The Waiting Land

by Dervla Murphy

  Obviously his sister Lhamo is Mingmar’s favourite; he repeatedly refers to her with affection and pride, saying what a clever businesswoman she is and how much he is looking forward to seeing her, after a year’s separation, when she comes from Lhasa to Kathmandu next month, en route for Calcutta. These Sherpas certainly get around – and they seem to need no passport for all their travels between Tibet, Nepal and India. Of course, Lhamo now flies from Kathmandu to Calcutta, and for all I know travels by truck in Tibet. She has two husbands so far – one who looks after the family farm near Namche Bazaar and one in Kathmandu, who also has another wife permanently resident there to comfort him while the tycoon Lhamo attends to her International Business. No wonder Sherpa relationships are not easy to sort out!

  Our last and longest delay came soon after midday, when we paused to watch a religious ceremony being conducted outside a stone hut on a ledge. For some time before reaching this ledge we could hear the wonderful melody of drum, bell, cymbals and conch-shell – music that made me feel very homesick for the Pokhara camp, and that sounded even more stirring against its natural background. I tried to find out what the ceremony was all about, but even if Mingmar knew he clearly did not want to discuss it with an outsider; so I stopped probing and contented myself with imprudently drinking four wooden bowlfuls of the best chang I have ever tasted.

  The elderly lama conducting the ceremony was dressed in black instead of the usual maroon robes, and his young monk assistant wore layman’s clothes. Both sat cross-legged on the ground, with their backs to the hut wall, and the Scriptures were laid before the lama on a low wooden table. His Reverence held a bell in his right hand and a dorje in his left – the dorje being frequently abandoned when he needed another swig of chang, which he favoured instead of the buttered-tea consumed endlessly during ceremonies by the more orthodox lamas. At right angles to the wall stood a painting of the Lord Buddha with the usual tormas and butter-lamps laid before it, and in front of this was a hanging drum, some three feet in circumference, which a tall, slim youth, clad in the local kilt, beat regularly in time to the chanting. About thirty people sat nearby in a semi-circle, laughing, chatting, drinking chang and eating cold sliced potatoes. The atmosphere was gay and friendly, and we were made to feel so welcome that we remained with the little group for over half-an-hour, each of us giving an offering to the lama before we left.

  The young mother of the Sherpa family with whom we are staying tonight recently spent three years as a coolie on the roads in Assam, and Mingmar told me that it is common for the people of this area to emigrate temporarily to India and work in road gangs with the Tibetan refugees. Then, having saved up more money than they could ever earn in Nepal – and increased it on the way home by astute trading in Kalimpong – they return to settle down here. I attempted to discover whether they are officially accepted into the road gangs as Nepalese citizens, or whether they masquerade as Tibetan refugees; but my questions on this subject were plainly regarded as indelicate so I did not pursue the enquiry.

  Tonight Mingmar at last knows where we are and says we will be back at base by midday on 24 November. The track from here to Kathmandu is familiar to him, which seems sad; it has been sheer bliss wandering lost-like from mountain to mountain.

  22 NOVEMBER – A HOVEL ON A MOUNTAIN-TOP

  This is the most squalid lodging we have encountered on the whole trek; it is even filthier than the children’s hut beside the gompa. The small room is windowless and now that darkness has fallen a bullock, four goats, seven hens and a cock are sharing the apartment with a family of six, plus Mingmar and me. Here we are again above 9,000 feet and the night-air is so cold that the door has been shut fast, allowing no outlet for the billowing wood smoke, which is making me cough incessantly and having the usual excruciating effect on my eyes; but as compensation these gentle, cheerful Tamangs are exceptionally likeable, and their anxiety to make me comfortable is all the more touching because of the irredeemable discomfort of their home.

  Today’s walk was another marathon, and by brunch-time I knew why Mingmar had not been keen on going further yesterday afternoon. We started the day’s adventures at 7 a.m. with quite a hazardous fording of a fiercely-fast, waist-deep, icy river. Here Mingmar was the terrified one – for a change – and as we waded across together he clung to me so frantically that he very nearly unbalanced us both. We needed every ounce of our strength to keep upright against the force of the water and it was so extremely difficult to retain a foothold on the large, constantly shifting stones that I didn’t really think we could make it without a ducking.

  At times the water had been up to our armpits and now we were painfully cold; but that was soon cured by a ninety-minute climb up a precipitous, slippery and very narrow path through dense scrub. Here it was my turn to be terrified; the snag was that I couldn’t see the crumbling path through the thick grass and undergrowth – but I could see very plainly the drop on the right, though I didn’t dare look down for long enough to estimate its depth.

  By about half-past nine we had left this unwholesome path behind and gone downhill again towards the river. We stopped for brunch at a stinking, fly-infested hovel near the junction with the main Kathmandu-Gosainkund Lekh track; and an hour later we were on this highway, sharing it with groups of heavily-laden Tibetans, Tamangs and Chetris and feeling already halfway back to the bustle of metropolitan life.

  For the next four hours we continued gradually but steadily downhill, following the river. At times the path led over stretches of colossal boulders, or through bright widths of fine silver sand, and once we crossed a dilapidated suspension bridge that swayed uncertainly 150 feet above the water. One feels slightly impatient about the neglect of these plank bridges; with so much forest on every side there can be no shortage of raw material for their repair.

  At three o’clock we reached a village which boasted the first shop seen since our departure from Trisuli. Here we asked for tea, since our own supply expired a few days ago, but the shop stocked only ancient, flyblown, Indian sweets and unsmokable cigarettes and mildewed biscuits – of which we bought two packets for consumption on the spot.

  Next we again climbed steeply for three hours – up and up and up, with the shining snow-peaks to the north becoming lovelier every moment. Here the lower, richer slopes are cultivated by Chetris or Newaris and the upper, more barren slopes by Tamangs. The whole region seems very densely populated – and smelly in proportion – when compared with the lonely mountains now behind us. One of the incidental joys of lonely mountains is the absence of that overpowering stench of human excrement which is always present in the more populous parts of Nepal.

  These insect-plagued lodgings are beginning to prey slightly on my nerves – and it’s not difficult to foresee that tonight is going to be a bug-classic. Since leaving Trisuli I’ve not had one unbroken night’s rest and, though the locals do not suffer to the same extent, I hear them scratching and muttering in their sleep every night. So the bugs must do real damage to health by making sound sleep impossible.

  23 NOVEMBER – KATHMANDU

  We achieved yet another marathon today, which got us here ahead of schedule – and what a welcome I received from Tashi! Like most Tibetans she is very soft-spoken so she didn’t bark or yelp, the only audible sign of rejoicing being that peculiar, rapid sniffling noise with which she always greets my returns; but for the first few moments it seemed that she would wriggle out of her skin with joy, or that her over-wagged tail would come adrift – it’s nice to be so important to somebody.

  This morning I saw my first total eclipse of the sun, which lasted from about 8.15 until 9.30 – and in honour of which today is yet another public holiday throughout Nepal.

  We left our hovel before dawn, since last night even Mingmar was unable to sleep for bugs, and by eight o’clock we had reached the top of a 9,000-foot hill, after an easy climb through crisp, early air. From here we were overlooking a long, deep, narrow valley, and our path now continued
almost level for some two miles, before plunging abruptly down to a small village by the river.

  As we were scrambling down from the ridge-top to join this path I noticed something very odd about the quality of the light, and simultaneously I registered an unnatural drop in the temperature. Overtaking Mingmar I said, ‘What on earth is happening? The light’s gone funny, and it’s so cold!’ To this obtuse question a native English-speaker might have been forgiven for replying that nothing was happening on earth; but Mingmar merely said, ‘The moon is having a meal.’ I stared at him for a moment, wondering if he were going dotty – and then I realised that the dottiness was on my side, for when he pointed to the sun I saw that about a quarter of its surface had already been obscured by the ‘hungry’ moon.

  What an appropriate place this was for experiencing the eerieness of a solar eclipse! As we walked along that path, so high above the valley, we could hear conches being blown wildly and cymbals and drums being beaten frenziedly, while all the lamas and priests of the little villages far below shouted and wailed and screamed in their contest with those evil spirits who, by attacking the sun, were threatening the whole of human existence. This extraordinary panic of sounds, combined with the ‘evening’ twitter of bewildered birds and the unique, greenish half-light, evidently aroused within me some deep racial memory, and for an instant, at the precise moment of total eclipse and estrangement from our whole source of life, I felt as my own that primitive fear which was then dominating the whole of Nepal.

  Epilogue

  The last days are always sad. One’s return is uncertain, but it is wretchedly certain that should one ever return ‘all will be changed, changed utterly’ in such places as Kathmandu and Pokhara.

  Some changes would of course be welcome, especially in relation to the refugees. Their numbers are comparatively few in Nepal and, perhaps because of the scale of the problem, it is easier there than elsewhere to see clearly the fundamental problems inherent in every refugee situation. A consideration of these problems during my time in Pokhara led me to certain unpopular conclusions which have been reinforced, since my return to Europe, by discussions with other fieldworkers on leave from Asia and Africa. To the many generous and sympathetic supporters of Western charitable organisations our views may seem unfeeling, or even shocking. Yet they are based on observations made while sharing the daily life of the refugees – an experience which we hope does not impair our sensibility, though it may purge us of that dangerous sentimentality which so often bedevils the thinking of those who direct refugee aid operations by remote control.

  The power of mass media to provoke emotional and ill-considered generosity was plainly shown by the public reaction to the Aberfan disaster, and one finds the same phenomenon, in a less extreme form, throughout the refugee world. Obviously the concern for refugees now felt in the West is stimulated partly by a sincere desire ‘to help the less fortunate’ and partly by an uneasy awareness that our own society is persistently over-indulging itself in a variety of ways. To give money to charitable organisations is one of the easiest possible methods of lulling one’s social conscience, and as some of these organisations become more high-powered, and more ambitious to implement impressive projects abroad, situations can easily arise in which problems are aggravated because of the resources that have been accumulated to deal with them. Already, in certain areas, we are expiating our collective guilt at the expense of the refugees by absurdly prolonging the period during which a particular group is granted refugee status. Materially, and from a short-term point of view, this may be a positive achievement; yet if one looks far enough ahead it is seen to be entirely negative, since excessive cosseting cannot fail to breed a community of parasites.

  It should be obvious that our first duty is to help the refugees to help themselves, rather than merely to feed, clothe and nurse them. Immediately after their arrival in a strange land they obviously do need considerable material support, as well as sensible guidance on how best to adjust to their new environment. Yet the essence of a refugee tragedy is not disease, hunger or cold. It is the loss of the emotional security of belonging to a stable community in a certain country, and therefore, in exile, the refugee’s most valuable possession is his self-respect – which should be used by us as a tool to help him reestablish his identity as a responsible individual. However, this self-respect is not very highly developed among certain types of refugees and can soon be destroyed by indiscriminate ‘aid’. Undoubtedly, less material support from charitable organisations would mean an initial period of greater hardship for most refugee groups; but – supposing the practical advice and reassuring affection of field-workers to be still available – a reduction in aid would also provide a valuable challenge which, if it were met successfully, could rapidly restore the refugees’ self-confidence and sense of security. By leaving them in a position where, to survive, they must quickly integrate as productive units in their new environment we would be doing them a far better service than by singling them out for special treatment over an indefinite period – and thus increasing both their own and their neighbours’ awareness of the refugee as an ‘alien’.

  In many cases there are of course innumerable political and economic obstacles to their employment; but these obstacles are not lessened when charitable organisations concentrate hundreds of people in one area. There is some evidence to support the theory that if refugees were to disperse in small groups throughout their host countries – perhaps having received, as aid, a small capital sum per family – they could earn a living much more easily than either they or their Western benefactors are now prepared to admit. In a world where millions are starving unobtrusively in their own countries the refugee ‘Big Business’ seems to be getting perilously out of proportion. If a million Indians migrated to Burma or Malaya this year, in order to qualify for Red Cross vitamin pills and WVS blankets and US Surplus Food, one could hardly blame them.

  During my last week at Kathmandu I sent many frantic cables to New Delhi and Dublin on Tashi’s behalf. Her entry-permit from the Irish Department of Agriculture should have been awaiting me at the British Embassy on 23 November; but it wasn’t, and our flight home had been booked weeks ago for 3 December, and as time passed I began to detect a certain affinity between the relevant civil servants in Dublin and my friends in the Singha Durbar.

  Every morning Tashi accompanied me to the new Indian Aid Telephone and Telegraph Office where, while I drafted progressively less polite messages to Dublin, the clerks eyed her critically and discussed the particular brand of lunacy revealed by a desire to bring any such object back to Ireland. Then, after four days of impoverishing communications, I ended the campaign with a defiant flourish and cabled that a black-and-tan bitch from Nepal would land at Dublin Airport at 3.20 p.m. on 3 December – with or without her visa, which had been applied for in September.

  Early on the morning of 29 November Sigrid drove us to Gaucher Airport and soon we were flying parallel to one of the most magnificent sights in the world – the Himalayas seen from the air on a clear winter’s day. To east and west they stretched as far as the eye could see, a wild symphony of remote whiteness, beautiful and terrible beyond all imagining. Yet, curiously, this was as imperfect an experience as seeing a tiger in a zoo. Better one glimpse of one peak from the top of a pass that has been struggled against than the whole of this facile, faintly sacrilegious survey from the artificial comfort of an aeroplane.

  In Delhi we stayed with friends for a few days – while Tashi received and recovered from her inoculations – and this interlude was no bad thing before a return to Europe. Inevitably it is a shock to leave Nepal, whatever one’s destination, and in India I now seemed to be encountering the acme of sophistication, luxury, convenience and reliability. It was a dull world – flat and predictable – for there is today rather less difference between Delhi and Dublin than between Delhi and Kathmandu.

  Only after landing in India did I realise how efficiently Nepal insulates its guests a
gainst the twentieth century. Unless one belongs to Kathmandu’s International Set (which most successfully evades the real Nepal) one unconsciously withdraws, within hours of crossing the frontier, from all the complications of our world. At first a bland fatalism diminishes their importance and then, as one succumbs to the natural isolation of the Kingdom – an isolation now less physical than mental – their reality comes to mean no more than that of Outer Space. Vietnam, war in Kashmir, famine in India, the pound doing odd things in Britain – all quickly recede into the realm of ‘What-doesn’t-matter-because-nothing-can-be-done-about-it’. Perhaps it is callous to recline comfortably on this indifference. But the fact that in our world millions of citizens are subjected daily to selected details of crises in sixteen different directions seems more likely to dement the citizens than to aid the crises. So now it felt strange indeed to be again Outside, where no mountains of indifference enclose valleys of calm.

  In Delhi Tashi showed characteristic Tibetan adaptability, both to her new surroundings and her new friends – as she has continued to do in all her subsequent travels and social contacts. Since her migration to Europe she has been variously described as a ‘stocking that was left too long on the needle’ and ‘something out of the Natural History Museum – perhaps a baby Dinosaur’. But though she will never make Crufts everybody loves her and she loves everybody, which is what matters.

  Before leaving Delhi I had bought the statutory ‘nose- and paw-proof’ basket – but I had also cunningly taken Tashi to Air India’s central office and introduced her to the Authorities. Nothing else was necessary; they completely agreed that it would be superfluous to imprison any such object in a basket between Delhi and London and, as there would be some empty seats on the plane, they arranged to have one beside me for the greater comfort of the object in question. So Tashi, born in a Tibetan nomad’s tent in the heart of Nepal, now had the run of a Boeing 707.