North Face

by Matt Dickinson

  Tashi reached down to help him back out. He emerged spluttering and gasping for breath, his face rigid with shock. Karma groaned as he rolled in the dust. He got a couple more forceful blows to his arms and legs.

  Suddenly one of the soldiers called out.

  ‘Sir! Look!’

  The officer frowned, looking round with a grunt of annoyance. Tashi turned, gasping out loud when she saw the crowd that had gathered: fifty or sixty nomads, all with anger written across their faces. The men were carrying staves.

  Word of the family’s problem had spread like wildfire through the valley.

  ‘What are you doing?’ the officer boldly addressed the crowd. The nomads just stood there, unsure, but united in their sense of outrage.

  ‘Let the family alone!’ came a voice. ‘Leave their animals in peace.’

  ‘They’ve done nothing wrong,’ said another.

  The officer talked urgently into his walkie-talkie.

  A convoy of lumbering army trucks barged into the valley. Brakes squealed. Troops jumped from the tailgates, riot shields at the ready. Tashi saw a familiar figure among them: Captain Chen, a megaphone in hand.

  ‘Disperse!’ he shouted.

  The nomads pushed back against the troops. Suddenly a rock came spinning through the air. It clattered against the helmet of a young soldier. Another stone hit Tashi on the shoulder.

  Two sharp explosions cut through the cries of the protestors. Olive green metal canisters came skittering across the grass, right into the thick of the crowd. Dense white smoke plumed up in a hissing cloud. Tashi felt her throat tighten as a wave of gas was sucked into her lungs. Her eyes watered. She kicked one of the canisters away.

  The troops began to lash out. The cries of anger from the crowd grew louder. Fists were flying. Chen waded into the fray, taking out his baton and striking Tashi’s father a fearsome blow right across the back.

  Karma let out a cry of rage, leaping forward and twisting the baton out of the captain’s hands. The stick whirled at lightning speed as Karma attacked. Chen staggered back, stunned. Then he blew furiously on his whistle, pointing directly at Karma.

  ‘Arrest him!’ he screamed.

  A group of soldiers ran towards Karma, pushing back against the crowd as the nomads surged forward. Batons rained down in a haze of furious blows. Karma fell, blood gushing from a wound on his forehead.

  Tashi crouched over her brother, trying to protect him from being crushed as dozens of Tibetans stampeded over them in a wave of thundering boots and flying bare feet. The megaphone continued to wail.

  ‘Disperse!’ Chen repeated. ‘Disperse or we shoot.’

  Tashi cried out as a sharp stripe of pain blazed across her legs.

  ‘Leave him!’ The soldier screamed.

  Tashi felt strong hands pulling her away from Karma. She held on for dear life, her fingers quickly bent back almost to breaking point.

  ‘It was self-defence,’ Tashi shouted, ‘Leave him!’

  Karma shook himself as he regained consciousness. Tashi felt herself pulled roughly backwards. Her grip loosened. Her brother stood, pushing against the soldiers then turning to run. The megaphone blared again, Chen’s voice sharper, more aggressive:

  ‘Drop your weapons now!’

  Tashi saw one of Karma’s friends race in on his motorbike.

  ‘Over here!’ the friend called. Karma ran across and sprang on to the back.

  The troops moved rapidly, trying to block the protestors as they regrouped. Tashi saw the motorbike weaving through the crowd.

  ‘Go!’ she muttered under her breath. ‘Don’t stop!’

  Karma and his friend ripped away from the riot, heading up the dirt track at breakneck speed. The commander yelled again. A water cannon opened up, spraying a powerful jet at the Tibetans. Tashi got hit by the blast and was bowled off her feet. Visceral fear overwhelmed her for a few seconds as she struggled to breathe.

  ‘Arrest them!’ Chen ordered.

  Tashi and her family were handcuffed and led to a military truck with twenty or more of the protestors.

  ‘Where did Karma go?’ Tashi’s mother asked tearfully. ‘Did he get away?’

  Tashi pointed to a spot high on the mountainside where a tiny dot could just be seen. Karma and his friend were safely distant, looking down on the valley.

  Half an hour later, with the family tent and all their other possessions thrown roughly into the back of the truck, they were driven away. Tashi took one last look at the yaks she had cared for all her life – the creatures she had loved and nurtured. She knew she would never see those animals again.

  Tashi stared up at the black felt of the tent, listening to the restless creaking of the wooden poles as the flexing wind raced through, the occasional outburst of vicious barking from a nearby dog. The snorts and grunts of the yaks were missing. The chemistry of the night felt barren and wrong.

  They were camping in a police compound, along with a bunch of other families who had been arrested after the protest. Her father was snoring lightly on the pile of blankets. From the corner of the tent came the sound of her mother weeping. Tashi got up and consoled her, stroking the side of her mother’s head for a while until she fell into a restless sleep.

  Then she heard a new noise, the stealthy sound of footsteps padding towards the tent. Somehow she sensed it was Karma even before his dark shape slipped under the tent wall and came to her.

  ‘You OK?’ Tashi shuddered as she saw Karma’s bruised and swollen face.

  ‘More or less,’ he tried a lopsided grin. Tashi felt a warm glow of love for her brother. It was amazing he could still smile after all that had happened in the last twenty-four hours.

  ‘You’re taking a massive risk sneaking in here,’ she said.

  Karma shrugged.

  ‘Take more than a concrete wall to stop me!’ he said.

  ‘You’re going to go away aren’t you?’ Tashi whispered.

  Karma nodded sadly.

  ‘Chen won’t forget what I did,’ he said. ‘I fought back against him.’

  ‘Sure. But he was beating Father. Beating an old man. You were right to resist.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter. They’ll still send me to prison for sure.’

  Tashi grimaced. She couldn’t imagine her free-spirited brother being imprisoned. It would destroy him.

  ‘Maybe you should escape with me?’ he said.

  Tashi had thought about it and already knew her answer.

  ‘I can’t leave Mother and Father,’ she said. ‘They need me.’

  ‘I feel bad,’ he said slowly. ‘The authorities are going to make your life hell because of me.’

  ‘How much worse can it be?’ Tashi said. ‘They’ve already destroyed our herd.’

  Tashi pulled out her coat. There, in a secret pocket, she had some money saved.

  ‘Take this,’ she whispered.

  Karma made to protest but Tashi pressed the small stack of notes into his hand.

  ‘You’re going to need it,’ she said.

  Karma nodded and tucked the notes away.

  ‘Where will you go?’ Tashi asked. ‘To India?’

  Karma shrugged. ‘I really don’t know,’ he said. ‘Maybe try and organise some sort of protest against the authorities.’

  ‘Protest?’ Tashi stiffened. She had heard reports of young Tibetans who had gone to extreme lengths to protest against Chinese human rights abuses – even to the point of suicide.

  ‘Don’t do something dangerous,’ she whispered. ‘You promise me?’

  Karma smiled fondly at his sister. His eyes were two slits in the swollen flesh of his beaten face.

  ‘I won’t do anything crazy,’ he said. ‘I promise.’

  He looked towards the sleeping shapes.

  ‘Will you tell them?’ he asked.
‘Explain … if you can?’

  ‘I’ll try my best,’ Tashi whispered. ‘They’ll be happy to know you are free.’

  Karma leaned forward and embraced Tashi. Then he pulled his Dalai Lama portrait from his pocket and gave it to her.

  ‘It’s a bit bloodstained from the riot,’ he said.

  ‘It doesn’t matter. I’ll treasure it,’ she said.

  Karma smiled, then went and stood over his father, and his mother, chanting a Tibetan prayer for them in a barely audible whisper. He took out his little silver box of sacred beads and placed a jade bead into the sleeping hand of each of his parents.

  ‘You’ve got one left haven’t you?’ Tashi smiled through her tears.

  He nodded, showing her the precious bead before sealing it in the silver box and placing it in his pocket. Then he nodded one final time to his sister and slipped underneath the tent fabric into the dark Tibetan night.

  Tashi lay there thinking. Would the family ever see Karma again? What would happen if the authorities caught him? She had heard stories about nomads, family men, that had been summoned for ‘interviews’ at military posts and were never seen again. No explanation. No forwarding address. No prisoner number. No mention of a trial. Just a terrible silence in which to try and rebuild a family torn apart.

  Probably they were sent to prison camps, most Tibetans believed. Or forced to labour in the mines until they died. Either way they were gone; just another statistic in the roll call of thousands, possibly tens of thousands, of Tibetans whose lives had been disrupted or even ended by the Chinese since they had invaded the country.

  Tashi curled up, pulling the thick blankets over her head, wanting to block out the world.

  Early the next morning Tashi and her parents were taken to a nearby military garrison. They were placed in an interview room and left for a few hours without the offer of food or tea. Finally a military official entered, armed with a clipboard and pen.

  ‘You are homeless?’ the officer queried.

  Tashi’s father shook his head.

  ‘Not at all,’ he replied. ‘We have our tent.’

  ‘A tent?’ the officer snorted derisively. ‘Such temporary dwellings are not allowed. You will be much better off in a proper apartment in a town where you can all find work.’

  ‘But … ’

  ‘You are being rehoused,’ the official interrupted. ‘Everything is arranged. You will be taken to your new property tomorrow.’

  ‘Everything is arranged … ?’ Tashi’s father stammered. ‘But how can it be arranged? We’ve only just been brought here.’

  The official gave a secretive smile. Suddenly Tashi could not hold herself back.

  ‘It’s all part of a plan,’ Tashi said. ‘Blocking us from our grazing, condemning our herd, rehousing us in some horrible town. It’s the same thing that’s happening to thousands of nomad families.’

  The official glared at Tashi and reached for a telephone.

  ‘Hold your tongue,’ he said. ‘It only takes one call to make things a lot worse for you.’

  The family were detained overnight in a concrete block next to the police station. Locked into a freezing room, they passed the night huddled up together on a mattress with just a flask of weak tea and some stale bread to eat.

  Through the thin wall of the cell they could hear another family talking miserably about their fate.

  ‘We’re not the only ones,’ Tashi’s father said.

  At 6 a.m. the door was flung open. A harsh voice barked at them.

  ‘Come on! Quickly!’

  They shuffled out to the yard. A military bus was waiting. They loaded their possessions on to the roof rack and took their seats alongside thirty other Tibetans.

  ‘Do we get told where we are going?’ one of the men asked.

  None of the soldiers replied. The bus set off.

  ‘I am being made to feel like a criminal,’ Tashi’s mother said.

  Surly guards stood in the front of the bus, watching them for the whole journey.

  ‘We are heading north,’ Tashi’s father observed.

  From time to time the bus made ‘comfort breaks’, stopping for fifteen minutes so the occupants could collect stream water and answer calls of nature. Where the land offered no natural privacy the Tibetan women had no choice but to walk away from the bus and hold up a blanket as a screen.

  ‘They could take us to a proper traveller’s cafe if they wanted,’ Tashi’s mother said bitterly. ‘This is all about embarrassing us.’

  Tashi looked at the guards, sniggering behind their hands as they joked about the Tibetan women.

  ‘It’s almost as if they are trying to make us hate them,’ she said.

  ‘They don’t have to try too hard,’ her mother agreed.

  Just before sunset the bus reached the crest of a high pass. The driver pulled in to a layby and turned off the engine. The occupants clambered off to stretch their weary limbs.

  ‘This is where you are going to live,’ an official said.

  Tashi and her parents looked down into the valley where a sprawling new town was lying beneath a haze of yellow smog. Factories were spewing out smoke. Ugly high-rise blocks were being built in a dozen or more places. A massive mine was cut into the hillside directly above the town, endless rows of trucks shuttling along the highway that led to it.

  ‘This is the future of Tibet!’ the official said proudly.

  Tashi thought it was the most depressing place she had ever seen.

  The bus rattled down the hill and entered the town. Progress slowed to a crawl, heavy traffic jamming the streets as they passed through an industrial area.

  Through the windows of the bus, Tashi could see factory workers walking to their night shifts. They looked worn out and exhausted, she thought, their pallid faces a total contrast to the sunburned complexions of the nomads on the plateau.

  Occasionally the factory doors were open. Inside one she saw massive textile machines, clattering as they churned out countless metres of cloth. Through the windows of another unit Tashi was amazed to see hundreds of women working at desks. They were busy assembling things but she couldn’t see what.

  ‘Rubbish everywhere!’ her mother exclaimed.

  It was true that the streets were filthy.

  Tashi felt tears prick her eyes.

  One by one the families were dropped off, each one met by an official and guided towards faceless concrete apartment blocks. Tashi and her family were one of the last, taken from their seats and hurried off the bus into a dingy courtyard.

  ‘You’ve got one minute to get your things off the roof rack!’ the driver told them.

  Tashi swarmed up the ladder and threw down their meagre possessions and their tent.

  Just inside the building entrance was a small cubbyhole. Inside it lurked an obese janitor in a dirty vest. He sat back in his chair, watching a soap opera on a flickering black and white television, taking the occasional hostile glance at the newly arrived family.

  ‘This is your new home,’ the official said with a flourish of his arm. Tashi exchanged a horrified look with her father. The living room was not much more than a concrete shell, a dark and gloomy space with a glistening sheen of water running down one of the walls. The ceiling was streaked with a rust-coloured stain. The single pane of glass was dirty and cracked.

  Tashi crossed to the window and stared out. The ‘view’ below was of a scrapyard in which half a dozen workers could be seen pulling apart fridges and washing machines. The rhythmic ‘clang–clang–clang’ of the yard’s crushing machine pounded in her head.

  ‘Can we choose another place?’ Tashi’s father asked.

  The man snorted in a derisive way.

  ‘Thousands of Tibetan families would love to have a residence like this,’ he said. ‘Show some gratitude.’

&nb
sp; Tashi and her family began to carry in their possessions. A former nomad family living in the same block came down to help them.

  The janitor let them take their pots and pans up to the flat. He also said nothing about the clothes and rugs. When it came to the bundles of the disassembled tent, however, he held his hand across the doorway.

  ‘Where do you think you are going with all of this stuff?’ he snapped.

  ‘It’s our tent,’ Tashi’s father explained. ‘We’ll be needing it again soon.’

  ‘You can’t take it in the building,’ the man said.

  ‘It’s probably infested with lice and fleas.’

  ‘It’s not infested with anything!’ Tashi told him. ‘We clean it every spring.’

  ‘Anyway there’s no space,’ the man said. ‘You’ll have to dump it.’

  ‘Dump it?’ Tashi’s father stared at the man in astonishment. The man was casually suggesting the family should throw away its most precious possession.

  ‘Or sell it. If you can.’

  ‘We will never sell this tent!’ Tashi’s father exclaimed.

  The confrontation turned into a stand-off; the janitor insisting that the ten huge bundles would not be allowed into the building, Tashi’s father trying everything to persuade him to change his mind.

  ‘I’ll call the police if you want,’ the janitor threatened finally. ‘They know how to deal with your type.’

  Tashi pulled her father back.

  ‘Don’t argue any more,’ she urged him. ‘It is useless. Better we find another place to store the tent.’

  The family loaded the tent back on to the truck and paid the driver to take them into the centre of town. Asking around the market soon found a storeroom for hire.

  ‘I smell rats,’ Tashi’s mother warned.

  ‘We’ll buy some plastic.’

  The family wrapped the tent in multiple layers of plastic and paid to store it for three months. They returned to their new home on foot, walking through poorly lit streets choked with late night traffic.

  ‘There are police stations everywhere,’ Tashi’s father complained. ‘And they are spying on us!’

  He pointed out the surveillance cameras positioned at every junction, on every street. Tashi stopped, staring up at one of the cameras. It swivelled on its pole, pointing directly at her.