With more than 35 albums to date, Wilson is one of the most successful and prolific pop songwriters of the past four decades — the creative force behind Beach Boys’ hits such as “California Girls,” “Fun, Fun, Fun,” “Little Deuce Coupe,” “I Get Around,” “Help Me, Rhonda,” “Good Vibrations” and “Surfin Safari.” Created in 1961 by Wilson; his two brothers, Dennis and Carl; his cousin, Mike Love; and his high school friend, Al Jardine, the Beach Boys defined California surf culture and brought it worldwide. Built on unique four- and five-part harmonies, their sound was fresh, original and in demand almost overnight. With record-breaking album sales, they were hailed more than once as the world’s most popular band.

By the late ’70s, however, Wilson’s personal life was in shambles. He weighed more than 340 pounds. He rarely left his bedroom. He heard voices. He avoided the piano, and his songwriting attempts were shells of what they’d once been. Wilson underwent years of therapy, focusing on his weight, his stage fright, his father’s physical and emotional abuse and his long-buried musical talent.

The bad years have been well publicized and these days Wilson tends toward the positives. Spreading love, he says, is his mission. He seems to have lost the ego of his youth and sees his success in the context of his 58 years — making gold records, for example, is nowhere near as difficult as salvaging one’s life.

I spent an afternoon recently with Wilson in his practice room, where an enormous piano in one corner and a large glass guitar sculpture (“I don’t remember who gave it to me,” he sheepishly claimed) were the sole testaments to a lifetime of musical accomplishment. He is ecstatic about his current tour, which, given his propensity for stage fright, is as rich a testimony to how far he has come as anything.

Toward the end of the interview, in recounting the places where he finds pleasure, Wilson confessed that his favorite food is chocolate. In fact, he said, since he mentioned it, he wanted to get some immediately. I was in the driveway obligingly fumbling for my car keys when Wilson shot past me into his Corvette with an energy like what he must have had in 1960, jamming in his parents’ living room. Off he went in search of chocolate, leaving me grinning in his wake.

You talked in your autobiography about rock ‘n’ roll having the ability to liberate the soul. Is that still the mission of music for you?

Yeah. I’m living for my solo career right now. I don’t have any intention of going back to the Beach Boys. I like where I’m at; I like the concert the way it is.

You’ve been using a whole orchestra, which must be incredibly complicated to deal with, especially since you’re notorious for not liking the stage much.

I don’t have to deal with it. I love it. The conductor tells them what to do and it’s just a bigger sound, more sweet and lush. We have a theremin player onstage and he’s fantastic. Wooweee [imitates the sound], it’s a weird sound. It’s really a thrill.

Are you writing right now?

I’m trying.

Are you collaborating with anyone?

I’m writing alone now. It’s more appropriate for the time. I’m in my own space.

Could you talk about some of the ways you approach songwriting today vs. when you first started?

The biggest difference is that then I was writing to get No. 1 records. I was writing to get hit songs. I had a No. 1 record complex in my head and I’d go to the piano with a little bit of a competitive feeling in my chest, and I would lean down into the piano and put everything I had into it. That’s the way I used to write. Now I write on a much less energetic scale; I don’t have as much total energy as I used to, so I take it slower and it takes longer to write a song. I think even if it could be a No. 1 song, it probably wouldn’t be anyway because everything is so different now.

You mention in the book a sense of your own mortality, of reckoning with getting older. How do you feel now when you see 18- and 20-year-olds onstage?

I feel jealous.

Why?

Because I’m in my 50s. I don’t know — I just am. These young people have so much energy and I’m just jealous.

But don’t you sacrifice youth for experience and wisdom?

I’ve never had anyone tell me that! I always looked at the downside of being older; I never saw the upside.

I always believed that when people go through all the shit that someone like you has, it opens up their capacity for the good stuff, too. Do you believe that?

It takes a lot of courage. When you’re on your ass and you’re looking up like that, it’s hard to manage to get back up there. It takes a lot of willpower and a lot of courage and inner strength to get yourself back into it.

Do you feel like you have a larger capacity for joy since that’s happened?

Actually, yes. What’s really given me some joy is my tour. It was raining in Birmingham, Ala., totally raining, when we did the concert. The rain just stopped right before we did the concert. We thought we were going to get rained out. And then when we got to Atlanta, Ga., it was foggy, pouring down rain the whole time. People had umbrellas and the people that didn’t have umbrellas got just soaked. It was almost funny. And they were just there, all wet, shivering, and they stayed for the concert.

Do you think that you’re going out there with a different sense of mission than you were 30 years ago?

Oh, much more! Yes. I consider myself to be a crusader of love. I try to spread love around the world as best I can because I know I have a handle on love. I’m trying to spread my love around a little bit. A lot of people need love.

What sort of reviews have you gotten from your friends or family or peers about the show? Not the reviewers, but those close to you?

Every night after the show they come and say, “Brian, the concerts get better every fucking night, how do you do it?” I say, “I’m scared. I have to do it.”

Scared of what?

Rejection and all that kind of stuff. I’ve had some of that in my life.

Rejection of you or your music?

Well, both. Mostly me.

I know you’re uncomfortable with people calling you a genius.

Not now.

Oh, now we can call you a genius?

Yeah, go ahead. I think I’m a vocal genius, not a musical genius. I like background vocals. I consider myself a voice, not a singer. A voice is a sound and singing is what you do with that sound. Have you heard that before?

No, I haven’t. So you’re part of a community of sound?

Right. [Smiles]

What’s important to you when you sit down at the piano to write? When do you know you’re on?

When I say, “Let’s go to the piano,” on a moment’s hunch. That’s when I know I’m OK. But if I say, “I wonder if I should go up and play the damn piano today,” there’s a difference. One’s a little more inspired than the other.

But you must still play when you’re not feeling inspired?

Right. I just play to play. I like the piano — I’m always about 15 feet away from a piano.

When you wrote “Pet Sounds,” you said it was the most personal album you’d ever done. Is your music today still at that level of intimacy?

Yeah, yeah. I think it makes it better. I’ll never surpass “Pet Sounds.”

Why?

Because the … well, wait a minute. That’s not true, actually, because I wrote a song called “How Can We Still Be Dancing?” It’s a really good rock ‘n’ roll song and it’s better than “Pet Sounds.” It hasn’t been recorded yet. I’ve written a handful of songs over the last five years, but lately, the last couple of years, I haven’t been able to click at songwriting.

And will “How Can We Still Be Dancing?” be on the album you start in November?

The rock ‘n’ roll album? I didn’t even think of that! Yeah, it’ll be on that album. I love that song. I love that song a lot.

I can’t hear any of it, can I?

I’ll play a little of it for you. [Wilson goes to his piano and begins playing and singing an upbeat, rocking tune.]

How could we still be dancing, after all these years? How could we still be laughing, after all these tears?

[Stops midway through] It’s just a good rock ‘n’ roll song.

Fabulous. I love it!

Thank you.

What is your hope for this album? Do the reviews matter? Do sales matter?

I don’t read the reviews. I avoid them because I don’t want to be depressed if they don’t like it. My wife reads them. If they’re bad, she’ll tell me I need to sharpen up. She’ll tell me I went flat on “California Girls,” that sort of thing.

What can people expect of this new album?

Hard rock. Some good rock ‘n’ roll.

Though you said you hadn’t been writing for some time.

Yeah, a couple of years. I have this month off, then I start the tour again. I should write this month, shouldn’t I?

Beyond music, where do you find pleasure in the world today?

You want to know my real pleasure? Food. I love chocolate. I can’t get enough chocolate. I can’t help it. But my biggest pleasure of all is exercise. I really get off on exercise. I go to a park that I’ve claimed and run about three miles every day. I love it. Also, the tour. And believe it or not, going to sleep at night is a pleasure of mine. Really.

The protocol involved Heliobacter pylori, a bacterium common in gastric ulcer disease, but it was the word “radioactive” that caught his eye just as he was poised to sign. When he inquired about the nature of the study, he was assured that it was perfectly safe. Zaidi refused to sign. After consulting his doctor, he declined to participate in the trial. When he complained about what he called UR’s irresponsible recruitment methods, first to the principal investigator, then to the university health services, he says he was disregarded.

It wasn’t until 1997 that Zaidi received a terse apology in the mail from William Chey, the principal investigator, that read: “I am sorry to notice that the carbon-14. Urea Breath test was not adequately explained to you to meet your satisfaction. I apologize for the incident.” Zaidi, concerned that the study was being conducted with other unwitting participants, had already brought the case to the attention of the Office for Protection From Research Risks at the National Institutes of Health. The Institutional Review Board
called a meeting with Zaidi and the principal investigators, none of whom
showed up. “There are multiple violations” at the University of Rochester, says Zaidi. “They’re not informing people about the risks and it’s deceptive. It’s immoral. They tried to keep me quiet about it.” Zaidi is currently embroiled in a bitter lawsuit against the university.

Though the Heliobacter pylori study was eventually terminated and the researchers placed on probation, such recruitment of subjects for research protocols is common on university campuses across the nation. Subjects earn anywhere from a few to thousands of dollars for participating in these clinical trials. Ads recruiting students for research protocols dot the hallways of universities. They appear in student publications and local newspapers. You can even sign up on the Web at CenterWatch for more than 41,000 research protocols around the country, a mere fraction of the trials under way at any given time. Though researchers typically deny any connection between high student populations and clinical trials, those areas dense with students, such as Boston, the Research Triangle area of North Carolina and Austin, Texas, typically have the most protocols at any given time.

Students as lab rats are nothing new. In the past it was a common requirement for psych majors to participate in their professors’ psychology protocols. Students are typically broke, healthy and naive enough not to ask too many questions. But clinical trials have multiplied, and to many investigators, students represent a convenient population from which to draw subjects. “In 1995 we said there were trials across the country that were problematic — not only with shortcomings but with serious deficiencies,” says Ruth Faden, director of the Johns Hopkins Biomedical Institute and chairwoman of President Clinton’s 1995 Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments. “In my darker moments I wonder why we don’t have more problems.”

Problems like Nicole Wan, a University of Rochester sophomore who died in 1996, two days after a routine bronchoscopy (in which cell samples are brushed from lung tissue) taken during a research protocol. Or Jesse Gelsinger, a University of Pennsylvania student who died in September after a gene therapy test.

Eight institutions have had their research protocols involving human subjects halted in recent months after OPRR investigations, the most recent of which were the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Alabama at Birmingham and Virginia Commonwealth University, all of whose trials were suspended in January. Since 1995, 10 percent of the nation’s 125 medical schools have been the targets of OPRR investigations, and the office has a staggering 159 investigations under way. This spate of investigations, says OPRR director Gary Ellis, is the result of the OPRR’s becoming more efficient in identifying problems in the wake of U.S. Inspector General June Gibbs Brown’s criticism of the office in a 1998 report on human subjects protection.

Such research protocols have long been a method for scientific advancement — and have long been marked by abuse. A recent Chronicle of Higher Education article reported that only 17 percent of the illnesses or deaths suffered during gene therapy trials were promptly reported to the National Institutes of Health. Faden’s advisory committee identified 4,000 federally funded radiation experiments between 1944 and 1974 involving human subjects, including the well-publicized 18 people at the University of Rochester who were unknowingly injected with plutonium in the 1940s. From 1932 to 1972, the U.S. Public Health Service conducted the Tuskegee Syphilis Study, in which poor black men in Macon County, Ala., were given free treatment for “bad blood.” The “treatment” actually entailed the withholding of treatment for syphilis, which was then epidemic in the area, to see how the disease would progress unchecked. The uncovering of the study eventually led to a formal apology in 1997 by President Clinton.

The real problem, according to many researchers, lies in the definition of informed consent. After all, the word is “informed,” not “begrudging.” Most researchers conduct a risk-benefit analysis for any clinical research trial even before the trial is proposed to the granting agency. Once the trial is approved though, briefly going over the risks and benefits with a subject who sees mainly the possibility of earning a little money hardly seems an adequate method of securing informed consent. “As the risks escalate,” says Faden, “then it becomes important to consider the maturity and vulnerability of the subject.” Zaidi, the Rochester student, says benefits and risks were never discussed with him.

The University of Rochester is now conducting a study called UPREST, which involves healthy and asthmatic patients inhaling 10 micrograms of carbon and iron oxide per cubic meter of air — a very small amount. “There are no known undesirable effects,” the consent form reads, listing some possible side effects such as coughing, throat irritation, bruising where blood is drawn or soreness around the mouth from gripping the mouthpiece.

But the Environmental Protection Agency’s National Center for Environmental Research and Quality Assurance tells a slightly different tale. While UR’s informed consent form says no symptoms are expected from the small amount of particles inhaled, the expected results from the study listed on the NCERQA Web page state: “UFP [ultrafine particle] exposure will result in mild airway inflammation, preceded by sequential expression and shedding of endothelial [the top layer of blood vessels] and leukocyte [white blood cells] adhesion molecules, and accompanied by a transient acute phase response [immediate] and increased blood coagulability.” If no subjects show side effects, the carbon levels will increase to 25 micrograms per cubic meter — still within the range of what the EPA considers safe to inhale. Subjects are paid $400 for participating.

According to Dr. Mark Frampton, principal investigator of the study, this research is one small piece in the larger puzzle of how to determine safe air standards. While most of us likely breathe in this amount of carbon naturally every day, at issue is how the consent form reads. It claims there are no known undesirable effects, but few research subjects will ask about the possibility of unknown effects. The information present on the form is a watered-down version of what appears on the NCERQA Web page.

And further, the form fails to outline the fact that while carbon is in the air we breathe daily, the real danger lies in the particle size. Our bodies have the means to combat larger particles; it is the ultrafine particles that present the most hazard, since they attach to the alveoli in our lungs and can cause respiratory problems or tissue damage. Frampton, who was one of the researchers in the study that involved Nicole Wan in 1996, says the researchers don’t “plan on going to levels dramatically in excess of what a person might be exposed to in ambient air or in the industrial environment,” but he concedes that “there’ve been some studies that suggest ultrafine particles may have [undesirable] health effects.” Frampton says these results have not been proved, though one professor I spoke with (who wished to remain anonymous) said ultrafine particles are widely recognized to be the most hazardous.

Frampton’s UPREST may well produce important results about pollution levels in the same way that lopping off a limb could lead to advances in prosthetics, but the study has raised a red flag. It is one of many Rochester protocols under investigation by the Office for Protection From Research Risks. (This is the second investigation at Rochester; the first followed Wan’s death. All research involving human subjects was suspended and the university’s review methods were revamped.)

“When people review research, really what we’re doing is making a guess about the prospect that something beneficial will come from the research,” says Faden. “But we’re also making a guess that something harmful won’t happen. The language is a problem with benefits and risks,” she says, “as in: ‘Benefits’ are sure things and harms are ‘risks.’ It ought to be the prospect of benefit, the risk of harm, if we really wanted to keep the two clear in our thinking.”

The regulatory standard, according to the OPRR, is for the consent form to describe completely any foreseeable risks or discomfort to the subject. “Shortcomings in the informed consent process [arise] in a distressing number of instances,” OPRR director Ellis says. OPRR investigators “often find understatements of risks and overstatements of potential benefits … That’s wrong. Researchers are best to err in the conservative direction.”

Rochester Provost Charles Phelps admits that the university’s “paper trail was thinner than it should have been” prior to Wan’s death and that there is now a more vigorous review process in place, though he denies that the university is responsible for the Wan tragedy. “We are convinced now that events that led to her death, as tragic as it was, were not events that would lead us to want to remove Dr. Frampton or other people involved from carrying out clinical work or clinical studies.” Phelps declined to comment on Zaidi’s pending lawsuit.

Jonathan Moreno, director of the Center for Biomedical Ethics at the University of Virginia, cites a philosophical principle dating back to the 1970s that “goes beyond consent to justice. And justice means you spread out the benefits as well as the burdens of research. Unfortunately, we don’t spread out the benefits at all because of our health care system, but we try to be just in spreading out the burdens.”

Moreno wrote about the burden of vulnerable populations in clinical trials in a chapter of “Beyond Consent,” an anthology discussing the notion of justice in research trials. He defined vulnerable populations as those not in equal balance with researchers because of social context: students, for example, or people with economic hardships. Eighteen may be the age of consent, but when the protocol stems from a researcher at a student’s own university, how much does the uneven balance of power play into the student’s decision? How many of us, students or otherwise, question our own doctors?

Frampton says he and his colleagues try to maintain a demographic balance when signing up participants, though he concedes that they mainly place their ads on bulletin boards. And in a place like Rochester, where the poverty rate in the city proper is nearly double the national average — 22.5 percent vs. 13 percent — economic necessity must factor into a participant’s decision to sign on the dotted line. “Poor people are very vulnerable because their life circumstances are such that they feel compelled to do something for money that someone who is better positioned in life wouldn’t even consider,” says Faden.

The University of Rochester was one of the first to undergo an extensive OPRR investigation, and Frampton says that today’s Institutional Review Board is more efficient and better funded, with much clearer guidelines. But it is alarming, notes Moreno, that even under the stricter guidelines adopted in 1991, schools such as Rochester “have no way of knowing how many experiments you volunteered for in the past several years, [but] they know exactly how many laboratory animals they’ve used.”

One major shift in the way research is conducted these days is that many investigators now function inside a new entrepreneurial kind of university. Numerous articles cite the 21st century professor who has financial stakes in a market that hires inventors in droves to discover new drugs and treatment methods. In a climate where more grants are available and more trials are conducted, there is a greater risk that certain standards will be overlooked. “The number of subjects is larger, there’s more money and you have multiple-site studies that are hard to coordinate,” Moreno says. “The licensing and commercial factors are huge.”

When Jonathan Swift published “A Modest Proposal” in 18th century Ireland, he offered a sure solution to the country’s economic ills: The poor could sell their year-old children as food to the rich. God-fearing citizens were outraged. Eat the young of the less fortunate? Never in this civilized society! And even to those clued in to Swift’s irony, his point was largely missed — namely, that any proposition couched in calm tones and reassuring language could be made to sound reasonable. In modern America, the missing word, according to the OPRR’s Ellis, is experiment. “It’s almost never used,” he says. “You’ll hear people talk about gene therapy, but it’s not therapy, it’s experimentation. You virtually never see that word in informed consent documents.”

“The frank reality is that we’re not going to make the progress we want to make unless we do some of the more risky human subjects research,” says Faden. “Given that we want the progress, we have a duty to make sure the subjects are protected as well as we can. And we’re not doing that.”

The latest U.S.-Castro muscling over Elian
Gonzalez is a case in point, the best
example of what Fidel’s done for Cubans. U.S. media
shows the 50,000-plus demonstrators in Havana to
bring Elian back home. Indeed, billboards
and posters with a confused looking Elian
punctuate the city declaring Devuelvan a
Elian a su Patria — return Elian to
his native country. Thousands of similar T-shirts
are passed out. It is government-perpetuated,
declares the United States, which is meant to
somehow render it devoid of meaning.

Indeed, like many events in Cuba, the Elian
protests appear to be, in part, cause for
socializing as much as anything. At one of the
events I saw, groups of blue-clad security men sat
amid the protesters, chatting and eating peanuts
from funneled pieces of paper. The speakers evoked
rage at the situation, but wandering through the
masses felt a lot like a walk through a summer
festival — not because conviction here was less
than total, but because this is Cuba.

So begins the new Revolution. Each Cuban with
dollars is a budding entrepreneur, an independent
capitalist. Throughout our first week here, Ann and
I commented on those strange gas fumes emitted from
each car we rode in. Then we learned that the
employees of state-run gas stations skim off the
top and resell the gas on the black market for
U.S. dollars, which the car owners, or renters,
keep to siphon from small jugs in their trunks.
Same with cigars. And soap. And food. And shoes.
Anything for sale anywhere — tools, stereos,
cassettes, refrigerators — nearly all is available
on the street to those with dollars. And since
rations only cover the average Cuban for two weeks,
such grand-scale thievery is tolerated. Franqui,
our sputtering Subaru, initiated us into this
system.

This is not to suggest Cuba is a rich economy –
there isn’t all that much to buy. I searched in
Havana for days for a banana and finally gave up.
Bottled water, very expensive in Cuba, is more
prevalent in remote areas of Tibet and Cambodia.
Public transportation is the worst I’ve seen
anywhere. Cars are few and buses fewer.

There is a free farmer’s market now, following
Castro’s reforms in 1994, but it is expensive even
for foreigners. Beef is saved for tourists and
pregnant women. Each Cuban gets roughly six eggs a
month, but omelets are plentiful in hotels. Toilet
paper is rare, even in hotels, and most households
use newspaper or magazines. Taxis have become the
domain of those wealthy enough to own cars. To get
a ride, one need only wave an arm and Juan Q.
Public will pull over and take you anywhere within
the city for a few dollars, offered inside the car
while the police look the other way. One man in
Cienfuegos even took us on his horse and buggy down
a labyrinth of side streets to avoid the police.
For $2.

My Cuban friend Leonardo, who spent time in the
States, told me that he did not live in so
repressive a society as I might think. We were
driving to Havana from the new Josi Marti airport,
built last year. I did not answer, but sat smugly
in the back of his gasoline-smelling car and
thought he didn’t really know oppression because
he’d never really known freedom. But slowly, over
the course of my weeks in Cuba, I began to see that
it was I who’d been wrong.

It began with Leonardo telling us about when he was
a ballot counter during the 1996 elections. (Since
1992, elections have been held every two years for
the General Assembly, which includes Castro.) When
he saw people write “Down with Fidel” on ballot
cards and suffer no consequences, he virtually
stopped living in fear — overnight. There are four
daily papers in Cuba, he said, and it is up to
journalists to exercise freedom of
speech, though what sorts of pressures they may
feel he couldn’t speculate. But freedom of speech
– like station attendants selling gasoline, farmers owning land and
families who turn their living rooms into
restaurants and their bedrooms into guest housing
– is the foundation of this new revolution. Tiny
steps toward capitalism.

We had decided to avoid Franqui’s flat tire until
the morning and though the lugnuts gave us quite a
challenge, the parking attendant’s son and neighbor
replaced the old tire with the spare in no time. We
gave them a few dollars, thanked them profusely
and, at Ann’s wise urging, drove back to the
Transtur mechanics to have our spare patched up.

Happily, it seemed they had little to do until our
arrival with Franqui. While they fixed the
spare, we explained about the gas gauge being
broken and they took to fixing that, too. Then they
fixed a missing part on the door panel. Then they
cleaned the windows. And when we asked if Franqui
could make it to Santiago they all smiled and said:
No problema. Several hours later we were on our way
again, this time absolutely confident that we had
treated Franqui well and would be duly rewarded
with faithful service hereafter.

The loud POP came halfway between Trinidad and
Camaguey, amid soft fields of sugar cane with the
Escambray mountain range behind us and palm trees
punctuating the fields. My heart raced remembering
the difficult lug nuts of the morning. This was no
mere flat. A 4-inch slice through the tire exposed
the metal threads once holding it
together.

There wasn’t a car in sight. I said a silent prayer,
jumped on the tire iron and miraculously the
lugnuts budged. We managed to change the tire — me
thanking Ann for forcing us to get that spare fixed
– and drove to a shop in Bayamo at the foot of the
Sierra Maestra mountain range to buy a spare. The
shop, of course, was a man with four tools and a
sign hanging outside his house. When it was
determined that no spare could be found in the
whole town, nor any surrounding towns, nor probably
the whole eastern portion of the island, the man
sewed the wrecked tire together with plastic
thread, ironing sheets of rubber over the inside
and eventually salvaging the unsalvageable. This,
as much as anything, symbolizes the unwavering
fortitude of four decades with Fidel and cast.

Cuba is no Utopia, certainly, and daily we were
reminded of the dichotomies inherent in the country. Money
does not hold the power that it does in the United
States since it cannot always purchase what you
need. One man told me he’d been offered U.S.
$40,000 for his house by a Dutch man, but he’d
turned it down. “What would I do with that money?”
he’d said. “Houses are harder to get than money.”
He’d seen the wealth in the United States. He’d
seen all that money could buy, all that he lives
without. But then he’d seen the poverty in Haiti
and Jamaica. “They eat garbage,” he said. “They
live like dogs.”

Tourism, of course, is Cuba’s main economy. And for
the socially conscious traveler, Cuba is one place
where your dollars can go directly into the hands
of the people and not the government. This happens
when tourists avoid large hotels, that are
visible at night because they are in the part of
town with the most electricity. In fact, if you
stand in La Cabana, the old Spanish fortress across
the bay from Havana where Che Guevara set up shop
after the ’59 triumph, you can chart the tourist
areas of town — they are the sections with the
most light. The rest of Havana is dark and still.

But this new Revolution is slower in the
countryside. In the week we drove Franqui through
the island, it took us several days to realize that
the posters and billboards with Elian’s
visage began to disappear, as did many of the Cuban
flags hanging from windows, and posters of Camilo
Cienfuegos began to replace those of Fidel. Occasionally the
old “Socialism or Death” slogans appeared on walls,
though they had been virtually erased from Havana,
and the hustlers that Havana police strive to keep
away from tourists seemed to multiply tenfold in
Trinidad and Camaguey.

Halfway through the drive to Santiago I discovered that
instead of being fixed, Franqui’s gas gauge was now
stuck on full. I began counting kilometers.

The equation between what you think you know and
what you come to learn in Cuba never evens out.
There is always more to discover because the rules
are liquid; what you read rarely matches what you
see. Property, for example. Cubans are not allowed
to own their own houses — on paper, at least. But
if they want to buy, say, the roof from a man in a
one-story house, they can build up from there,
someday having a roof of their own to sell. One
large three-bedroom apartment we visited in
Santiago had cost U.S. $7,500 to build with
materials all purchased one by one on the black
market. This week, a toilet. Next month, maybe a
sink. It’s the ratio of available capital to
available material, and the laws of supply and
demand are not applicable in Cuba. Yet.

The man who fixed our tire in Bayamo ordered us to
toss the thing immediately upon arriving in
Santiago. After three hours at the shop, we were on
our way with 74 miles to go. I drove gingerly
over potholes and train tracks, white-knuckling the
steering wheel and imagining how we’d get Franqui
through the mountains and into Santiago if another
tire blew.

When we finally drove into the city after sundown,
our hearts melted with relief and we fell
immediately in love with Santiago’s winding streets
and hills, which reminded us of San Francisco. We
pulled up to a guest house that had been
recommended and were greeted enthusiastically in
English by a young woman who seemed to come
factory-made with a smile. We left the car out
front temporarily, with the hazards on. Relaxing
for a moment in the open courtyard of her house,
Ann and I grinned at each other. We all — even
Franqui — had made it, had reached a kind of
promised land.

“Better not leave Franqui out there,” I told Ann,
“with the keys inside.”

Her face dropped. Turned white. “The keys?” she
said.

Indeed. I’d left them in the car. She’d locked it.
And there it stood, flashers going like
admonishments that we would never be free of
Franqui’s spirit. The woman in the guest house
smiled nervously, telling us perhaps her husband
could help if he got home soon. We shook our heads
at our misfortune. How could the gods betray us so?

A man in a car happened by and greeted us;
our new hostess told him briefly of our plight,
asking if he could possibly help. He nodded at the
car, studied it for a moment, then plucked his own
car keys from his pocket, stuck one in Franqui’s
single keyhole and voil`, the car was
unlocked. “SOY CUBA!” we shouted in unison, I am
Cuba! Franqui would not conquer us!

Most Cubans agree that changes are needed for
survival — 1993 was an awful year, with people
starving in the streets after the fall of Russia.
But things are better now. More goods are being
bought and sold and everyone has a home. Indeed,
wandering the night streets of Havana, Cienfuegos,
Camaguey, Trinidad and Santiago, I came across only
one homeless person. Too many changes at once will
bring on a collapse like in Russia, many fear. And
though Fidel waves these as perpetual banners, free
health care and education are banners worth
waving.

If there is one thing that unites Cubans, beyond
Elian fervor, it is a collective hatred of
Miami Cubans. Fidel may be bad, but the Cubans in
Miami are worse, everyone says. An infiltration of
those in Florida, many fear, would bring tides of
crime, drugs and poverty — all the debauchery
Miami is infamous for. The Miami Mafioso, the Cuban
population there is called. And Cuba would return
to its pre-Castro days with the mob running
high-stakes gambling and overpriced sex shows.
Only this time things would be worse because those
in Miami have more money. Fidel, at least, is a
known commodity.

Though their fears are not unfounded, neither set
of Cubans bracketing the Florida straits is
offered a proper perspective. The stereotypes are
pervasive: Miami is gangs, drugs and murder whereas
Cuba is only prostitution and petty thievery.

As for the U.S. embargo, Cubans have at least one
reason to rejoice: It has probably saved the island
from the inevitable death-by-tourism plaguing Bali,
Cancun, Jamaica, Bermuda and countless other
“tropical paradises.” There is a down-home warmth
to the place, like the house of a favorite cousin.
The police are numerous, but friendly, and greet
you as you pass. Talk to a Cuban for more than 10
minutes and you’ll be invited home, provided you
convince the police that you’re not being hustled.
It’s a place where human noise, which is constant
and loud, offers a sense that life is happening all
around you. Not machinery, but the voices of
community.

Within our first 10 days in Havana we knew our
neighbors and the brother of our guest house’s
owner, and his son’s girlfriend, and the father’s
doctor and the neighbor’s friends. Three times I
ran into people I’d met, as if Havana was some
small town I’d grown up in and not just a place I
was visiting. It is the frenzied, frenetic rhythm
of a salsa song with pauses long enough to catch
your breath and dance again. It is the broken
instrument held together just barely, sounding
nearly as it always has, a little rough around the
edges and painted in pastels, but still playing.

Not unlike Franqui, the little devil that did, in
the end, bring us where we wanted to go. Franqui
hadn’t brought us in the way we expected, and not
in the ways we know or could have imagined. But all
along the way people had aided his and our
survival, given their time, material and skill with
a patience that only comes from years of making do
with what you’re given: eating, as it were, the
whole apple. Franqui, his skin bruised but core
intact, had made it nonetheless.

I had come to Cuba to discover the island on the millennium. Literally, but also metaphorically. What was Cuba to become in this new century? We spent the first two weeks in Havana before our odyssey with Franqui, and by then I had established a routine much like any I have at home. I rose at around 6 a.m. and drank cafi con leche at a nearby cafeteria on the corner of Avenida 23 and Calle L in Havana — one of the city’s main intersections and home to Coppelia, the famous ice cream metropolis where Cubans line up for hours every day.

In those early mornings I strolled past the woman selling ham-and-cheese sandwiches or cigarettes, depending on what was available that day; past the tiny shooting booth where kids and adults re-created the Revolution; and by my final morning, when Franqui was just a bad but cherished memory, the “Save Elian” poster with his primary school picture faded to white.

The waiters at the cafeteria came to recognize me, one of them shouting “la periodista” when I walked through the door — the journalist. For months leading up to this trip I had imagined myself prey to the deep and unabashed love that writers for centuries plummet into upon stepping onto Cuban shores. I saw Havana’s sultry streets, salsa, rum, cigars, sexy women and amorous men; I imagined dancing till dawn and languid days in the sun with a population of idealist albeit somewhat disgruntled citizens. I thought of religious Santeria rituals and discussions of ideology. What better reason to visit a forbidden place than romantic longing for that which you have been denied? The proverbial apple. The problem with the apple theory, however, is that once you begin, the rest is left for you to finish — core, seeds, bruises and all.

Asking Cubans what Cuba at the millennium means is a bit like trying to ask a 12-year-old to dismantle the engine of a Toyota. It’s not so much that it can’t be done — more that no one really wants to try. In the U.S. we are forever asking who will follow Fidel Castro. Who will be Cuba’s next president? What we are really asking is when will those darned Cubans come around to our capitalistic way of thinking? As one 25-year-old said to me, “Politicians all over the world are the same. Fidel is not bad or good. He is Fidel. The important thing is that I work and eat.” This was his millennial Cuba. Work to eat. Eat to work. One century same as another. Or, to put a finer point on it, it’s not what you drive, but how you keep it on the road.

Visiting Havana, many write, is like going back four decades. Our best example of an anachronistic city. Old American cars enigmatically still running punctuate the winding, cobblestone streets of Old Havana. Once-grand mansions of the ’40s and ’50s with intricate latticework and crystal chandeliers contain many of the same antiques they contained when their owners fled after the 1959 revolution. Couples along the Malecon walk by the sea amid tourists and prostitutes — much like they did when the Mafia controlled Havana’s economy midcentury. The embargo, many speculate, has done more to keep Castro’s minions cheering for him than any other contrivance in Cuba’s recent history. If the economy is poor in Cuba’s post-Russia era, the blame can be pointed directly northward, Castro says. El bloqueo.

But those who speak of anachronism miss the point. The truth is that Fidel’s millennial Cuba is as much in the throes of a new revolution as it was in 1958. This one, however, is more subtle, and more immutable.

Franqui’s troubles were not apparent at first. Cars are difficult to rent in Cuba and reservations are nonexistent, so when we were presented with this red, shiny tot of a car for 40 bucks a day, we were overjoyed. No matter that I couldn’t see over bicyclists as I drove. There’s not much traffic anyway once you’re out of the cities. Ann and I sputtered out of the Transtur office hailing Franqui as our ally in travel and, after loading him up with backpacks and 30 liters of black market gasoline and a siphon hose bought via the owner of our guest house, we were off.

Our plan was simple: Cienfuegos, Trinidad, Santa Clara, Camaguey and either back to Havana or on to Santiago de Cuba, where we’d fly back to Havana. With Franqui, the island stood as an open invitation.

But as is true with stories, life and cars, it is the details in Cuba that matter. It’s not that the American Fords and Russian Ladas are kept running, it’s how they’re kept running: through sheer determination, ingenuity and perhaps a little prayer — all things we would come to understand about Cuba via Franqui.

There is a certain sadness to Fidel’s failed Revolution. After all, the ideas that he, Che Guevara and Camilo Cienfuegos (Guevara’s counterpart in eastern Cuba) had were good and true: men working for the sake of the work, men working unselfishly for one another, all having equal opportunities, equal paychecks, equal goods. At some level, Fidel must be forgiven because the failure cannot be attributed solely to him. Socialism is flawed because humans do not possess the same passions and priorities, not because madmen stand at its helm. To have socialism today you’d have to block out the world and even Castro can’t do that.

So when the world comes in, I wanted to know, how do people stave off their anger? One Cuban who worked at a luxury hotel near Santiago refused to eat from the deluxe buffet offered to tourists, despite it being included in his wages; he could not enjoy that which his family was denied. When the woman serving spoonfuls of beef dishes on platter after platter to those tourists goes home to a kitchen of canned meat and six eggs per month, how does she control her rage?

In spite of Castro’s efforts, Cuba today is a two-tiered society, though the haves have less and the have-nots have more than could be said of Batista’s Cuba, which the United States supported through much of the ’50s. Those with American dollars have cars. They may be 20-year-old Russian clunkers with missing door panels, loose floorboards and taped windows, but they aren’t motorcycles or bicycles or buses like the have-nots. Soap, gasoline, food, medicine — all things rationed are often available with U.S. dollars. The irony that his country runs on the monetary unit of his most scorned enemy must surely drive President Castro mad. But Cubans –presidents and peasants alike — seem to have discovered their own methods of survival long ago.

Our first stop with Franqui was in Cienfuegos, roughly a three-hour drive from Havana. We made it by midafternoon, rejoicing in the sun and sand. We’d taken the Autopista, an enormous highway that runs through much of Cuba which, if there were lane markers, would be roughly eight-lanes wide. Since it is not a land of cars, we saw few along the way and dozens of folks flagged us as we chugged past. Of course Franqui, roughly the size of a large novel, was filled to capacity and we couldn’t pick up any stragglers. This was to be our only day free of Franqui anxiety.

The actual millennium here was largely recognized to be next year, and no matter anyway since New Year’s — another century forthcoming or not — is a family affair and not the debaucherous fiesta of the States. Relatives eat, drink, dance and open small gifts from each other.

Before departing on our journey, we had spent a wonderful evening with a family in Santa Fe, a suburb west of Havana, eating roast pork, yucca and congris — Cuba’s national dish of rice and beans. One of the guests cut sprigs of bougainvillea for us so we’d not feel left out as they opened gifts. Not a single person uttered Y2K. The hysteria that gripped the U.S. seemed to have escaped Cuba entirely. Indeed, one man said in disbelief: “I heard the Americans were buying water and taking money from their banks!” When I confirmed this rumor, he howled.

But Castro’s original Revolution deserves some credit. When he took power in 1959 he outlawed racism. While surely it exists still in hearts, and blacks are often targeted as perpetrators of petty crimes, this younger generation of Cubans seems generally to have embraced Castro’s view. Interracial couples are as common as their homogenized counterparts. There is no minority housing in any of the towns we visited. Indeed, even when Castro came to the United Nations shortly after he took power, he made a point of staying in a Harlem hotel. Certainly it may have been a show, as many journalists have declared over the years, but show me an American politician who’s done likewise.

Even more importantly, Castro’s legacy, above all others, will be that he returned to the Cuban people a notion that they could control their own destinies, a sense of pride and nationalism. For hundreds of years they’d been colonized and oppressed by the Spaniards.

Castro, who began his revolution with only a dozen or so men and seemed to have been initially inspired by the Keystone Cops, proved that there is strength in dreams — 1959 was the first year of Cuban independence. “Our future task,” Guevara wrote at the time, is that “the concept of their own strength should return to the Cuban people, and that they achieve absolute assurance that their individual rights, guaranteed by the Constitution, are their dearest treasure.” If, in the year 2000, Castro remains angry, it is anger that he cannot change Cuba’s history of colonization in the way that he changed its future in 1959.

Now, the thing with Franqui is this: I believe he was inhabited by spirits. A little Santeria, perhaps? It’s not so much that he broke down again and again, but that he offered an infinite number of obstacles in our path after that first day. From Cienfuegos we drove to Trinidad, a small colonial town with cobblestone streets (which Franqui disliked) and brightly painted buildings. It was declared a World Heritage site by UNESCO in 1988 and funds have been used to restore it. Since cars are fairly rare and car parts close to extinct, you pretty much have to pay someone to watch your rental car at night. No problem since this costs a buck or two and the man we hired directed me to park two inches from the wall, being careful to pull Franqui’s mirror in beforehand.

It wasn’t until the middle of the night that I bolted upright with this epiphany: How would I get inside Franqui to pull him out? After all, the only keyhole was on the driver’s side, now only centimeters from a brick wall. Ann and I labored over this reality. Climb over the hood and unlock it? I still couldn’t get inside. Push it? How to put the car in neutral? Pick it up and move it? In the morning I pointed out my stupidity to our parking attendant, who merely called over another man and the two of them yanked Franqui’s rear as if it was made of cotton and we were on our way. For the moment.

In minutes Franqui began bucking and I knew we were in trouble. The gas gauge read half a tank. It seemed to be the fuel line and we miraculously made it to the local Transtur office where we were told there were no cars to rent. Not in Trinidad. Not in Cienfuegos. Not even in Camaguey. All we could do was drive to the Transtur mechanic 10 kilometers away and hope for the best.

We stopped and started Franqui, praying and cursing and wanting the blazing sun to disappear behind a cloud. The drive took nearly an hour, and after six kilometers it seemed Franqui had had enough. We were horrified at first that we’d have to get out and push, but then we realized the rat only weighed six pounds. Off we went.

It took the mechanic 15 minutes to determine that Franqui’s half-full gas gauge actually meant empty and not only had we run out of gas and pushed the rebellious tot, but we had done so with 30 liters of gas in the trunk. To his credit, the mechanic merely grinned.

After a wasted day, we drove back to Trinidad, back to the parking wall with the passenger side hedged in this time and relief that the worst was behind us. Our faithful attendant greeted us smiling and, seconds later, pointed to our flat back tire.

Our guidebook told us the 14th Dalai Lama had a presence so large he filled up the room during his public audiences in Dharamsala. Now suddenly we — a traveling American writer and photographer — had been granted a private audience with him. Would his presence, I wondered, overwhelm me? Would I be rendered inarticulate? Would I feel a transcendence afforded legends standing in the presence of this reincarnated demigod? It occurred to me that the cleanest clothing I had was an orange T-shirt that said “Life is Good” — which seemed mildly inappropriate when meeting a man in exile.

Before leaving Chicago a month earlier, I had not been granted an interview with the Dalai Lama. In fact, I had been told by his private secretary that he would be in Portugal when I was due in Dharamsala. But my photographer, Ann Maxwell, and I had been delayed in Tibet by mudslides and closed roads and we had arrived in India days later than anticipated. Infuriating at the time, this now seemed like a wondrous stroke of dumb luck.

We were on a two-month exploration of all things Tibetan. Our itinerary included Nepal, the first stop for all incoming Tibetan refugees, Tibet, Dharamsala and London, where the Tibet Information Network is based. We investigated increased violence inside Tibet, forced sterilization of Tibetan women, refugees, feminist nuns and dissident groups like the Tibetan Youth Congress. Meeting the Dalai Lama, of course, had always been our greatest hope for the trip, our apogee.

The night before our interview, our nerves nearly combusted. Ann checked her film, flash, batteries and lenses half a dozen times. I checked my tape recorder, pens, batteries and questions; I read more than half the Dalai Lama’s autobiography in one sitting; my Chicago Tribune editors called at midnight and went through my questions twice.

Ann believed we would feel it, feel that something that was missing from the presence of ordinary mortals. I was more skeptical. Perhaps he had grown into his power and title not because he was exceptional, but because he had been groomed from age 2 to believe in his own preordained position, in the same way that geishas, slaves and royalty evolve into the roles they’re told they command. Perhaps any man would have a presence as large under the same conditions.

And yet, in “Civilization and Its Discontents,” Freud begins by discussing the attraction that all people have for power — in themselves or in others. But the greatness of those we admire, he says, rests on “attributes and achievements which are completely foreign to the aims and ideals of the multitude.” Certainly 50 years of peaceful perseverance in his campaign for Tibetan autonomy put the Dalai Lama in this category.

In Lhasa, the capital of Tibet, we had spent a great deal of time at the Potala Palace, the Dalai Lama’s former 1,000-room winter home, from which he had fled the Chinese in 1959 disguised as an armed guard. Both the Potala, where 10,000 monks once lived, and the Norbulingka, his summer palace, have been left exactly as they were when he fled them — a Phillips radiogram in the bedroom, two 1927 Austins and a 1931 Dodge parked behind the palace. The Potala now has just a handful of monks who attempt its upkeep and wait for the Dalai Lama’s return. Though the Chinese advertise that it’s open for tourism only several days a week, I went often, again and again, through its dark labyrinth of hollow rooms where plain-clothed monks sit quietly and refill yak-butter candles in silver chalices; they smile at the tourists studying the deity reproductions, the faded blue, red, green and yellow silk cloths that hang from the ceiling, the white scarves draping over Buddhas. Here flickering candles shoot wavering shadows on the dark red walls and the quiet is the kind reserved for places where tragedies too big and too close to accept reside: Dachau, the killing fields, Rwanda, My Lai.

In broken English, translators attempt to explain the Tibetan Buddhist sects — the yellow-head sect or the red-head sect; they point out the Green Tara, or the Buddhas of compassion, wisdom, patience. If asked, they will say the Chinese have offered them opportunities that they never got under the Tibetan government — though these 20-year-old translators, who smile at the naiveti of Westerners believing Tibet should be free of China, are themselves rarely old enough to remember when their country was ruled by its own people. And in each room of the Potala, far up in a dark corner, drilled into the 300-year-old wood and charting each movement of the monks, each conversation, each wistful gaze they offer, sits a bolted white camera.

I closed my eyes in one room, breathed in the thick scent of yak butter and tried to imagine the voices of 10,000 monks, the chant of the Dalai Lama in his home, his footsteps on the stone ground, the flowing silk robes he once wore when both freedom and country belonged to him. The Potala was like an ancient building undeserving of the historical status afforded it because its history was still alive and well on a misty mountaintop. I opened my eyes and for a long moment, stared into the dark lens of one camera.

The Dalai Lama’s home in Dharamsala is much less
grand. Armed Indian guards stand behind an iron gate
leading to his residence and offices; two metal
detectors are positioned in front of and next to the
gate. Among pine trees, several one- and two-story
buildings dot the land beyond the fence, but the fog
was so heavy I could never see more than a few feet
past the gate.

Before meeting the Dalai Lama, journalists are
required to give their questions to the private
secretaries, partly for security and partly because
his holiness has a reputation for long-windedness;
knowing this, the secretaries often help to rephrase
questions in order to fully utilize the time allotted
in an interview — in my case, 20 minutes. As I sat there
going over my questions about India’s nuclear testing,
Tibetan autonomy and Clinton’s last visit to China in
June of 1998, I felt as if I’d entered a parallel
universe, a place where this interview should not have
been happening. What would we have discussed, I
wondered, if it was happening at the Potala.
The Chinese have allowed portions of Lhasa — encouraged
it even — to become a shrine of all things Dalai Lama,
all things Buddhist, as long as references encapsulate
only the first through the 13th Dalai Lamas and
as long as the numbers of monks and nuns remain far
below the pre-1950s population. Praise could be
bestowed upon the fifth for expanding the Potala to
its present glory, but the 14th Dalai Lama,
the current exiled leader and winner of the Nobel
Peace Prize, was relegated to the memories of his
followers and his enemies, neither of whom spoke of
him publicly. Denouncing a fact, though, hardly makes
it less true.

As I wandered the narrow, cobbled streets of the
Tibetan side of Lhasa, I thought often about the Dalai
Lama. I didn’t know then, of course, that I would meet
him, but I felt a sort of shame in knowing that,
unlike him, unlike the refugees who had fled, unlike
his countrymen who had been jailed, persecuted and
killed under Chinese rule, I was free to enter and
leave the country almost at will. Even though the
Dalai Lama, when he lived there, never roamed the
streets like an ordinary citizen but was in public
rarely and only with an entourage, the streets still
felt as if they belonged to him. I met many who
carried thumb-sized photos of him in the folds of
their robes and I wondered what it was like inside the
Dalai Lama’s memory. Surely the city, even without the
obvious Chinese influence, had changed. When he longed
for Tibet, I wondered, what was the Tibet he was
longing for?

Before our interview, Ann and I bought white scarves
to offer him and we learned how to prostrate and hoped
he would recognize our cultural sensitivity. I was, of
course, in internal pandemonium, my stomach ached, my
hands shook, but I also knew there was safety in this
interview. Above all else, he was nice. I’d read his
book, I’d visited his country, my editors believed in
me, I knew to look him in the eye, and most
importantly, Ann believed I could do it, which was
worth more than everything else combined.

When the time finally came, we, with our equipment
and our white scarves, were led to a sidewalk where the
Dalai Lama, flanked by two men, waited for us. He wore
his standard maroon robe with a gold tank top
underneath and stood, arms at his side, stoically,
watching my approach. He was taller than I had
guessed. I wondered if the walk toward him was
included in my 20 minutes. It was, in memory, both
the longest and shortest walk of my life, akin to what
a bride must feel when the aisle stretches out before
her, yet suddenly there she is, in front of the
minister. I offered a half-grin — I am a habitual
smiler. He didn’t flinch. Before I could speak, he
snatched our scarves and tossed them to his secretary,
grabbed my hand firmly and pulled me into his
reception room. “Not much time,” he said gruffly.

I nodded vigorously. His voice was deep and loud, not
at all the gentle monk I’d envisioned and my hand was
red where he’d grabbed it. I took a deep breath and
launched into a question about India’s nuclear
testing. The phrasing was important. He did not
support nuclear weapons, war, or military action in
general; he wanted a demilitarized world. What he
supported was the right to such testing if, and only
if, world powers like the U.S. also engaged in such
“rights.” By most accounts, he was misquoted. As he
answered the question, I began to wonder if he missed
Lhasa’s thin air, if the Dharamsala dampness bothered
him, if he envisioned the sparkling minerals that
glinted like jewels off mountains in the sun all along
the Tibetan plateau. I wished I’d brought him
something from Tibet — some yak butter or prayer flags,
a story of hope. Did he miss the Kham warriors who
wove turquoise into their long hair and the days when
the words foreign policy, United Nations and refugee
meant nothing to him? Today, would he get in that ’27
Austin and plow through the winding alleyways near
Lhasa’s Jokhang Temple? Did he envision himself
wandering the hallways of the Potala? Would he
recognize its hollow silence?

He was a stocky man with gray stubble on his head, a
long face, and large, metal framed glasses. His
answers were complex and his English halting. Every
few moments he looked to his two secretaries who sat
in the room with us and asked them to clarify words in
Tibetan, which they would then translate into English
for me.

The day I interviewed the Dalai Lama happened to be the day after President Clinton admitted to having an improper relationship with Monica Lewinsky. This was before the U.S. had split down the middle, before the partisanship, the hatred, the petty slandering and questioning and distrust. We knew only that the news had reached even the mountaintop in Dharamsala and that we felt betrayed and disappointed and hurt by our president. In my second question, I’d begun with Clinton, intending to ask about his visit to China. Before I could finish, the Dalai Lama drew his head back in surprise and looked at me incredulously. “You mean with Lewinsky?” he shouted.

I froze. Behind me, Ann’s camera shutter stopped. I bumbled an apology on behalf of my president. But suddenly I realized the irony of discussing the world’s biggest sexual faux pas with the world’s most famous celibate man and I burst out laughing. That the Dalai Lama, Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky had entered my mind’s trajectory simultaneously seemed sacrilegious even for a democratic agnostic. I realized that I hadn’t broached this issue with his secretaries, but I pressed ahead anyway. “Actually,” I laughed, “that’s not my question, but I would like to know what you think.”

He threw his head back and laughed with me. All at once, the tension dissolved, he slapped his hand on his knee and together we cracked up. Even his secretaries, who were largely humorless, laughed; Ann snapped photos and suddenly I saw that the way to the Dalai Lama was through his laughter. Here was a man who had escaped his country, who had endured for nearly 50 years without wavering, indeed who never even called his enemies such and he had a laugh as big as the sky. I’ve heard that he knows the power of his own laugh, that he has used it to manipulate other journalists, but with me it felt wholly sincere. I couldn’t help thinking of my country, of the ultimatums we offer to the Iraqs and the Bosnias and the Vietnams of the world, of the shame we all feel, Democrat or Republican, at having officials who lie and get caught. But if a man like the Dalai Lama, who had lost an entire country and countless friends, could still lose himself in gales of giggles, surely there was hope for the rest of us.

We discussed politics, religion, autonomy, refugees, opposition groups and Chinese oppression, but the thing I remember most was his penchant for laughter. “You know,” he spoke in a conspiratorial whisper about midway through the interview, “you really are spoiled. Your generation.”

I told him my grandmother had said likewise for 30 years.

“I think the younger generation of America all have great potential if utilized properly,” he said. “They can think, and that’s important.”

My 20 minutes turned into a half hour and my half hour turned into an hour and we laughed and talked and joked. He grinned at Ann’s camera. He asked if we had enjoyed India. He put his hand over mine when we talked of refugees. When it was all over, I asked him how he had endured for 50 years — with that deep well of laughter — and he told me this story: “One Tibetan monk who is now close with me came [to Dharamsala] in the early ’80s [and] joined with me. He [had] spent more than 18 years in a Chinese prison labor camp. So we used to talk and he told me on a few occasions he really faced some danger. So I ask him, ‘What danger? What kind of danger?’ — thinking he would tell me of Chinese torture and prison.

“He replied, ‘Many times I was in danger of losing compassion for the Chinese.’”

Ann and I gasped. He paused and studied us.

“That’s marvelous, isn’t it?” he grinned.

Save for that story, most of his answers to my questions have faded from memory. But I will never forget the sound of his big, booming laugh. I don’t know if the Dalai Lama fills a room because of who he is or because of what we’ve made him, but I think now that it doesn’t matter. I think what people really mean when they say he fills a room is that he fills their hearts.

When the interview was over, he motioned to one of his secretaries who then disappeared into a back room. Reappearing moments later, the secretary handed each of us a tiny white envelope. Inside, was a silver Tibetan coin — the kind not used since the Chinese takeover — made sometime between 1906 and 1912. On one side was inscribed “Gaden Phodrang,” which refers to the Tibetan government; on the other was a lotus circle, which, in Tibet, represents victory in all directions. The Dalai Lama wanted us to have them. The secretary later told me that he gave them out only to those he felt an affinity toward, those “new friends and old,” in his words, who “constantly refresh me.” The secretary also handed him the two white scarves we’d brought with us. Placing one around my neck, the Dalai Lama peered closely at my shirt. “‘Life is good,’” he read aloud. “That’s good, yes.” Then, taking my hand in his, he squeezed it and leaned in toward me. “Now tell me,” he whispered, “about Tibet.”