The second time...

Today I only left the apartment twice.

The first time was for about fifteen minutes after I realized that the gas for the stove was sputtering to a full stop. I had to walk down the street to find the gas lady (who is conveniently also the rice, oil, and flour lady) so that she could drive her moped to my apartment building and come get the empty can...

The second time was later.

After a day which had mostly been spent resting, cleaning, doing menial unfinished tasks, preparing some food for tomorrow's meeting, reading, waiting for the return of the gas can, and sitting in the sun which chanced to escape through the looming dust clouds and claw through the grimy windows to warm my eager lap.

The second time I left was to grab some dinner with my teammate. We went to a small noodle shop tea house combination, not too far not too close to our school. We were greeted by not one single staff member but a couple of monks in one corner and a grandmother who's body was bent into a permanent ninety degree angle at the waist shuffling around the room. My whole body ached watching her and my spirit could sense the hand of oppression which held her there so we decided to wait only a little while to see if anyone who could cook noodles would show up. I casually regretted the absence of Dawa, the girl who worked there a year ago and had disappeared over the summer.

Within moments the owner/chef/waiter showed up and greeted us with a "tashi deleg" (good wishes) of recognition. We greedily slurped the bowl of noodles, vegetables, and meat that he brought to us. We had no idea what we were getting into.

A mostly covered girl slunk through the door directly to my side. At a glance, I drop my chopsticks and half rise half stammer: Dawa!?!

The song of the next hour can only be sung in fractured Tibetan, smiles, and cups of tea. She paid for our meal, grabbed our arms, marched us less than fifty meters down the street to the room which she had divided in half with a large piece of cardboard. The front half served as a small shop selling drinks and snacks the back half served as her entire existence. Had she been here the whole time? What had she been doing? No chance to find out. She forced plates of candy and raisins on us, she set to the work of making sweet tea, she invited her two friends (one of whom was a bus cashier who insisted that twice she had called my name and twice I hadn't heard her... she makes the second bus cashier that I know by name), and in a room the size of most American bathrooms covered with posters of the most famous idol in Lhasa and Amdo Tibetan singers we chatted... we tried to chat. The only English word that was exchanged the entire time was 'jellybean', but Dawa's Tibetan is slow and accentless and she is patient. She pulled out a picture that I had taken with her a year ago and given her as a gift before going to America last summer. Your face becomes so thin she remarks... and then bursts out laughing when I delcare No no, I have become a pig.

As the sun dipped behind the mountains and began to cast long shadows on the stained street outside we made to leave but not before Dawa insisted we drink another cup of tea and demanded that I come back to visit her tomorrow and often. I stepped out of her room, mind reeling with Tibetan words remembered and used and wished for, and memorized the number spray painted to the tin grating over her home and hugged her, to the astonishment of her neighbors playing snooker two yards away.

That was only the second time I left today. Our Father wastes nothing.

Imagine if I had left a third time?