“I think it’s because the odds of it happening are supposed to be so slim, it’d be like winning the lottery,” Ammon said. “Although I can’t imagine that the chances are all that slim here. We may as well just call getting pooped on by a cow lucky too, then.”
“How on earth could you get pooped on by a cow? Who would be stupid enough to sit under one?” Mom said.
“Easily, Mom,” I said. “Just imagine that you’re sitting in a car, stuck in traffic, when one of these gazillion cows decides to back up to your open window. Just like that, you’re a lucky son of a gun.”
“C’mon, Savannah. How often would that happen?” Mom said.
“I bet it happens more often than we think, with all these cows around everywhere,” I said stubbornly. In Kathmandu it wasn’t uncommon to see peculiar sights such as cows grazing on garbage on major highways or monkeys stealing food from vendors and then getting away by leaping from rooftop to rooftop. Goats climbing around on the tops of cars or being pulled with ropes like dogs in the streets were also frequent sights, but luckily, there wouldn’t be any more goat-head soup for us.
Instead we often treated ourselves to pasta in a restaurant on the second floor of a building that was tucked away in the middle of the city’s chaos. It appeared to have been decorated by gypsies; huge wagon-wheel candleholders and black lights from the 1970s hung above us, making the fairy paintings on the walls glow, and beaded curtains glittered around cushioned floor seating.
From the open-air, wall-sized window, I loved to look down on the knitted ball of electrical wires strung up like a drunken spider’s web hanging over the bustling traffic. Pedestrians balancing giant loads on their heads, bicycles, taxis, motorcycles, and small three-wheeled vehicles called tuk-tuks added to the thick haze polluting the narrow, congested alleys. The piles of garbage being eaten by what looked like entire families of pigs presented a major contrast to the clean, well-maintained streets of China.
As we walked the hectic streets, an odd mix of Buddhist chanting, Celine Dion songs, and the Eagles’ infamous hit, “Hotel California,” assaulted our ears. English signs offering Internet cafés, guesthouses, food bazaars, money exchangers, massages, Italian cuisine, laundry services, and travel agencies flooded the crowded boulevards. The wild atmosphere was a sensory overload, but I instantly fell in love with much of what the capital had to offer.
We loved exploring some of the many tiny, second-hand bookstores, where most of the books were more brown than white, and many were missing pages. We traded in half-a-dozen books that we’d read and shared among ourselves and got a whole stack of new classics.
Sifting through the dusty shelves, I discovered a real gem amidst the rubble. I nearly ripped the cover off when I grabbed it off the shelf. I couldn’t believe I’d found Scarlett, the sequel to Gone with the Wind. The pages were loose but, as far as I could tell, they were all intact. Oh Rhett, how I’ve missed you…
There was nothing I wanted more than to lock myself in our dank, musty hotel room and reunite with my fictitious lover, but Ammon interrupted my reverie. Having spent more time than us exploring the city, he filled us in. “The people here are super friendly, so don’t be surprised when the next thing you know, you’re sipping tea with someone in their shop. The locals are complaining that tourism is down, but it seems pretty busy here to me.” The relative lack of tourists provided extra incentive for shopkeepers to apply the heat and persuade everyone and anyone to purchase their goods and go trekking.
We had to keep politely refusing vendors shouting out phrases like, ‘Money is no problem for you’, ‘Come looking my shop’, ‘Special price’, and ‘Ten dollars. This is nothing for you’. Apparently their listening abilities were even more selective than Bree’s, and they didn’t seem to understand the meaning of ‘No’, ‘I don’t want’, or ‘I don’t need’. We always had to keep our weight and space limits in mind, so any new purchase was very carefully considered.
“Come, you look!” a merchant cried, stepping out from the doorway of his cashmere shop to stand directly between Mom and Ammon. “Sir, this is nice for pretty lady. You buying for wife, sir. Very nice wife.”
“What? Hold on just a second there, buddy.” Ammon’s whole expression completely changed. His usually calm façade rapidly gave way to cringing as he explained, “Wife?! That’s my mom, man.”
“No, this is not possible. She? Too young for your mother,” the shopkeeper laughed as he waved his pointer finger. “Oh I know! You funny man, making jokes to me.” He dismissed Ammon’s comment and stepped to the side to invite us in. “Come. You get good price. I give you good price for pretty daughters. Very nice things you finding.”
“Those are my sisters. What are you trying to do here? Destroy my ego?”
“Is not possible. You are much too old.”
Ammon slapped his forehead. “Why do I even bother trying?” I grabbed him by the arm to tug him along. Ammon was tall with prominent, manly features and quite a receding hairline; He’d always looked older than his years.
“Well, it’s not that farfetched an idea,” Mom said. “Don’t let it bother you. You know how young they start having kids here.”
“Yeah, that’s all fine and dandy for you to say. The girls here get married at, like, thirteen, but the men are at least forty by the time they settle down. So that would make me more than twenty years older than you,” Ammon said, concern edging his voice. “Wow. Do I really look like I’m sixty-five already?”
“No, you don’t look that old. But older men are better looking anyway, so it’s all good,” Mom reassured him.
“Yeah, think of Rhett Butler. Oh, my heart,” I said, clenching the new book to my chest. I could not wait to be with him again.
“So why is there so much more English here?” Mom was trying to get his mind off this recent attack on his self-esteem.
Ammon grumbled but couldn’t resist answering, “That’s thanks to the British presence and all the tourists. What else do you see that’s influenced by the Brits?”
“Oh, of course. They drive on the left side of the road here,” Mom said.
“It’s no thanks to them that I keep running into people not knowing which side to pass on,” I said, leaping away from a wild, oncoming tuk-tuk driven by what might as well have been an oversized monkey.
We made our way to Durbar Square, which is the centre of the old town and the site of the old royal palace and Pashiputinath – the most important Hindu temple in Nepal and one of the most significant temples in the world honouring Shiva, a popular Hindu deity considered to be one of the primary forms taken by God.
“Nepal itself is very Hindu and very Buddhist, depending on where you are. You’re in for some fascinating traditions and rituals,” Ammon explained. We saw examples all around us to support Ammon’s expectations.
Ancient, bearded holy men walked the streets of Durbar Square with painted faces and dreadlocks dragging on the road beside their twisted toes. They leaned on wooden staffs, wore bulky beads strung around their necks, and wrapped themselves in light, cotton fabrics.
Groups of school kids in smart uniforms manoeuvred effortlessly between sleeping cows that blocked traffic everywhere you looked.
One of the main charms of Durbar square is the Kumari Ghar, a three-story, brick building with beautiful wooden windows and archways adorned with carvings of gods and symbols. Residing within is the Royal Kumari, a young girl who is literally believed to be a living goddess. In the search for the next Kumari, only girls in perfect health and physical condition with very black eyes and hair and dainty hands and feet are selected. According to tradition, candidates must have: eyelashes like a cow; a chest like a lion; a body like a banyan tree; a neck like a conch shell; thighs like a deer; and a voice as soft and clear as a duck’s.
As the incarnation of the demon-slaying Hindu goddess Durga, fearlessness is a major quality expected from the Kumari. They identify this quality during the selection process by evaluating the r
eactions from a small group of three- to five-year-old potential goddesses, who are being tested in a dark room with men in demon masks dancing around freshly slaughtered buffalo heads.
One of the pre-pubescent girls is eventually selected, and they worship her as the living embodiment of the goddess until she menstruates. Even major blood loss from an accident is enough to make the goddess vacate the child’s body and end the current Kumari’s reign. She’s given a decent pension afterwards, but is left somewhat tainted by the belief that any man who marries an ex-Kumari will die young. I thought a lot about those young girls as I stood in the courtyard, looking up at the dark, silent window of her room.
She must be very pretty. What must it be like for her, not being allowed to have her own friends and to only have family members visit on special occasions? Is she lonely behind those walls? What will life be like when she tries to revert back to being a commoner after spending so many important years isolated like that? How will I readapt after so long away? Will either of us have anything left to return to?
Our neighbourhood was awash in souvenir, cashmere, jewellery, and clothing stalls, as well as tattoo and body piercing parlours, so while Ammon was busy on the Internet, we girls went off to get one of Mom’s ears pierced. The shop was a tiny, square room with fabrics hanging on the walls and a glass counter displaying all kinds of used earrings and piercing guns. The employees urged us to simply sit, but we insisted on getting a pen to mark the placement of Mom’s new earrings. Even though Bree was very careful and precise when she drew the spots, Mom was very nervous and particular.
Once the first two were done, Mom decided, “That didn’t hurt too much. What the heck! Let’s do a few more while we’re at it.” For about five percent of what it would have cost in Vancouver, Mom had four new piercings. She could now wear a total of eight earrings, three on each lobe, plus the single cartilage piercings on each ear that we’d had done in Beijing.
“Mom, why don’t you just let Savannah get her nose pierced,” Bree asked.
“Why? ‘Cause it’s not going to happen, that’s why.” She stood with her hands on her hips and a determined look on her face. I still don’t quite understand how I ended up, only minutes later, sitting in the rickety metal chair with a piercing gun stuffed up my nose. Crosseyed and baffled, I suddenly wondered what I’d gotten myself into. I’d never actually stopped to consider whether I really wanted my nose pierced and realized, at the proverbial last minute, that I’d only been nagging about it to annoy Mom. Did she just call my bluff?
From a past experience trying to pierce a friend’s nose at home using a needle and stuffing a cork up her nose, I expected my nose and eyes to water, but when the Nepalese man pressed the trigger, the sharp golden earring went in quickly and painlessly.
“Wow, that was so easy,” I said surprised, but poor Mom looked like she was about to faint.
“Ohhh, I think I need to sit down,” she said, her knees wobbling. The man rushed to get her seated, and she put her head between her knees to prevent herself from falling over.
“I don’t know what’s happening to me,” Mom said. “I think it’s just watching you go through that pain,”
“But Mom, it didn’t hurt – at all. I still hardly feel anything,” I said, wiggling my nose to prove it.
“I know. I’m being silly. I just need a minute.”
Bree must have some hidden hypnotist capabilities because, while Mom was already in position, sitting and clearly not thinking straight, she agreed to get her nose pierced, too. What!? Bree quickly chose the spot for her before she could change her mind, on her right nostril, opposite where I’d just had it done.
“I cannot believe what just happened,” I said.
“So silly that I felt so faint watching yours, but it didn’t bother me at all to get my own done. You’re right. It hardly hurt at all.”
When we barged into Ammon’s room, he stared at us and shook his head. “You guys have lost your minds once again. Seriously, you people are insane.”
“Ouch… Okay, now the sharp point at the end of this thing is stabbing into the inside of my nose,” I said. Instead of a nose ring, he’d left the sharp-ended ear piercing stud in which was far too long for the size of any nostril. “We’re going to have to take it out and change it. Yikes, this is going to hurt.”
“You think you have problems?” Ammon said. “Apparently I have a wife and two kids, not a mother and two sisters. And have I mentioned lately that you’re all downright nuts?”
“You’re right, Daddy. And Sky will probably kill us for this,” I said. I was still awed by the big golden nob hanging from Mom’s tiny nose and actively trying to figure it all out. Perhaps Mom knew she was sometimes unreasonable, and maybe this was her way of reconciling with me, calling it a draw in some unspoken way. And when she put aside her stubbornness and gave in to me on the nose-piercing issue, I became more inclined to see her point of view. It had been a roller coaster of a ride which had definitely seen its highs and lows, but this felt like a step in the right direction.
Her stories from the past echoed in my brain: ‘I never got to have long hair’, ‘I always had to have this stupid boy cut’, and ‘I never got to have pretty long hair like you’. Too often, we hang on to memories like that and they become something more significant than they really are over time. It was never about long or short hair; it was not being allowed to change it that made it seem so intensely important to me. But I could see how important it was to her. If, in some convoluted way, keeping my hair long somehow made her feel better about her childhood, then I guess it wasn’t the end of the world.
Through Her Eyes
34
“Oh my gosh, this is the airport?” I’d expected we’d feel some air conditioning, a nearly unimaginable luxury these days. I’d vainly hoped that Mom would splurge on a Starbucks, too, but no… Though this was the capital city and the airport handled international flights, neither cool air nor coffee were available.
“I can’t believe we can’t go inside the arrivals hall. That’s so crazy,” I said.
“Well, you can if you pay the entry fee, but we’re not going to waste money on that,” Ammon said.
Bree stared. “That’s ridiculous. You have to pay to wait in there?”
“I can kind of understand. Can you imagine all the touts who’d be inside if they let everyone in? The fee prevents that from happening,” Mom said. So we waited outside, watching the automatic doors of the tiny airport open and close like a giant mouth spitting out newcomers.
“Well, I do believe we should take advantage of this last chance to play a few rounds of cards,” Ammon suggested. Our Jerk game was ongoing, and it’s a four-player game. We couldn’t mess up the official records, and it wouldn’t be right to ignore our visitor while we played. Bree pulled off her headphones, reemerging from her self-induced la-la land to play.
“Steph is actually coming. I still can’t believe it.” The excitement was almost more than I could handle, and I was finding it hard to pay attention to the game. Bree and I had been unable to contain our enthusiasm since the night before, and it was now 4 p.m. I’d gotten pretty good at waiting, and this trip had taught me to be much more patient, but time was passing slower than on any of the long-haul bus rides we’d survived. When we’d received the news only a couple of weeks ago that Stephanie had purchased a ticket and was really coming, I was elated, even if she was technically Bree’s friend.
“Oh man. Steph is just going to want to party.” Bree laughed. “She’s going to be so surprised when she gets here and realizes what we’re really all about.”
“They’ll love me for my hair,” I said, quoting Steph’s latest email. She was certainly right about that, but she wasn’t going to love them for it. She had the most beautiful shade of natural strawberry-blonde hair I’d ever seen; its colouring was rare even at home. Here in Nepal, it would be completely fantastical, and she would stand out like a sore thumb.
“Okay, let�
��s wrap it up here. Only two more rounds to the bottom of the score page,” Ammon said, glancing at the watch clipped to his pants. “She should be coming out any minute now.”
At long last, the next wave of people started pouring through the gates. Over the sea of darker-featured Nepalese returning home and fairer-skinned travellers milling about between us, Steph waved her arm high and spotting me first she hollered, “Savannah!” She ran to me so fast she nearly knocked me over in a huge bear hug when we collided. I lost myself in the smell of her hair as I squeezed her, all the while thinking that, if soft has a smell, this would be it.
“Yay, someone from home,” Bree said, jumping up and down in her best friend’s arms. “I can’t freaking believe you pulled this off.”
“Why not? Of course I was going to come. I said I would, didn’t I?”
“And that’s what I love about you,” Bree said. And she meant it; people promising to do something and then not following through with it had been one of her biggest pet peeves for as long as I could remember.
Steph had always had a sexy aura about her; it emanated from every move she made, whether they were purposeful or instinctive. The way she moved her head and shoulders when she laughed made her boobs bounce just the right amount. She’d recently turned the ripe old age of eighteen, and she acted as though she had the whole world at her feet. Everything she did demonstrated that. Although she had this very feminine appeal about her, she was also always up for an adventure. She certainly wasn’t afraid to get her hands dirty, but we were going to test her limits on this trip. She’d never been to Asia, and I was really glad we got to share this first with her.
“Savannah, you got your nose pierced?!” she gasped, then turned to Mom to see if she knew, unable to believe that she would allow such a thing. “Maggie? You got one, too?” This left her temporarily speechless as she gaped at Mom and leaned in close to make sure it wasn’t a practical joke.
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