in time to see the first bright slice of sun peek over the rims of the
highest mountains in the world. Everything, except the minimal dusty
traffic on the street outside her window, was still. Such stillness, she
knew, was a dream.
Blue plastic benches in the half light of morning. Four steaming bowls
on a table: black rice porridge, fresh soy milk, mushroom stuffed buns,
la jiao, and tea boiled eggs filling the space between her and a Chinese
colleague in a feast fit for Chinese kings... or ate least Chinese
construction workers. The gaps in conversation filled by slowly moving
the food from the cracked plastic table to bellies beneath. The morning
soon disappears under the shadow of such a breakfast and the glare of
winter sun.
A phone call, two students waiting at the school gate, and what could
have been a totally different day began. The girl dodged bicycles, women
with babies, men with walking sticks, three wheeled garbage trucks, and
baskets of vegetables with people buried somewhere underneath as she
followed the two adventuresome, or perhaps simply normal, boys to a bus
stop. Two buses, many laughs, a climb into the back of a dump truck and
frighteningly slow and bumpy ride up the mountain later the odd
threesome arrived. Drepung Monastery, the largest in Tibet.
She is ushered into a monk's cell and in a blink of the eye cups of
butter tea and a bowl of slowly going stale cookies appear before her.
Nibbling on the obligatory cookie and blowing the foam off the butter
tea she absorbs the formerly harsh sunlight falling softly on a room
decked out in maroon and gold everything. The Tibetan chatter swirls
around the room in the soft whispers of the monk and the shy laughter of
her students and suddenly a stranger's heavily accented English cuts the
atmosphere like a knife: please give me your passport.
The bare bench in the sun more uncomfortable and intense than any
interrogation room. The man with three ID cards talking quickly into the
phone and a teacher flanked by her two bashful and shamed students. The
man growls threats and admonitions as he records identity information,
the teacher shields her eyes in the sun and shrugs, the students ask:
can we at least go to see the temples? Or are you going to make us go
back to the school? A silence. Of course go see the temples, only next
time don't sneak into a monk's house with a foreigner. And for the
second time with no ticket purchased the three enter in...
The day and story is far from over.
Wandering around with these two students is a stunner for the girl. They
patiently describe the reason for placing food and water beneath random
statues of gods, even duplicates: of course they don't eat that food,
they are statues after all, they smell it. They carefully point out
pictures leaning in some forgotten corner of clouds that look like a
face, or a bear, or a cloud... so as not to miss an opportunity to
worship something. Here a door locked for what appears to have been
eternity covered in butter and small money offerings, of course none
other than their most famous lama's bathroom, which only he has ever
used and that over fifty years ago. Offerings to perhaps the cleanest
bathroom in the city. There a thousand identical statues, don't worry
Ms. Kelly they forgive you for not believing in them. Now another room,
now another sickly buttery smell, now another visitor desperate to
practice English: where are you from? Oh America! American English is so
delicious. Everywhere the incessant clicking and sliding of the boys'
prayer beads as they mumble through the day.
A lunch of sweet milk tea and meat dumplings then a quick stumble slide
down the mountain, past the man sitting in his hole muttering
meaningless chants all day, through the village, a lap around another
temple back out into the pot holed what's left of the city street
beneath. Two buses later and three exhausted and dusty travelers arrive
at their currently reconstructed school gate only to wish that their
beds were 100 yards closer.
The girl awakes for a second time that day to rub the grit from her eyes
as the sun begins to cast long shadows and her friend sends a message
declaring her arrival at the school gate. Hungry and happy to be with
someone fairly predictable they chat their way across the city and stuff
themselves with potato noodles, pumpkin, and tofu skins boiled in a
spicy soup and dipped in sesame oil and vinegar. The meal finishes with
a desire for Popsicles as the heat from the spice sloshes around in
their stomachs.
The stars liter the sky and the girl who awoke to one day and lived
perhaps three or more climbs out of her dirt and oil encrusted clothes
and into the same bed from which she awoke to the first bright slice of
sun peeking over the rims of the mountains. A text message: I have yak
milk for you please hurry I am afraid it will die. The girl drifts into
a restless sleep knowing one should never cry over dead milk.
Once upon a time there was a girl. She trusted her Father, she awoke
with Him peering over the mountains at her, she squeezed next to Him in
blue plastic benches, she followed Him around the city and in and out of
places where He was not welcomed, she wore Him as her armor and carried
Him as her shield, she rested in Him, she awoke once more to Him laying
the earth down to sleep, she glimpsed the twinkle in His eyes as He
called the stars out by name. He woke her up and He put her to sleep.
And that was that.
