Namma

had returned to normal family squabbles Tsedup had truly settled in. The strange time of reunion and self- assessment was over. Tsedup had the confidence to act in this way. He was no longer racked with guilt for having run away and he had left behind the peculiar limbo state of his early days at home, when he had been struggling to find a foothold among the people he had left behind. I had watched him tentatively reasserting himself, reacquainting himself with his nomad ways and reconciling his modern mind with his past values. Today he seemed strong and very much at home, if a little petulant.

I asked him what they had been arguing about. It was Sirmo. Her lover had proposed to her. With a thrill of recognition I realised that I had probably witnessed it that night in the dark of the tent. This morning Tsedup had walked in on his mother worrying and fussing at Sirmo. 'If you can't make your mind up, make sure you don't get pregnant,' she had said, never one to mince her words.

Sirmo sat embarrassed, churning milk in the corner of the tent and blushing. As a private sort of girl she was visibly cringing. It reminded me of myself and my own mother. But Sirmo's family were concerned for her: she was the youngest girl in the family, maybe even a little spoilt, especially by her father, and they wanted the best for her. Was it the right thing to marry this boy?

Tsedup knew that his mother had been applying the pressure. He accused her of pushing Sirmo into marriage. The older nomad women were always telling Sirmo she was getting old and should find a husband, and Tsedup was sick of it. He urged Annay to leave Sirmo alone. She was only twenty-one and, as far as he was concerned, she was too young to get married. It was a grievance that, as a nomad man, he would not have expressed and I could see how much the West had influenced him. He turned to Sirmo: 'You're too young,' he pleaded. 'Why don't you wait and do some different things with your life? You'll find someone later on.' Then he continued to rail against his mother, who wept into the sleeve of her tsarer. Sirmo sat subdued in the corner, quietly churning the milk and staring at the hem of her skirt, listening as they discussed her future. She didn't say a word, and whatever she held inside, she did not share it.

For some light relief, when Sirmo had finished churning I suggested we go out and wash the clothes together. We carried the load in a tin basin down to the stream, crouched in a hollow of the bank and scrubbed as the hot sun shimmered on the wet pebbles. She didn't sing.

'You are still young. Don't rush into marriage,' I said.

'I am old, Shermo,' she stated matter-of-factly, and with what I felt was a glimmer of irony.

'No, you're not.'

'Yes, I am.'

It was useless to argue. What was young for me, was not for her. Here people married in their teens and to stray too far into your twenties without finding a mate was frowned upon. I just didn't want her to feel pressured into marrying Chuchong Tashi. If she chose him, I hoped he deserved her. Dolma had said he had a good heart and I hoped so. It was really none of my business what she chose to do. I was imposing my western values, as Tsedup had.

We didn't speak any more. She sighed and the corners of her mouth curled up into a curious smile. I wondered what she was thinking.

Twelve. End of an Era

Snow, soft and white, through the crack in the tent flap. When I had slipped out of the tent for a pee at dawn, it had been unusually dark, the air thick round the yaks. A couple of hours later, I could see the glare of sharp white light through the doorway. I wrapped up in a double layer of tights and my tsarer and stepped out into the drifting flakes. The whole landscape had become invisible: no mountains, no sky. The sheep, usually wandering to the boundaries of our land, stood inert and silent in the middle of the encampment, heads bowed.

I knew there was a bowl of warm water for me to wash in at the main tent, but in my maniacal drive for privacy, I obstinately made my way towards the stream. When I got there it had turned to ice; but I took a small rock and smashed a hole in the surface, cupped my hand into the water and splashed it on my face. It stung. Two young girls collecting water on the other side of the bank smiled and waved at me. They must have thought I was mad.

Inside the main tent it was miserable. The grass floor had turned to mud slush around the edges. We sat in front of the fire on damp Tibetan carpets in our tsarers, as the snow spiralled down through the roof-opening. When the flakes began drifting in earnest, Amnye closed the flap and we sat in darkness, listening to the drips that fell from the yak hair on to the plastic sheeting tied on for makeshift protection. The dogs, usually banished outside, were allowed to come close to the fire. They lay still and sighing as their thick fur prickled with melting snow. Amnye occasionally cursed them when they scrounged for scraps. Shermo Donker coughed consumptively in the smoky gloom.

Despite the conditions today, the offerings of hdir were to be made. The brick-shaped bundles of yellow cloth, containing sacred blessings that Tsedup had bought in Labrang, were to be buried at the foot of Amnye Kula, to propitiate the mountain god. Rhanjer ducked inside the tent blowing fiercely on his hands and settled down to smoke with his father and brothers in front of the fire. He and Tsedup were going to town to collect a monk from the monastery who was to help perform the ritual. After a bowl of hot tea, they set off. Tsedup, who had bandaged his head with a woollen scarf, started up the bike and skidded immediately on the slippery ground, falling into the snow. After a second successful attempt they disappeared. Within seconds the buzz of the engine was mute, swallowed in the silence of falling flakes.

Once they had gone Shermo Donker began flitting from corner to corner like an agitated sparrow, frantically fetching tsampa, butter, the langwha, basin, and kodaks, prayer scarves, all of which were packed into a saddle-bag. Annay brandished a smoking juniper branch around the bag then let it smoulder in the ashes; the tent was filled with the bitter-fresh fragrance of the aromatic sticks. Lhamochab and Donkerchab, two young men from the tribe, arrived on horseback and when the saddle-bag was loaded, set off in the direction of the mountain. I played with the children that day, as I did on most days. They could all count to five in English now and were usually clamouring for my attention, the girls sitting close and holding my hands and Sanjay leaping into my lap. Amnye or Tsedo would frequently scold them for getting so close and they would obediently skulk away. But I didn't mind. I loved them and, anyway, the closer we were, the warmer it was.

It was nearly time to move on. The days were closing in and the nip of frosted air bit deeper with each nightfall. A cold wind blew from the east and as the seasons shifted, the family and the rest of the tribe busied themselves with preparations. We were moving back into the valley soon from the open grassland. The family had their winter house close to where we had been living when we first arrived and every effort was being made to furnish and equip it for our arrival. Apart from Annay and Amnye, who had their house in town, the family had never lived under a roof before; this was to be the first year. The tribe had decided to try to live more comfortably this winter and everyone was busy building and fashioning their new dwellings. Most of them were to occupy the 'railway arch' constructions, built during the Cultural Revolution. There were two rows of them in that valley and they were to provide a convenient, if somewhat ugly, shelter. Our house was separate and stood at the base of a range of hills that ran the length of the stream valley up to the mountain peak of Kula. It was a simple home. The front was covered in a layer of clay and, above it, white plaster. It had a wooden door in the middle with odd windows on either side and a flat, corrugated-metal roof. Inside, there were two small rooms, one with a floor of brick and the other of earth. The walls were made from turf and were plastered over. Shermo Donker had built a clay stove on the earth side and the bricked side awaited an iron stove, which Tsedo would buy from town. It was only partially habitable and a couple of Chinese builders were still finishing off. Tsedo went to check on their progress each day on his motorbike.

Behind the house was a corral with a central dividing wall, one side for the sheep and one for the yaks. During the winter months the animals would be penned inside at night for safety – the mountains around