Broken days

Some things are broken. Some entire days are broken.

I walked a long, dirty road stained with nasty to get to a small, dark room now crowded with familiar. My friend sat with her cousin watching a documentary on the laptop. I shuffled clothes and books around on a bed to make space to sit. Her sister walked through the door with bulging bags of vegetables. The stove was lit to make tea.

The documentary was about the quest to find a lama's reincarnated self. You became cold as the monk traversed snowy heights. You became disappointed when he arrived at empty villages. You became shocked when the chubby child chose the correct beads. But you were never forgiven, you were never ransomed, you never became free...


Finding this child is more important than a thousand of my own lives the monk said, teary eyed.

My friend and her sister had seen it more than a dozen times and could quote it. The cousin was transfixed. I was sinking deep into depression as the lostness of an entire people group clamped down on my heart. Before my friend had left for Beijing she had been dreaming of another Word, a better one. Now she was offering carrot cake crumbs to a picture of a demon with human skulls around his neck.

They paused the documentary to take a break for lunch. The picture was paused on the visage of their most famous lama. When the grandmother came in and caught sight of the computer screen she literally froze in what appeared to be awe and wouldn't eat, speak, or blink until the screensaver came on. At which point she started breathing again. I shuddered clinking my chopsticks hard against the bowl. The food tasted like ashes.

Afterward, she walked me to the street corner. The sky was as low as my spirit. You are my only best friend she said and soon you will go. 

The sky dribbled with sorrow.

An hour of buying random gifts with my teammate and getting a Tibetan man to knock forty yuan off a blanket by appealing in Tibetan to his better nature left me with a bag of ground meat walking towards a bus stop, tired.

Walking right into a teacher from our school who I had seen several times, always exchanged smiles with, but never spoken to. Are you going to the school? I asked in Tibetan, assuming that if he was teaching at our school he wasn't able to speak English. He seemed only a little surprised, suggested we get a taxi, changed his mind when our bus pulled up a moment later, jumped on, finding two seats for us near the back.

The bus ride was really just a conversation that made me smile for its awkward use of random bits of language that will make me sick for this place when I'm gone. I found out that he was from Lhasa, had studied Chinese in Beijing, and was pretty much miserable with it. I waited while his confusion of words rushed to my ears and looked at this man who was trapped. His muddle of languages only enhanced his obvious inner struggles with the life he was living.


I'm happy today that we could talk I told him in Tibetan as we neared our school. But my speaking is so poor he muttered.

Back at home I went about the entirely too complicated task of cooking an American meal for my monk friend who had organized our birthday party. On the menu: sloppy joes, mashed potatoes, deviled eggs, and peas. He arrived half an hour late, gobbled it all up, and changed chairs to lean back and stretch it out. After a lighthearted announcement from him that he was only a two day a week monk, I and my teammate agreed to walk him back to the monastery because the evening was beautiful.


How do you feel about leaving soon Kelly, he asked. Nea simpa sulibulichasha I quickly answered.

My heart has become messy.

The walk back was notable for the man walking towards us with his shirt pulled up scratching his nipples in the dusk. My teammate needed to make a quick stop at the copy shop near our school gate and I sat down on something that only after three years in Lhasa I was confident was meant for sitting. Between us we were two yuan short for the copies and in nervous stumbling random Chinese words tried to explain the dilemma to the copy shop people who know and, apparently, love us... luckily, they are our friends, and what's two yuan between friends?

Mei guan xi she said, which I took to mean: no matter.

Maybe I am the one broken.