Namma

livestock, a Sky Woman usually has a female audience and her stories provide more of an insight into intimate relationships. Thus she may tell of marriages, love or family concerns and disasters, and just as the old stories of the Sky Men assume mythical proportions, so the tales of the Sky Women are, in their turn sometimes romanticised. For that is often the nature of women.

On the afternoon of the interrogation we visited the Sky Man. He and Tsedup's grandmother, Ama-lo-lun, lived at the monastery with Tsedup's brother, Cumchok, and his nephew, Tinlee, who were both monks. The monastery stood at the top of a hill above the town at the end of a winding track; it was small in comparison with the palace of Labrang, yet still elaborate enough to suggest its spiritual significance in the community. It sat among a jumble of small dwellings ramshackle and tumbledown, inhabited by the monks, the whitewashed walls propped up by tree-trunks stripped of bark, each with a wooden door, leading to quiet courtyards, books and rooms of contemplation.

We stopped outside one such door in the labyrinth, and as we pushed it open a small brass bell tinkled above our heads. The sound was not enough to alert the tiny aged figure who knelt on the veranda opposite, bent over like a dried piece of leather. Ama-lo-lun continued sorting through a pile of dried flowers, oblivious of our presence, her careful handling of the blue and yellow blooms interspersed with prayer. But as we crossed the bare courtyard and came up the dirt path towards the wooden house we called out to her and she lifted her head, not knowing us for a moment, her pebble eyes squinting. 'Sou ray? Who is it?' she exclaimed, and then as we came closer she remembered: the One Who Is My Heart.

She cried out Tsedup's name and we helped her to her feet as she clucked in appreciation and led us back down the steps of the beautifully made house. It had been built for Cumchok at Amnye's instruction, but Azjung and Ama-lo-lun had their own small hut to the side of the courtyard. It was meagre by comparison: small, with a turf roof and a dirt floor, a sleeping platform, a stove and one window, glassless but covered in dusty plastic, which had weathered and torn at the corner. Dust had settled deep into the skins on the bed and the pots hanging from the wall were soot-stung and blackened. I smelt dried meat, earth and strong tea, as the dented kettle steamed and the fire crackled and spat out the husks of dried grass from the dung. They seemed to have only the barest necessities, a habit that had lingered, no doubt, from two nomadic lives. It is customary now for elderly nomads to settle in a house when their bodies can no longer endure the hardships of weather-beating and work, but a roof over the head does not quell the nomad spirit. Azjung and Ama-lo-lun looked every bit as wild as they sat on the dirt floor in their sheepskin tsarers and served us the bitter, black tea. They were exactly as Tsedup had described them when we were in England. In the years while we waited for his documents he had feared that they would die before his return, but it had not been too late and that day, watching them together, I was moved.

Despite his years, Azjung was a remarkable-looking man: his old skin was taut on his skull, like stretched hide, over cheekbones smooth as stone; beneath his shorn head his brow was as square as the thin line of his mouth, and as he turned to lift his bowl I saw that his nose was not flat at the bridge, as many Tibetans' are, but ridged and aquiline, almost aristocratic. He smiled at me and the deep sockets of his eyes were filled with a dark sparkle.

Ama-lo-lun sat before us fingering her prayer beads, her lips moving rapidly as she mouthed her silent mantra. Her shock of dreadlocked grey hair was woven into two miniature plaits, one on either side of her neck, which protruded rakishly like two stick antennae. Around her neck she wore a tangle of religious adornments: a string of ivory prayer beads, a small, faded silk purse containing blessings, and a piece of frayed, luminous green ribbon given to her by a lama. Her tsarer seemed as old as herself, a crush of matted sheepskin and faded trim, beneath which she wore a soiled, bottle-green sweatshirt turned inside out. Her small face was a lattice of furrows and her green eyes burned, keen and sharp, darting from face to floor to space, observing everything and missing nothing. Occasionally she would laugh, a curiously girlish outburst, and punctuate each sentence, each pause between sentences, with 'Oh, yeah,' muttered through toothless gums.

The Sky Man spoke to Tsedup in a low voice while bent double over the prayer beads that he fingered slowly and methodically in his big hand. His sunken cheeks filled and puffed out the words in a throaty resonance. He had a presence, as if time itself had settled around him like a cloak. Azjung was not only a man with a good memory, he was living history. He listened carefully to his young relative and gave ponderous, methodical answers, smiling benignly. He wanted to hear about the West and Tsedup told him. Occasionally he laughed huskily at something ironic or surprising, relishing this new knowledge and storing it for future reference. New stories from a new world.

As they sat talking by the fire, which belched out a small cloud of smoke now and again, I felt humbled by the spirit of this old couple. They had enormous dignity, and it struck me that, because of the importance of oral tradition here, they had attained the respect they so rightly deserved. It was clear that the more old people talked, the more others listened. Their wisdom could directly affect the morality of a society and they were therefore placed at the top of the hierarchy and were profoundly revered. I had always felt that there was so much more I could have learnt from my own grandmother. I had tried to suck up her words as we sipped tea from china cups, the clock ticking on the sideboard, the dog snoring in the chair. She was my history. But, in the West, the war stories of a pensioner are often discarded as of little consequence. The young audience are too busy to listen, too bored by the past. In a fast-moving world there is no time for stories, no fire to tell them around. And the spark of imagination died with TV.

Tsedup listened respectfully to the old man, laughing with him, debating, learning. Sometimes they fell into quiet, intimate discussion, and I could hear the steady chink of the prayer beads and the squeak of Ama-lo-lun's prayer wheel as it spun in her bony grip. She smiled at me with such warmth that I was reminded of my own grandmother. They shared the same strength of character honed from years of experience, both diminutive but powerful women, their bodies decrepit but their minds alive with wisdom, defiance and raw energy. My grandmother had loved Tsedup because she sensed his respect for her. When she died, he telephoned his family to tell them. They asked for her name. He told them Lily. I could hear them pronouncing it tentatively down the receiver. Then Ama-lo-lun and Tsedup's mother came to this monastery and asked the monks to pray for her spirit on its journey to the next life. One hundred butter lamps were lit for her here on this hillside. A life that had begun in 1910 in the depths of suburban London, had ended with a tribute by Tibetan nomads on the Roof of the World. It was memories such as these that made the polarity of our cultures and their fusion seem even more remarkable.

Before we left, Azjung took a small felt holdall from inside the musty cupboard. Tied carefully inside it was a small polished bowl made from a light substance. He said he didn't know whether it was wood or fungus. It had been in his family for four generations and his ancestor had paid for it with a yak. It was obviously of value. A Tibetan's prize possession, along with the obligatory knife and tinder box, is their own bowl, so it was a great honour when he pushed it into Tsedup's hand and told him to keep it.

We closed the wooden door behind us and heard the familiar tinkle of the bell. Time had stopped in the dark dust of that hut. I could still hear the voice of the Sky Man and it was no longer a simple resonance, a vibration on the dirt floor and soot walls, but the echo of a thousand forefathers in my ears.

Seven. A Woman's Work

It wasn't an echo, but a snorting and snuffling that woke me the next day. A yak was licking the side of the tent, its tongue rasping against the coarse canvas. I beat the moist imprint of its muzzle with the back of my hand shouting, 'Sshtoo!' as I had been taught and it thundered away with a snap of the guy rope that continued to vibrate in a dizzying drone. I lay for a few moments, feeling the warmth of our bodies, watching my spiralling breath. Then, pulling my sheepskin tsarer loosely around me, I stood up on the damp grass and shucked on my shoes. It was six a.m. and nature was calling.

Outside was silent, apart from the odd sheep bleat and yak grunt. I crouched, shivering, in the frosted grass by the stream's bank and watched dawn laying down her palette of rose, peach and gold, the low cloud suspended over the Yellow river. It was a rare moment: there was no one but myself and the animals in sight. Behind me our flock of sheep lay sleeping in a large orderly circle on the grass. They were nothing like the