Namma

  The next morning I woke and got up. I have never liked leaving my parents, although I have done it many times. There was still some invisible sinew that held me to them. It was true that things would be easier when we didn't have to worry about their welfare, and I wouldn't have to witness them fighting over the video camera any more, and part of me was looking forward to a break, although I knew I would miss them. However, as the car rolled up to the hotel gate and we loaded their bags, I had to put on a brave face. My father hugged Tsedup – he had not done that before, being an emotional man who rarely betrays his emotions. A very English man. Then he hugged me and I felt the warmth of his plump, safe embrace. My mother was trying not to cry. She clung to me and I held her, and tried to suppress the feeling welling up inside me. If she didn't cry then I could control it.

  Then I just stood and watched the arms waving from each window, right over the bridge, through the barley-field, down past the mud huts, out of sight.

  Four. Out on a Limb

  We left the concrete tents immediately and took a room in town where our two friends were staying with their families. They were returning to Machu the next day and had promised us a lift. The upstairs rooms overlooked the street, providing an interesting perspective on the scurrying life beneath the smeared window. Ours was a simple room with a linoleum floor, three single beds with cleanish sheets and pillows stuffed with what appeared to be sand. On the wall was a mirror, and underneath the window, a table. A bare lightbulb hung from the ceiling and an old-fashioned washstand, containing a tin bowl, stood sentry by the door.

  In the courtyard lurked the public toilet; its putrid stench provoked convulsive retching at a distance of ten yards. It was becoming clear to me that, for all their striving for development, public sanitation was not high on the Chinese list for improvement. In fact, I had not been aware of a drainage system since leaving Lanzhou. Obviously the Tibetans had got it right: wandering off inconspicuously into a field had its merits.

  We joined Sortsay, Tsorsungchab and their families in a room down the hallway. They had just got back from the Tibetan hospital across the road. It was my first time in the company of Tibetan townswomen, who were quite different from the nomad women. These women's appearance owed more to Chinese dress sense. Sortsay's wife, Dolma, sat on the bed looking pale and ill. She wore black polyester trousers, a white patterned blouse under a pink cardigan and a large gold ring. On her feet were high-heeled black shoes, and her long hair was woven into one thick plait, not two tied at the bottom, as the nomads wore it. She smiled weakly at me, then scolded her eight-year-old son, Tenzin, as he hit her knee with a small plastic gun. Meanwhile Tsorsungchab's wife, Tashintso, who needed treatment for a blood disorder, sat on a chair splitting melon seeds between her teeth and spitting the husks into a plastic bucket. She was beautiful, with a soft face and large, slightly drooping eyes, and was dressed in a similar fashion to Dolma. She had a curious indigo tattoo on her left hand: a series of dots in a circle. I wondered whether it related to some form of treatment or if it was a symbol of something. In the corner of the room sat Sortsay's mother, who was a true nomad and was dressed accordingly in her tsarer and jewellery. She seemed incongruous in this setting and was the only reminder that, despite these families' adoption of modern dress and all the trappings of 'civilisation', they were nomads, who had been born in tents.

  It began to rain outside, the first drops heavy. The air was cooling after days of scorching heat. We sat in the crowded room and the smoke from the Chinese cigarettes hung torpidly in the fug. I was feeling a bit alienated. With Mum and Dad gone, I was beginning to grasp that Tsedup was the only person with whom I could communicate effectively. I wanted desperately to be able to talk to these women, but they seemed as embarrassed as I was to initiate a conversation, which would inevitably grind to an abrupt halt after the first sentence. We just giggled as Tsedup attempted to start things off by teasing Tashintso and trying to make her talk to me. I hoped they liked me. Perhaps they thought I was strange. I felt as if I was under a microscope.

  The atmosphere lifted, however, when Tashintso's four-year-old son, Lhamochab, who had inherited the lovely brown eyes of his mother, was cajoled into performing a dance for us in the centre of the room. He was the most cherubic-looking child you could imagine, with a cheeky plump face and a quizzical smile. He strutted around, flailing his arms, in his bright yellow and black striped jumper, like a distressed bee, while singing at the top of his voice the words of the only Tibetan song he knew:' Ah latze, ah latze, ahhh latze, ah latze, ah latze, ahh latze.…' Needless to say, it was somewhat repetitive, but had the whole room in uproar. Lhamochab was pleased with his new-found fame and spun round and round, until Tenzin poked him in the eye and it was curtains for the show. He sat grizzling on his mother's lap as Tenzin gloated, then ran out of the door screeching. His parents were obviously used to such behaviour for they made no attempt to discipline him. Dolma continued to smile weakly and Sortsay chuckled and smoked some more.

  That evening I sampled my first karaoke. We had all dined on broth, cooked by a young Muslim man over the open fire at his street stall, under a plastic awning out of the drizzle. We slurped in unison from the clay pots that contained various ingredients, such as furry, tentacled stomach, which I ignored. Then we went back to our hotel and up the steep staircase at the other side of the courtyard to a glass-fronted room. Inside was a dimly lit bar with Formica tables and chairs and a dance-floor. A Chinese man sat at a table fiddling with the knobs on the karaoke machine, which winked synchronised neon blue lights out of the darkness, while the barmaid leant lethargically over the counter. The only customer so far was an inebriated Chinese man talking to himself by the wall. From the ceiling hung coloured lights, flashing brazenly like a school disco, and an enormous television screen that was belting out Chinese pop music. On the screen a bikini-clad girl wandered around a park, followed by a cameraman, who was wasting no time with his zoom lens. Sex on TV is censored in China, but there seemed to be an awful lot of sublimation going on. Karaoke is big in China, and even in remote parts, the locals take it seriously.

  As the men fetched some drinks and we sat down at a table, the barmaid came to life. She took the microphone stand and began howling in a pseudo-operatic whine. She was loving it. Tashintso looked at me, attempting to suppress her mirth, but we burst into fits of giggles that were drowned, none the less, by the cacophony. The men joined us and we sipped our drinks and surveyed the menu of songs. I was lucky: there was nothing in English, so I would not have to humiliate myself. But I was soon invited to dance, and reluctantly joined Sortsay on the floor for a quick turn. He was remarkably gentlemanly and guided me in some kind of waltz to the strains of a love song, singing along to the words. I struggled not to stand on his feet as I wrestled with the intricacies of the steps and he smiled encouragingly. This was a world away from a club night in the West End, not that I was ever a fervent party-goer. Soon everyone took their turn at the mike, and their familiarity with Chinese popular culture became evident in that they knew every word and inflection to every song. The best songs were those about Tibet, in Chinese, of course, but sung to evocative images of nomadic life on the video screen: yaks and sheep, festivals and horse-racing, dancing and monks.

  The inevitable happened later. The song list changed and I found myself with no excuse to avoid singing an English song. I stood blushing under the glitterball that rotated in the disco lights and trembled my way through the Beatles' 'Yesterday', as the drunk man shimmied around in his blue Mao suit and cap, splashing beer over the lino. When I finished the whole room cheered and clapped, and I have to say that in some strange way I found the experience quite liberating, if surreal.

  When we returned to our room, bleary-eyed and a little the worse for beer, someone was in one of the beds. Aka Tenzin had found his way in and was snoring in the lamplight. I guessed he fancied a change from the monastery. I felt most uncomfortable with the idea of undressing in front of a mon
k, so climbed into my bed on the other side of the room fully clothed as Tsedup woke him to chat. I fell asleep to the rise and fall of their voices and the barmaid's final song.

  ***

  The next morning we left in another Beijing jeep, as Aka Tenzin waved from the noodle shop where we had breakfasted. I sat in the back with Tsorsungchab and Tashintso, who held Lhamochab on her knee. Tsedup sat in the front next to the driver as he was prone to travel sickness. It wasn't him that we had to worry about this time, however; we had gone only fifty yards when Lhamochab was sick over his father's legs. Many Tibetans are not used to motorised vehicles, especially the nomads who traditionally prefer the horse if they have any distance to travel, but for these townsfolk the vibration of the engine, the smell of the petrol and the sense of claustrophobia were an unfamiliar hazard. Tsorsungchab did not drive because of the car crash that had damaged his eyesight. When he took off his dark glasses to wipe his weeping eye I saw the two-inch scar that ran beneath it. He told me, quite cheerily, that beer had caused the crash and ruined his sight. Now he didn't drink.

  We had been five hours on the road and the weather was inclement. An all too familiar English grey had dissolved the sky, and I searched the smudged landscape through the steamy windows for signs of home: a curve of a mountain, the sweep of the grassland that fell from the Wild Yak range. I had missed my surrogate family and the tribe. The few days of drifting in Labrang had left me feeling displaced and I craved a sense of being rooted. I had never been much of a pioneer; too much a suburban girl at heart. However, now that his role as tour guide was officially over, Tsedup was desperate to return to Machu town to be reunited with his friends. He still hadn't seen many and was as keen to make contact with them as he had been to meet his family again.

  First, though, we went to Tashintso's house. It transpired that she and Tsorsungchab also had a daughter, Tsepharchab, who must have been about eight and had been staying with her grandmother while they were in Labrang. She burst into tears as soon as she saw her parents and clung to them, in her yellow dress and pink socks, as we got out of the stuffy car. Their house was in the heart of the town, among the sprawl of concrete dwellings and courtyards divided by a grid of narrow alleyways and high walls. They unlocked their metal gate and we made our way into the courtyard, up the little path, past the tap -a much-coveted item – and round to the back of a shambles of outbuildings. In front of a red-brick inner courtyard was a gaily painted house with a conservatory of fashionable blue glass displaying potted plants. We sat at the table under the glass roof and Tashintso brought us some beer.

  They had just finished building the house. It was simple, with a lounge area and two bedrooms all with wooden floors. In the front room sat two armchairs, a coffee table, wardrobe and dresser with silk flowers and a clock on it; otherwise the room was bare. The bedrooms contained only a bed with a neatly folded shiny pink quilt and a small cupboard. The house looked as if they had never set foot inside it.

  The outbuilding crouching opposite in the yard was their real home and had been for years. It consisted of a parlour, with an electric cooker and glass-fronted cupboards, a bedroom with a small stove and television, and a back room for eating and for the children to sleep in. Its walls were decorated with newspaper but it was clear that Tashintso and Tsorsungchab had all the mod cons – except a fridge; that was the ultimate goal. If you had a fridge, you were someone. Tashintso's brother had a fridge; one day she would have one.

  As we sat and drank our beer, Tsorsungchab busied himself. Something trilled shrilly from under the table and I was astonished to see that he had a mobile phone, which he answered proudly. I could see that he was fond of gadgetry – a land-line telephone sat on a small table in the corner, covered by a handkerchief to protect it from dust. Whether the calls were work-related or not was difficult to say. He looked important anyway, as he puffed on his cigarette and grunted loudly and repeatedly into the mouthpiece, 'Ah… Ah… Ah …' meaning 'what'. He seemed oblivious of anyone speaking to him, for the whats continued for some time before he settled into a rhythmic and repetitive boom of 'Oh… oh… oh.…' meaning 'yes'. Whoever was struggling to get a word in gave up after a short time and Tsorsungchab turned off the phone without saying goodbye. Amdowas don't say goodbye, they just say, 'Da de chi roi,' which means, 'OK, that's it.' I laughed eventually as his monosyllabic retorts seemed to be the only thing he was uttering and he laughed heartily back. 'Shermo, drink beer!' he cried, flicking ash into the green china ashtray. I was as much a source of humour to him as he was to me.

  Tashintso busied herself with the children and unpacking. Lhamochab was turning circles on his tricycle in the yard, while his sister grizzled on the flower-bed wall. She had been abandoned and was not going to let her parents forget it. Her mother cooed comfortingly as she simultaneously swept the floor, put away the clothes and chatted animatedly with Tsedup and her husband.

  'Tashintso is a policewoman,' Tsedup told me. I don't know why, but for some reason I found this difficult to believe. In my limited understanding of local authority and the machinations of this alien society, it seemed inconceivable that a Tibetan man could be a policeman, let alone a Tibetan woman, but I suppose this was Communist China, and women were just as likely as men to occupy positions of authority.

  Tsedup pointed to a green uniform, which hung on a peg by the door. 'Look. That is her uniform.' She was indeed a woman of the law. Paranoia kicked in. Perhaps she was watching us. We should be careful. As if he was reading my mind, Tsedup explained, 'Tashintso is going to help us. She says she will arrange for us to meet the local police sergeant soon. He will want to have an interview with me.' Perhaps it would be a good thing to have a friend in the police station after all, but the thought of an interview made me shudder.

  The next day as I was brushing my teeth in a tin bowl in the sunny yard a familiar figure appeared. He wandered around the edge of the outbuilding and said, 'Hello, Kate.'

  I was so shocked to hear a Tibetan speaking English that I nearly choked. He looked older, but it was unmistakably Tsempel. He had been a great friend of Tsedup's in India when we had first met, but had returned to Tibet soon after I left for England. I had not seen him for five years. His front teeth were chipped now from splitting melon seeds and around his eyes were deep lines I didn't remember. He was thin and slightly stooping, with an apologetic air, and he spoke calmly and quietly in a low, husky voice.

  'Arro, Tsempel. Cho demo?' I asked, as we shook hands firmly.

  He replied in English again, 'I'm happy to see you.'

  I ran to the bedroom to wake Tsedup and he sprang out of bed. The two embraced warmly in a blurt of excited dialect, and it struck me, as I looked at them together, how much time had passed. It seemed now almost as if they were from two different worlds. Except, as with all the other reunions I had witnessed, there was an immediate connection between them. It didn't need to be spoken; they were like brothers. Whatever they had experienced, whichever path they had chosen, they were essentially the same. They were 'Amdo boys', and that, I had learnt, was a phenomenon unto itself.

  The clarity of the concept is derived from the exiled community in India, which is split into the three regions of Tibet: Kham, Amdo and the Tibetan Autonomous Region, (TAR) with those who have been born in exile. For the most part they live harmoniously, but certain hostilities and prejudices exist. For a start they all speak different dialects. The majority, who are from the TAR or who were born in India, do not understand the regional dialects of Amdo and Kham, and it is the responsibility of the latter to learn the dialect spoken by the TAR. Meanwhile the Amdowas and the Khampas always stick together in their regional groups, like small tribes. They are from farther away and as most of them have left their families behind, the young men are freer than the others to express themselves and take advantage of their new-found freedom. When I met Tsedup, he shared a tiny cell-like room with seven other Amdo boys where they baked bread to sell on the street. They relied on each
other for everything and an even greater bond existed between them than when they were in Tibet. The ' Lhasa boys' are often afraid of the Amdowas who, like their Khampa neighbours, have a reputation for brutality in fights. The Amdowas are often made to feel coarse and crude by the older Lhasa Tibetans especially, being 'countryfolk'. But they are also revered generally for their dominance of Tibetan literature and music, of which Amdo is the heartland.

  The average Amdo boy is fiercely loyal and would die for his friend. He conducts himself with something verging on medieval gallantry. He is brutally honest, so candid, in fact, that he does not understand the meaning of tact. If you are fat he will say so. If there is a dispute to be had, there is no subtle sidestepping: the cards are always on the table. The 'civilised' world would describe it as naivete and it was the source of much miscommunication in the early days of Tsedup's and my relationship. I had not realised the levels of cunning to which we westerners aspire. A complicated combination of emotional bribery and evasive action had always worked for me. Now things were different. The Amdo boy is also proud; he does not display the arrogance of the foolish but has a genuine sense of identity and belief in self that comes from being a member of a tribe. He is often contemplative, and it is, presumably, the vastness of the grasslands that has prepared him for his lateral observation of life. But the Amdo boy is also mad, with a wild sense of humour, and is full of teasing tricks, which prevents him from appearing too dour. When the jokes are over, the Amdo boy is, above all, sincere. I had never heard anything as sincere as my husband's first words of love.