Dashing in front of cars gearing up their engines as the light turns from red to green, my student's sister, Tibetan writing tutor, and friend waits shyly for me at the corner holding some small thin plastic bags of vegetables: our lunch.
She is small, made smaller by her mannerisms: eyes quick to turn downwards, tongue peeking from apologetic lips, the posture of one who is sure she's going to be beat from above. You would never know that she trained inland to be a dancer for three years. Her dirty hair pulled back in a bun, obviously exhausted, carrying a heart heavy with grief. Her mother died five weeks ago of a brain annuerism... she is the oldest of at least eight children... according to Tibetan Buddhism her mother's soul is wandering now, and will continue to do that for another two weeks. She is sad, lonesome even in her joyful moments, her mind wandering with her mother's spirit.
Today is the first time I've ever been invited to her house.
We walk down streets that smell like urine and turn a corner down a narrow lane empty except for a few garbage collectors sitting on the side walk having tea. We duck into an alley just wide enough for two people to walk side by side and nearly climb up the wall as a motorcycle comes roaring through. Houses built on top of houses, alleys that dead end in trash heaps, and courtyards that never see the sun. Through a rusty red door up some concrete stairs and to the right is her house. A room.
A room slammed with all the necessities of life: a stove, broken mirror, two hard Tibetan style beds, a small table, cabinet for books, clothes, and anything else, some plastic bowls and a few thermos' of hot water is the entire world. A cup materializes out of no where and I find myself set to the task of drinking an entire thermos of some ginger and pear concoction. Her sister who is my student is there, and another sister with a one year old baby also stays with her. My student is perpetually busy, never sits down but wanders in and out cleaning anything she can, boiling more water, fetching things for the baby. The other sister throws the little one on her back, rubs his recently shaved head, and continuously licks his pacifier. The baby chortles, makes delightfully wise and curious expressions, and does the one trick he knows: lifts his hands in the Tibetan sign for 'drink some more', and my friend sets about explaining the Tibetan farmer's almanac to me.
Time passes.
We go about the business of cooking lunch. Fried vegetables and rice requiring more dishes that have materialized from the same unseen place as my cup. Oil made from their hometown and poured from dusty stained containers heated just so becomes the base for every dish. The process takes time because the dishes must be cleaned in order to be used for the next thing. As the third dish of fried egg and tomatoes gets set on the table the first becomes stone cold. The sisters and I sit down on beds and a rope stool to eat. The baby gets fussy but his mom hasn't eaten. I mutter a half hearted 'di-sho' (come!) knowing that the typical response that I get from children is blood curdling screams and to my surprise he toddles over and begs to get in my lap where I sit rocking and humming over him until his mother takes him back.
Time passes.
Lunch is over but not the day. I offer to clean dishes; an offer that is met by scornful looks from all three of the sisters, including the one who doesn't speak English. So instead I make my way up the grated metal stairs to the roof. Two sisters stay behind to clean and the third with the baby also heads up. The view is strange. Like standing in a rooftop soup with the rim of the bowl some dusty mountain ridges. All is sun baked gray tan color. So I shift my perspective and in surprise notice all of the other people on rooftops: grandmothers sleeping on crocheted afghan covered cushions, young men playing guitar, women hanging laundry, children darting playfully through tangles of wires, and an old man with butter tea cup in hand and jaw dropped at the sight of a foreigner... Lhasa lives on a rooftop.
The baby entertains as sisters below clean madly. I walk with him in circles around the dusty wire strewn roof until his chubby legs give out and he sleeps with his mother on some cardboard in one corner. Making my retreat to the cold dark room below, the two sisters prepare to make sweet milk tea, and I warm my feet near the blessed heat lamp. In a moment with just the two of us my friend whispers: this would be a so happy day for me if my mother were... without her I have no.
Time passes.
Hot water comes and goes, thermos' are emptied and their contents transferred from one to the next, my cup is emptied and filled in one never ending cycle and the sleeping baby and third sister come down to join us as the wind has picked up outside blowing cold dust and grit over the rooftops. They chat, we pass miniature oranges around, the sisters begin to tell tales of their childhood together, mock each other, and make jokes, and things get really silly when my student mixes up the thermoses and we get drinks of absurd combinations. We laugh in that violent silent way so as not to wake the baby. So he wakes up to spite our attempts at quiet and is given a bowl of roasted barley flour to dip his pacifier in, they offer me some mud rolled into pill shape and blessed by a monk, it is declined but the baby reaches for the extra helping. Then we sing. We sing the only song that all four of us know: the Tibetan alphabet song... we sing it until it is lines the ridges of my brain, the sweet milk tea runs dry, and the sun creeps totally out of sight... all to the uncontrolled mirth of the baby.
Time passes.
And my student and I get up to go back to the school and my friend also comes so that she can meet another friend for dinner leaving the cold room for the third sister and the baby. We make plans for the following week, and my last in Lhasa before the break, we make plans for next term, make plans for the summer. She says: Kelly teacher, my house is also yours... And I sense that this is the most that she can give me and means to do just that.
Time has passed: bus number 502 squeals to an exhaust fumed stop and we part.
But, for six hours I was a sister.
