Keeper Of The Mountains (10 page)

She discovered Durbar Square and the Tundikhel, a huge grass parade ground. Alive with activity, the
maidan
was an ideal place to get a sense of the pulse of Kathmandu. Young boys came by the dozen, marching and exercising under the watchful eyes of Royal Nepal Army soldiers. Cows grazed contentedly and squealing children competed in sporting events and gymnastics.

The other lifeline in Kathmandu was the sacred Bagmati River. It was here, rather than on the streets, that she saw the women of Kathmandu, washing their hair, their bodies and their clothing. The Kathmandu bazaar was a place of mass confusion and activity. Bicycle shops, beggars, cows and the occasional Rolls-Royce all shared street space. Mounds of spices and rice, piles of peppers and bananas, bolts of brilliant silk and cotton, cheap plastic jewellery and the all-important moneychangers caught her eyes. The smells and sounds were overwhelming: bells rang ceaselessly from more than five thousand temples in the valley, drums drummed and horns honked. Even though there were few cars, each seemed to have a fully functioning horn and a highly motivated operator. The evenings were strangely silent.

But Elizabeth Hawley's arrival in Nepal was of a professional as well as personal nature. Before she left India, she had learned that Nepal was about to hold its first general election in history, so she dropped in at the Time Inc. bureau in Delhi and asked the correspondent if
he would like her to do some work for him there. He said yes, so she teamed up with two journalists, her friend Elie Abel from the
New York Times
, a man she described as wonderfully bright, and a correspondent for the
London Observer
, Cyril Dunn, who struck her as gentle and witty. The three of them travelled as a pack, doing interviews with leading Nepalese politicians and others. Watching the two experienced journalists work, Elizabeth was exactly where she wanted to be – on the inside track of an interesting period in the political history of Nepal, when King Mahendra would institute the nation's first constitution.

The chronology leading to the first parliamentary elections was one of intrigue and a massive shift in power that was centuries old. The Ranas had ruled Nepal since the mid-19th century, and the Rana prime minister normally held his position until death. To accomplish their stranglehold on power, they had devised a crafty refinement of the caste system that split the powerful Rana clan into
A
,
B
and
C
classifications. Only the
A
's could rise to the upper levels of power, and of course it was an
A
-class Rana who devised the system. They were known for their keen interest in women, whisky and hunting. They didn't tolerate freedom of speech in religion or politics, and the prison was full of political prisoners to prove it.

Under the Ranas, the members of the royal family were powerless and lived as virtual prisoners in their own palace. Needless to say, there was some tension between these two most powerful forces in Nepal. Just before Elizabeth arrived in Nepal, Tribhuvan – meaning “dweller of three worlds”: material, spiritual and human – was king. His son, Mahendra, was crowned in 1955. The new king lived in a palace which, while not as the prime minister's palace, was nevertheless impressive, Elizabeth wrote, with grounds resembling a “fairyland version of an English country garden.” His title was hollow, but the throne was maintained because, to the Nepalis, he was a deity. The Ranas arranged his marriage and by the time he was 14 he had fathered two children by two wives who were sisters. To foreigners, he was a symbol of self-indulgence, rumoured to be interested only in opium and women. In fact, this was not the case, and history would prove he had intelligence, self-discipline and the courage to mobilize his people to a new way of governance and life that would emerge at just about the time Elizabeth arrived in Kathmandu. The nation had
begun its rebellion against the Ranas and was about to embark on its long road to democracy.

By 1950 King Tribhuvan and his family had escaped bondage in their palace, finding refuge in the Indian embassy at Kathmandu and then in India itself. There, they were welcomed by Pandit Nehru. While the king was in India, armed Nepali Congress supporters invaded southern Nepal and captured the Rana government, setting up a provisional government. In the west, peasant guerrillas leapt into action. Nehru's opinion was made clear in his statement: “We are anxious that there should be peace and stability in Nepal. At the same time, we felt that the introduction of substantial political reforms was essential for this purpose.” With the fall of the Ranas, the king returned as constitutional head of the country. He announced that an interim cabinet would be set up with seven Ranas and seven representatives of the popular party. All political prisoners would be freed and there would be a constituent assembly chosen by adult suffrage the next year.

It was a strange kind of revolution – in part inspired by the population, in part by the monarchy. But despite his best intentions, Tribhuvan seemed unable to replace the oppressive Rana rule with anything other than unworkable, short-lived, compromise governing councils. To make things more complicated, his son, Crown Prince Mahendra, insisted on marrying a Rana woman named Indra. Defying his parents on an issue as important as marriage was unheard of, but Mahendra did it, marrying first Indra and then her sister Ratna after his first wife died. After several years of recurring illness (and probably exhaustion from his recent efforts at reform), King Tribhuvan died in a Swiss hospital.

In 1955 Prince Mahendra was crowned king and his second wife became Queen Ratna. A precedent had been set – it was possible for a crown prince to choose his own princess. The significance of this became clear 50 years later when Queen Ratna was the septuagenarian queen mother in residence at the palace when yet another crown prince rebelled against his parents' marriage plans. Only this time, it would end in a bloodbath such as the country could hardly comprehend, the slaughter of almost the entire royal family. But now, after a century of Rana rule, King Mahendra was keen to move his country into the 20th century, and so he gave his country its first constitution
and held the first general election in Nepal's history. It was these events that Elizabeth had come to observe.

After several weeks of voting, victory was declared by the Nepali Congress Party (
NCP
), which won 70 per cent of the votes. Elie Abel of the
New York Times
had to leave Nepal, but not before he told his foreign news editor in New York about Elizabeth. She was flattered, and also pleased from a practical point of view because she was running out of money. She flew to Calcutta, where she wrote a report to the
Time
bureau chief in New Delhi and then began her long journey home. She took a cargo ship to Hong Kong via Rangoon, Penang, Singapore and Pusan, then from Hong Kong to Osaka on another ship, overland to Tokyo and its port of Yokohama, and finally San Francisco, arriving in time for spring.

Elizabeth recalls a mélange of sensory pleasures upon returning to American soil after two years abroad – a rush of familiarity, but also the dawning awareness that her home country had less to offer her than before. After sailing under the Golden Gate Bridge into San Francisco – an event she remembers vividly – she went directly to Blum's candy shop and soda fountain in Union Square and ordered a sundae smothered in chocolate sauce and walnuts. With that treat in hand, she wandered around the square, feasting her eyes on scenes of “typical” America that she hadn't seen for two years. It was a pivotal moment. During that wander, she had a little discussion with herself: “This is a great place, but it's not the real world. I would like to live a few years in the real world – a world that's like what most people live in.” Her travels had made an impact. Her life would never be the same.

But she was also practical. She wanted to live comfortably and it dawned on her that Kathmandu was the place. It had a pleasant climate, a low cost of living, beautiful hills that reminded her of Vermont and she would be able to hire staff to look after her everyday needs. (No need to cook!) At no point did climbing and exploration enter the equation in her decision-making process. She was blissfully unaware of the Herculean efforts taking place on the Himalayan peaks. The names Herzog and Buhl meant nothing to her. But in order to mobilize this new plan, she first needed to return to New York and find a job.

She moved back into her apartment on Madison Avenue, settling in with the treasures she had accumulated in the far-flung corners of
the world. She worked at a series of temporary jobs, just until she had enough money to depart for good. One of these was for
Life
magazine's new book-publishing arm. As always, she did research. Then she did a stint for Nelson Rockefeller's brief presidential campaign, where she proved to be a useful member of the staff because of her access to the morgue and all those files.

In the meantime, she applied for a job at the U.S. Information Agency (
USIA
) within the State Department. This was the domestic name for what was known abroad as the
USIS
(United States Information Service). Its role was to understand, inform and influence foreign policies in promotion of U.S. national interests. Information activities in overseas operations included reading rooms and libraries, and personnel in missions, embassies and field posts around the world. President Eisenhower set up an Operations Coordinating Board to run the
USIA
, which consisted of several high-level people: the Undersecretary of State, the Undersecretary of Defense, the head of the Foreign Aid Agency, the head of the
CIA
and the head of the
USIA
. This tight group met for lunch once a week, speaking freely about what was going on in the world, which at the time included atomic energy tests, secret information relating to the Soviet Union, shifts in political regimes, and citizens movements.

Although she had good credentials to work for the
USIA
, it didn't look promising, as revealed in a letter from Deputy Director Washburn: “She made a very good impression here, but jobs for women in the Foreign Service are extremely limited.” This was tough to accept for a woman as independent, experienced, knowledgeable and capable as Elizabeth. She was also waiting on a decision from the Ford Foundation Foreign Area Training Fellowship, for which she had applied. She proposed a study of Nepal's postwar history – its political and economic development since World War
II
, with particular emphasis on its penetration by influences from outside its borders, specifically India and Tibet. Albert Furth, assistant to
Time
magazine founder and editor Henry R. Luce, wrote an effusive reference letter for her:

Elizabeth Hawley was among the top few researchers on
Fortune
's staff … she was always in demand by our ablest
writers.… The writer knew he would not only have the benefit of thorough, penetrating reportage; he also knew he would have the benefit of a mature and uncommonly intelligent mind in debating the implications of the material gathered.

In early December Elizabeth was asked to come to Washington to appear before a panel of three
USIA
men: one from personnel, one from the press section and one from the cultural-affairs section. They grilled her for an hour and a half about her past experience, her views on American foreign policy, what she would do if she were running the
USIA
and whether she understood what her duties would be. She obviously made an impression because 10 days later she received a letter asking her to proceed to the next steps: a security check, medical examination and psychological–psychiatric examination. She was being seriously considered for a Foreign Service appointment.

In April 1960 she received a “no” from the Ford Foundation because they felt she didn't have enough academic background in South Asia. The
USIA
eventually did offer her a foreign posting, but because she was not allowed to choose the country, she turned it down. Her mother also discouraged her from working for the
USIA
, as she was convinced it would be too bureaucratic for Elizabeth's free spirit.

By this time, Elizabeth had become fixated on Nepal. Fascinated by the country's politics and the idea of an isolated state emerging into the 20th century, she decided to live there for a few years. She wanted to watch the country change and develop. She described it as “a place where you can see what the world is becoming.” During the summer, she hammered out an arrangement with Time Inc. in which she would return to Kathmandu in September of 1960, accredited as their part-time correspondent. Two years later her accreditation would be for the Reuters news agency. In the meantime she was also offered fairly lucrative work with an organization calling itself the Knickerbocker Foundation. She accepted the offer – an arrangement that would cause some raised eyebrows back in New York, since many of her colleagues and friends assumed she was really doing intelligence work for the U.S. government under the cloak of a foundation. With her contacts made and her contracts signed, Elizabeth was off.

The mountains hereabouts are infested with men mad enough to want to slog to the tops.

— Elizabeth Hawley

N
ow that she was to make it her new home, Elizabeth explored Kathmandu and its environs with even keener interest. She discovered the adjoining ancient city of Patan. Bazaars filled with tiny shops selling exquisite silk, silver and gems were the reward for navigating its maze of narrow lanes and alleys. Along each brick-paved street, spacious houses were decorated with dragons, gods and goddesses carved into wooden frames.

She drove to Bhadgaon, where hundreds of gilded roofs glared in the harsh sunlight. The distinctive styles of both Buddhist and Hindu temples intertwined in evocative imagery. Religious festivals were common and it seemed to Elizabeth that the entire valley seemed to embrace ancient religions of all kinds.