Namma

  We moved through the cacophony and came to rest at the crossroads in the centre of town. There we tied the horses to a telegraph pole and hobbled them as a small crowd began to form around us. I was obviously something of a spectacle: an old nomad couple cooed their satisfaction with my costume, grinning through blackened teeth; a group of Chinese workers in blue suits and caps stared, expressionless; a young nomad woman with fat, rosy cheeks and jangling earrings jabbered at me, throwing her hands in the air and squawking with delight. Shermo Donker took my arm and guided me across the road to a restaurant. We dived in as she cussed the dog, who was still following us. He lay down on the pavement to wait. Safe inside, she shouted for a jug of water and the Muslim waiter filled her bowl. As he walked back to the kitchen, she called, 'Arro! Tangwan! Oi! Waiter!' He turned and she quick-fired her order in Tibetan while Sirmo gave hers in Chinese. I ordered a bowl of tanthuk, gesticulating the action of flicking dough pieces into water. Sirmo translated. The restaurant was one big room with Formica walls and four tables. A mirror spanned one wall and a bar stood opposite. The sunlight filtered through the net curtains and formed doily patterns on the yellow linoleum floor. A couple of nomads stared, unblinking, at us as they slurped their noodles and smoked simultaneously in the corner. Off the main room were four doors leading to smaller, private dining rooms. This was a common feature of Chinese restaurants, as most people preferred to eat discreetly, especially the officials, who would carouse for hours. But there were no restrictions and anyone could relax in seclusion with friends or family.

  As if on cue, the door to one of these rooms opened and Tsedup walked out. He was wearing his tsarer and a cheeky grin of surprise on his face. I had not seen him since yesterday and was amused to find myself blushing with pleasure at the sight of him. He was followed by his younger brother, Gondo, and as they were both a little bleary-eyed, I concluded that they had probably been ruminating over a bottle of rice wine in the confines of their shady room. There was a lot to catch up on. They sat with us for a while, smoking and teasing us, as we devoured our food. Then they paid for it quietly, and left to wander the streets. I felt like a young girl who had bumped into her boyfriend. It wasn't the done thing for men and women to hang out together here. Even if I had wanted to, I wouldn't have gone with him: today was our girls' day out and I had no intention of deserting the side.

  When we had finished and Shermo Donker had licked her plate clean, we stepped out into the street. Shopping was a serious business and these women were no different from me when it came down to a bit of retail therapy. Soon I was being steered from shop to shop as they examined, prodded, poked, measured and tasted. They were like methodical housewives in the January sales. No shopkeeper was going to get the better of Shermo Donker. She was a seasoned professional at bartering and pulled me away from any purchases she deemed unreasonable. She knew the Chinese traders were out to make a fast buck from someone like me. They ushered me into their shops, eyes glinting, rubbing their palms together. Everywhere we went people asked the same questions: ‘Is she married? How old is she? Does she have children?' She evaded their impertinence with a swift retort of 'She's a namma,' implying that I had just got married and didn't have children yet. But the pressure was on. A woman of thirty with no brood was unheard-of. In the street the nomads stared amazed as I wandered conspicuously through the small crowds, feeling uncomfortable. Some old men stood transfixed, staring blankly at me, and I wondered what they were thinking. Some women, who had heard about the English bride, stopped to point and exclaim quite vocally to their friends, 'Look, namma!' I was really under the microscope. Most of the old nomad women smiled at me, examining my costume, murmuring, 'Sweet.' I was touched that they acknowledged my attempts to assimilate with their way of life. When they chatted to me and discovered I spoke a little of their language, they were even more delighted. It was strange to them that I wanted to be a part of their culture. In Machu only a few Chinese spoke the Amdo dialect: they saw it as the responsibility of the nomads to learn Mandarin, and the nomads assumed that a foreigner such as myself would demand the same. I was a mystery, a phenomenon, a friend.

  Still, it was important to keep moving. If I stood for any time on one spot in the street, a small crowd would rapidly form around me, a sea of unabashed, staring eyes. It was tolerable for a short time and I would perhaps focus on some distant space or pretend to be absorbed in examining an interesting purchase. Then I knew it was time to move on. But I couldn't blame them for staring: this place was so remote that the locals had rarely seen a western face. Perhaps a handful of tourists each year would venture this far into the wilderness. Also many of the nomads hardly ever came to town as their encampments were often far away, so I understood their bewilderment at witnessing, probably for the first time, a white face, a long nose, eyes like marbles.

  We took a break from the shopping in a poky wooden shack, where Shermo Donker barked for three plates of rungpizz. The cold ribbon noodles, covered in tofu, chilli, garlic and vinegar, were delivered to our table by a surly Muslim woman. She flung the plates down in front of us and Shermo Donker scowled and snapped at her carelessness. The woman snapped back. Rungpizz was the nomad women's favourite afternoon snack and was called 'the women's tuckpa' by the men. It was hastily devoured by Sirmo and Shermo Donker, who sucked on the slippery noodles, splattering juice liberally on the plastic tablecloth and wiping their chins with the back of their hands. I did the same, but nearly choked as the hot chilli stung my throat. 'Ka tsag.!' They giggled. 'Mouth hurts.' The nomads had a high tolerance for chilli, which sadly I lacked. I drank some water and paused to catch my breath.

  Outside a Chinese man in a cap and blue jacket was selling chickens from a wheelbarrow. They were crushed into cages, piled three deep, squawking and flapping pathetically. A small boy was prodding them through the bars and recoiled, giggling, when they pecked him. I watched a Chinese customer arrive. The chicken-seller selected some birds and pulled them from the cages for the man to look at, stuffing them back when he seemed uninterested. Finally he chose two birds. The chicken-seller strung them together by their feet and suspended them upside down from the rod on his scales. Then the man paid and squashed them into the front pannier of his bicycle, one upright like a passenger, the other upside down, and rode off past trucks full of yaks, driven by Muslim slaughterers. That day, all manner of life was doomed for the dinner table.

  It struck me that the Chinese were especially cruel in their treatment of the animals. Their methods were at odds with the concerns of the compassionate nomads. I had witnessed extreme examples of this, such as the fish outside the post office. The nomads were appalled by the shallow basins of river creatures gasping for life at the street-traders' stall. They saw the fish as sacred. They would buy them from the Chinese to put back in the river. Of course, the traders knew this so they continued catching the fish. It was a profitable business.

  The dynamic between the three different peoples in the town was intriguing. A fragile hierarchy supported a population that seemed to exist only by being tolerant. According to the local guidebook, the Gannan Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture (of which Machu was a part) had a population of 600,000,which was predominantly Tibetan, then Chinese, with the remainder made up of other ethnic groups. The book boasted a harmony of interests, due to the Communist Party's policy on minority nationalities in the prefecture and its open-door policy which, it claimed, saw that everyone adhered to 'one central task, two basic points'. The central task was the priority of animal husbandry, which was the major area of production, with cereal growing and forestry as its two sidelines. With 3 million livestock in the area, providing 30,000 tons of meat, 4,000 tons of milk, 1,000 tons of wool, 90,000 pieces of cattle hide and 29,000 sheepskins, it was not hard to see how important the nomads' lifestyle was to the local economy. Yet, on the social scale, as far as I could see, the Han Chinese condescended to the nomads, whom they saw as inferior and dirty. The Tibetans were disgusted by the Muslims' obsessio
n with killing, and thus condescended to them. Meanwhile, the Muslims stuck together and profited from their astuteness for trade.

  At the table in the noodle shack, I toyed with a yuan note. Like the guidebook, it celebrated the harmony of races with a picture of a Tibetan woman next to a Muslim, next to a Chinese, and a few words from their different languages. I paid the cheerless waitress with it and she scowled ungratefully.

  That afternoon we bought needles, cotton, woven trim, shiny fabric, cooking utensils, a new basin for washing in, hair balm and soap. Sirmo treated herself to a tiny pot of face cream, and she and Shermo Donker bought identical new shoes for the winter. I bought a pink shirt, sweets and wa ha ha, small bottles of milk shake, for the children. We stopped at a hoop-la stall that had been set up in a courtyard and threw plastic hoops. Our neighbour won a wok. Sirmo missed a blanket by an inch. She was distracted: looking over her shoulder for a sign of 'the beautiful one with the earring'. It was getting late now and we still had to get to the jewellery shop. Cousin Dolma was waiting.

  When we arrived she was standing, like a doll in her Tibetan costume, behind the glass case of treasures and ornate knives, chattering to the Chinese jeweller in her impish voice. She was the nomad women's contact for getting good jewellery made. Today Sirmo wanted her earrings changed to include more silver chains and coral, which Shermo Donker had given her. I had been given a lump of silver by Annay and Amnye to have my own earrings made. They thought it wrong that I didn't have any nomad jewellery. They wanted to spoil me. I chose some small turquoise stones and showed Dolma the design I had drawn up. Then she huddled in conversation with the jeweller, who winced at it through his eyepiece. He nodded his approval. Our new accessories would be ready in a week, Dolma twittered. Would we like to come back for dinner? She had just bought some meat. We declined politely, but walked with her back to the horses.

  The streets were dim and most of the shops were closing. A few street-lamps were lit and straggling shoppers toiled home with their wares through the pools of light. Even the monks had ceased chanting at the market entrance. In their place, an old beggarwoman was sifting through a box of rubbish and bruised fruit, mumbling and cursing. We filled up the saddle-bags with our purchases and untied the horses. Shermo Donker gave me their reins and darted into one of the last open shops. She wanted to make the most of her freedom. It was already too late to get back in time for us to tie up the yaks. Indeed, I realised, she had had no intention of being early. Despite her conscientiousness, she was a rebel today.

  Eventually we rode off in exuberant spirits out of the town and into the wide open spaces of the grassland. They teased me bawdily about the saddle sores between my legs and all the way home we sang to the sky and screamed the wild cries of the horse-racers, with shameless tongues. 'Ngoo sajermek! You have no shame.' We laughed lustily. Women didn't do this sort of thing. Yet we were alone and who cared? It had been a great day out. We laughed until the sun fell over the snow mountain, until all I could see was the white of the horse's hide as the ground spun beneath me in the blackness. Then all I could sense was the homely scent of smoked dung on the night air.

  Ten. Holiday

  There had been an accident. Tsedup was in hospital. I searched Rhanjer's face as he tried to explain. Tsedup hadn't come home to the tent the night before. I had assumed that a day out with his teenage brother had disintegrated into a piju-potent sleep as I had stood in the twilight tying up the yaks, looking at the road. I made excuses for them: it was best that they had stayed in the town: Tsedup was a novice motorbike rider and it had probably been too dark to make the return journey.

  That night I had a nightmare about a mutilated dog and woke in a sweat to a yak head-butting the tent. As I crept outside into the dawn, it had thundered off with a sharp thwack of the tent rope. At breakfast, we heard the familiar buzz of a bike-engine and I thought it would be my husband. It was not. A messenger had come from town. We should leave now. Amnye said the dog dream had been a sign. I felt sick as I ran to our white tent for my bag.

  I sat numbly on the back of Rhanjer's bike. I hadn't really understood much of what he had said to me in the tent. How serious was it? It was so difficult at times like this, not speaking the language. It was easy to get confused or worry needlessly, I reasoned, but a sense of panic was rising in my gut. I felt powerless. At home in England I would be able to cope with a crisis. I understood how to get help, where to go, how to try to make things better. Here I was lost. I was completely reliant on Tsedup's brothers. I knew they were protective and well organised – it was the Tibetan way: when all around you appeared to be chaos, there were always forces at work to pull the whole thing together at the last minute. Everyone relied on each other. I prayed that everything would be all right as we sped along the road above the river valley. The river glistened as usual. The sun shone as usual. But everything might have changed.

  We arrived at the hospital to discover that Tsedup and Gorbo had been discharged and were directed to an outbuilding. That was a good sign, I thought. There was a row of small bungalows under some trees at the back of the hospital, where the doctors lived. The bikes tore up the gravel as we skidded to a halt. Rhanjer and Tsedo led me inside. It was the home of a relative, a Tibetan doctor at the hospital. He was bent double, cleaning some bowls under a dripping tap inside the glass porch. Geraniums stood along his shelf. Inside it was dark. The first person I saw was Gorbo. He sat in a chair, attached to a drip, his face stitched and caked in bloody scabs. He was wearing an eye-bandage and looked at us sideways through his good eye as we walked in. I gasped. Tsedup sat on a bed to our side, his own face battered and scarred, with black circles beneath both eyes. On the floor, covered by a blanket, lay the inert body of our friend Tsempel. For a moment I thought he was unconscious, but as he raised his head to gasp his greeting, he revealed a lack of front teeth. I was in shock.

  'It was dark. Three of us on the bike… drunk… a concrete block in the middle of the road… lights didn't work… over the handle-bars… thought he was dead…' Tsedup was mumbling the story through bruised lips. It seemed that he was all right and I was relieved, angry and sorry for them all at the same time. I wanted to scream at Tsedup for being irresponsible, but I shut up and braced myself for Rhanjer and Tsedo to chastise him instead, as older brothers did. But they all started laughing. Even the doctor was in stitches.

  'It's not funny.' I glowered at Tsedup. 'Your brother is bad,' I said to Gorbo.

  'Shagga. He's good,' he said loyally, grinning through the dried blood.

  No one was listening to me.

  The men went out and bought some beers, then sat on the steps of the porch as Tsempel lay sedated on the bed and Gorbo slept in the chair. I relented and joined Tsedup and the others when I had cleaned some blood off the casualties' faces. As I drank my beer, Tsedup cast me sheepish glances. Of course I could forgive him. I could forgive him anything when he looked at me like that. I was just thankful that he was alive.

  Later that day we brought the two brothers home in a three-wheeled tolla. Strangely they hid under their tsarers as we drove through the town. I realised it was a ploy to prevent idle gossip. If they were spotted, a rumour might circulate that they had been in a fight. It would be wrong to disgrace the family. Annay and Amnye had not been to the hospital and would be waiting anxiously, I thought. Annay will cry. Amnye will scold. When we finally pulled up outside the tent in the late-afternoon sunshine, they came out laughing with relief. I was having a tough time predicting people's responses. They seemed to make light of everything. It must be the nomad way. Or so I thought.

  When I had got over the shock, I realised that Tsedup had precisely five days to recover before our friends arrived. Ells and Chloё were coming to see us from England and we were due to pick them up in Labrang by jeep. Tsedup spent the next few days lying in the tent next to Gorbo; we nursed them and watched their faces emerge from under the purple, green, then yellow bruising. Each morning, noon and night I bathed Gor
bo's swollen eye and it gradually deflated from the size of half a tennis ball to normal. He insisted on picking off his scabs, which left his skin covered in pink patches. Then I was given the unenviable task of removing his stitches. He wouldn't go back to the doctor; he wanted me to do it, he said. They seemed to see me as a Florence Nightingale figure. Still, I found that removing stitches was much easier than I had thought and even quite pleasurable. As I worked, I teased him about our friends arriving.

  'Your bride is coming!' I said. 'Ells wants a husband. She'll give you a big kiss!'

  He recoiled, then grinned mischievously. 'I'll hit her with the lump of steel I use to hit the dogs with,' he threatened. Girls were still a mystery to Gorbo, but he had to appear knowledgeable and stay cool. I knew all about this from having a brother, and Gorbo reminded me of Phil in his younger days. He had the same sharp tongue and challenging twinkle in his eye.

  Oddly Gorbo and Tsedup's adventure had brought them closer together. They lay chatting and laughing in the tent together while Annay fussed around them. Tsedup had left for India when his brother was only four and now he was getting to know him. They were proud of each other.

  One morning we were invited to Tsedup's uncle's tent.

  'You go,' Tsedup said. ‘I can't, because it'll make my scars worse.'