and yet now she herself was praying . .
. praying with all her heart.
Please, God, deliver me
from evil.
Even as she prayed, she could hear
the men laughing, taunting her as their filty hands hauled her jeans down over
her flailing legs. One of them climbed
onto her back, sweaty and heavy, his perspiration dripping onto her skin.
I'm a virgin, Sienna thought. This is
how it is going to happen to me.
Suddenly the man on her back leaped
off her, and the taunting jeers turned into shouts of anger and fear.
The warm sweat rolling unto Sienna's
back form above suddenly began gushing . . . spilling onto the mattress in
splatters of red.
When Sienna rolled over to see what
was happening, she saw the old woman with the half-peeled onion and the rusty
now standing over her attacker, who was now bleeding profusely from his back.
The old woman glared threateningly at
the others, whipping her bloody knife through the air until the three men
scampered off.
Without a word, the old woman helped
Sienna gather her clothes and get dressed.
"Salamat," Sienna whispered tearfully. "Thank you."
The old woman tapped her ear,
indicating she was deaf.
Sienna placed her palms together,
closed her eyes and bowed her head in a gesture of respect. Whe she opened her
eyes, the woman was gone.
Sienna left the Philippines at once,
without even saying good-bye to the other members of the group.
Inferno
Dan Brown
pages
465 to 468.
