Namma

by Kate Karko

  The preoccupation with death and rebirth appeared to form the crux of the Buddhist mindset. It seemed to me that the nomads took refuge in Buddhism as a means of understanding and conquering death. I had realised the clarity with which they accepted the impermanence of life. I had seen the strings of white prayer flags fluttering on the opposite bank of the Machu river and knew that it was a water-burial site. I had heard the terrible tales of the tribeswomen performing sky burial for their dead men on the mountain.

  But the process of dying I had heard about seemed as mystical as the shamanic rituals. Certain mystic initiates are capable of maintaining a lucid mind during the dissolving of their personalities. They can even pass into the next life fully conscious. An ordinary man, however, is guided down the path of death by a lama. He explains to the dying man the nature of the journey on which he is about to embark and reassures him. Then the lama's task is to command the spirit out of the top of the man's head with a cry of 'Hik!' followed by 'Phat!' The disembodied entity may then begin its journey through a series of visions, guided by his character and past actions. This is the intermediate state, Bardo. After three days, when the lama has induced the spirit to leave the corpse and abandon its attachment to the world, the body is tied up and carried to the sky burial site. It is dismembered, the organs removed, the limbs cut off, the bones pounded to powder with rock. The dead man's body is a last generous offering to the other sentient beings of the earth: the vultures, wolves and birds. Or the fish who consume a waterborne corpse.

  After death a person embraces a new life. If they have accumulated enough merit they will be a good person. If not, they may come back as an ant, or worse. Annay was always careful where she trod. Whatever their state of rebirth, the dead person's name is not spoken in the same way again. I had referred to a late relative of Annay's by his name and had been corrected. I had also seen photographs with faces scratched out. Although the younger generation, more familiar with new technology, accepted pictures of the dead, it seemed that older nomads were unsettled by them and preferred, as they always had, the vividness of a mental picture. I wondered what Amnye and Annay had thought of the pictures I had shown them of my grandmother.

  I realised that the intricacies of the Buddhist doctrines were not the main preoccupation of devout people like Annay and Ama-lo-lun. It appeared, as with most nomad women, that their main preoccupation was with living a compassionate existence, reciting the mantra, visiting the monastery. They saw the lama as being like a god, representing the Buddha, and I recognised the importance they attached to the offerings they made to him. Buddhism had brought the nomads morality and spiritual liberation and they worshipped the Buddhist deities, but I knew that the tribesmen's hearts were more closely bound to the mountain gods. Annay was always scolding Amnye for not going to the monastery often enough, but a nomad man needs to feel invincible: he calls upon the mountain warrior for his own protection, in battle against his enemies or the elements. The younger men, like Tsedup's brother Gondo, were especially reliant on the protection of the mountain gods. Gondo would climb Archa and scream to the wind over his fire-offerings for success in gambling. There was no place for a lama in these matters. If Gondo sought refuge in the holy man he would be entering a moral debate and would probably be encouraged to cease his negative actions. The mountain gods were not morally judgemental.

  I had been privileged to listen to both the soft murmur of a mantra and to the war-cries of wild men on a mountain peak. If the nomads could live with this rich contradiction, so could I.

  Nine. A Trip to Town

  It was the first day of autumn, a sad day. Tsedo and Amnye were in serious discussion over breakfast, their conversation riddled with numbers. They were talking about the herd. Today the annual head count was due. Each family member was allowed by law to own only ten yaks, twenty sheep, and half a horse. Though what a nomad could do with half a horse, I had no idea. There were eleven family members in Amnye's tent and now he had a dilemma on his hands. According to his calculations, he had too many animals and today he would have to sell ten yaks, thirty sheep and four and a half horses to the Muslim slaughterers.

  It was a difficult task deciding which ones should die. Many had been promised a safe life by the family and could not be sold. My yak, Karee Ma, was one such lucky beast. They knew each animal's name, and I listened as they recited the roll-call and determined their fate. It seemed inconceivable that every sheep could be so clearly identified, since they all looked more or less the same to me, but it added poignancy to the proceedings. Hardest of all to judge was which horse should go. The nomads loved their horses. When I had met Tsedup, he had told me that his family had fifty horses, five hundred yaks and a thousand sheep. But this was only a memory. He was shocked to discover that while he had been in England, the government had introduced new laws to control land division and livestock ownership. The vast herds that used to roam the great grasslands for hundreds of miles were now depleted and had been sectioned off by barbed-wire fences.

  At this time of year, the only contented people were the slaughterers. With every nomad bringing animals to town to sell, they controlled the prices. The market would be saturated and such competition meant no profit for a man like Tsedo. For him, there was nothing to be gained but a few paltry yuan. In fact, it was difficult to see how the nomads made their money. I knew that Amnye received a small salary for his post as local councillor and that must have been the family's major source of income. They were big producers of cheese, wool, leather and butter, but they seemed to use most of this for their own subsistence and didn't appear to sell much. The butter was part of their staple diet; any surplus was stored in the family tent, in a skin-covered wooden box for the winter, donated to the monastery, or used to make butter lamps for the altar in the tent. The sheepskins were kept for making tsokwas, the thick winter tsarers, and the wool was spun and woven into dobshair, the textile hanging used to cover the items stored at the back of the tent, or felted to make mattresses, clothes, saddle-blankets or dalin, saddle-bags. The cheese was eaten or stored – it was so hard it didn't go mouldy. Sometimes it was traded for fruit and noodles when the Chinese entrepreneurs' three-wheeled truck brought provisions from the town to the tribe. The yak wool was spun and used for weaving the tents and braiding ropes. Only the occasional yak hide and some sheep's wool had made their way to town, as far as I had observed.

  I had recently watched the men complete the shearing. They rounded up the sheep into a corral, which had once been 'houses' for the nomads during the Cultural Revolution. The ugly stone and concrete constructions looked like small railway arches, about twenty in a row. They punctuated the landscape all over Machu, like lines of abandoned gravestones. I found it difficult to believe that these tribal nomads, whose home was the land, had been forced to inhabit such dungeons. But today they had a new function. I had watched the sheep bleat and riot with brainless terror beneath the arches, as the men grabbed their horns and wrestled them, one at a time, to the ground. A man or boy stood on the horns while another sheared swiftly with huge scissors, sharpened with spit and stone. Once the wool had been cut, it was flung on to a huge pile and twisted into long skeins, while the sheep fled, bouncing comically into the air.

  The family lived comfortably with none of the trappings of a materialist culture. They had a tape-recorder and sometimes bought cassettes of Tibetan music. Occasionally they bought new clothes or shoes, but normally it was the food and essentials with which the animals could not provide them: wheat or barley flour, rice, cabbage, spring onions, chillies, apples, oranges, watermelons, sugar, salt, matches, candles and, of course, tea. The nomads were big tea-drinkers. That was something we English had in common with them. In fact, it was so important to the nomads that in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, tea was compressed into bricks and used as currency. I had seen and tasted this brick-tea: it was a powerful brew made from the coarse leaves and twigs of the shrub, which had been steamed, weighed and squa
shed so solidly into bricks that it had to be ripped apart with some force. The Amdo nomads did not drink butter tea, as their Lhasa neighbours did, but occasionally they added milk to the black broth in the kettle. All of the family's provisions were bought by the sackload and stored at the back of the tent, apart from the vegetables, which were kept in a tin box in the corner and the fruit, which was devoured within half an hour. They always gave me a pile of apples to hide for myself before the children finished the lot.

  They had few possessions and the ones they had were given away freely. If you admired something, they offered it to you with no qualms. Their Buddhist philosophy taught them the value of non-attachment to material possessions and I could see this clearly in their generosity. But the nomads also didn't like to be swindled by their Chinese neighbours and were shrewd at bartering. When it came to the animals, a man like Tsedo was no fool. He would try to make as much as he could from the sale.

  The next day he left early with the doomed beasts. Sirmo, Shermo Donker and I were also bound for the town, but our trip was to be less harrowing. We girls were going shopping. Since the women were rarely away from the tribe it was a treat, and in contrast to the sober mood the herd count had induced, we were all in high spirits.

  After breakfast we dressed in our finery. It was important that we looked our best to go to town. Sirmo and Shermo Donker scrubbed their faces and rubbed lotion into their ruddy cheeks. They moistened their hair with a highly perfumed balm and combed it long and flat, until it shone with greasy brilliance. Then they wove it into two plaits, one over each shoulder and tied the ends together, before flicking it over their heads, down their backs. They rummaged around at the back of the tent under the plastic sheet and pulled their best tsarers and silk brocade shirts out of an old rice sack. These were never used for work. In contrast to their everyday clothes, these were vivid and lustrous. I watched them tying their sashes. Although she was tough, Shermo Donker was so petite I found it difficult to imagine that she had had three children. As she pulled the fabric tightly around her waist, I noticed that her hips were no bigger than a girl's. By contrast, Sirmo was taller and more voluptuous. Her full breasts quivered beneath her thin shirt as she deftly rearranged the tucks and layers of her tsarer, checking her back, measuring the front, until she was satisfied. They polished and put on their best shoes and, finally, retrieved their jewellery from a wooden box and strung the coral beads around their necks. Shermo Donker's necklace was a family heirloom given to her by her mother. Between the coral, there were enormous amber orbs, the size of cricket balls. Tsedo had lent me his coral necklace that day and I wore it proudly and conspicuously over the top of my red silk shirt. We giggled at our new-found splendour.

  They saddled the horses and helped me to mount. I was riding with Shermo Donker on Amnye's white horse, and Sirmo had the grey. They had placed a piece of foam mattress on the horse's rump for me to sit on and, for now, it felt comfortable. I put my arms around my sister-in-law's tiny frame and we set off at a gende walk, the children running alongside laughing, the dogs barking. It was a bright, hot day. The crisp grass crunched beneath the horses' hoofs and skylarks started from their nests into the blue sky. In the distance, the rocky summit of Kula stood jagged and stark above us. We made for the road, stopping at the gate for Sirmo to dismount and let us through before closing it again behind her. If nothing else, the fences kept out the wolves. The nomads had strung pieces of fabric tightly over the gate to cover any holes the predators might squeeze through, and Sirmo was careful to replace them exactly as before.

  Then we discovered we had an addition to our party. Cherger, the dog, had followed us to the boundary of our encampment, and when Sirmo ordered him to return to the tents, he stood obstinately wagging his tail. As we continued through the grassland, he trotted loyally alongside us. He was obviously familiar with the six-mile journey and fancied a day sniffing out a different environment. But when he heard a bus's engine he started barking. The white vehicle had turned off the dirt road from town and was now bumping over the pot-holed track through the grass towards the tents. As it neared us, I peered curiously through the tinted windows and was astonished to see the excited faces of a group of Chinese tourists. They were pointing at us, laughing, taking snapshots. I was filled with dread: they were on their way to the tribe.

  I turned away and ignored them. The girls did the same. Tsedup had told me about this sort of thing. He remembered them coming when he was a boy. They had parked their bus in the middle of the tribe and flashbulbs flashed. Then the rain had come and they had sought refuge in Jerko's tent. The nomads hadn't understood why they were in the tribe, but had let them in and served them tea anyway. They had sat on the wooden gamtuk, containing the family's tsampa, and hung their socks over the fire to dry, both sacrilegious acts. They had not realised their errors, but Jerko's wife had been furious.

  A few weeks ago I had witnessed other curious visitors to the tribe. Sirmo and I had been washing clothes in the stream, when a jeep pulled up and a voice cried, 'Hi, there!' It was an American accent but I didn't know the people inside. I had felt a curious sense of loathing and had turned away as two Chinese men got out and walked towards us, followed by a Tibetan, who had smiled in embarrassment at us and given a half-wave.

  'Do you know them?' I had asked Sirmo.

  'I don't know the Chinese. I know the Tibetan,' she had replied.

  From their dress I had realised that they were not from America but were English-speaking tourists from one of the big Chinese cities. The Tibetan was their guide. Judging from the size of the lenses suspended around their necks, I knew what they had come for. They had instructed the guide to ask Sirmo if she would stand by her horse so that they could snap her. I had felt her reluctance as we sat huddled together in our tsarers and I did not want her to perform for them. She told the guide that she didn't want to be photographed so they had reluctantly taken a few pictures of her horse, said goodbye, then driven off to photograph the rest of the tribe.

  I had been galled by their blatant voyeurism and insensitivity, yet found myself struggling with my identity. Was I a hypocrite? I had been photographing the family and the tribe at odd moments in their beautiful, traditional costume. I knew they were photogenic. I knew they were a curiosity, part of a world that we 'civilised' nations had lost in the frantic race for development. In that respect I knew I was no better than these tourists. But somehow it was different. I was a part of things, and not just objectively pointing a lens at something beautiful. I was trying to capture someone, a member of my family, whom I respected and loved. They had made me a part of them and I was honoured.

  That morning, the vulgarity of the tourists' actions had made me feel more of a nomad than I had felt before. Yet I would never be one. I was under no illusions. I was a westerner living the life of a nomad. There was a big difference.

  The tourists were soon forgotten and we strolled on horseback through the dandelions, fording pebbled streams and laughing at the prairie dogs, who stood alert, yapping on their hind legs, then scurrying into their burrows. Below us, to our right, the river meandered through the sun-dazed valley from the eastern horizon. On either side the mountains slipped to the valley floor and a white spray of cloud flecked the otherwise blue-blank sky. The dog trotted amiably at our side as we chattered in the saddle. We passed an old man on horseback, who smiled, and a couple of young boys on yaks, who nearly fell off when they saw me. Shermo Donker started to tease Sirmo. It appeared that she did have a loved one, after all, but she was not giving anything away. We pleaded with her to tell us, but she just smiled coquettishly from beneath the brim of her hat. The only details we could extract from her were that he was beautiful and he wore a big earring. I wondered if she was hoping to catch a glimpse of him that day.

  Soon we rounded the brow of a hill and saw the town spread out before us in the distance. It was low-rise, clinging to the valley floor, its tiled roofs packed together. Only the post office stood sentinel
in the crush of concrete, the sun blazing brilliantly on its blue-glass façade: a symbol of progress. To the north of the labyrinth of squat buildings, stood the scarlet archway built by the Chinese to signal the entrance to the town. Tiny trucks trailed dust along the gravel road into the distant mountain valleys. We trotted down the track on to the flat pasture. It was two hours since we had left the camp. The dry heat of the midday rays toasted our cheeks, as the flies droned and the horses swirled their tails.

  At the first set of dwellings on the outskirts of the town, Shermo Donker and Sirmo pulled up beside a mud wall and dismounted. They helped me down from the saddle and I slumped, numb, to the ground. 'Tsanduk errgo?' Sirmo asked, squatting in the ditch. I joined her, hitching up my skirts, then took the horses' reins so that Shermo Donker could relieve herself. This was an important pit-stop, I soon discovered. A trek across the grassland could play havoc with a girl's clothing and it just would not do to arrive in town without first smartening up. The next few minutes were spent nipping, tucking and tying until we all looked like new again.

  We rode in like a scene from a Western, two abreast on the sandswept road, high in the saddle. The town was a dusty ramshackle of shops, restaurants, a market and street stalls all plying their trade. The buildings were concrete, some white-tiled, like a bathroom, some painted white with green and orange decorative borders under their eaves. Their doorways were crowded with goods, and people spilled out of watch-menders' and carpet-vendors' on to the pavements. A gang of Chinese schoolchildren in blue and white tracksuits ran from the gates, shouting hello. Nomads riding yaks jostled Han Chinese on bicycles. Sharp suits cruised on motorbikes through flocks of sheep. Muslim women bartered in black headdresses over wheelbarrows of fruit. Monks sat begging in burgundy robes at the market entrance, chanting prayers. Chinese pop and traditional Tibetan music pumped out from every doorway, while a shooting range emitted a relentlessly mundane, electronic refrain – Kwan ying, kwan ying, kwan ying, kwan ying.