Sihpromatum - Backpacks and Bra Straps

by Savannah Grace

  “Don’t blame this on Savannah!” Ammon barked.

  “Why do you always have to defend her?” Bree stood on the bed and adopted a challenging stance in front of Ammon. I knew this was the starting point and already felt nervous. I hated when I was the cause of a fight because someone else took my side. I knew how irrational Bree could be, and that neither she nor Ammon would back down. I also knew how fast an argument could fire up over nothing. When she got in this kind of a mood, I dared not test her. On many occasions, I had been able to manipulate an argument and back her into a corner verbally – but it always resulted in me getting beaten up. She once chased me up the stairs of our old house and, like a troglodyte, clobbered me over the head so hard that my knees buckled and I fell to the ground. I was spared further harm by her weird sense of humour; she started laughing her butt off at the sight of me twitching on the floor like a fly that had been swatted. At that point, I could do no more than slowly start crawling away on my hands and knees.

  Before violence commenced, she often threw out an unrelated insult that was only meant to hurt the other person, instead of addressing whatever the actual issue was. This lack of verbal skill annoyed Ammon immensely.

  Her first attack was, “And you’re balding, too.”

  “How is that even relevant!?” Ammon was taken aback.

  “Because,” she began, but then followed it up with a very typical Bree statement, “Just uughhh!” She was feeling a bit edgier than usual, as well, given her monthly hormonal overflow, which did not help this particularly fraught situation. She was frenetic, irritable, and fiery. The tone of their voices quickly became harsher and louder. A few uncalled for remarks started flying and, before we knew it, we were hopelessly engaged in the middle of a family feud.

  And just like that, our nice day of cards and laundry turned on its head, just like Bree’s Gemini mood swings. I can’t believe I’m locked up with these loonies. Surely this can’t be good for a maturing teenager. I’m going to come out of this as crazy as they are.

  “Bring it on!” Bree lured us in. “I’m not afraid of you, and I’m not going to back down.” She was up on the bed at this point, with her fists raised in a fighting stance.

  “I’m going to kill her,” Ammon replied through tightly clenched teeth. They’d had a few small fights, but this was a major blow-out. I’d had just about enough of both of them, but I had to do what I could lest it get even worse. I actually found myself ineffectively shouting over and over, as though I were yelling at two concrete gargoyles with purely decorative, painted-on ears, “Ammon, don’t you dare hurt my sister!” I had hoped that it would have more effect than it did.

  “Ammon you’re not going to hurt your sister, so just stop this,” Mom said.

  “No, but as soon as she hits me, it becomes self-defence. You act like you’re ten years old, Bree, and it drives me crazy! And you act as if you’re completely uninterested in where we are or what we’re doing.”

  “You can try and hit me, but I’m so mad at you, I swear I’ll beat you up,” Bree said, always egging him on.

  “I’m going to kill her. I seriously am.” He directed his threat at Mom, almost in an ‘asking permission’ way.

  “You will not! Don’t kill my sister!” I was still hollering away, but no one seemed to hear me, or if they did, they sure didn’t seem to care.

  “Why do you say that to him?” Bree said, stabbing me with her dagger-sharp eyes. “Why don’t you beg me not to kill your stupid brother?”

  “Oh geez. Because you’re half his size!”

  “Yeah, but I’m tough…” she said. “And crazy.”

  This wasn’t going to make Ammon any calmer, and I was beginning to wonder why I even bothered trying. But the rabid look in his eye was getting worse; he was losing control. Bree was already a leaping, crazed monkey, daring him to let loose. If she on a suicide mission? Does she really think she can beat him in a physical fight?

  Perhaps my feeble attempts to stop them helped because they did eventually give it up. My sister lives, mostly because Ammon eventually decided it just wasn’t worth it and went out walking to calm down. Deeply shaken by the emotional turmoil we’d just experienced, we all collapsed onto our beds when it was finally over and fell into an uneasy sleep.

  I think the whole thing boiled down to poor Ammon being stuck in the middle of a high-altitude, three-way monthly period.

  When I awoke, I heard gentle, chirping newborns. Just outside the window, crammed in the corner between the roof and the wall, was a little grey nest with two squeaky pigeon chicks. The sound of new life in its first hours on this earth and the innocent purity of their cries restored my hope. Like the calm waters after an ocean storm, it reaffirmed that life goes on.

  Privacy

  27

  It wasn’t long before the next emotional wave hit. The negative energy was flowing, and we were breaking down bit by bit. I woke up with sore eyes and an intense headache.

  “Mom? I seriously want to cut my hair. This is so retarded,” I whined, tugging at the metre of knotted hair attached to my throbbing head.

  “You can’t. Your hair is beautiful. Why would you want to chop it off?”

  “It’s a mess, and it’s so annoying to brush, and it’s too hot. I can’t stand it.”

  “It’d be the same with shorter hair.”

  “But it’s too long. It’s so long I can freaking wipe my ass with it in the shower.”

  “Hey! Watch the language.”

  I couldn’t believe my ears. That was really too much. “Are you serious? You, who used the black market to smuggle your entire family into Tibet? You, who made me do something illegal–”

  “I didn’t make you do anything.”

  “And then you talk about language?”

  “Savannah, stop being so rude. And you’re not cutting your hair. Besides, I’m the one who brushes and braids it for you every day.” Mom and I battled constantly over my hair.

  “Just get it over with and let her cut it,” Ammon said, rubbing his temples, his headache also worsening after two days of arguing. “Who cares, anyway? Why don’t you just let her do what she wants?”

  “ ’Cause my mom always marched me into the barbershop with my five brothers and gave me the same awful cut they got,” she told me, for what must’ve been the hundredth time. “Everyone else had long, beautiful hair, and I really wanted mine long, but it was always short and ugly, ‘cause it was ‘practical’.” Mom was finally allowed to let her hair grow out as a teenager, but once she was nineteen and pregnant with Ammon, it never grew much past shoulder length. I knew she was afraid that if I cut mine, it would never grow back, either, so her answer was always, “No way.”

  “Okay, whatever. But I am getting my nose pierced in India,” I said.

  “You know what? I’m sick of you constantly bitching. Do whatever you want,” she said, and her language surprised me so much that I physically took a step back. After the blow-out with Bree, Mom was not feeling particularly disposed to tolerate any more grumpiness or teenage-style mood swings. She grabbed the camera, the room key, and her money pouch and threw them all in her daypack – hard. “Forget it. You’re not coming with us today. I’m not going to take you if you’re going to act like this. I need a break.”

  “She’s not coming? Why not?” Ammon asked as he stood in the doorway waiting for us to go sightseeing for the day.

  Before turning to leave, she said, “And if you’re not careful, Savannah, I’m going to send you home to stay with your dad.”

  “Well, that’s just great,” I shouted after them as they walked out the door. “Now what am I supposed to do?” I couldn’t believe how unfair she was being. She knew I wanted to go home, but she also knew that I had nothing left there to go back to. I was trapped in a lose/lose situation.

  I slowly became aware of my oddly silent surroundings, and a few scary thoughts crossed my mind, as usual. Thoughts like, “What if they don’t come back? How would I
call the police? How would I know where to go?” My last concern, as silly as it will sound, was, “What on earth would I do with all their junk?”

  But as my disappointment and shock cooled off, I realized that there was an upside. This was the first time I’d spent without the family in, how long? I ran to my journal lying open on my bed – one hundred and thirty-three days. I was about to enjoy my first moments without them. As unfair as I thought Mom had been, I thought I’d better take advantage of this rare opportunity. I scanned the area suspiciously, checking for peepholes to make sure I was truly alone. The almost complete lack of privacy had been gripping my loins, especially lately. It had crossed my mind a thousand times, even before we’d embarked on this familial odyssey. There’s more than one way to turn lemons into lemonade, I thought, as I unzipped my pants and reached my hand down to that soft spot I’d so dearly missed.

  “You know, it’s a real shame you missed out today,” Mom said when they returned hours later, in that motherly, rub-it-in way she sometimes adopted.

  “You’re the one who left me here. I didn’t say I didn’t want to go,” I said, but I didn’t push it.

  “Yeah, she’s the one who really cares about what we’re seeing around here,” Ammon defended me.

  “We even got to see the monks during one of their debates. They were all gathered around in groups of two or three. We didn’t know what they were saying, of course, but they were waving their arms and slapping their hands in front of the other guys’ faces,” Bree said.

  “Drepung is the biggest monastery around Lhasa; some say it’s the biggest in the whole world, and it’s built right on the side of a mountain. It used to house ten thousand monks in its prime, but not anymore. Only about seven hundred monks live there now after the Communists killed most of them,” Ammon said. “It’s by far the coolest thing we’ve seen in Tibet, possibly even in all of China.”

  “Thanks a whole lot, Mom. I sure am glad I missed that.” I glared at her as self-righteously as I dared.

  “So, what did you do with yourself all day, Savannah?” Bree asked in an attempt to change the subject.

  “Oh, not much really. Wrote in my journal, read a bit, reorganized my bags. You know, just fiddled around a bit.” I didn’t dare let them know how much I’d enjoyed myself, and what a much-needed break it had been. I smiled to myself as I realized how reenergized I felt.

  A Holy Province

  28

  When we were ready to see more of Lhasa on Ammon’s twenty-sixth birthday, I asked, “So, what am I missing here? If what you say is true, that Tibet wants to break away from China and be its own country, why are there so many Chinese flags everywhere?” Bold red flags flapped from windows on nearly every story of every house, including the Tibetan part of town where we were staying. I expected to see the streets flooded with beautiful Tibetan flags (colourful blue and red stripes bursting from a bright yellow sun), and bumper stickers reading ‘Free Tibet’, like I’d seen in other parts of the world, but they were nowhere to be seen.

  “I’m not a Tibetan historian or anything, but it’s looking a lot like Chinese propaganda to me. It’s everywhere,” was Ammon’s answer. “This part of town is obviously the most interesting, though a little depressing when you think that most of the city is now Chinese. Within a very short time, they’ll be finished constructing the railroad. You remember that big one with all the people working on it that we passed on our way here? Well, they’re currently building a route up from Golmud that’s apparently nearly done,” he said without intonation. “After that, everyone will have super easy access to Tibet and the domestic tourists and migrants will flood in, crowding the Tibetans out of their own country and oppressing them even more.”

  Despite this, monks and regular Tibetans were busy making their pilgrimages, spinning their hand-held prayer wheels as they walked the streets prayerfully. A Tibetan ma ni lag ‘khor is a cylindrical wheel on a spindle that can be made of many different materials: metal, wood, stone, leather, or even coarse cotton. Sizeable wheels are often found within Buddhist monasteries; some of the largest are turned continuously by water mills. The Om Mani Padme Hum mantra (meaning, roughly, Praise to the Jewel of the Lotus) is traditionally written on the outside of the prayer ornamentation. It’s believed that spinning it counter-clockwise gives the same effect as reading or reciting the inscriptions, and that simply touching one of these holy wheels helps to offset the risk of bad karma.

  We made our way to the magnificent Potala Palace on foot. It was a huge, thirteen-story building with white staircases and dozens of windows with rusty-red accents that loomed over Lhasa on the hillside. Gazing up at it, nestled in a natural bowl surrounded by some of the highest mountains in the world, I was thrilled to think that this was the home of the Dalai Lama.

  The more Ammon told me about the religion and the history of the conflict that had occurred there, the more I realized just how little I’d actually known about this renowned place. I was once again struck by how very much more there was to learn.

  As we approached the entrance, Bree said, “Look at all the tourists.” They were mainly older people, and most were wearing shorts and hiked-up socks along with bum bags buckled around their waists.

  “Bree, shhhh. People can understand you here,” I said, but she didn’t care. Her eyes were still puffy from the nights she’d spent crying, but to all outward appearances, we looked like a healthy, normal, emotionally well-balanced family.

  “Why are there never any cute guys? Do they just not travel?” she continued.

  “Oh man,” Ammon said. I could see his jaw tighten. “We’re actually lucky enough to be travelling around in Tibet, and all you care about are guys? You are impossible.” He directed his next comment to Mom. “I seriously don’t know why she’s here.” But she just gave him one of her sternest ‘calm down’ looks. He let it go with a somewhat subdued grumble. “There’s no sense even wasting this experience on her.”

  “I think most young people go to Thailand and India,” Mom intervened, answering Bree’s question. “And what you see are the people who have the time and who can afford to travel. Retired people.”

  “Then why are we here?” I asked.

  “Because we’re doing it all overland; travelling like the locals do and paying local prices. Most people only go on tour for short periods during holiday times, which is when it’s the most expensive,” Ammon explained. “They just do short trips, and it’s generally quite expensive, because they pay for airfare, nice hotels, and tours. For them, time is more important than money, and for us, money is more important than time.”

  “This is definitely the most foreigners we’ve seen in months.” I kept trying to avoid the topic of boys.

  “Which means more touts and more beggars, probably the worst of the trip so far,” Mom said as she politely tried to discourage them from selling the things they had obviously decided she needed. From our perspective, being attacked from every direction by beggars seriously detracted from the area’s holy vibe. There was no chance for a moment’s solitude when ladies harassed us to buy prayer beads and wheels, Coca-Cola, and postcards. Somehow, these items just didn’t seem to mesh with the area’s historical ambience, but, ironically, I knew it was because of tourists like us that these westernized products had been introduced. The touts literally shoved souvenirs into our hands and refused to take them back, pulling at our arms and insisting we buy. All we wanted was some peace and quiet so we could reflect on the spiritual aspects of this unique setting.

  I quickly tossed a fridge magnet back into its owner’s pocket and bolted out of reach. Where would I put something like that? We don’t even have a refrigerator, for goodness sake, and my backpack is heavy enough already.

  “I dunno about this being the worst we’ve seen, Mom. Beijing was pretty bad,” I said, remembering all the children and women who had wheeled themselves around on skateboards to showcase their missing limbs and pull at our pant cuffs for money.

&
nbsp; “True, but here they’re a lot more aggressive,” Bree said.

  Ammon nodded. “We need the practice for India, anyway, so it’s all good.”

  “I guess so.” I placed the latest trinket that had been forced on me on the ground, only to have another immediately shoved in my face.

  “You know what else I’m seeing a lot of? Ra-Whaaa!” Ammon jumped as a furry creature scurried past him and up the staircase crammed between two buildings. “Rats. They’re everywhere. For the record, Lhasa has the most rats openly running around than any other place I’ve seen.”

  “But the strange thing about that is that it really isn’t that much dirtier here,” Mom observed.

  “Yeah, but remember Kyrgyzstan? Bishkek and Osh were also pretty bad, with lots of big fat ones roaming the streets,” Bree reminded us.

  We anxiously anticipated entering the famous Potala Palace where the Dalai Lama had once reigned.

  “The fourteenth and current Dalai Lama was forced to flee during the Tibetan uprising half a century ago. He’s been hiding out in India ever since,” Ammon said. “Perhaps it’s his absence – I can’t quite pinpoint it – but something is definitely missing here without him.” This had been his residence for three-hundred-and-fifty years, making my homesickness seem completely minuscule in comparison. I wondered when the Dalai Lama had last been home. From the inside, it looked like many of the Buddhist monasteries we’d already seen, with tapestries, smokey incense, half burned candles with wax dripping down the wooden holders and colourful paintings. It was quite dimly lit within, and we quickly got lost. With its thousand rooms, ten thousand shrines, and about two hundred thousand statues, it was overwhelming and felt very much like a maze.

  Taking pictures wasn’t allowed within the palace, but Mom was always busy snapping hidden shots. Her cuteness and dainty figure could be deceiving; she’s actually quite the rebel in some respects, just not a very obvious one. She clearly enjoyed breaking the rules, and was usually the first to hop a ‘do not cross’ barrier, but her generally straight-laced nature and appearance seriously contradicted this sort of behaviour.