FLAG Ep. 9: Yurts and the Land

Olowokandi and Aqbal discuss the news that the UN is dispatching an Internal Audit Group investigator to the base. Olowokandi tells Shirasu that Eversalt is worried that the UN will try to make Nikkanen the scapegoat for the operation’s failure. Shirasu talks to Su-Ming about it, and Su-Ming explains that if the SDC did nothing wrong during the operation, the failure lies with the operation itself and its planners, the UN General Staff Office. Shirasu also interviews Eversalt about the situation, and she angrily responds that she doesn’t mind putting everything she has to say on the record. In the infirmary, the sheepherder fights with medical staff and they decide to send him home since his injuries aren’t severe. The next morning, Nikkanen boards a helicopter with the sheepherder to return him to his people. Aqbal mentions that Nikkanen is a certified nurse, much to Shirasu’s surprise. Shirasu films their flight back and Nikkanen explains to Aqbal that there’s a traditional medicine doctor who travels the steppes and helps the nomads. Nomadic children gather around the helicopter after it lands and the patient is offloaded. Nikkanen speaks to the doctor and Shirasu takes many pictures of the nomads. She gets video of nomads beating wool with sticks to make the felt that covers the exteriors of their yurts. Aqbal comments that life out here is hard, so people age much faster than they do in the city. In Subasci, Akagi goes to the bar and meets with a photographer who tells him there’s been unusual lefts of recon flight activity coming from the airport. Speaking at first through a translator, Dr. Tson asks for supplies to treat another patient and Nikkanen promises to help. Shirasu films several young girls giving Aqbal some flowers. Nikkanen tells Dr. Tson that they can bring in the supplies tomorrow, and Shirasu asks if she can stay overnight with the nomads because she feels sick. Nikkanen says he has to go because the inspector is waiting for him at the base. Akagi and Lisa work their sources to get info, but everything on the UN side has dried up. Dr. Tson gives Shirasu an examination for her “upset stomach.”

Inside Dr. Tson’s yurt, Shirasu finds anatomical charts and medicinal herbs. He asks her to carry a table outside because he knows she’s not really sick. She asks why he let her stay, and he answers that he can use someone for the manual labor. Shirasu takes pictures of Dr. Tson at work and asks how long he’s been doing this. He answers that it’s been a long time and that everyone in every camp knows him. Dr. Tson gives Shirasu a stack of hay to carry around as he makes house calls to different yurts. She films Dr. Tson working with an elderly woman, and he later says that old people are tough because they hide their pain. Shirasu is surprised to see Dr. Tson also treating a yak, and he says that if it has a pulse, he treats it. He cuts hay to make medicine for the yak and asks Shirasu to help him. She puts down her camera and helps Dr. Tson, but the yak refuses to eat the medicine and instead drags them around by a rope. As night falls, Dr. Tson’s elderly patient again asks where Shirasu is from. With Dr. Tson as a translator, Shirasu asks the old lady what good things have happened in her life, and she answers many things. Shirasu asks if she has pictures, and she answers that the images are burned inside of her eyes. Dr. Tson comments that the moment you take a photo, it becomes the past, but having lots of happy pasts means you had a good life. Later, Shirasu is with Dr. Tson in his yurt and finds an old framed photo of him as a boy with his father and a woman. She asks who the woman is and Dr. Tson answers that it’s the old lady she met earlier. She’s surprised because the woman was so pretty in the photo, and Dr. Tson answers that everyone ends up looking that way if they live long enough. He thinks photos can be cruel sometimes, but Shirasu thinks it’s a lovely memory. He admonishes her to put down her camera and sit down to eat, which she does. Dr. Tson explains that his father and the old lady were childhood friends, but he doesn’t know more about it than that. He wonders if his father was in love with the woman, and after he died Dr. Tson took on the job of caring for her. Dr. Tson tells Shirasu that he got fed up with his father’s traditional medicine and went to America to study modern medicine. But while there he saw people chained to machines for life and thought that if death is one of life’s gifts, maybe Ru Pou was right all along. Shirasu asks Dr. Tson if he knows Ru Pou, and he answers that he used to be his chief physician and that Ru Pou was the one who had him sent to America to study. He thinks Ru Pou did it so that he could see the slow death of the spirit was more terrifying than the physical death of the body. He thinks that as a journalist she should have seen enough to understand that people have their own ways of living and dying. Dr. Tson encourages Shirasu to keep taking pictures of everything she sees around her. The next morning, Aqbal and medical staff return by helicopter to hand over supplies to Dr. Tson. Shirasu asks where Nikkanen is and Aqbal answers that he’s being questioned. Shirasu sets up her camera to take a timed group photo with the nomads, but a sheep photobombs by wandering into frame. As the helicopter flies away, Aqbal mentions that she found out the supplies Dr. Tson requested included powerful tranquilizers used on patients in the final stages of cancer. She thinks the old lady doesn’t have long to live and that they could’ve taken her to a hospital, but she declined.