The house had been festooned with silver decorations and the table was piled high with sweets, fruit, boiled meat and drinks. In the back room, several hundred momos awaited. We all went to sit down on the platform. Azjung sat in front of the table, the sunlight from the window mapping out the lines on his old skin with shadow. He thumbed his prayer beads. As we entered he smiled and motioned for Tsedup and me to come and sit with him.
'Why do the westerners celebrate Christmas?' he asked Tsedup curiously.
Not wishing to instigate a full-blown theological discussion, Tsedup found an analogy to make himself understood. 'It is their Buddha's birthday,' [1] he explained.
Azjung nodded carefully. Tibetans didn't celebrate anybody's birthday, so no doubt he found this answer strange. I had always found it strange that they did not count birthdays. Here, everyone automatically advanced in age at the same time every New Year, which was around February. Sometimes this led to confusion for me: it meant that a baby born in January would be called a year old a month later. This was probably why nomad children always looked much younger than their western counterparts.
Many years before, when Tsedup had applied for his Indian passport to leave for England with me, he was supposed to have produced a birth certificate. He had had no idea what they were talking about. When I had explained, he had said, ‘I exist. I don't need a piece of paper to prove it.' Nevertheless, the authorities seemed to think it was important. He had remembered his mother telling him he was born in winter, so he had picked a date at random: 2 December. From then on, to the outside world, he had existed. It had been Tsedup's first taste of the infuriating bureaucracy of modern society and it hadn't stopped there, for they had also asked his surname. Tibetans don't use their family names as we do in our everyday life in the West. In Tibet everyone is known by their first name. Although his family name was Kambo-Wasser, Tsedup had never used any other name but Tsedup. In his culture it simply wasn't necessary.
'What is your father's name?' the official had persisted.
Tsedup had stood confused. 'Karko,' he had said.
From that day, it had been Tsedup's surname and then mine.
The western Buddha's birthday was in full swing by mid-morning. Dombie and her husband Tsering Samdup, Gondo and Tseten had now arrived, having finished their morning chores at home. It was a rare thing for the women to come away for a whole day and night, and was only possible thanks to their neighbours, who had agreed to round up the animals at the end of the day. I was glad that they had made it. With all the family and half of the tribe competing for space in the parlour, it was time to distribute the presents. They had been stacked up on the family altar since we had arrived and the children had sat patiently, staring with saucer eyes at the bulky yellow-paper packages. It felt almost ceremonial as we began to give them out. Tsedup and I had chosen a different gift for each child and we felt around the shape of each parcel to determine what was inside, then gave it to them. Each time, nine other pairs of eager eyes followed the parcel to its destination. The children shrieked with delight when the contents were revealed. When Dorlo received his long-expected rifle, he jumped around hysterically on the platform. He loaded the plastic bullets into the cartridge with professional ease and cocked his weapon, ready to fire. He took aim at Yeshe and before anyone could stop him, he pulled the trigger. Annay screamed. But nothing happened. He squeezed the trigger again. Still nothing. Unbelievably, the gun was faulty and, feeling cheated and frustrated, Dorlo collapsed in tears as everyone tried to calm him. The excitement of Christmas was just too much for him. It was too much for little Sanjay too. Among other things, we had given him the plastic dinosaur and when he peeled back the paper and saw the hideous creature inside, he dropped it and ran away in shock.
The children's mothers collected up all the presents for safekeeping as soon as they were opened. I thought it strange that they didn't let the children play with them now, since that was what Christmas Day was all about. But they were shrewder than I. They knew that if today was to be anything like the Losar they were used to, those presents would shortly be garbage.
I soon saw what they meant. The nomads really knew how to party and, sure enough, I watched the day progress from the initial chatting and sipping of drinks into a full-scale riot. Most of the tribe had arrived to join in by now and since there was a severe overcrowding problem in the house, everyone spilled outside. It was a warm day, the wind had settled and the sun shone favourably from the sapphire sky. There was nothing to prevent a game or two out in the yard, I thought. Perhaps a football match with Samlo's new ball. But they had something less sedate in mind. The nomads like to wrestle. The women were the real hell-raisers and left most of the men inside with their beer. I watched as they chased the teenage boys, performing perfect rugby tackles and bringing them down in the dust. Grandmothers grappled grandchildren and nephews attacked aunts. Dombie, who was normally so quiet, had transformed into a raging Amazon and had her cousin Donkerchab in an armlock, as he cried for mercy. I saw Shermo Donker writhing and screeching on the ground, as Dado rubbed her head in the grit of the paddock floor. Dolma had been pinned to the floor by two young tribesmen and screamed and kicked as they tried to tether her to the yak ropes. The ensuing tumult whipped up a dust-storm in the yard and, one by one, the fighters retreated to rest by the porch, panting and covered in filth. They were crazy, and although a part of me wanted to join in, I found it hard to come to terms with the fact that at the end of the frenzy there would be no shower. I watched and laughed, absorbing their boisterous energy, and wished I had their freedom of spirit and blatant disregard of muck all over my body.
As they played, I thought of Christmas in England. Right now, my family would be dozing on the couch with a bellyful of bird, while the TV flickered and the fairy-lights winked on the tree. I couldn't have been further from them. I missed them, but not the familiar trappings of our festive season. These days, the excitement was mostly for children while we adults just sat around achieving various stages of inebriation. Here, the adults were content to behave like children sometimes. They knew how to have a good time.
I had heard other stories of their wildness. Last New Year the men from our tribe had driven a truck to the next valley. The men of that tribe were away and our men had kidnapped all of their women and brought them back to our valley for a joke. In retaliation, the abandoned husbands had then ridden over the ridge to claim back their stolen wives, along with our women. A mock battle had ensued with much wrestling and frivolity as Atung's wife, Annay Tseko, had ended up running around naked. She was certainly one grandmother with a sense of fun. Some day I would stay for New Year in Machu.
That night as the revellers straggled home, Rhanjer invited Tsedup and me to sleep over. With so many relatives staying, there was no room at home or inside his house, so we settled for the railway arches. Shermo Domatso made us a fire and brought enough dung for the night's fuel. She put down fresh straw on the earth floor and gave us sheepskins as bedding. Then she left through the curtain covering the doorway. The freezing air blustered in from outside and we wrapped ourselves in the skins and drew closer to the iron stove. The shadow cast by the flames danced mysteriously around the mud walls and between the clefts and ridges of the concave stone ceiling. It was a weird place, a cave full of memories. We shared a cigarette and Tsedup told me that these buildings had been part of a labour camp when he was a boy. His parents had worked here. All day he had been left in a tent, unsupervised, with the other children. He explained that no fire had been allowed in the tent. There had also been no food; that was supplied in the main mess, where strict rules governed eating times. I wondered how it had felt to be abandoned in such a way. His elder brother Tsedo, aged about nine, had looked after all the younger ones in their family until ten o'clock at night when his mother and father came back. Exhausted, his parents then sat reading from The Little Red Book. They might be asked to quote random passages from it in the morning and there would be trouble if they couldn't remember. Of course, like many nomads, Annay was illiterate. Those like her had had to learn the book by heart – or by head: their hearts had had nothing to do with it. Amnye had read it aloud to her.