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Elsewhere

by KAROLLE RABARISON

Yak butter in my hair, yak butter on my skin. Not the actual thing but the smell of it. Sweet then sour then sweet then pungent. We were back in Lhasa for the evening with dinner as our first stop. A buffet in two lines: one labeled "Tibetan food" and the other "Chinese food" which, as far as I could tell, were the same bold dishes consumed in Sichuan the week prior. I opted for the former and assembled a humble plate of curried potatoes and tsampa porridge before collapsing into a seat. There was more to this fatigue than sore feet.

Even as a kid I fantasized of elsewhere. Do you know that place? Daydreams of some grand journey to some undetermined locale that guarantees some life-altering experience. My brother and I drummed up adventure games and explored the neighborhood as if we didn't know each alley's crooked lines and every kink on the sidewalks already. We didn't invent treasure to seek, only that we were seeking, and spent afternoons tramping about collecting clues. Riddles on notebook paper and keys long separated from their respective locks. Yes, the same clues we ourselves hid.

This fantasizing, it's a hard habit to break. It isn't unhappiness with a place, a home, but knowledge of other places with potential to be other homes. When we weren't outside running along like video game characters, we conjured plots of running away to places learned from books and color-coded maps. I am sure Tibet was one of them. Little did I know that years later I would make it there.

En route to Samye Monastery one morning, my eyes lingered on every scene as if they'd go blind at the trip's end. Prayer flags and khatags like cobwebs clinging to mountain passes. Riverside, the rolling hills faded into more rolling hills that weren’t rolling hills. In villages visible from the road, families emerged from flat-roofed dwellings to begin their day. A pair laundered linens in a basin; another gathered on small stools with morning bowls. A few miles further a girl biked through dirt, glancing back every two seconds or so at the older girl chasing her. When the older girl caught up, I thought I heard the two giggle — impossible through the bus window.

I drank yak butter tea in slow sips to delay the second round, one I knew to be gesture of hospitality yet wished to dodge anyway. What if I hid the cup under the table between my knees and out of reach? I aborted the idea by the fourth sip and replaced the cup on the table instead. Another pour, a quiet thanks.

In Lhasa's Barkhor a shopkeeper pulled me aside to ask where I was from. The Barkhor, the area that encloses the Jokhang Temple, is a pilgrimage site where Buddhist devotees from all over Tibet come to perform the kora — or circumambulations. It also includes a cat's cradle of a marketplace crowded with vendors shouting prices for thangkas (paintings), knock-off North Face jackets and other mishmash.

"The U.S.," I answered. She had judged that my skin tone meant I was visiting from South or Southeast Asia and hesitated before continuing.

"Oh. Oh, your face reminded me of a school friend. Long ago."

"Really? Here?"

"No, no, no, in India. My father sent me to India. When I was 11 but I returned soon after my schooling." A pause before she added, "To the family's disappointment. Ever been to India, miss?"

I shook my head no. "Why weren't they happy to see you? Why did you come back?"

We were chatting but she did most of it, and always in this tone like she was sharing secret wisdom. To interrupt is to go hungry.

“They say the city has lost its soul. Or, that only greedy ghosts turn its prayer wheels.”

Then: "But why wouldn't I come back? This is my home. This Lhasa, it's different. Bigger. Louder. More people like you, less faces like mine. But this is my home."

And this: “There is no place or fortune that could tempt me to leave again. Not even your America, you see.”

A man then approached the stoop to wave trinkets and incense at my face. "Special price just for you! Special for you!" This I took as cue to leave, and the woman and I exchanged last words over the vendor's various discounts. Be well, take care, tashi delek.

Growing up in Antananarivo I was used to tourist encounters. We lived in the neighborhood perched just below the Queen's Palace, the city's highest point, so it was common for backpack-laden Europeans to interrupt our play asking for directions. Tiny, eager fingers pointed upwards as if granting novel information, as if there were anywhere else for them to go but up and up, and now I imagine we must have mocked their worried faces for thinking themselves lost. On one such occasion, a couple asked to take our picture. We were surprised, confused even, but agreed anyway. We posed on steps leading up to the pink house that overlooked a small convenience store. Smiled. Months later my mother would recognize that house on a postcard while at the market and would bring home a copy for us to see.

Alas, how strange to think of my own image mass-produced to collect tourist moneys. At special prices! Just for you! Stranger still to grow up to be a backpack-bearing tourist, elsewhere, taking pictures of every little thing while children eyed me out of mockery or curiosity or both. The last evening in Lhasa, I went back to the Barkhor for a stack of postcards and chose the ones of landscape or architecture only, none of faces. The latter made me uneasy.

In letters and phone calls, I never mentioned that uneasiness or this fatigue — head weary, heart rootless. And I didn’t confess feeling guilty over stints that allowed only a scrape of a place. Paint chips, really. Instead I wrote of sleeping mountains and red geraniums in window planters and butter tea. Instead I described — what was that sound? — the clack of wooden planks against stone as pilgrims kowtowed again and again.

A Western breakfast prepared us for the trek back to the east coast: scrambled eggs, toast, and coffee aplenty. Anytime I was in transit, whether in flight or chasing trains or as bus cargo disconnected from the landscape, I took advantage of the limbo to update the mental list of Things Experienced I Might Write Home About. The list for Tibet was handwritten in a notebook and started off like this: 

We adapt familiar words to describe familiar things.

We collect code words for everything including toilets.

"western" - it flushes; available only at the hotel.

"tree stop" - a roadside scramble for trees.

"the roof" - two toilets on the roof of a restaurant (on the roof of the world).

"deep pit" - exactly what it sounds like and the only facilities at the Potala. "Only in an emergency," the guide said, meaning only if you can't wait till the group left the grounds. Some of us couldn't wait.

Within 12 hours we were in Shanghai, another two and in Suzhou. I didn't know Suzhou's streets well then, but they were familiar enough that I could tell when the shuttle was within 15 minutes of campus. We, luggage and snacks and all, made it into the dorm lobby just in time for the 11 p.m. curfew. The concierge secured chain locks around the door handles. I hauled 70 lbs up five floors to my newest homebase.

Karolle Rabarison is a contributor to This Recording. She is a writer living in the Carolinas. This is her first appearance in these pages. She tumbls here and twitters here.

Photographs by the author.

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