The evening before we left the grassland I went walking by myself. I wanted to absorb the last deep breaths of Amdo air, to savour the wilderness in which I had been living. It helped me to think. For I knew that sometimes, in the day-to-day routine of life, I had forgotten to register that I was actually here. I had forgotten the pain that we had gone through in waiting to be able to come. I had forgotten that six months ago I had not known these people or this land. I had heard so much about it, but I hadn't really known it. It had been a distant and inaccessible dreamscape somewhere in the deeper recesses of my mind.
That evening, I paused and stood very still. I looked up at the mountains. I listened to the children calling each other. I heard the icy stream rushing over the rocks. I watched flocks of tiny birds rushing up into the dying blue, the buzzards lazily arcing through the waning dusk. I heard the coarse grass rustling at my feet and smelt the dung smoke drifting from the tin chimney. I felt the vastness and irrepressible beauty of this place and I knew that I was home.
The morning we left the grassland, I followed the children to the river and watched them ice-skating in the sunshine. They took it in turns to sit cross-legged on a small wooden toboggan and pushed themselves along with a metal spike in each hand. Each time, they crashed and spun across the thick rutted surface of the ice, laughing. I stood sadly watching them from the bank. I was leaving them today. Tonight we would be staying in Annay and Amnye's town-house, as the car was coming to take us to Lanzhou at dawn the next day. Most of the family were coming to stay in the house with us, but the children would remain here. Perhaps they sensed my sadness, for they called out to me excitedly as they played, 'Come on, Ajay Shermo! You have a go.'
'I'll just watch you,' I replied, too morose to join in.
But Dickir Che was having none of it. 'Come on! Come on!' she cajoled. 'You'll be so happy if you try.' She was mothering me, as she always had from the day I arrived. I smiled at her and squatted down on the tiny sled. She put the picks into my hand and showed me how to dig them into the ice for speed. Then I scooted off and she ran along beside me laughing wildly and skidding in her broken boots. She was right. I was happy.
When it was time to go we loaded our bags on to Rhanjer's truck. Gorbo had disappeared so we couldn't say goodbye. I guessed he wasn't up to an emotional farewell. That wasn't a teenage boy's style. Then Rhanjer crunched the gears and we lurched off down the pitted track, stopping at the railway arches to pick up a sheep. Namjher was taking it to town to sell. As they hauled it into the back of the truck and we pulled away, everyone in the tribe ran out shouting goodbye. We waved and smiled, hanging on for dear life, as we bounced violently through the landscape, the poor sheep scuttling and skidding over our rucksacks. Way down the valley, my dear Dickir Che was still running alongside the truck, grinning and waving, her cheeks flushed from the sting of the wind. I stretched out my arms to her, but she couldn't keep up any more. Her joyful laughter was the last thing I heard of the grassland, before the truck's engine drowned it and we disappeared over the brow of the first hill.
That night we had our last supper. The small house was tight for space as twelve of us were staying. We talked and drank and laughed together in the hot room as Annay stoked up the fire. Shermo Donker made tanthuk, and Tsedup and I savoured the last bowl of real Amdo fare. Then we went up to the monastery to say goodbye to Ama-lo-lun and Azjung. Tsedup's grandmother lay on the floor of their house covered in yak skins. She was ill. She seemed to have shrunk and her tiny body was swamped by the mound of musty, animal hides. We sat and talked with her and Azjung for a while, and I held her hand. She looked so weak that I was worried we would never see her again. It was so hard to leave her, but she was too frail to talk and we decided to let her rest. As we said goodbye and stepped out of the room, she cried after us feebly, ‘I will see you when the flowers blossom.'
Tsedup covered his face and walked away quickly, guided by Azjung, who saw us to the outer door. As I mounted the bike, the Sky Man gently took my face in his hands and pressed his forehead to mine. Then his cheek to mine. It was the closest thing to a kiss I could imagine. A gesture so spontaneous and pure, with no regard for nomad etiquette, that I would never forget it. 'It is so sad that you have to leave,' he said, over and over.
Tsedup and I said nothing to each other all the way back to the house.
The next morning we woke at dawn and moved quietly about our business. The car would be arriving soon to take us away. Although the house was crowded, everyone moved silently around each other in their long costumes, like a slow, sad dance of swishing skirts. Tsedup and I were dressed for the journey. His family had made him a wine-coloured, woollen tsarer with gold brocade. Amnye had bought the cloth in Lhasa. A huge knife dangled from his waistband in an elaborate silver holster. I had been given a green silk tsarer, with red and gold trim and a soft lambswool collar. The women tucked and tied the folds of fabric until they were satisfied and smiled at their work. Then I was presented with amber jewellery, which had been handed down through the generations. Annay Urgin strung them on to my necklace, then stood back to look at her finished work. 'Amdo Namma.' She smiled. It was like a ceremony and we were as resplendent as a bride and groom. I felt proud to be returning to my culture in traditional Tibetan costume. It felt normal. It was who I had become. I was going back to a grey place, but thanks to Tsedup, I had been blessed with a new knowledge. This was my beginning in a coloured world.
As I stepped out of the house Annay took my arm. We embraced and wept gently. 'Look after each other,' she said to me. Then she went to find her son. I stood alone on the step and took one last look at my new home. The sun had left a delicate thumbprint in the pink morning mist. The milky cloud drifted low over the river basin and the blue mountains smudged the horizon. The first silver slivers of light winked from the town. Out in our field, I heard the clink of the white stallion's bridle and the muffled voices of the farewell party, their leopardskin collars pulled tight against the frost. I breathed in the fresh fragrance of the yarsa weeds, tumbling over the stone wall. It reminded me of the autumn harvest when we had lain laughing in the bales of crisp straw. I picked some and put it in my bag.
Then I walked to the waiting car. All of the family crowded round and many of our friends had come from the town to say goodbye. I moved among the earnest faces; the same faces that had seemed so strange to me when they had greeted us so long ago. Today I knew them all. I was their namma. They were my heart. 'Come back soon,' they cried, as we climbed into the car. As we pulled away, I watched them waving and receding in the back window.
Don't cry, I told myself. You will see them when the flowers blossom.
Epilogue
Everyone stared at us on the plane. We must have looked ridiculous to the other passengers, as we sat in our lavish costumes, but I didn't care. They were from the grey world. I looked out of the window at the land beneath the cloud and remembered the family running out of the tent to watch a passing plane. Planes hardly ever flew over the Tibetan plateau, so it was always an exciting event. 'One day you'll be inside and you'll look down at us and wave,' they had said. But, needless to say, they were not on our flight path.
Back in London I wore my tsarer for a week. Then I felt too bizarre and conscious of the strange looks in the street, so I put it away in favour of that season's fashions. It hung in the wardrobe, waiting, the leopardskin trim a reminder each morning when I selected my office clothes. The soft aroma of dung smoke still clung to the fibres when I nuzzled into them. It took a week to wash the dirt of the grassland from under my fingernails and even longer for the cracked skin on my hands to return to normal. For a while I sleepwalked around the city in a state of shock. It was strange to be surrounded by so many white faces. I went to a party and watched dancers flailing their limbs to a deafening rhythm. I was calm inside, the slow beat of my heart like a slip of the hawk's wing trembling on a thermal in the Valley of the Rocks.