by Martin Roth
He sighed at the question. “I used to be.” And my parents before that, he almost said. It’s the family trade, you know.
He braced for further interrogation, but then he glanced out the window and realized that the bus was arriving in the township of McLeod Ganj. This was Upper Dharamsala, the actual place where the Dalai Lama had lived and died. And, when he thought about it, this was also the place where his younger brother Matt had lived and died.
The hippie was no longer interested in murdered missionaries. She and her companion were looking excitedly out at a vivid kaleidoscope of rickety, multi-colored buildings that were jammed into narrow, winding streets, lines of washing dangling from verandahs, gaudy Tibetan prayer flags flapping from roofs.
The base of the buildings held rows of shops, and Harel’s heart sank as he surveyed these - the internet cafe, the organic, vegetarian pizza store, the celestial cosmic souvenir stall, whatever that was. Billboards promoted yoga classes, fortune tellers, courses in herbal medicines and meditation sessions. The fake-Rolex and pirated-DVD outlets were presumably lurking just around the corner.
But he was a professor in California, and could handle all that. He even knew that as a professor of spiritual art he should be excited about this first-ever trip to Little Lhasa. However, he had been to the real Lhasa, the capital of Tibet, now occupied by China, and had been privileged to view many of the magnificent treasures there. He doubted that anything was about to stimulate his intellect in this outpost of hippie colonialism. He planned to make his visit as short as possible.
No, it was something else that sent Harel further into despondency. He stared at the buildings. Most looked as if a strong wind would knock them down. It was the monsoon season, and small streams ran down the streets. He looked at the people walking through the mud - many were bent and bowed, as if they were carrying a load of rice on their backs.
Then he imagined the homes. Already he could see the pale brown water that emerged when you turned on the taps, the lavatories that didn’t flush properly, the neighbors in the apartment above yours who drank and played mah jong - or whatever the local equivalent was - all night, and the kids outside your front door who were skilled in picking your pockets.
This place screamed out two words: “Mission Field.” It reminded him of his upbringing and of his early adult life, until he “went native,” as the saying went, married a local girl and became a professor instead. To be followed by the bitter divorce and the abject humiliation in his father’s church, at the hands of his own father. But he knew how attractive this place would be to his parents, and how excited Matt undoubtedly felt at coming to live and work here.
There was indeed a time when he relished all this, took pride in living in towns like this. But now he preferred a comfortable California duplex, gourmet cooking, a glass of wine and some soft music. He didn’t want to be a missionary any more. This town transported him to his past. And that was a place he no longer wished to visit.
Military Orders is available for download at the Amazon Kindle store.
About the Author
Martin Roth (http://www.military-orders.com) is a veteran journalist and foreign correspondent, and the author of many books.
He has worked on daily and Sunday newspapers in England, Australia, New Zealand and Greece. For seventeen years he lived in Tokyo, and his reports from Asia have appeared in leading publications around the world, including the Wall Street Journal, Guardian, Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune and Baltimore Sun.
He has also spent six months working on kibbutzim in Israel.
The first three books in his Johnny Ravine private detective series are:
* Prophets and Loss
* Hot Rock Dreaming (Australian Christian Book of the Year finalist)
* Burning at the Boss
He is also the author of the “Military Orders” series of novels, the first four of which are:
* Brother Half Angel
* The Maria Kannon
* Military Orders
* Festival in the Desert
He lives in Melbourne, Australia with his Korean wife and three sons.
Learn more, and check for new releases, at Amazon’s Martin Roth author page or at the author’s own website. Check the author’s Facebook page for special promotions.
