Namma

liability.

In the evening we congregated at our house. Annay held the fort as the children shrieked and fought together in the limited space. It was rare for all the cousins to be united and tonight it was mayhem. Two of Rhanjer's children, Samlo and Rinchenchet, had also turned up to stay the night. Although their own house was only a hundred yards away, there was no way they were going to miss out.

At bedtime the boys went to our hut outside. Gorbo was in charge. He supervised as Rinchen, Samlo, Dorlo and Sanjay squabbled together under the quilts. Yeshe did not want to join them. He had specifically asked Tsedup if he could sleep with him on top of the dung mountain outside. Tsedup was delighted. We wrapped them up in sheepskins as they lay together in sub-zero temperatures on the small summit, with only their noses poking out. Tsedup told me later that they spent a long time watching the shooting stars and then, thinking his uncle well travelled, Yeshe had asked him if he had ever been to the moon. It hadn't been such an unreasonable suggestion, since England seemed just as far away to Yeshe.

'When you went up in a plane, you must have been really close to the stars,' he had said. 'Did you see people and houses on them?' Tsedup had told him yes, and Yeshe had decided to go there when he grew up.

I put the girls to bed next to the clay stove. Dickir Che, Ziggy, Dawa and Rinchenchet were all inside one huge sheepskin that had been sewn together like an enormous sleeping-bag. I threatened to tickle them all and they retreated to the bottom of the bag, screeching and writhing to escape me. I left them breathless and giggling together. Then their mumblings became silence as they fell asleep. But just as Tsedo, Shermo Donker, Annay and I were about to bed down for the night, Dorlo burst into the room, tears pouring down his cheeks. He flung his arms round his grandmother.

'What's wrong?' Annay asked.

'There's a ghost out there,' he sobbed. 'Cousin Gorbo told me.'

We laughed as she hushed and rocked him, then let him settle in her bed on the floor. His gunslinging bravado had disappeared, and Dorlo was not the big man he professed to be, just a child. In fact now, a more lovable one.

I woke on Christmas morning to Dorlo climbing inside my tsarer. 'It is a big gun, isn't it?' he said. I had to give him top marks for persistence, but I wasn't going to give in. It reminded me of my own Christmases as a child. The anguish I had suffered, waiting for my parents to wake up and make the tea, then drink it, before my brother and I were allowed to open our presents. Now Dorlo would have to learn the same patience. I went outside to check on Tsedup and Yeshe. They were still sound asleep on top of the dung heap. The early-morning frost sparkled on the mound of sheepskins. Not even a nose was visible. I hoped they had been warm enough in the night. We prodded them awake and Annay and I laughed at them as they emerged, blinking, from the pile. It was the most bizarre location for a bed.

When we were all assembled we went down to Rhanjer's home for the party. He lived with his wife and three girls in a smart brick house at the side of the railway-arch dwellings. Although he had five children, his two boys stayed in town. The eldest, Tinlee, was a monk and lived in the monastery, and the younger, Samlo, was at school in the week and lived with his uncle, a teacher. As we arrived at the house, Gurra, Rhanjer's eldest daughter, ran out to escort us past the dogs. Her father stood on the porch, grinning festively. He was proud of his home. It was much larger than ours, with steps up to the front door and brick floors throughout. He guided us in to where his wife, Shermo Domatso, was busy preparing for the festivities. She was a diminutive woman with a wide smile of perfectly white teeth and laughter lines fanning out from soft eyes. She spoke gently and melodiously. 'Losar zung!' she said in greeting, as I walked in. It was the closest thing to 'Happy Christmas' in the nomad vocabulary, but really meant 'Happy New Year'. Losar was their biggest annual festival, and Tsedup had told them that Christmas in England was like Losar in Tibet. In terms of seasonal status, this was true, but I was to discover that the nomads' idea of celebrating was quite different from our own.

The house had been festooned with silver decorations and the table was piled high with sweets, fruit, boiled meat and drinks. In the back room, several hundred momos awaited. We all went to sit down on the platform. Azjung sat in front of the table, the sunlight from the window mapping out the lines on his old skin with shadow. He thumbed his prayer beads. As we entered he smiled and motioned for Tsedup and me to come and sit with him.

'Why do the westerners celebrate Christmas?' he asked Tsedup curiously.

Not wishing to instigate a full-blown theological discussion, Tsedup found an analogy to make himself understood. 'It is their Buddha's birthday,' [1] he explained.

Azjung nodded carefully. Tibetans didn't celebrate anybody's birthday, so no doubt he found this answer strange. I had always found it strange that they did not count birthdays. Here, everyone automatically advanced in age at the same time every New Year, which was around February. Sometimes this led to confusion for me: it meant that a baby born in January would be called a year old a month later. This was probably why nomad children always looked much younger than their western counterparts.

Many years before, when Tsedup had applied for his Indian passport to leave for England with me, he was supposed to have produced a birth certificate. He had had no idea what they were talking about. When I had explained, he had said, ‘I exist. I don't need a piece of paper to prove it.' Nevertheless, the authorities seemed to think it was important. He had remembered his mother telling him he was born in winter, so he had picked a date at random: 2 December. From then on, to the outside world, he had existed. It had been Tsedup's first taste of the infuriating bureaucracy of modern society and it hadn't stopped there, for they had also asked his surname. Tibetans don't use their family names as we do in our everyday life in the West. In Tibet everyone is known by their first name. Although his family name was Kambo-Wasser, Tsedup had never used any other name but Tsedup. In his culture it simply wasn't necessary.

'What is your father's name?' the official had persisted.

Tsedup had stood confused. 'Karko,' he had said.

From that day, it had been Tsedup's surname and then mine.

The western Buddha's birthday was in full swing by mid-morning. Dombie and her husband Tsering Samdup, Gondo and Tseten had now arrived, having finished their morning chores at home. It was a rare thing for the women to come away for a whole day and night, and was only possible thanks to their neighbours, who had agreed to round up the animals at the end of the day. I was glad that they had made it. With all the family and half of the tribe competing for space in the parlour, it was time to distribute the presents. They had been stacked up on the family altar since we had arrived and the children had sat patiently, staring with saucer eyes at the bulky yellow-paper packages. It felt almost ceremonial as we began to give them out. Tsedup and I had chosen a different gift for each child and we felt around the shape of each parcel to determine what was inside, then gave it to them. Each time, nine other pairs of eager eyes followed the parcel to its destination. The children shrieked with delight when the contents were revealed. When Dorlo received his long-expected rifle, he jumped around hysterically on the platform. He loaded the plastic bullets into the cartridge with professional ease and cocked his weapon, ready to fire. He took aim at Yeshe and before anyone could stop him, he pulled the trigger. Annay screamed. But nothing happened. He squeezed the trigger again. Still nothing. Unbelievably, the gun was faulty and, feeling cheated and frustrated, Dorlo collapsed in tears as everyone tried to calm him. The excitement of Christmas was just too much for him. It was too much for little Sanjay too. Among other things, we had given him the plastic dinosaur and when he peeled back the paper and saw the hideous creature inside, he dropped it and ran away in shock.

The children's mothers collected up all the presents for safekeeping as soon as they were opened. I thought it strange that they didn't let the children play with them now, since that was what Christmas Day was all about. But they were shrewder than I. They knew that if today was to be anything like the Losar they were used to, those presents would shortly be garbage.

I soon saw what they meant. The nomads really knew how to party and, sure enough, I watched the day progress from the initial chatting and sipping of drinks into a full-scale riot. Most of the tribe had arrived to join in by now and since there was a severe overcrowding problem in the house, everyone spilled outside. It was a warm day, the wind had settled and the sun shone favourably from the sapphire sky. There was nothing to prevent a game or two out in the yard, I thought. Perhaps a football match with Samlo's new ball. But