Namma: A Tibetan Love Story

The music was often sorrowful. Amdowas had a strong sense of identity, an unfaltering concept of home, and an acute sense of the visual. Their vocabulary directly reflected this and they had a stardingly subtle variety of adjectives at their disposal. They had specific words for each minute colour variation of their horses and that colour could not be used to describe anything other than a horse. I was often reminded of the inadequacies of my own language in this respect, as some things were impossible to translate without sounding clumsy.

Tsedup's cousin, Lugerjar, was a singer-songwriter famed throughout Amdo. He made his living producing audio cassettes, which were sold across Tibet, and running the local School for the Performing Arts. I was privileged to have heard him sing for us one night in a restaurant. It was a melancholy sound, a lingering, crystal vibrato. He delivered it with passionate force from the pit of his solar plexus. Everyone stopped eating when they heard it:

My guru has winged into the blue space,
Tears well up in my eyes as I long for him.
Lend me your wings, white condor,
And I will go to the guru in the azure sky.

My brotherhood has been scattered to the four corners of the world,
Sorrow floods my heart as I long for my little brother.
Lend me your speed, wild horse,
And I will go in search of him.

My beloved parents have departed to the darkness of death,
I am lost in timeless nights and days as I long for them.
Bestow me with your beams, o great sun,
And I will search for them in the world of the dead.

Another relative, Choegetar, had just produced his first cassette. He was the one who had sung the reunion song for us in the tent when we had first arrived home with Tsedup. His music was haunting, revealing the drama and strife of this land, and now that I knew more about him I understood why. A few years ago, his father had been killed over a land dispute. All of his sons displayed creative tendencies -Choegetar's younger brother, Sherab, had published a book of poetry, and the youngest, Jachwar, was a dancer and singer at the local School for the Performing Arts – and their work was imbued with a sensitivity and an acute sense of empathy that perhaps is only felt by those who have truly suffered.

But not all nomad lyrics were sorrowful. At our marriage blessing in England our Amdo friend Lamakyab had stood at the altar and read Tsedup and me the words to a lazjhee.

Let you be the yonder snow mountain,
Let me be the pure virgin snow.
Even though the blazing sun rises
I will never melt.

Let you be the sandalwood tree
And I will be the scented leaves.
As long as you are not harmed by the wind
Leaves will never fall.

Let you be the glistening lake
And I will be the golden fish.
For where would I exist
If not for your rippling waters?

Let you be the statue of Dolma, the female saviour,
And I will be your dazzling, brocade robe.
Who would don me
If you were not there in all your sculpted splendour?

The cedar in the forest
Neither perishes in the bleak winter,
Nor is changed by the sweltering summer,
Such are our thoughts.

The snow-white Waller flower
Is neither withered by the bitter wind,
Nor suffocated by the weight of snow,
Such is our love.

I had also heard Tsedo and Rhanjer chanting aloud a traditional rhyme that chronicled the transition of the various stages of winter, which were split into units of nine days:

The first ninth, the chilled ground cracks,
The second ninth, the cold stone splits,
The third ninth, the icy iron cleaves,
The fourth ninth, the shuddering bull groans in the barn,
The fifth ninth, a spark of fire warms the sea bed,
The sixth ninth, ice reveals its entombed treasures,
The seventh ninth, water brings seeds of life,
The eighth ninth, the horseman takes off his hat,
The ninth ninth, the wayfarer takes off his shoes,
The tenth ninth, the fertile land heralds the spring.