Sky Burial: An Epic Love Story of Tibet

by Xinran

  The next day, helped by Saierbao, Wen put on a Tibetan gown for the first time. They were the “maiden’s clothes” that Saierbao had worn before her marriage and consisted of a set of white undergarments made of a coarse cloth, a long-sleeved collarless shirt fastened at the side, and a pair of trousers, richly decorated and gathered in at the ankles. Over this, Wen put on a thickly lined robe of blue, pink, and purple cloth that hung all the way down to her feet. Saierbao showed her how to wrap it across the front of her body and secure it with a broad brocade belt. She then tied a rainbow-striped length of cloth rather like an apron to the front. Wen was still frail, so to help her withstand the cold mountain winds, Saierbao gave her a high-necked sheepskin waistcoat and some felt boots. The boots were far too big, but Zhuoma said that it didn’t matter: in cold weather they could stuff a thick layer of yak’s wool inside for warmth.

  Finally, Saierbao tied a jade amulet to Wen’s waist and placed a rosary of wooden prayer beads around her neck “They will protect you,” explained Zhuoma. “They will keep evil at bay and drive away ghosts.” Then she smiled and silently placed a string of her own carnelian beads around Wen’s neck.

  Saierbao made a sign to Wen to sit down, and standing in front of her, she parted her hair with a comb and made two braids on either side. The youngest daughter, Pad, who was standing to one side, then gestured to Wen to look at herself in a bowl of water she had standing ready. Wen could hardly believe her eyes: apart from the fact that her braids were too short because she had only shoulder-length hair, she looked like a proper Tibetan woman. She tucked her precious book containing Kejun’s photograph and her sister’s paper crane inside the big pocket of her Tibetan robe.

  A few days later, Wen noticed that someone had laid a cloth bundle on her sleeping space. It was her uniform, now cleaned and mended. Wen was so touched that she didn’t know what to say. She held the clothes in both hands, inhaling the tang that came from the sun of the high plateau, and bowed deeply to Saierbao.

  ZHUOMA TOLD Wen that Tibetans said there were only two seasons, summer and winter, because, in Tibet, spring and autumn were so brief. But that spring was a very long one in Wen’s life: she spent many sleepless nights, longing for Kejun and turning over and over in her mind her uncertain future. She couldn’t imagine how she could possibly continue to survive in such harsh conditions, or learn a language that seemed to her utterly impenetrable. Although she knew there must be other nomadic families in the region because Zhuoma had told her that Gela and Ge’er met other herders when they were out at the pastures, the women saw nobody. She began to doubt whether Zhuoma had been right in thinking there would be an opportunity to get information about Kejun and Tiananmen. Both she and Zhuoma were so absorbed in their struggle to adapt to the nomadic way of life that each had entered her own private world, and they rarely discussed what they would do next. Despite her loneliness, though, Wen had begun to feel great affection for the family, particularly its matriarch, Saierbao.

  Saierbao’s face was so weathered that it was hard to tell how old she was, but Wen guessed she must be about thirty. She was an extremely calm and dignified woman who seemed to savor all her chores, however tough and exhausting they were. She never shouted or scolded. Even if someone knocked over her freshly made tsampa or spilled her milk tea, she didn’t get cross. At most she would purse her lips and smile briefly as if she had seen it coming. Saierbao loved jewelry and draped herself in precious things even on ordinary days: with her necklaces, bracelets, and waist ornaments of agate, jade, gold, and silver, she was like a multicolored wind chime. Wen rarely saw Saierbao rest: her tinkling began the moment the first rays of light sneaked into the tent; at night, the whole family took its cue for sleep when her chimes fell silent. Wen would imagine performing the routines of life with Kejun in the manner of Saierbao: bearing and raising children, husband and wife working together in harmony. But every night, as soon as the final movement of Saierbao’s daily concert drew to a close, Wen was brought back with a jolt to her longing and isolation, and her face would be bathed in tears.

  Gela seemed older than Saierbao. He was a man of few words, but was the spokesman for the family. One of the popular Chinese myths about Tibetans was that the men were tall and strapping, but Gela was not much taller than his wife. Neither fat nor thin, his face neither humble nor arrogant, happy nor angry, he gave an impression of reliability, but he was not an easy man to read. Even the animals, Wen discovered, recognized Gela’s dignity and authority: no sheep would wander off, no horse would refuse to allow its hoof to be picked up when Gela was around. Everyone, human and animal, took their orders from Gela’s body language: he was a model patriarch.

  Ge’er was close in age to his older brother, Gela. The two were very alike, except that Ge’er was thinner. Wen found herself wondering whether he was a mute. He never spoke, not even when he was playing with Hum, the youngest child, of whom he was very fond. Zhuoma told Wen she’d heard Saierbao say Ge’er was the best craftsman in the family, and Wen often saw him mending tools with extraordinary concentration.

  One night, just as daylight was breaking, Wen decided to brace herself against the gale and go outside the tent to relieve herself. When she tiptoed back past the sleeping family, she was amazed to see Saierbao under the quilt with Ge’er, their arms wrapped around each other. She stood there for some time, unable to move, watching them sleep.

  Since coming to live with Gela’s family, Wen had slowly gotten used to sharing a common bed with all of them, male and female. She couldn’t imagine how husbands and wives conducted their sex lives in full view of all, but she knew a great many races had lived like this for centuries. It had never occurred to her that the calm, dignified Saierbao would have an affair with another man right under her own husband’s nose. Just to live with your own husband, she wanted to shout to Saierbao, is the most precious, wonderful thing in the world. She didn’t, of course, but nor was she able to go back to sleep.

  The next day, Wen remained troubled by her discovery. She didn’t know how to look Saierbao and Ge’er in the face and tried to avoid them. Everyone noticed there was something wrong with Wen, but assumed that she was homesick. Ni kept dragging Zhuoma over to try to persuade Wen to tell her what was wrong, but Wen just went red and they couldn’t get any sense out of her. Zhuoma knew that Wen often stared into space during the day and wept at night, so she assumed Wen’s distractedness must be due to missing Kejun and was afraid to risk asking clumsy questions.

  After a few days, Wen’s sense of embarrassment had faded a little. When she observed Saierbao and Ge’er together, she could see that the two of them acted as if nothing was going on. She very much wanted to find out whether they were really in love or whether their coupling was just a physical urge, but she was ashamed of her own nosiness. Still, however she looked at it, Saierbao no longer seemed such a paragon. For Gela—a man whose wife was being stolen from under his nose—she felt pity; for Ge’er—a man who was living under his brother’s roof but flouted the most basic moral rules—disgust.

  One day, the family’s fifth child, Me, approached the camp on horseback in the company of a group of lamas from his monastery. He was on a trip to collect colored stone from the mountains, which could be ground into pigment for religious paintings. He had heard from neighboring nomads that the family was nearby. When he saw Saierbao and Ge’er he galloped toward them shouting, “Mother, Father.” Since Gela was working away from the tent that day, Wen thought she must have misheard the form of address Me used. Her Tibetan was still limited to a few basic words. But Zhuoma, who had taken over churning the butter from Saierbao, said with a sigh, “Me must miss his mother and father. All children who leave home for the monastery get homesick.”

  “Yes. Such a pity his father’s not here,” Wen added sympathetically.

  “Oh,” said Zhuoma smiling, “that doesn’t matter. For Tibetan children any of their fathers will do.”

  “What do you mean?” asked Wen, surpris
ed. “Zhuoma, do you mean to say Gela and Ge’er are…” Wen stopped Zhuoma from turning the wooden pole.

  Zhuoma was astonished by Wen’s confusion until suddenly it dawned on her. “Didn’t you know that Gela and Ge’er are both married to Saierbao?”

  Now Wen was even more bewildered. “Saierbao has two husbands?”

  “Yes, this is Tibet. In Tibet a wife can have several husbands. You never asked me about it so I thought you’d worked it all out from hearing the children call to them.”

  Zhuoma passed the butter pole to Ni, who was standing nearby, entranced by their talking to each other in Chinese, and pulled Wen to one side.

  “I understand how difficult it is. For you, living here is just like being in Beijing was for me. If I hadn’t visited China, I would still think the whole world lived on a snowy, mountainous plateau.”

  Now that she understood Saierbao’s “adultery,” Wen was ashamed of her own ignorance and misjudgment. She didn’t tell Zhuoma that what she had seen a few nights ago had been the cause of her low spirits.

  Wen was disappointed to find that Me and his fellow lamas knew nothing of the conflict between the Chinese and Tibetans and had not seen a single Chinese soldier. Just before they departed, Wen asked Zhuoma if Me might be persuaded to part with two small pieces of colored stone. That evening, she used one of the stones to write a letter to Kejun on the back of his photograph.

  Dearest Jun,

  Are you all right? I just want to write one

  word. Sorry. Sorry to you because I haven’t

  found you yet. Sorry to myself, because I

  can’t search the plateau on my own. Sorry

  to Zhuoma and this Tibetan family,

  because I have no way of repaying them.

  The color from the stone pencil was very faint but the stone made such a deep indentation that her words were engraved on Kejun’s smiling face. She remembered the diary and pen that Wang Liang had given her in Zhengzhou and that were now buried, along with her pack, somewhere in a mountain pass. “Writing can be a source of strength,” Wang Liang had said. She felt that her short message to Kejun had given her fresh courage to face the difficulties ahead.

  Me’s brief visit to the tent made Wen reflect on what life was like for Tibetan children. It must have been very hard for him to leave the family at such a young age, she thought, and Saierbao must feel his absence deeply.

  Zhuoma told her not to worry.

  “The Tibetans let children go very easily,” she said. “All of Tibet is like one enormous monastery. Every household with more than two sons has to send at least one to the monastery to become a lama. This shows their religious devotion, but it also gives the child an education and relieves the economic burden on the family. There is a Tibetan saying: ‘Yak butter is a more lasting possession than a son.’ This is because a yak belongs to a family alone, but a son can easily be taken away to a monastery.”

  Were Tibetan children allowed any kind of childhood at all, Wen wondered. She noticed that, except for clothes and hats, hardly a single item in Gela’s household was made especially for children. She asked Zhuoma to question Ni about what it had been like when she was smaller. Had she ever had toys?

  “Yes,” Ni replied. Her father, Gela, had made her lots of toys out of grass and dried goats’ tails, but whenever they moved on they had to be left behind. He had also carved them wooden animals as birthday presents.

  The oldest son, Om, was no longer a child. He must have been about eighteen and spent the day silently working away with Gela and Ge’er. He couldn’t read but he played the Tibetan lute beautifully and sang well. Every day at dusk, the time when all the family dealt with little bits of personal business, like removing lice from their robes and hair, washing themselves, or laying out their bedding, Wen would hear him singing outside the tent. She never knew what he was singing about, since it was all but impossible for her to communicate with Om, but she could sense a man’s outpouring of feeling for a woman. Om’s singing always brought out her longing for Kejun, as if the sound waves could shake him out of hiding. Wen had no idea how an eighteen-year-old boy raised in such isolation could create such resonant melodies.

  The oldest daughter, Ni, had just reached puberty and was the most animated member of the family. She was like a merry little bell, able to make her usually taciturn parents rock with laughter. But Ni always cried secretly at night. At first, Wen thought Ni was having nightmares. When she tried nudging her awake, however, she found that Ni wasn’t asleep. Wen didn’t understand how the girl sleeping next to her could be so different by day and at night. She could see a kind of despair in Ni’s tearful eyes. Wen avoided thinking about this. She herself was trying to hold off despair and refused to succumb to it even when, in her worst nightmares, she saw a blood-soaked Kejun. Wen wondered what had left this lovely, flowerlike girl so bereft of hope.

  Ni’s younger sister, Pad, was so quiet she hardly seemed to exist. Nevertheless, she was always close by to lend a helping hand, passing her mother or sister the very thing they were looking for. If, after the evening meal, Pad was seen pressing their belongings to the edge of the tent to keep out the draft, Saierbao would give everyone an extra blanket for the night and, sure enough, later Wen would hear the wind roaring outside the tent. Astonished by Pad’s predictive abilities, sometimes Wen was tempted to ask Zhuoma if Pad might have some knowledge of Kejun’s whereabouts. But she was too afraid of what she might learn from such a revelation. She didn’t dare risk a forecast that could crush her hopes.

  The little boy Hum seemed to be about eight or nine. He loved being around other people, always wanting to learn everything. Wen often watched him with Om, who was teaching him to play the lute. Om would show his little brother the fingering and how to pluck the strings by tying the little boy’s fingers to his own as he played. Hum also liked to pull the butter-churning pole from his mother’s hands, leaving Saierbao no choice but to place a pile of dung sacks under his feet so he could see how to stir the pole through the milk. He would even run into a flock of sheep his father was trying to round up, copying how his father threw the lasso and yelled at the animals. Zhuoma told her that Hum was eager to enter a monastery like his two brothers. Wen couldn’t understand how a little boy who had never left home could be so keen to become a lama. She noticed that Hum prayed with a devoutness far beyond his years. Such maturity of belief in a boy not yet four feet tall must, Wen realized, be a true spiritual vocation.

  EVERY DAY Wen noticed surprising things about the Tibetan way of life, and was constantly amazed by the differences between Tibetan and Chinese customs. One day, she discovered that Gela and Ge’er, not Saierbao, did all the family’s needlework. The first time she saw Ge’er sewing a robe, she could hardly believe it.

  “Zhuoma,” she shouted, “come over here! What’s Ge’er doing?”

  Saierbao, who was standing nearby, couldn’t understand Wen’s reaction. What was so surprising about the men in the family doing the sewing? Zhuoma told her that Chinese men hardly ever touched a needle, that sewing and mending were invariably women’s work. Ni fell about laughing after she heard this. “Women, sewing?” she said to her mother. “Surely not.”

  Saierbao shook her head, sharing in her daughter’s disbelief at this absurd idea.

  So, it was the men’s stubby fingers that were responsible for the whole family’s clothes and bedding, and even Om could sew a decent seam. Ge’er was particularly skilled with a needle and Wen learned that almost every item of ceremonial clothing the family possessed had been made by him.

  Zhuoma explained that the clothes of the earliest people in Tibet had been made out of animal skins and furs, which needed to be sewn with very thick thread. Only the men had the strength to sew with needles like iron poles and ropelike thread. Although it was now possible for women to sew clothing, the old tradition remained.

  WEN WAS eager to be able to repay the family’s hospitality by helping them with their work. However, she
rapidly discovered that, although Saierbao swayed and hummed as she went about her tasks, they were by no means easy.

  At first she found it impossible to milk the yaks. It was a job that demanded a great deal of skill. Worn out and dripping with sweat, Wen got nothing but complaints, and certainly no milk from the yaks. Even Pad, who quietly passed her a cloth to wipe away the sweat, couldn’t stop a little smile from crossing her face.

  Making dung cakes looked easier but Wen soon found out that this was very deceptive. Before the dung could be dried, it had to be collected. She was supposed to scoop up the dung with a special curved shovel, and swing the droppings into a basket carried on her back. Then it had to be kneaded and patted into cakes, dried in the sun, neatly piled into sacks, and stored inside the tent. Wen usually ended up throwing the fresh dung all over herself instead of into the basket on her back. She howled at Zhuoma about how bad her aim was.

  Being pure physical labor, fetching water required the least skill of all the chores. But it demanded great strength. Wen could hardly bear the weight of the water cask and would stagger along. More often than not, she would lose most of her load before she was halfway home.

  Wen most wanted to master the butter churning. Saierbao said that her mother used to tell her that this was a woman’s most exhausting task—but also one of the skills for which she was most respected, because butter (and the yogurt and curds that were made from what was left over) was the essential ingredient of all three daily meals. Churning involved stirring milk in a wooden tub with a wooden pole hundreds of times, until the fat separated and could be ladled off to make the butter. Another process involved separating the curds and whey. The dried curds could be made into cakes with tsampa and were often used as religious offerings.