by Kate Karko
In the morning we walked down the valley of dried grass, the swishing stems higher than our knees. She lassoed two yaks, and we rode back up towards the mountains to collect water from a fresh stream. Her niece, Norgentso, accompanied us, a bold young girl with bluntly chopped hair, who had an amazing voice and entertained us all the way with folk songs. Later, we sat against a mud wall in the sun-trap of Dombie's yard for a rare work-break and she told me about herself, as she brushed her hair, thick as a yak's tail. She had eloped, just like Sirmo. She was seventeen and her father had thought her too young to marry, but she had run away with Tsering Samdup anyway. Dombie was not worried about her sister. She had seen it all before.
That night it snowed. The men arrived without the children, but Dombie didn't complain. She was an obedient wife and I felt her restraint. If it had been me, it would have been a different matter. Tsering Samdup, ignorant of his failure to deliver, sat in his leopardskin tsokwa and tipped out his winnings on the floor. He had spent a hard day and night gambling and was pleased with himself. He was a seasoned professional. Tsedup looked at me and, smiling nervously, told me he had tried his hand, but with only a few yuan. I was not amused. We had little money to last us to the end of our six-month stay and I hoped the peer pressure wouldn't get to him. A lot of men were gamblers here, and Tsedup's brother Gondo even made offerings to the mountain spirit to ensure that the cards worked in his favour. Of course, Rhanjer and Tsedo, the sensible brothers, didn't indulge, and there would be trouble from them if Tsedup got involved in it. There would be trouble from me too.
The morning we left them, I watched Tsering Samdup propitiating the gods outside his house. He poured hot ashes on to the offering site, a metre-high cube standing outside the yard, which Dombie had constructed from clay. Then he sprinkled tsampa and milk on top and yelled aloud to the spirits as he tossed handfuls of wind horses into the bright sky. I had never seen such a vocal display as a daily practice. Amnye's morning ritual, which I had observed outside our tent door, had been far more restrained. After breakfast we left for town and I waved from the back of the bike at the receding figure of my sister-in-law standing sentry at the gate. She looked small and isolated. I hoped her children would come home soon.
I had never really thought of myself as a feminist, but sometimes, even though I was loath to impose my western values here, I found it hard to be objective when I observed the way men and women interacted. For me, the most alien aspect of nomad society was the structure of gender relationships. Tsedup had told me that there was an equilibrium; that, in metaphorical terms, the nomads saw the man as the tent pole and the woman as the tent. They existed interdependently. One was useless without the other. But, as far as I could see, this egalitarian outlook required something of a compromise on the part of the woman. This was a man's world, and Machu man was indeed macho. This was a place where men were men and women were women; each had their clearly defined role and it was virtually impossible for members of the indigenous tribes to cross the barrier. Not that they wanted to.
It was largely a question of the public and private domain. Men occupied the public quarter and women the private. Apart from a trip to town to do the shopping, or to visit relatives, women stayed in the tribe and busied themselves tirelessly from dawn to dusk. An idle wife was a bad wife and this view was upheld by the men but enforced by the senior women in each family. I had witnessed Shermo Donker toiling in foul weather with flu but no one urged her to rest, neither Annay nor Tsedo. She always complained and sighed with pain or discomfort, however, just to remind everyone that she was suffering. Nomad women were good at that. Many were workaholics, and if there was no work to be done, they invented it for themselves. It was not permitted for a woman to go to bed before the rest of the family either, and if the men chose to sit and talk for hours, then she was required to stay to pour the tea and stoke the fire, even though she had risen at dawn when the men were at liberty to lie in. It was all accepted behaviour.
Apart from deep in midwinter, when they lived up in the mountains with the herds for a couple of months, the young men had it easy. They rose at a respectable hour, ate a leisurely breakfast, then sometimes they mounted their horses and checked the herd, but usually they took a trip to town on the motorbike and hung out playing pool, gambling in hotel rooms, eating in the restaurants, then returned home before dark. But Tsedup told me that it had not always been like this. Before the land division, men were occupied with shepherding over a huge area of grassland. They were dedicated to their task and rarely slept. Such was the fear of theft that they guarded the cattle with guns all night, hardly ever sleeping in the tent. Armed bandits would stake out tribes and hide for days, waiting for an opportunity. Then they would swoop, sometimes taking a hundred horses at once. They had been a formidable threat. Tsedup remembered his father remaining outside in storms and snow. It was a hard life in those days, but everyone was equal. The nomads were a tough and diligent people, but now, the men had been rendered impotent. Because of the fences there was no reason to herd the animals and it was more difficult for bandits to attack an enclosed encampment. Their role in the family had been all but erased. The new laws had tragically accomplished their goal of nomad domestication.
Nowadays, sometimes the men chose to stay in town overnight and their wives waited, anxiously, for their return, as I had seen with Dombie. I knew the women had excellent hearing. I was used to them jumping at the faint purr of an engine on the distant track. When the men came back the whole family would run out to greet them. Sometimes they brought treats of sweets or noodles for the children, who rarely went to town and these were received with hasty enthusiasm and devoured instantly. In fact, the men were exceptionally good at shopping, and since it was they who frequented the town, it was their responsibility to buy all the necessities for the family. I had been impressed to witness Tsedo quite shamelessly purchasing face cream, shampoo and other unmanly items. Thanks to Chinese entrepreneurialism, the nomads were now avid consumers and cosmetics had become more of a feature in their lives, although the older generation still used butter to moisten their skin.
As Tsedup and I made our way to town I prepared myself for the change. It was difficult to be together there, and although I sometimes looked forward to a break from the remoteness of the grassland, I always approached the town with a mixture of excitement and trepidation. We pulled up at our usual restaurant and warmed ourselves by the iron stove as the waiter fetched tea and Tsedup chatted with some friends. I sat watching men and women going about their business through the window to the street. I was secretly looking for Sirmo, but she was nowhere to be seen. Men cruised around on bikes or sat on the pavement looking around. Women huddled together in groups, parading themselves up and down like peacocks, shopping and giggling. Rarely did you see a husband and wife together, although they might sit together in a restaurant to eat with their children. For a Machu man, it was simply not cool to be seen in public with his wife. Indeed, to be cool was a much practised and refined art here. I had never seen anything like it.
The nomad men's use of language was fundamental to their character. Tsedup could never suffer chit-chat in western society: in England, I had watched him struggle to comprehend what was going on as someone attempted to engage him in some spurious discussion. He simply could not and would not join in. Sometimes people thought him unsociable, but he wasn't. He was genuine. Here, people spoke from the heart and practised an economy of language unmatched in my experience.
In Machu, this restraint was evident. For instance, a nomad would be in a restaurant with friends and, having barely eaten the last morsel, he would stand, mutter casually 'Jo ray, I'm off,' and leave without a glance. His friends might offer a 'Yeah,' which is the same in English, in reply, but that was it. It had taken me some time to get used to such casual greetings. When I had first arrived I had tried to kiss friends goodbye, but this was unheard-of so I refrained. Likewise, when a man greeted someone in the street he would usually just
look at them, maybe smile, usually not, and instead of saying the equivalent of 'Hi, how are you?' he would ask them where they were going: 'Cho gang an jowjer?' Since this was a small town, there weren't many places that a man could be going, so the reply was usually something along the lines of 'Oh, I'm just hanging around.' The conversation just about wrapped up there, and both parties would mutter, 'Yeah,' and walk on. The essence of it was not to be over-enthusiastic. Otherwise you risked seriously losing your cool. This place might have had a stress-factor of nil compared to London, but it had a cool-factor far exceeding anything I had ever seen on the streets of Soho.
As far as I could see, if you were a nomad bloke, to be really cool the following ten prerequisites had to be observed. You should:
1. Ride around town on your horse or Honda really slowly. Since town consisted of two T-junctions you would frequently be seen. This was good.
2. Wear your tsarer (or leopardskin tsokwa in winter) in all weathers, even when it was go degrees, your left sleeve almost touching the ground. (Since there appeared to be no conceivable reason why one sleeve should be so long except that it made a good pillow to sleep on, the design, at some point in history, must have incorporated the cool-factor.)
3.Wear your five-metre-long red sash, kirok, wound as low and as tight as possible round your hips. This made it difficult to walk with anything approaching ease, but it was cool. It was important to walk slowly with a bowling gait at all times.
4. Carry a knife, preferably in a sheath with coral or turquoise embellishment. This hung from your hip and gave you the appearance of being ready for action, even if you had only used it for cutting sheep's intestines.
5. Carry a pistol. This should be tucked into the bulk of your kirok, leaving the butt visible. People had to see it was there.
6. Carry a pipe, ratcho, the bigger the better. Silver was best; horn not bad. Preferably, again, encrusted with coral and turquoise. It should be tucked inside your tsarer in its embroidered pouch and puffed on regularly.
7. Wear dark glasses. Some people thought big and square was best, but those in the know rejected the seventies look in favour of the small John Lennon variety.
8. Not wash your hair. Unkempt was cool, but not too long. Shoulder-length and straggly was good, for that just-got-out-of-the-sack look.
9. Wear an earring. One thick silver hoop hanging heavily from the lobe.
10. Try not to look busy.
Of course, this behaviour was notjust about getting respect from a young nomad's peer group. It was also about trying to look sexy. For although men and women occupied different spaces in the town and remained quite apart, they were very much aware of each other, observing from a distance. Town was a hotbed of gossip: here, men and women from distant surrounding tribes came into contact with each other and provided the basis for a future hornig. A glance from a gamine to a young man might signify an invitation for a nocturnal visit.
Affairs were common. Tsedup had told me that there was often a curiously liberal attitude to sex outside marriage here. A man could take a lover and have a casual liaison for a while without hindrance. He might even discuss it with his wife, she might tease him, and they might laugh about it together. However, if the relationship developed into something more serious, this represented a threat to the stability of the family unit and would be actively discouraged by elder family members. Of course, these liaisons resulted in random offspring, but it was not acceptable for the man who had sired the child to visit it or take any part in its fathering, even if he wanted to. Also, if a woman's husband was away she would be within her rights to an extramarital affair. If he heard about it the husband would stay away. Tsedup explained that it was shameful for a man to demonstrate jealousy.
This was all very strange to me. I could not imagine Tsedup surviving in this environment. If he had stayed and married a nomad woman he would never have coped. He demanded loyalty. And, similarly, if he had any ideas himself about skipping off in the night as I smiled on, he was mistaken. But it was clearly not uniform behaviour, as I had discovered from my conversations with Shermo Donker. I had also noted Gorbo's reaction when we had thought she had run away with Sirmo to hornig: Tsedo would not have been pleased. The social codes were more complex than they appeared. It seemed to me that, in reality, men were capable of having extramarital relations without fear of guilt. It was part of the macho charisma and was something to be proud of, while women, who carried the burden of domestic chores and who looked after the children, had less opportunity or had more responsibility for the cohesion of the family unit. Nomadic society, like western society, was full of contradiction.
With all this in mind, it was difficult to see how a western woman who was also an Amdo bride fitted into this environment. I was still hugely conspicuous and felt self-conscious in town, even though I wore traditional Tibetan costume. This consisted of my cumbersome leopardskin tsarer, and a kirchi, a knitted tube of fabric that could be worn as a hat or pulled down over the face for warmth. All the women wore them. I had two, one luminous pink and the other lime green, since these were the fashionable colours, but although I felt as if I looked just like a nomad woman, I obviously didn't. I concluded that it must be my marble eyes and protruding nose that gave me away. Despite my attire, or perhaps because of it, I was still a constant source of curiosity for the nomads and Chinese alike.
Yet harder than this feeling of alienation, was the difficulty I was experiencing in spending time with my husband. After nearly nine years away, he was in his element hanging out with the boys in town. I understood why, he had missed them so much when he was in England. But somehow I had imagined he would enjoy the grassland more. Back home I had envisaged him as a nomad, riding, hunting and herding; it was these images that Tsedup had nurtured back then, when he had endlessly recounted stories of his homeland, but it was different now that we were here. I knew that he was a nomad at heart, but I could see that he had already made a departure from that life when he had left the tribe and gone to school. Yet this taming and 'civilising' had been a necessary part of his history if we were ever to have met and made a successful marriage. Without it, even if we had had the chance to meet, which would have been highly unlikely, I guessed that we would not have been able to relate to one another so well and our expectations of each other would have been irreconcilable. Certainly we would not have achieved the level of intimacy that we had. Somehow we had reached middle ground.
But now – despite his concern for my welfare – to have a wife at his side in this macho land was a slight embarrassment. And, as we sat in the restaurant, once again I felt extraneous. As usual there were no women present in our group and, after listening to the men's conversation for a while, I had to admit that gambling successes and recent fights had never been my hot topics of conversation. They had never been Tsedup's either. I was forced to accept that, in town, the new gender definitions I was encountering were certainly changing the dynamics of my marriage. What had been a symbiotic synthesis of shared time and experience in England had been transformed into a necessary parting of the ways. Sometimes he made me angry. I made my excuses and left the table; it was time to visit my female friends.
I walked to Dolma's house past the ditches of rubbish and snuffling pigs at the far end of town. Tsedup's cousin ran out to meet me with her small son, Gonbochab, who cried, 'Ajay Kate! Ajay Kate! Aunty.' The mongrel in the kennel by the gate strained on its leash and gnashed furiously in the direction of my ankles. At least I was welcomed by the family. Dolma showed me into the parlour and poured me black tea. She set down the gamtuk, the box containing tsampa, cheese and butter, in front of me and took up her knitting on the bench at the other side of the iron stove. Gonbochab played with a puppy on the brick floor and grinned at me. Then Dolma spoke to me in her high-pitched voice at great speed. She made no allowances for the fact that I could not understand her, and laughed at me when I made mistakes with my Tibetan. If I asked her to repeat something she looked at me wit
h a glazed expression and repeated exactly what she had said before, but with different emphasis on the words, as if it would help. It did not. Then she would smile and mumble something to herself. Unlike Annay, Sirmo and Shermo Donker she did not gesticulate and simplify her language for me, but I enjoyed her company nevertheless. She was warm and kind, with the cheeky grin of a teenager and twinkling eyes. I'm sure she felt sorry for me as she was always asking if I missed home. In fact, everyone asked that. I supposed they could not imagine being so far away from their own home and thought I was suffering. I was not… but they could sense that sometimes it was hard for me.
That night Sando, her husband, tempted me to stay the night with the promise of an English-language wildlife VCD. I felt obliged to watch it as I suspected he had bought it specifically to entertain me. About thirteen of us squeezed into their tiny parlour. He had recently purchased a brand-new VCD machine, silver and shiny with a winking, spiralling electronic light display. He was most proud of it. However, there was insufficient electricity from the mains to power it, until after 10 p.m. We sat in anticipation, he rather frustrated, twiddling knobs furiously. Then when he had cracked it he played not one but five wildlife films all about the plains of Africa. I was touched, because I was the only one there who understood them. Typically Rhanjer, who was also there, wanted me to explain about every single animal that appeared on the screen. After the third film, I began to wilt and at one o'clock in the morning, after Dolma had collapsed with boredom and fatigue beside me, I insisted on going to bed despite his attempts to play me the latest Kenny G VCD of saxophone songs, which he told me was a big hit.