Nima

  “To all things a purpose,” Dechen says.

  To all things a purpose.

  Years ago, Dechen had planned to build a lodge with her husband, but when he died from influenza, there was no money. So she was forced to work. With no land, the only work she could find was as a merchant. But with nothing of her own to sell, her son must trek to the border with India, buying fifty pounds of oranges that she sells up and down the Khumbu.

  Dechen picks up one of the perfect oranges, a treasure hauled all the way from the terai. The fruit’s color is so deeply orange, its shape so perfectly round with not a single mark visible, it’s hard to believe the journey it took to get here. “Would you like to try the sweetness of the Indus?” she asks Val, piercing the skin, just like she did for Ethan and Daniel. “Money flows like a river, you see. If it stays in one place too long, it gets dirty. Just like an orange.”

  Val peels it and bites into a slice. The juice drips down her chin, and she wipes it with a delicate hand. Dechen laughs, that single tooth jutting out of that dark, empty mouth. “Well?” she asks.

  I forget that Val doesn’t speak Sherpa, and there’s a moment of silence as Val chews and Dechen watches, her mouth open, waiting. Dechen turns to me. “She wants to know if you like it, Val.”

  “Delicious.”

  I trust Val. I realize, in this moment, that I trust her in almost everything. When the rifles were pointed at her, she took a heavy risk. How close did she come to losing her life—and ours? A glint in her white eyes, the crack of a twig if she had advanced another step? Anything could have set the soldiers off. And then? None of us would be standing here now. And yet I trust her boldness. Act, even if afraid. Don’t leave fate to chance. To all things a purpose.

  “Everyday life is already so unthinkable,” Dechen laughs. “Is not the everyday enough? Is not life, this very thing you hold in your hand, the sand and dirt between your toes, the earth which was here before and will be hereafter, isn’t that magic?”

  More fruit is peeled and passed around.

  “Ask her about the mikarus here,” Val cuts in. “Ask how they’ve changed the mountain.”

  I translate. Dechen’s cheeks sag. “There is always potential for everything, at any moment. Or disaster, at any moment.”

  “But the mikarus,” I repeat. “How have they changed Sherpa life on the mountain?”

  “From hardship we grow strong.” She pauses, from sadness or fatigue, I don’t know. “What is your name?” she asks finally.

  “Ang.”

  “Speak up.”

  “Ang. My name is Ang.”

  “Ang. Ang means ‘young.’ Young life. In my time, every Sherpa had two names, named for the day of the week they were born. I was Dechen Dawa because I was born on dawa, a Monday. How are the mikarus changing the mountain, young Ang?” The old woman turns to Val again, explaining slowly as I translate: “Many Sherpas take mikaru names now, or their parents shorten their names. There are too many of them, too many mikarus. The home of Khumbi Yulha is no longer a hidden valley. And young Sherpas like you no longer have traditional names because the mikarus brought change. Maybe your son won’t have a Sherpa name, maybe he won’t be a Buddhist.” Another pause. Both her hands are busy now, one twirling a prayer wheel, the other tracing the hundred and eight strung beads. “Om mani peme hung. Praise to the jewel in the glancing eye. After my husband died, I renamed my son. He was Mingma Babu, but I renamed him Mingma Tsering. Not a mikaru name, but a strong Sherpa name. You know what that means, young Ang?”

  “Long life.”

  “Long life. Tell your mikaru that. Tell her.”

  So much to explain. Val’s writing is a blur as black ink scratches across white pages. “Do you believe the earthquakes and the ru’s would have struck anyway, without the mikarus?”

  To that, Dechen shakes her head. “No, no. It’s the gods’ way of showing anger. This is still their home, no matter how many mikarus come.”

  I keep translating her words to Val, pointing at the peak, the mountain everyone is staring at. Ethan is back with two bottles of water. He passes one to Val, finishes his own, lets it drop to the ground. Val stares at Ethan in disbelief, as if he’s just committed some grave mistake.

  “What?” he says, scowling. “There’s trash everywhere.”

  Val keeps her stare locked and Ethan mutters something I don’t understand, kneels and picks up the bottle, stuffs it into his pack.

  Dechen asks me if my mikarus have seen the goddess before. I relay it to Val.

  Val stands up, squinting as she tilts her head to the sky. And she sees her. The foremost goddess.

  I stand staring, just like my mikarus, and I see her through their eyes. Her body is etched by winds and storms. Clouds swirl around her snow-capped top, before they peel away, revealing harsh streaks of sharp stones, endlessly tall. Peeping through the opening of the clouds, the goddess silently disrobes for us. Jomolangma, she’s the reason they all come here. Then, as gracefully as she gave herself, the misty robes wrap back around her. The clouds return, and she’s gone.

  17

  THE NEXT FEW HOURS OF TREKKING ARE A GAME OF HIDE-AND-SEEK: the goddess retreats behind bluffs and crests only to rise again, floating in the clouds, spurring us on. Chasing a view makes it easier for the mikarus to forget their exhaustion, as they crane their necks.

  “Everest,” they keep chanting. “Everest.” I wish I was as easily seduced by that name. The closer we get, the more my mind is back in Khunde, at my home, with my sisters, my mother, even Norbu. He’ll probably just marry Nyi or Soom. Maybe both. He’s not a bad man. They should be happy together, they don’t need me. But the others will have a hard time now with my father.

  Why isn’t what we have ever enough? Dechen’s voice echoes in my mind.

  Straight uphill, we pass the tree line, into the high country of barren ridges and boulders. The wind is wilder, the air thinner and colder. No snow on the ground here, but all the surrounding peaks are blanketed. Late in the day, we finally trudge into a town that sits in the lap of the range, like a cub in its mother’s womb. Namche Bazaar. Three thousand four hundred and forty meters. It’s one long road winding up and down the mountain and through the town, and this one is the biggest in the Khumbu.

  The aroma of cooked foods leads us from dirt trail to cobblestone street. We pass children in starched white school uniforms running past goats, dogs, roaming chickens. A cyber cafe, a bakery, all closed already, but the scent of sweets still in the air. A police station with a lone officer armed with an ancient-looking rifle—he reminds me of the boy soldiers, but this man doesn’t even bother to look at us. We search for a place to sleep as Ethan and Daniel complain about Lasha’s elusiveness. Shouldn’t he at least wait for us at the end of the day, help arrange things for us? Will he order another room for us both tonight?

  The Namche Hotel, booked. Then the Thawa Lodge. The front door is locked, and after I bang on it, a man with a pot belly and a piece of chicken in his hand opens the door. He spits on me when he responds: “No vacancy!”

  The sun is down now, and we keep hiking on a dark lane I know well. I’ve come here for years to sell our produce—back when we had something to sell. When I was small I would come with my father, a farmer between the trekking seasons. Sometimes he let me have a few coins from his sales. How different those times feel now. I exchanged one of those coins for a red kerchief, for Second, and with the other I traded for a plastic blue ball, for Ang.

  We try three more tea houses—the Trekker’s House, Hotel Zamling, and another without a name—no room or no answer at the door, the third shutting its lights as we reach the front step. A curtain parts and a young girl’s face looks down with worried eyes. Her mother comes to the window, gives us the same look, shakes her head at the girl, and draws the curtain once more.

  There’s a hint of panic on the faces of the mikarus. It’s common practice to lock up at nightfall to ward off bad spirits. Most Sherpas believe that hung
ry ghosts knock on doors at night, eager to return to this world. And perhaps they’re right: a girl dressed as a man and using the name of her dead brother—I am as good as a ghost to them.

  One uphill road, and we’re almost at the end of Namche. We pass Siddhartha Bank, shiny and new and with a blinking light. I would sleep anywhere now—my feet feel ready to burst.

  And my back, how it burns with these kilos strapped to it. Behind me, the mikarus shuffle, their heads hanging. Something about the bank makes Daniel stop and take a photo. Across from the bank, the Khumbu Lodge and Tea House—the last place to sleep in Namche.

  Ethan points to a sign written in red paint in English. ECO LODGE. Val makes a gesture as if she’s too tired for his jokes. We don’t have a tent or supplies, and it’s too cold to bed out in the open. I can see my breath burst out in quick puffs. The three mikarus are all looking at me to solve this final problem. I try the door—fearful to turn the knob—but I grip and turn it, expecting the handle to fight me, but it opens.

  Inside, we’re finally out of the cold, the warm smells of men hit our noses—but the place is empty. There’s a small TV on in the day room: a Bollywood film showing a family dancing at a wedding. The bride in white, her groom in black, Hindi music flowing.

  I slam the door to make our presence known. Still no one to greet us. Strange. And there, lined up against the wall, through force of luck or divine intervention, are our team’s bags. I rub my eyes: yes, they are our bags. Val, Ethan, and Daniel rush to open them. They dig out water bottles and bags of chocolate and nuts and strip them out of their plastic packaging. They’re so hungry. Val hands me a piece of chocolate and I take it and chew without tasting it. Lasha could have foreseen that we would stay here—maybe he, too, couldn’t find an open tea house. The magic of the ordinary, according to Dechen.

  Other than the low sound of Bollywood chants and my mikarus’ loud chewing, it could be a ghost house. Then the sound of glasses being slammed onto a table and a loud laugh. We follow the laugh into a kitchen, its ceiling low, a single bulb hanging from it, just like the room I stayed in last night. And there, playing the card game jhyap and drinking chang, a pile of rupees in the middle of the small wooden table, sit the sirdar and two boys. He doesn’t speak any English, an excuse to keep apart from the clients. Just like my father used to do.

  “How’s your little porter? Is he keeping up?” he asks Val in Nepali. I know Val understands, but she doesn’t respond, instead turning from the kitchen to look into the communal dining area.

  The old man isn’t wearing the kerchief around his neck, and I can see where my blade marked him, a single red dot, scabbed over. He wiggles his mustache from side to side, like a caterpillar above his lips, and looks up at me and slams a card to the table and yells, “Jhyap!” and the boys yell back, “Cheat! Cheat!”

  Lasha flushes and his caterpillar twitches. “Cheat? No cheating. These fools distracted you—I jhyapped and reached one hundred points—you saw it! Both of you saw and no one countered. Are you saying I lied?”

  “May I?” Ethan interrupts, holding up a few crumpled bills, and Lasha’s eyes go from slits to full moons. Drunk. He nods, waves the mikaru over. I’m sure Ethan doesn’t know the game, but it doesn’t matter, he’s a man and he sits down next to Lasha, and chang is poured and cards are dealt. Now he’s drinking, and one drink is all it’ll take at this altitude, all the better to lose his rupees.

  “It’s nice you speak Nepali,” the sirdar says offhandedly to Val. “Maybe we can chat later,” he adds.

  One of the Sherpa boys gets up. Wobbly from drink, he glances at each of us before tossing his three cards to the floor. “Come, come,” he slurs in English to Daniel and Val, leading them through a wooden door and into the dining hall.

  The sound of laughter and voices in English, the stink of that all too familiar mountain fuel, they’re among a rabble of white faces, men mixed with women, all sitting and drinking tall bottles of Everest beer. Val and Daniel have quickly found seats in the dining area, and I follow. I want to take Val aside to tell her about the sirdar but change my mind. She looks so tired, barely holding her head up at the table.

  “Tea?” the youngster shouts at us. I nod and he turns and whistles and an old woman with a dog paw birthmark over an eye emerges—another conjured spirit?—holding a tray of steaming cups of tea, and the mikarus take the cups and drink thirstily.

  The boy yells again—she could be his grandmother or just as easily hired help.

  “Cha,” she says, fishing a claw into the deep pockets of her skirt and scooping out three sets of long metal keys. She turns to me. That mark on her face, I can’t help but stare at it as she tells me the price of the rooms. Three hundred rupees a night, twin cots, wool blankets, pillows. Standard tea house fare, by now I know.

  “Order now, the kitchen will be closed soon,” she advises.

  Daniel puts down the camera, rubs the back of his head, and I overhear Val speaking to him in English, catching only a few words: “dizziness,” “nausea,” “vomiting,” “altitude.”

  An empty bottle slammed down at the next table jolts me. Drunks. The same everywhere. One of them has hair so red I can’t believe it—it’s a girl, probably my age—and she gulps

  Everest beer, just like the men.

  I pray I can speak with Val tonight, before the sirdar does and poisons her with lies. And if I do, maybe she can start teaching me English, too. If I could speak English with the tourists, I could get work. It wouldn’t matter who I was.

  “Diamox,” I hear Val say before the drunken yells drown her out. My stomach rumbles, I haven’t eaten a proper meal since the morning.

  “Have you decided what you would like for dinner?” I ask.

  Val asks Daniel, who studies the menu as if it were some monk’s poetry. Ethan joins the table, empty-handed, having lost his rupees faster than even I thought was possible. He picks up the menu, mumbles a queer poem of his own: “Curey, chikken, feesh.” He craves meat. He and Val argue briefly, at the end of which the big mikaru lets out a long sigh and points with his finger: vegetable fried rice. With an egg on it.

  The smash of a bottle onto the floor, more laughs from the next table.

  “Australians?” Val wonders. Ethan puts his hand on her neck, checking for a tender spot, but she pushes his hand away. She picks up a saltshaker from the table. “What do you call this?”

  “Tsha,” I answer. “How do you say it in English?”

  “Salt.”

  I smile encouragingly. It’s fascinating how things are named—how sounds become words become things. But it doesn’t look like I’ll get to trade words with Val tonight. I head back to the kitchen, where Lasha is still playing cards, but this time with someone new, a man with his back to me. From his square build and short hair, I think it’s one of the boy soldiers, and I freeze in the doorway. Lasha sees me and leers, mumbling something I don’t catch, and the unknown man turns to face me. He’s the one I’ve been running from for days, his face tattooed on my mind’s eye.

  My heart is in my throat, leaping out. Norbu.

  18

  WAS IT A SCREAM OR JUST THE WIND?

  I’m back in front of our old home in Khumjung, watching as my mother and sisters dig through the snow. Dig, dig, dig, they keep digging. However much they shovel, still the same amount of snow remains on the ground.

  It’s pitch black, and then, behind us, a flare so bright I can’t look at it directly—but I know who it is by the way he walks. He takes a step forward, the light gets brighter. I hold up my hands to shield my sight, but I can smell it. The smell of blood, broken bones, and death. He comes closer and closer, and I can’t move, and when he’s right in front of me, the chang wafting from his breath, the light flashes even brighter. But it’s not my father in front of me anymore. In his place, a little boy tosses something in the air—a blue plastic ball. I fumble to catch it, but my feet are stuck in place, I can’t move, and the ball rolls away into the darkness.


  When the boy comes closer I can see his face. Ang.

  I grab him and we fall to the snow. I hold him tightly, refusing to let go. We roll in the snow, me and my little brother, and I shut my eyes hard as the tears build. I have you, I have you. You’re safe. They won’t take you away now. I won’t let them.

  I’m squeezing as hard as I can, then I feel a hand on my shoulder, shaking me. But Ang is no longer in my arms—all I’m holding is that little ball, cradling it with all of my being. When I look up, the one shaking me is Norbu. I feel the cold suddenly, the wind is roaring now. I’m all alone, darkness on all sides. The only thing I can see is Norbu’s hand held out to take me away from all this.

  Norbu stands in front of me in the cramped tea house kitchen in Namche Bazaar. The woman with curved fingers looks me up and down and the Sherpa boys swig chang. Lasha utters a high little laugh. It’s a warning laugh, reminding me that he knows, that he will speak to Val later. And when Norbu looks at me, I know he knows who I am. He comes closer, reaches out with his hand, just like in my dream.

  “Nima.”

  Terror. All the beatings my father gave me run through my body. I take a step back, then another, and I’m out of the kitchen and back in the dining hall.

  Nobody looks up as I stagger in. The door behind me stays closed—the mikarus are here, shoveling food and drink, I’m safe for now. Behind me, the kitchen door opens. Norbu grabs my arm, pulling me close. “What are you doing here? Why did you leave?”

  His grip is tight, and I grimace. He lets go and the two of us just stand there, hidden in plain view from the partying mikarus. Norbu places a hand on my right shoulder, aching from carrying the heavy pack. His touch is gentle this time. His hand goes to my exposed neck, touching where the marks from my father still show. He traces up to my chin, a finger on my upper lip—where Val’s pencil gave me a mustache only yesterday—all the way to my hair. And then he lifts the knit cap I’m wearing and his almond shaped eyes bulge.