by Adam Popescu
Lasha must be close to fifty, and though as surely as he had once been a child and would one day be ready for the sky, I can’t imagine this hard old goat being any age other than what he is. He looks the age he should always be. Sensing me studying him, he nods at me, then ducks his head back down to readjust the pack. I’m not worth more than a passing glance.
No one has noticed. Val shoots me a look of pride—mikaru magic is strong. I heave my pack on and the straps dig into my shoulders, even through three layers of clothes. As I straighten, trying to pretend like it’s all routine, the small of my back tightens. Thirty kilos, but it feels double that, easily, a weight Val can’t help with.
Lasha doesn’t have to make-believe, he simply pumps those tree trunks of his and heaves the load onto his back in one toss. And then the sirdar’s off, leading the way through the stupa, pausing briefly to spin the wooden prayer wheel. He knows it’s best to play the game even if he doesn’t believe. Bless us, please. One after the other, we follow into the narrow space, the mikarus running gloved fingers over the Sanskrit-etched wheel.
“To a good trek,” Val says over the chiming bells.
Wheel still spinning, Daniel takes his turn. “A good trek,” he echoes, giving it an extra push.
Ethan grips the wheel with those big hands, stops it completely, then flings it so hard the bells clang furiously. He hoots and whistles, an overgrown child.
When it’s my turn, I spin it, too. And I don’t say a real prayer, I just think of what I’m doing this for and picture the faces of everyone I’ve left behind. Second, Third, Fourth, Fifth. Mother. Norbu. Father. I spin the wheel like Father would. I invoke the gods like Norbu. We pass under the archway of the stone kani. ENJOY YOUR TREK. On the other side, and onto the trail, the sirdar speeds ahead. He’s not waiting for the foreigners. He knows to get there as fast as possible, every lingering step an unnecessary delay. In the span of a few breaths, the sirdar is around the bend, disappearing through the trees. I dig my heels, ready to do the same, but then Val touches my arm lightly.
“You don’t have to speed off,” she tells me in Nepali. “I want you walking with us. I want you to show us parts of the trail that we wouldn’t notice. Okay?”
“Okay,” I nod. “Okay.”
The weight is so heavy on my back—it’s nearly impossible to keep my head up to navigate. And what am I supposed to show Val that she does not see? I’ve been along this path only to deliver goods and sell at market, what do I know about the Khumbu? I’m no guide. I feel a pang in my stomach, a slight pain. It’s the yak meat—I usually take barley tsampa for breakfast, and my stomach hasn’t been right since. Or maybe I just miss home, regret everything. But that’s Nima talking, words a scared girl would say. Nima is gone. Push it away. Bury it. Do what Val asks: Look with fresh sight.
All around, the forest envelops us. Six-foot ferns, giant pines that spring from layers of fallen cones. Branches stacked with watchful birds, bobbing their heads and hooting. Between the trees, the steady rush of the Dudh Kosi below us, an occasional splash as one of the birds dives down to fish a meal. Where the trees thin, I see fields with cabbage and squash ready to harvest, bright yellow wildflowers sprouting in yards. Farmers on plastic chairs rest in front of their homes, sipping black tea. Down here the drought hasn’t hit as hard. And next to the flowing river, the Sherpas have all the water they need to feed their crops. Most don’t even have to work as porters to make a living.
I watch the mikarus in front of me and decide they are an entirely different breed. The shape of their faces, their noses, lips, eyes, bodies. These men are all jagged lines instead of curves, just like Sherpa men. A woman’s body I understand, at least women like me.
Val has a camera around her neck, its black straps hugging her naked nape, bouncing against her chest. Her breasts are clearly outlined through her shirt, visible and unashamed. Her nails, painted a dark red, so unlike my chipped and ugly ones. No woman from the Khumbu would ever dress like that, though in Kathmandu it’s different. Maybe Nurse Lanja did when she was there, but here it is strange. And yet on Val, it looks more normal the longer I’m around her. Her way and her world, no matter where she is.
“Hey, you all right?” Val turns to me, slightly out of breath. I nod quickly. The others are already sweating and panting.
“Anybody need to rest?” I ask.
“Let’s keep going,” she answers for the others.
Val reaches for Ethan’s hand, holds it as they walk, displaying affection in full view, with no shame, perhaps even enjoying the stares from the onlookers. I’m jealous. Yes, I am, I’m envious of her freedom. Free to love whoever she wants, even to do it in public, if she so desires.
My mother would always say that to make a man happy, a woman must have strong legs, a face flat like a salt lake, and narrow eyes, since evil spirits dive into big ones. Big eyes show things that are not there. That was beauty to her. Mikaru skin has no pigment, and it makes their faces plain. Blank. They don’t all have the same eye and hair color like we do. They change it.
How different we all must look to each other. If I were to be around them, just mikarus, would I find their form pleasing? Would they find me pleasing?
Despite the heavy pack, I’m walking with a strange sort of lightness. The fear is gone, replaced by a feeling I know monks would call bliss—and I realize that’s the power of my newfound freedom. I try to focus on that thought. The trail is a winding path of broken rocks. And with the straps digging into my shoulders, my back, I feel each step.
Not even an hour out of Lukla and everywhere on the trail I am distracted by the signs of others, those who come to the mountain and leave their mark. Even us. The path is littered with things tossed: cigarette butts, candy wrappers, plastic bags, aluminum cans. Sherpas chew tobacco for energy and toss the wrapping. All part of the mikaru world—and if not for the mikarus, then pieces from down below the mountain.
What’s ours and ours alone is the land and the creatures who dwell here. Pack animals of all sorts: yaks, horses, donkeys, and jobke, a cross between yak and cow, they all traipse in both directions, piled high with supplies, hard at work. Work that makes for quick digestion, everywhere their earthy dung is strewn and steaming in the cold morning air.
The animals are led by boys who can’t read books but can command bulls down cliffs. Sherpa boys who walk in sandals and tennis shoes. They don’t need boots, they deal with ice, snow, rock, mud, river, feet caked with dirt, toenails like eagle talons, skin and muscle that insulate against the cold and the trail. Sherpa feet walk through it all. I suddenly feel self-conscious of my own feet, privileged in my too big boots. But inside these boots, my feet are the same.
A team of yaks barrels towards us. The boys driving the animals beat them mercilessly with bamboo sticks, pointing them, I realize too late, right at my mikarus. I’m so wrapped in my own thoughts, I didn’t sense the danger, didn’t understand that the mikarus won’t know what to do, how to react.
“Move!” I yell in Nepali, but the yaks drown out my words.
Instinctively, Val hugs the side of the mountain as the bulls charge down—but Ethan and Daniel are right in the middle of their path, frozen.
“Get back!” I scream. They don’t understand. I dash forward and in three steps push the men up against the trail’s overhanging rock face, just as a big bull swings—he’s so close I can see the red of his pupil, the mucus dripping from his nostrils. The bull snorts and trots off as the herders—children half my age—bark and whistle at the old yak, though it seems they’re chiding the foreigners.
Daniel rises, panting, his eyes big and darting. “Thank you, Ang,” he says, wiping the dust off himself. So strange to hear that name, it takes me a moment to come back to now.
Ethan coughs, his face glistening with sweat. I offer an outstretched hand, but he bolts up, pushing me back. Val comes over, touches his arm. He resists her, too.
“I’m fine.”
“Let’s rest for a
moment,” I say to Val.
“Good idea.”
We huddle in a cluster of tall pines and the mikarus all drink, Val from a plastic bottle, Daniel with hands shaking, and Ethan sucking from a long, transparent tube connected to his pack, which he drinks as if his was a dying man’s last sip. No one says anything for a long time, more shaken than tired.
“Animals always have the right of way up here,” Val says in English, and this time, I understand before she translates.
A woman stops next to us, leaning against a load of oranges and closing her eyes as the sun creeps through the trees. Her face is a row of wrinkles and loose skin. But her hair is jet black. All of us are staring. Daniel raises his camera. Snap. When the old woman feels eyes on her, she doesn’t turn her head, just murmurs, “Namaste,” her lips revealing a toothless hole. “Namaste,” I return. She opens her mouth to say something more, but when that hole opens, no words come out, just a string of deep, hacking coughs. Up and down the mountain, all day, every day.
A light breeze sings softly as it pushes the branches. I draw my eyelids closed and see a kaleidoscope of color. I can hear the river, it runs faster and louder below us, the water choked between big boulders. And I hear one more cough, a deep one, from the belly. When I open my eyes, the old woman is gone, as if she was never there.
Trooping down, another platoon of Sherpas haul baskets five feet tall, as tall as they are, loads tipping with firewood, crisps, Everest beer. I lock eyes for a moment with a girl in a faded pink jacket buttoned over an almost breastless torso, hair in braids, feet in pink sandals. She can’t be more than fourteen. She reminds me of Fifth.
The girl looks away from me—I’m already acting more like a mikaru than a Sherpa, we don’t hold stares, it’s bad manners—and she stops to balance her load but doesn’t lower the basket, simply busies her hands with retightening the thump line. Biting her chapped lower lip from the effort, she fixes the line, looks up as if to see if I’m still looking, meets my eyes again, and then looks back down. I want to stop her, to find out who she is, where she’s going, but she digs her chin into that girlish flat chest and vanishes around the bend.
“How many women work as porters?” Daniel asks, and Val translates. “Are girls ever porters on expeditions? To the summit?”
“Plenty of them are porters,” Val answers. “We passed them before, but with their hair short, they look like boys.”
“No way,” Ethan says, out of breath. “You never see pictures of girls on Everest.”
“Is that true?” Val asks me in Nepali. “Are there female Sherpas who’ve climbed Everest?”
“Lhakpa Sherpa,” I reply, remembering her name easily. “She’s climbed Jomolangma nine times. She lives in the United States, but she’s famous here in Nepal.”
Lhakpa Sherpa. Her daughter is named Nima, like me. Other women have climbed, too. I’ve heard of a group of seven—all Nepali women—who are trying to conquer all seven summits, among them a Gurung, a Danuwar, the rest Sherpas. There is a path to anything. If I climbed the summit, I would be free of all burden, I could truly do anything, and no man would be able to tell me otherwise. I could travel down to the capital and be whoever I wanted. Pick up any book, speak to any boy, eat and dress however I like.
Two girls with baskets filled with tins of coffee and tea trudge past us and my focus follows. One of the girls isn’t even wearing shoes. She walks barefoot, her feet and the ground one color. A strange buzzing goes off inside my head just as they pass—I worry it’s my intuition, what’s called a crying ear. It’s loud enough that I expect it to frighten the girls into dropping their baskets. But they keep their gazes forward, keep marching. And then they’re gone.
“What does that do to a child’s body?” Val asks me in Nepali. “Does it limit their growth, stunt their height, maybe help them build stronger muscles? It can’t be good. Look at you, Ang, you barely have any muscle at all.”
“I climb better than you,” I reply.
Val opens and closes her mouth. It is hard to tell if she is amused or angry. Finally she apologizes: “I didn’t mean to be insulting.”
Ethan fidgets with the tubing that snakes out of his backpack, notices me inspecting the device.
“It’s called a CamelBak,” Val tells me. “A backpack fitted with a water container and a plastic tube. So a climber can drink without strain. He sets his watch to ten minute intervals. When the alarm goes off, it’s time for a drink.”
I nod, not sure of everything she said—some things just don’t translate—and I get up so my legs don’t get too tight. I pull a purple kerchief out of my bag and wrap it around my face.
“This is what a climber needs up here,” I tell Val. We’re all moving now, with me leading. I turn to the mikarus and smile, only my eyes showing, and they burst out laughing.
“They say you look like a bandit, Ang.”
It’s impossible to fight the dust, I reply. You must take precautions. “Wrap something around your face for protection.”
“It looks silly,” she says in English, struggling to explain the meaning. We don’t have that word in my language, but I don’t press her.
When mikarus come down the mountain, every one of them is sunburned. Some nod hello, most shun any eye contact. And they can’t stop coughing and sneezing. The women look almost disfigured, the men with beards as long as an old guru. Like Val, most don’t wear anything around their face—it must be considered silly.
When we see a man leading a herd of goats down the mountain, this time the mikarus get out of the way.
“Namaste,” he says, pressing his palms.
“Namaste,” they each reply.
The goat herder places two fingers in his mouth and exhales a sharp whistle and the goats follow. The bleating faces remind me of the doe back home, the one that would always lick my face or bleat when she was hungry.
Two Western trekkers sidestep the goats, spitting rapid-fire English in between heavy panting. Foreigners smeared in sunblock, steadied by walking sticks, shielded by shiny sunglasses. So strange.
“Namaste.”
“Namaste.”
Strange to hear this Nepali word coming from white mouths. Most who’ve been on the mountain at least a day adopt this single Nepali word as their own, the one local word they all know.
“What does it mean, Val?” Daniel asks. “I’ve heard it before, in yoga mostly, but I never gave it much thought—I didn’t know people actually said it and meant it.”
“It means ‘peace,’ ‘greetings,’ ‘thanks,’” she answers. “And ‘tashi delek’?” Val asks me, switching to Nepali. “I hear it all the time but I just repeat it. What’s it mean?”
“It’s from my language, in Sherpa. It means ‘good fortune,’” I say, then in English: “Good luck.”
“Tashi delek,” she repeats, smiling. “My first words in Sherpa.”
Freedom is back-breaking work, the dust stinging my nose and throat with every labored breath, even with the rag covering my face. Maybe this is what drove Father mad, after a lifetime of all this. My eyes squinting, my mouth and throat hidden beneath my faded purple kerchief, gulping air kicked up by throngs of sandals and boots, hooves and paws, an orgy of dust mixed with drops of perspiration and thick cakes of dung, all kicked up, every step, every breath, tied together from the earth we all walk on. I’m drenched in sweat, feel it dripping down my back, under my arms, pooling at my waist and trickling down my legs.
Traffic is heavy this far down the trail. Girls and boys my age, lugging wood and water atop their heads, sweat pouring from their temples, resigned desperation all over their faces.
What other life is there for us? They heave baskets filled with everything from kerosene drums to furniture, loads stacked above the baskets’ rim, each secured right around the forehead, right up against the brain, with a cloth strap that digs deep. But rarely does a brimming load spill onto the trail. Even overloaded, every Sherpa sprints by us, forever hauling their lives up
and down the mountain. I have to hold on to my compassion, my joy, I’m the proof that there is another way.
As fast as they go and as strong as they are, man, woman, or mikaru, we all yield to the beasts with massive horns, we all jump to the mountain’s edge as they thunder by. And each time, behind them, teens in tattered shirts, miniature masters ruling with sticks and rocks.
Lukla, our start, is two thousand, eight hundred and sixty meters. “More than nine thousand feet up,” Val translates. And we’ve traveled only a few hundred meters in elevation, slow going with unaccustomed foreigners. So unaccustomed, anything could happen to them. They’re my charges, my responsibility. My link to freedom. They move out of the way when they see yaks now. They may be older than me, but at times they seem younger, especially the men. Without experience. I have to watch them.
We pass small villages—Chheplung, Ghat—communities that remind me of home. I try to push these thoughts away, but they creep back, like a fox that’s been fed. No matter where I go, I’ll feel that nagging, until I go back with my head held high.
Then it hits me: all the Sherpas coming back and forth, up and down the mountain—I could be spotted.
That’s Nima the Eldest!
She left her groom, stole from her father, what shame. There’s a reward for her—100,000 rupees!
Suddenly, my father comes barreling down the mountain on horseback, his kikuri glimmering in the sunlight, eyes black and narrow as he brings that blade down, slicing me in two—
But it’s only fear. None of it is real. No Sherpas say anything as they pass. In fact, they don’t even raise their heads—Sherpas consider direct eye contact bad manners, a challenge, enough to shift our karmic balance. When the mikarus stare at me, I have to remember that it’s not meant as a threat. Try as I do, though, the way the two men look at me now, while we pause again on a rest break, I can see it on their faces. Daniel pulls off a boot and rubs his toes. Soft white feet. Ethan sucks at the last drops from that tube. Val instructs them about something. I can’t understand, she’s speaking too quickly and using words I don’t know, but it’s clear from the way they focus, whatever it is, it’s meant to encourage them.