The strangest night of all began with pancakes. It was a bit easier to manoeuvre now that we were in a house, so I had mixed up some batter and was busy making them for Dickir Ziggy, Sanjay, Gorbo and Shermo Donker. It was already dark. The yaks and sheep were safely in their corral, the evening's tasks were finished. Tsedup and Tsedo were away, Dickir Che was at her grandmother's and Sirmo was staying next door with Dolma in the Kambo household, as Annay Urgin was in town. We were a skeleton crew. I squirted mandarin juice and heaped sugar on top of the fried batter, as they smacked their lips in anticipation. Such was their new-found lust for this English treat that two hours later I was still ladling the thick mixture into the pan when Dolma appeared. I thought that she and Sirmo might have come over and joined in our feast, but concluded that they were probably too preoccupied with the evening's impending hornig. Two girls alone in a house was a perfect opportunity for young horsemen wandering the night and they knew it. Dolma hadn't come for pancakes, she had come to ask Shermo Donker something and, after some suspicious whispering, the two left the house.
The children and I finished eating then sat and played cards together. An hour passed and still Shermo Donker had not returned. I sensed that something odd was going on. Then, just as I was getting bored with playing patience for the twenty-fifth time, Dolma appeared again. She was alone and told me, giggling, that we should all go to bed, as Shermo Donker had gone to hornig with Sirmo. I was shocked and thought how strange it was that a woman could go off into the night on her horse looking for men, without even putting the children to bed. I laughed, but felt uncomfortable. As I was not really sure of the etiquette of the situation, I asked Gorbo if it would be a problem for Tsedo that she had gone to hornig and he replied that it would be. It was obvious that this was not a normal thing for women to do. But before I could grill him further, Gorbo decided to go off girl-hunting himself and disappeared on one of the yaks, leaving Ziggy, Sanjay and me to go to bed.
I tucked up both children next to the clay fire in their sheepskin and shut the door to the dark house, leaving them alone. But although they had assured me they were all right, when I came back in to clean my teeth they were afraid. Not knowing what time their mother would be coming home, I told them we could all sleep in my bed in the room outside. They jumped at the chance, although Ziggy was worried that her mother would tell them off.
'Where is Mother?' she asked me.
'Kambo,' I lied, meaning Annay Urgin's.
I assured them that Shermo Donker was not going to tell them off – she wouldn't get a chance, if I could help it. I was angry with her for leaving them. The three of us snuggled up together in the straw bed as the cold wind breathed through the glassless window and the doorless door. They soon fell asleep after some initial excited chatter and I lay quietly looking out at the stars. What a strange place this was. Their father had gone to the next valley and was supposed to be coming back later, although he had joked that he had a wife nearby and might visit her tonight, and their mother was herself off to hornig I didn't know what to think.
Eventually I heard footsteps outside and someone opening the door to the house. Shermo Donker called to the children, but of course there was no one inside and she came straight to my room. 'Shermo,' she called nervously. She came and sat on the edge of the straw bed in the blackness and laughing, told me that she had been to hornig. To humour her, I asked if she had found a man. She said that she hadn't, then suddenly became serious and said that it had been a cover-up. She hadn't been at all. 'Sirmo has eloped!' she exclaimed.
So that was it. I was so shocked that I didn't know how to reply. Sirmo's lover had come on horseback for her and the two had made off in the moonlight to his tribe. Tomorrow she would be his bride. Immediately a string of thoughts filled my mind. That day she had led me to the Kambo house and had asked me for her chadmay, silver and coral belt, which she had always let me wear. I gave it to her. Earlier that day she had also complained that her feet hurt and had shown us her blistered heels in her dirty old shoes. Tsedup had told her to put on the new shoes she had bought for Losar, Tibetan new year. She had. This girl was clever. It had all been a plan to escape without suspicion. Annay and Amnye were in Lhasa, and her older brothers were away that night. Sirmo had planned it all. I was shocked and sad. I hoped she would be happy, but I knew I would miss her. Shermo Donker and I exchanged exclamations along these lines, then she went to bed and I lay thinking for a long time.
Sirmo had gone. I recalled all the things we had done together. I remembered talking to her by the stream when I had told her not to rush into marriage. Now I knew that she hadn't listened to a word. She loved this man, I supposed, and had made a brave decision to go with him. She had sensed her family's doubts for her future and had rebelled. Elopement was not common here: usually there was a marriage ceremony uniting both sides of the family. I knew that her mother and father would be sad when they returned from Lhasa, and that Tsedup would be angry and disappointed with her for not listening to him. But I felt an empathy with her. In a sense we were similar. I had run away to India to marry my husband and, like a hot-headed teenager, had not told my parents we were married. I was all too familiar with what love could make you do and I knew why Sirmo had gone.
The next morning when I came out of my room Tsedo was outside stretching and yawning. I asked him if he was angry that Sirmo had run away and, in his usual relaxed fashion, he said not at all. I knew that Tsedup would not share his indifference. They might have been brothers, but when it came down to it they were quite different. Tsedo could easily watch the world go by, while Tsedup would set it spinning on its axis. Sure enough, Tsedup pulled up on the motorbike in the morning sunshine, with a pot of paint I had asked him to buy for the window. He was looking pleased with himself for remembering it. Then I broke the news: his sister had gone. At first he didn't believe it and started laughing, but when I insisted it was true, he swore in a rage. Skidding the bike a full 180 degrees, he disappeared in a cloud of dust and shortly after returned with Rhanjer. It was time for a family conference.
The three brothers argued while Shermo Donker and I stitched the curtains. Once, Tsedup turned from his tirade to address my sister-in-law. He blamed her for being one of the women who had pressured Sirmo into marriage by always saying she needed a husband. Shermo Donker kept her head down, uttering stifled protestations through the pins in her mouth.
Tsedup was in full flood. He ignored family protocol and began condemning his older brothers. A younger sibling usually deferred. 'Why didn't you make Sirmo stay at school?' he demanded. 'This would never have happened if you had.' He was referring to the knife attack. As far as Tsedup was concerned, nobody had made enough effort to encourage her to go back after she had been assaulted, especially not his father. With Amnye away, Tsedup targeted his fury at his brothers. He felt responsible for Sirmo's education: nobody else in his family seemed to believe in the value of schooling. He had taken himself off to school in the town when he was twelve. It was not compulsory, and his father had told him that if he didn't like it he could come home at any time. But he had loved it, and when he was older he had taken both his brother Samba and sister Sirmo to school because he had recognised their academic potential. He told me later that subconsciously he had wanted them to be closer to him; none of his other brothers and sisters were in the town. But I suspect it wasn't just a question of geography: he wanted them to be like him. I thought it charismatic and resourceful for such a young boy to try to influence his family like that. There was something heroic and rebellious about it. But Tsedup had always been bossy. He was still full of the strength of his own conviction. He had had high hopes for them. Except that, in the end, he had left them both behind when he ran away to India. Samba had become a monk and Sirmo had left town to come back to the tribe. He felt guilty for having left them. Perhaps he couldn't have kept Samba from his religious devotion – it was good for every family to have one son who was a monk and his parents had desired it. But if he had stayed he would certainly have ensured that Sirmo went back to school.
Now he was back and he had implored Sirmo not to get married so young, believing that she could have an easier life in town. But she had rejected town life already, when she failed to return to school. It wasn't that the nomads were averse to education, but it was a complex debate. Both Rhanjer and Tsedo saw the value in Tsedup's beliefs – Rhanjer's son, Samlo, was at school – but compromises had to be made in order for the brothers to understand each other. Tsedup felt strongly that, with an education, a nomad could have a strong hold in both his own community and in the town. He felt that it was becoming increasingly important, now that the nomads were more a part of town life. Even a true nomad, such as his father, was a figure in town now, attending his regular meetings.
But the nomads valued their lifestyle, which they saw was under threat. Not only were restrictions being imposed on their land and herds, but they were having fewer children. According to the authorities, it was permissible for rural people to have two, but that was considerably less than they were accustomed to – Tsedup's generation came mostly from large families. With so few children the nomads also felt that in sending them to school, they would be initiating a departure from the tribe for future generations, weakening their infrastructure. Although there was a Tibetan School in Machu, which taught the Tibetan language as well as Chinese and the standard subjects such as maths, history, geography and the sciences, the tribes knew that their strength was in their unity and the preservation of traditions held for centuries. It was a timeless existence that was clearly being threatened by the inevitable pressure of development and encroaching 'civilisation'. School would take their children away from them, both physically and mentally, and they also believed that there would be a Chinese influence on their characters. A man like Tsedo thought that if he sent his son, Sanjay, to school, then Sanjay would surely not return to a nomadic life after graduation. What would be the future of his family with no one to inherit? In our tribe alone there were thirty-two children who were not at school. I considered this sufficient evidence of their parents' anxiety. But who could say what was right? It was true that these children had a right to education and were being deprived of it, but it was also true that without the children, the tribe could not survive. It seemed that Tsedup hoped these two points could be reconciled.
But there was to be no reconciliation between the brothers now.
'Go and bring her back!' Tsedup ordered Tsedo.
'No way, big-head!' said Tsedo indignantly. 'You can go if you want to.'
Tsedo had had enough of his younger brother's hysteria. Tsedup was way out of line. But Tsedup didn't go to fetch Sirmo. Instead, rather childishly, he said he wasn't coming back to the house until his mother and father returned from Lhasa. Then, I imagined, he planned a real showdown. Outside the house, he asked me if I would come away with him for a few days. I quickly prepared a small bag and we left on the bike.
We went to stay with his sister Dombie for his cooling-off period. She lived with her husband, Tsering Samdup, and their vast herd on the other side of Machu. They were safely ensconced in their winter house, which stood in a collection of three dwellings in a deep, remote valley. Their two young children, a girl, Dawa, and a boy, Yeshe, were at school in the town. Dombie was younger than Tsedup and the eldest of the two sisters in the family. She was beautiful, like Sirmo, but shy. She spoke softly and laughed huskily as she served us tea. We were most welcome. I hadn't spent any time with her since my arrival and she was keen to befriend me. We sat inside the clay house, on green vinyl flooring and rugs, while Tsedup related Sirmo's saga. Dombie made cooing, soothing noises as Tsedup repeated the tale. Tsering Samdup sat polishing his knife, his short bursts of laughter interspersed with the swear-words: 'Hartsay viron!' and 'Garo geywa!' Most men's speech was liberally punctuated with a dose of swearing on the good deeds of their ancestors, for this was what it meant. He looked like a Roman centurion with his close-cropped wavy hair and aquiline nose and he wore the most enormous coral necklace I had ever seen. It was a sign of his status, as his family were quite wealthy. Dombie had married well, but she had an enormous workload. The family's seventy female yaks, dro, needed milking each day, twice a day in the summer, and it was Dombie's responsibility to do it.
The next day I attempted to help her with some of her tasks, as Tsedup had accompanied Tsering Samdup on his daily trip to town. I sensed that she was probably lonely sometimes. The other two houses in the valley were occupied by Tsering Samdup's sisters and their spouses, but she missed her children whom she saw only at weekends. As it was Friday Tsering Samdup was to bring them back tonight, she told me animatedly. She was one nomad who certainly knew what day of the week it was. We spent the afternoon collecting fresh dung pats from the floor of her corral and slinging them into a pit from our wicker baskets. She had the biggest mountain of excrement I had ever seen outside the fence to her house. She was a good namma. That evening the men did not return and she tried to hide her disappointment at not seeing her children. 'Tomorrow,' I assured her, feeling silently cheated that we had been abandoned.
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 with 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.
The next day Tsedup stopped by and I asked him to drive me to Tashintso's. As I stepped into her back kitchen our policewoman friend flashed a couple of tickets in front of me. 'We're going to a show!' she said. That night, along with half of the town, we made our way to the big local theatre. Nomads and townspeople collected around the entrance and filtered through the turnstiles. When we walked in I was amazed at the size and grandeur of the building. It was just like an auditorium at home, with a sloping floor and wooden flip-seats. But there were striking differences to the proceedings. There was no hushed anticipation as the lights went down and the curtain came up. Instead it was a riot. Nomads shouted and smoked, laughed and joked with each other. The women called from row to row. About thirty small children, who had rushed to the front, now fought each other, writhing around on the floor in a grubby rumpus. Meanwhile the dancers danced on and the singers turned up their microphones. When it was time for a comedy act the whole place was in uproar. I had never seen such an unabashed display of audience participation. All around me people were fighting to control their laughter, tears dripping down their faces. I laughed too, but since I didn't understand a word of the performance, I was really laughing at them. After each act the nomads burst into applause and whistles ricocheted around the walls.
It was a rare thing, to be out on the town, sharing time with men and women. Usually the only women I saw out at night were the platform-heeled barmaids in the karaoke houses. I missed going out with my friends in England and the ease of the male-female mixed social scene at home. This town was a difficult place for me to be and I was pleased to leave the next day. The haven of the grassland was calling me. It was where I preferred to be. I wasn't sure if Tsedup would be joining me, due to his self-imposed exile from his family, but I knew I had to go back. Before I returned, we made one more stop at Gondo's home nearby.
His tribe were still in their tents and that night the two brothers insisted that we sleep under the stars. It was sub-zero outside, but that wasn't a problem for them: it was something they had always done together when they were boys. Gondo's wife, Tseten, propped up the flap of yak fabric on one side of the tent with a stick and made a bed for us from sheepskins and thick quilts. Gondo, Tsedup and I lay three in a row with our balaclava-clad heads protruding outside and our feet facing the glow of the fire. Tseten, perhaps, had had more sense – she stayed inside.
It was a clear night and the ground was covered in a thick frost. I looked straight up into the deep blue-black sky, and puffed out my breath, watching it cloud away on the freezing air. The yaks stood grunting resignedly behind our heads. The air was fresh and clean on my face, and although I had thought they were mad for wanting to sleep out like this, I was grateful for the beauty of the experience. Once again, I was coming close to nature in a way I hadn't known before. At home in England, Tsedup could only sleep with the window wide open, even in midwinter. He craved the Tibetan night air. I now knew why. But it wasn't the same. In London he hadn't had the spectacular dome of the galaxy to ponder. Nor had his tears turned to ice.