by Kate Karko
One and
Two and
Three and
Four and…
Even Annay was cackling and pummelling and struggling to form the words.
We continued in this fashion for an hour or so, until the welts on my arms had formed welts of their own. My face was stinging from the heat of the afternoon sun. Their familiarity with the outdoor life had given them naturally ruddy cheeks, but I resembled a lobster. They urged me to stop and go and rub on some butter to soothe my skin, while they saw the job through until nightfall.
The autumn heat had not only fired the women, as I had seen the day before, it seemed to have brought about a rise in activity among the teenage boys of the tribe. I was beginning to notice a pattern to each evening. On one particular night after dinner in the tent, a few boys turned up. They had come for Gorbo. They sat with us and ate as they waited. One was Wado, a tall lad with a permanent gormless grin. He was a bit of a clown and looked far more clueless than he was. His father, Athung, had been brought up with Amnye, and Gorbo and Wado were cousins. Tonight, under his tsarer, he sported a garish, silky, flower-patterned shirt that he had instructed his mother to make for him from a scarf he had bought in town. He felt rather special, but his new look caused an uproar in the tent. Tsedo and Tsedup teased him and slapped his back. ' Yucka!' they cried, choking and spluttering on their noodle soup. He continued to grin gormlessly.
Accompanying him was Rinchen, Shermo Donker's youngest brother and a real Artful Dodger. He stood sniggering and hanging on to the tent pole by the fire. His head was covered in stiff stubble with bald patches where the razor had gone too far. He sniffed intermittently and wiped his nose with the back of his grubby hand. He had the same wide mouth as his sister and a huge silver hoop hung from his earlobe. He was fourteen but looked about eleven, such was his diminutive size, and this was his first night out with the older boys: his initiation. He was nervous. Tsedo and Tsedup gave him beer then spent the next hour teasing him as he reeled drunkenly, guffawed loudly and puffed on a cigarette, attempting to look grown-up. Meanwhile, Gorbo rummaged around quietly in the drawer under the altar and found what he had been looking for. He knew that Ells had given some perfume to Sirmo and, rising awkwardly from the corner of the tent, he moved among us in a pungent cloud of Chanel No. 5. This produced more laughter from the family. The boys were really going for it that night. They were on for a serious hornig.
Hornig was the nomads' dating game. I had laughed when I had first heard the word as it sounded strangely familiar. These boys were indeed horny as hell. Their task was to set off into the night on horseback or on a yak and seek out young girls in their tents at night. They often travelled miles under the stars if they had heard of a particularly beautiful young girl who lived in another tribe. Or they might have glanced at her in town or on the open road. The trick was to find one who was not 'locked in'. If a girl was locked in, it meant that her parents were in the tent with her. She could not be wooed. I had heard tales of boys being chased away by fathers wielding knives and throwing cooking pots. It was best to be careful. But the real art to entering a tent was to get past the mastiffs, a potentially life-threatening task. The boys each carried a chukgor, a steel weight on the end of a long leather thong, which they swung round threateningly in huge arcs as they approached the dogs on horseback, creating a path as the animals snapped crazily at their heels. When a dog got too close, its strangled cries rent the night sky.
A boy's second most prized possession was his torch. He was lost without it. Once inside the tent, he would seek out his loved one among the mass of her sleeping brothers and sisters, then silently lie down beside her. He would wake her and, if she liked the look of him, he would be permitted to stay. If not, he would be told to get lost and his quest would be over before it had even started. This was the young Romeo's first hurdle. It was easy to see how hornig might be a soul-destroying experience for less attractive wooers. But if a boy was considered desirable he would stay and talk with the girl, perhaps sing her an Amdo love song. Thus it was also imperative that he could sing. A girl would often judge him on the quality of his voice and those with a bad ear were at a major disadvantage. Despite the pitfalls, there were no hard and fast rules to hornig. A boy could roam freely until dawn from tent to tent, night after night, in the most promiscuous fashion, or he might find love and return again and again to the same girl. This was how the nomads eventually found a marriage partner.
For me, hornig seemed so mysterious and romantic. Here were all the ingredients of a first-rate drama: secrecy, danger, love and courage. I had visions of battling dogs, swaying torchlight and love songs whispered on young lips. Even these young boys, so unpractised in the art of seduction, were gallant in a way that had become old-fashioned in the West; this kind of custom did not translate into my culture. There, the most the average teenage girl could hope for was the promise of a slow dance and a grope in the dry ice at the local disco. As the boys swaggered out of the tent that night, I wished them luck and wondered what it was like for them to brave the night.
Perhaps I would never have found out if Tsedup hadn't stayed in town one night the next week, for then I shared my tent with Sirmo. As we lay down together, I noticed that she had on all of her jewellery, which I found curious. She usually placed the enormous coral beads and silver earrings by her pillow at night when she slept in the main tent. Still, I was green in these matters and didn't question her. We gossiped under the covers until I slipped into a deep slumber. Later, I woke in the darkness and heard her whispering to herself. Then I heard a young man's voice whispering back. At first I thought it must be her brother, Tsedo, but the voice was not sonorous or deep. It was the voice of a young man, not more than twenty perhaps, and they were talking to each other at great length. There was a man in our tent! Could it be Chuchong Tashi, the beautiful one with the earring? He was behind us, very close. I could feel the pressure of his head or his arm on the sheepskin pillow between us. I thought him most brave to have dared to enter the tent in the dark with me there and most stealthy to have reached his position of intimacy close to her by the tent wall. I lay motionless and listened curiously, trying to regulate my breathing so they would think that I was asleep.
'Hja serro! Yellow hair!' he exclaimed at one point, and I could feel the warmth of a torch bulb on my cheek as he amusedly examined the foreigner next to his love. I struggled to stop my eyelids flickering, listening to his horse outside, the chinking of the stirrups and bridle as it stood patiently in the moonlight. They talked for what seemed like hours, but I didn't understand a word. When I heard the zip opening on her sleeping-bag, I prayed they wouldn't be getting any more intimate – I was not that flagrant a voyeur. I must have drifted back to sleep for when I woke she was there in the candlelight and he had gone. She climbed into bed and leant over me to extinguish the flame but found no breath for a while and, unable to contain myself any longer, I laughed as she puffed, at last acknowledging that I was awake. She told me nervously that she had just been outside to the loo. I didn't say a thing.
I settled back into the folds of blanket, smiling silently. I had experienced a hornig, and even though it was not my own, I had still felt the thrill of it. Now, whenever I heard the baying of dogs and the dim thud of horses' hoofs around the tribe at night, I would know.
The next day I stayed silent. I had resolved not to divulge my secret to anyone, not even Tsedup. I felt I had trespassed on Sirmo's private moment and in the stark light of morning I felt cheap. But it soon transpired that Sirmo's business was to become a matter for the whole family.
One morning I walked into the main tent and Tsedup and his mother were arguing. Annay was crying as Tsedup berated her. He was frowning and worrying at a piece of bone with his knife as he addressed her sharply. I felt uncomfortable and sat down and ate my tsampa quietly as the two harangued each other.
'Namma, Tsedup is not good,' Annay said to me, through her tears. 'He's always telling me off.'
>
I had no idea what they had been talking about, but decided it was probably best to remain impartial. I was upset to see him treating his mother like that. She was an emotional woman at the best of times, but to have her son speaking to her so harshly was too much.
'Tsedup, have some respect,' I implored. He had sounded authoritarian, like a father talking to his child. But I realised that, despite the atmosphere of hostility, the family were getting closer. Now that they had returned to normal family squabbles Tsedup had truly settled in. The strange time of reunion and self-assessment was over. Tsedup had the confidence to act in this way. He was no longer racked with guilt for having run away and he had left behind the peculiar limbo state of his early days at home, when he had been struggling to find a foothold among the people he had left behind. I had watched him tentatively reasserting himself, reacquainting himself with his nomad ways and reconciling his modern mind with his past values. Today he seemed strong and very much at home, if a little petulant.
I asked him what they had been arguing about. It was Sirmo. Her lover had proposed to her. With a thrill of recognition I realised that I had probably witnessed it that night in the dark of the tent. This morning Tsedup had walked in on his mother worrying and fussing at Sirmo. 'If you can't make your mind up, make sure you don't get pregnant,' she had said, never one to mince her words.
Sirmo sat embarrassed, churning milk in the corner of the tent and blushing. As a private sort of girl she was visibly cringing. It reminded me of myself and my own mother. But Sirmo's family were concerned for her: she was the youngest girl in the family, maybe even a little spoilt, especially by her father, and they wanted the best for her. Was it the right thing to marry this boy?
Tsedup knew that his mother had been applying the pressure. He accused her of pushing Sirmo into marriage. The older nomad women were always telling Sirmo she was getting old and should find a husband, and Tsedup was sick of it. He urged Annay to leave Sirmo alone. She was only twenty-one and, as far as he was concerned, she was too young to get married. It was a grievance that, as a nomad man, he would not have expressed and I could see how much the West had influenced him. He turned to Sirmo: 'You're too young,' he pleaded. 'Why don't you wait and do some different things with your life? You'll find someone later on.' Then he continued to rail against his mother, who wept into the sleeve of her tsarer. Sirmo sat subdued in the corner, quietly churning the milk and staring at the hem of her skirt, listening as they discussed her future. She didn't say a word, and whatever she held inside, she did not share it.
For some light relief, when Sirmo had finished churning I suggested we go out and wash the clothes together. We carried the load in a tin basin down to the stream, crouched in a hollow of the bank and scrubbed as the hot sun shimmered on the wet pebbles. She didn't sing.
'You are still young. Don't rush into marriage,' I said.
'I am old, Shermo,' she stated matter-of-factly, and with what I felt was a glimmer of irony.
'No, you're not.'
'Yes, I am.'
It was useless to argue. What was young for me, was not for her. Here people married in their teens and to stray too far into your twenties without finding a mate was frowned upon. I just didn't want her to feel pressured into marrying Chuchong Tashi. If she chose him, I hoped he deserved her. Dolma had said he had a good heart and I hoped so. It was really none of my business what she chose to do. I was imposing my western values, as Tsedup had.
We didn't speak any more. She sighed and the corners of her mouth curled up into a curious smile. I wondered what she was thinking.
Twelve. End of an Era
Snow, soft and white, through the crack in the tent flap. When I had slipped out of the tent for a pee at dawn, it had been unusually dark, the air thick round the yaks. A couple of hours later, I could see the glare of sharp white light through the doorway. I wrapped up in a double layer of tights and my tsarer and stepped out into the drifting flakes. The whole landscape had become invisible: no mountains, no sky. The sheep, usually wandering to the boundaries of our land, stood inert and silent in the middle of the encampment, heads bowed.
I knew there was a bowl of warm water for me to wash in at the main tent, but in my maniacal drive for privacy, I obstinately made my way towards the stream. When I got there it had turned to ice; but I took a small rock and smashed a hole in the surface, cupped my hand into the water and splashed it on my face. It stung. Two young girls collecting water on the other side of the bank smiled and waved at me. They must have thought I was mad.
Inside the main tent it was miserable. The grass floor had turned to mud slush around the edges. We sat in front of the fire on damp Tibetan carpets in our tsarers, as the snow spiralled down through the roof-opening. When the flakes began drifting in earnest, Amnye closed the flap and we sat in darkness, listening to the drips that fell from the yak hair on to the plastic sheeting tied on for makeshift protection. The dogs, usually banished outside, were allowed to come close to the fire. They lay still and sighing as their thick fur prickled with melting snow. Amnye occasionally cursed them when they scrounged for scraps. Shermo Donker coughed consumptively in the smoky gloom.
Despite the conditions today, the offerings of hdir were to be made. The brick-shaped bundles of yellow cloth, containing sacred blessings that Tsedup had bought in Labrang, were to be buried at the foot of Amnye Kula, to propitiate the mountain god. Rhanjer ducked inside the tent blowing fiercely on his hands and settled down to smoke with his father and brothers in front of the fire. He and Tsedup were going to town to collect a monk from the monastery who was to help perform the ritual. After a bowl of hot tea, they set off. Tsedup, who had bandaged his head with a woollen scarf, started up the bike and skidded immediately on the slippery ground, falling into the snow. After a second successful attempt they disappeared. Within seconds the buzz of the engine was mute, swallowed in the silence of falling flakes.
Once they had gone Shermo Donker began flitting from corner to corner like an agitated sparrow, frantically fetching tsampa, butter, the langwha, basin, and kodaks, prayer scarves, all of which were packed into a saddle-bag. Annay brandished a smoking juniper branch around the bag then let it smoulder in the ashes; the tent was filled with the bitter-fresh fragrance of the aromatic sticks. Lhamochab and Donkerchab, two young men from the tribe, arrived on horseback and when the saddle-bag was loaded, set off in the direction of the mountain. I played with the children that day, as I did on most days. They could all count to five in English now and were usually clamouring for my attention, the girls sitting close and holding my hands and Sanjay leaping into my lap. Amnye or Tsedo would frequently scold them for getting so close and they would obediently skulk away. But I didn't mind. I loved them and, anyway, the closer we were, the warmer it was.
It was nearly time to move on. The days were closing in and the nip of frosted air bit deeper with each nightfall. A cold wind blew from the east and as the seasons shifted, the family and the rest of the tribe busied themselves with preparations. We were moving back into the valley soon from the open grassland. The family had their winter house close to where we had been living when we first arrived and every effort was being made to furnish and equip it for our arrival. Apart from Annay and Amnye, who had their house in town, the family had never lived under a roof before; this was to be the first year. The tribe had decided to try to live more comfortably this winter and everyone was busy building and fashioning their new dwellings. Most of them were to occupy the 'railway arch' constructions, built during the Cultural Revolution. There were two rows of them in that valley and they were to provide a convenient, if somewhat ugly, shelter. Our house was separate and stood at the base of a range of hills that ran the length of the stream valley up to the mountain peak of Kula. It was a simple home. The front was covered in a layer of clay and, above it, white plaster. It had a wooden door in the middle with odd windows on either side and a flat, corrugated-metal roof. Inside, there were two small rooms, one with
a floor of brick and the other of earth. The walls were made from turf and were plastered over. Shermo Donker had built a clay stove on the earth side and the bricked side awaited an iron stove, which Tsedo would buy from town. It was only partially habitable and a couple of Chinese builders were still finishing off. Tsedo went to check on their progress each day on his motorbike.
Behind the house was a corral with a central dividing wall, one side for the sheep and one for the yaks. During the winter months the animals would be penned inside at night for safety – the mountains around us were full of wolves. Tsedup, Tsedo and Gorbo pegged the exterior walls with sharp spikes to prevent the predators from jumping in and savaging our flock. I helped clear the corral of long grass, which the family had grown there throughout the spring and summer. Tsedo cut it with a crude scythe and Shermo Donker and I gathered it up into bundles and bound each one into a sheaf with stalks. We stored the sheafs in a pit at the rear of the house. This was to be fodder for the animals when the weather was too harsh for them to forage for themselves. At the end of each day after our work, our hands were mapped with tiny cuts, scratches and weals from the sharp stems.
Despite the family's insistence that I should not work, I continued harvesting a few days later at Annay and Amnye's house near the town. The more they spoilt me, the more pale and feeble I felt, like some wan character from a Jane Austen novel, and I wanted to be involved with the preparations as much as possible to prove my worth. Ama-lo-lun sat on the step outside the tumbledown house spinning her prayer wheel and watching us toil. It tried to snow, but we ignored the flakes and I ignored Tsedo, who kept urging me to rest. 'Mar sho! Mar sho!' he cried every five minutes, but I relished the work. When we did rest, we all lay in the piles of grass together and compared injuries to our hands and fingers. At night we slept in a row on the low platform of wood and straw, Shermo Donker cradling Sanjay inside her tsarer. I listened to their regular breathing in the dark and to Ama-lo-lun's small voice as she chanted prayers in the adjoining room, before she gradually ceased and fell asleep.