The Waiting Land (6 page)

We then turned off New Road, with its would-be Western-style shops, and immediately were amidst that dank maze of narrow laneways which still forms the main part of Nepal’s capital. When we came to a small square Rambahadur glanced furtively around, though no one was in sight, before darting through a very low doorway and beckoning me to follow him. The domestic courtyard we now crossed was scattered with stone gods and phallic symbols, but I had no time to study these before being quickly hustled into a pitch-dark interior and led up a steep, shaky wooden stair to a squalid ‘bed-sitter’, where Rambahadur instructed me to await developments. He then disappeared, locking me in the little room – presumably as a precaution against inquisitive neighbours.

For the next twenty minutes there were no developments. The small window overlooked the courtyard, where a wrinkled, much-bejewelled woman was now scouring brass pots and platters with handfuls of
black mud, afterwards rinsing them in sour-looking water. A dejected pi-dog, which had accompanied her, was nosing unhappily at a heap of refuse, and then a tiny naked boy toddled out to make his
contribution
to the excrement already in evidence – being afterwards called by granny to have his bottom cleaned, also with black mud and water. In general this scene was not uplifting and I soon turned away to observe the interior of the room.

In one corner stood a large, padlocked tin trunk, which I rightly assumed to be the ‘safe’, and on top of it were piled a number of poorly-printed paperbacks in Nepali, indicating that the
money-changer
– who of course would also be a trader – had had some education. Several garish Hindu oleographs were pinned to the walls between a large photograph of King Mahendra with Queen Elizabeth II and a TWA picture calendar for 1952. And, presumably as a demonstration of strict neutrality, small photographs of Nehru, Gandhi, Chou-en-lai, President Kennedy and Khrushchev were huddled companionably in a corner by the door.

I had become thoroughly bored by these gentlemen when at last Rambahadur returned with our fellow-conspirator – a lean little Chetri who looked sharp-eyed but honest. Having scrutinised my cheque, passport and various signatures very closely he requested me to write both my local and home addresses in his ‘register’ – a scruffy exercise book. Then he took the key of the trunk from round his neck, walked to the corner almost ceremoniously and finally, after much muttered counting and recounting, handed me the cash in brand new notes. I couldn’t help wondering what practical purpose my credentials could serve in these circumstances; if my cheque were a dud there was no method of legal redress open to him and equally, if his notes were duds, I was debarred from protesting officially. In fact this was the most pleasing part of the transaction: it demanded a high degree of mutual trust – and so far his notes have not been questioned. I also wonder, being conspicuously ignorant about financial matters, how and where such cheques are eventually cashed. It is said that in many countries with an unstable currency they are never cashed, but are passed from hand to hand as legal tender; yet this seems unlikely, for
the simple reason that they would disintegrate comparatively quickly. Even now in parts of Nepal the country’s own paper currency is unacceptable for the same reason.

This afternoon I spent four and a half hours buying medical supplies for the refugees in Pokhara – a fascinating experience, unlikely ever to be repeated elsewhere. To begin with most of the stocks – imported from India – have passed or are rapidly approaching expiry date and the anxious salesmen look at you pathetically when you point out that this terramycin or that sulphaguanidine has been useless since last March. They then explain hopefully that local doctors unquestioningly use these drugs every day (which doesn’t surprise you in the least) and having declined to follow the doctors’ example you resignedly move on to the next chemist. Naturally everything takes ten times as long as it would at home – finding the articles, searching for the semi-illegible invoices, painfully and not always accurately pin-pointing the relevant articles on the invoices, typing the account with one finger on a machine that looks like the first of its kind, checking, packing,
un
packing because that box was too small, repacking, finding straw because the other box was too large … If one were new to the Asian business scene (of which Nepal is admittedly an extreme example) one would go mad within an hour; even though reasonably adjusted I very nearly did go mad after four and a half hours. But mercifully the petty dishonesty so common in India seems to be much less evident here; every night I leave Leo in Sigrid’s garden – an act of faith which no one but a lunatic would make in India.

It will sadden me to leave this warm-hearted little household, which has recently been augmented by two domineering hens, bought by Donbahadur to provide Sigrid with
really
fresh eggs. At dusk they come strutting into the living-room, watched by a disapproving but discreetly unprotesting Puchare, and demand to be put to bed in the kitchen under the standard Nepalese wicker coop. Now Donbahadur is murmuring ambitiously about the advantages of owning a buffalo heifer – to provide Sigrid with
really
fresh milk. But I suspect that his stockpiling enthusiasm will be checked at this point, to avert the occupation of the bathroom by cattle.

This morning, when delayed by a series of typical Kathmandu hitches, I foolishly allowed myself to fizz slightly; all passengers for Pokhara were due at the Royal Nepalese Airways Corporation Terminal at twelve noon, but it was 11.58 a.m. before I had got myself, my knapsack and assorted boxes of medical supplies, dried milk and old clothes assembled at the appointed spot. (Leo cannot travel until a day when the plane is less loaded with freight for Pokhara.) Yet I needn’t have fizzed; minutes passed, and more minutes, and half an hour, and three-quarters of an hour – and then an impatient-voiced young man told us to hurry out to the bus, his tone implying that the delay was all our fault. We next had to walk some three hundred yards up a side-street and with so many bits and pieces in my charge I was the last to reach the smart, blue airport bus (donated by the USA). Disconcertingly, it was quite empty, but an exceedingly decrepit Afghan-type bus stood a little further on, packed to the roof (part of which was missing), and now someone beckoned to me and shouted ‘Pokhara?
This
Pokhara bus.’ So I squeezed in, having paused to pick up from the ground under the bus a British Embassy mailbag, gravely but not very effectively labelled ‘On Her Majesty’s Service’. My luggage was then insecurely attached to what remained of the roof and I engaged a small boy to ride with it and scream loudly if anything fell off. Now all we needed was a bus-driver; and one did appear after about ten minutes. He took a pair of sandals from beneath the driving-seat, slipped them on to mark the resumption of his official duties, climbed leisurely into the cab, lit a
foul-smelling cigarette and started the engine. Giving a roar like a wounded tiger the bus at once leapt convulsively across the rough street and I trembled for my small boy on the roof; but curiously enough both he and my luggage were still there when we arrived at Gaucher Airport forty minutes later.

There are eight landing-strips in Nepal, all but two – Pokhara and Gorkha – being in the Terai, and RNAC runs daily flights (weather permitting) to each of these favoured points. This means that as fares are relatively low (about £3 for a hundred-mile flight) many Nepalese villagers have graduated within a decade from the earliest-known method of transport to the most modern. At first I was astonished to see so many poverty-stricken peasants queuing for planes, but I soon realised that if one can arrive in thirty-five minutes instead of walking for ten days, spending money on food and lodging
en route
, it is undoubtedly more economical to fly.

At Gaucher Airport a wind-stock is not necessary during this season when the wind rhythmically blows columns of yellow dust across the field – a sight both horrible and fascinating. Even more fascinating is the airport’s indescribable turmoil; it is entirely beyond my
understanding
how anyone ever gets to their prearranged destination – or ever finds their luggage on the same plane as themselves.

The Pokhara flight was scheduled to depart at 2.30 p.m., and at 2.15 I went into the small airport restaurant for a cup of tea. At 2.25 the loudspeaker made a rapid crackling noise, so indistinct that it could have meant anything in any language, and I optimistically deduced that the Pokhara flight was being called. But looking out of the window I saw our huge handcart of luggage still standing near the verandah where it had been loaded; so I relaxed again, aware that this was no reliable indication of the flight’s postponement, but determined to stand by those hard-won medical supplies.

After another cup of tea I moved out to the verandah, where an ocean of humanity and luggage was ebbing and flowing amidst a despairing babel of sound as everyone pleaded with everyone else to tell them when
their
flight was departing and which plane was going where. At this stage four Dakotas (two of them venerable machines
bought long ago from Aer Lingus) were enigmatically lined up on the airfield and one simply had to watch to see which plane one’s luggage was put into – and go on from there. The luggage itself was a classic Asian array – tin trunks, bed-rolls, padlocked wooden boxes, bundles tied up in filthy clothes, bulging sacks, plastic baths filled with miscellaneous objects, cardboard cartons uncertainly roped together, canvas satchels, cloth bags, biscuit tins, and wicker
dokars
(porters’ baskets) shaped like overgrown weaver-birds’ nests. When at last our cart was pushed and pulled to a plane by four coolies I somewhat cynically followed to supervise the loading, for here the public are allowed to wander at will among arriving and departing aircraft.

Half an hour later the loudspeaker made another of its rude noises, people began to move towards our plane – and now it seemed we really were on the way to Pokhara. Then suddenly everyone stopped moving and started to gesticulate and protest, and a young Nepalese teacher beside me announced in English that our flight had been postponed until seven o’clock tomorrow morning. To me this seemed so true to form that I wasn’t even slightly surprised – nor was I half as annoyed as my Nepalese fellow-passengers. Strolling back to the verandah I sat awaiting the unloading of the plane and a reunion with my medical supplies, for which I was by now developing an almost maternal affection, having guided them through so many dangers. The young teacher came to sit beside me, his pale-skinned,
fine-featured
face puckered with frustration. When I asked him if he knew why the flight had been cancelled he sighed and said, ‘The crew never came – this often happens after a party that is late to end. And in Kathmandu we have many parties.’ He added, ‘For you our country is full of difficulties – I’m sorry.’ To which I sincerely replied that for me his country was a joy, and not half as full of difficulties as the West; but I’m afraid my sincerity failed to convince him.

By now our handcart had arrived back at the verandah and was being rapidly unloaded; my companion explained that the next flight, to Simra, had just been postponed as this cart was needed to load the relevant plane. Then, when half our luggage had been flung to the ground, a rumour started that our flight
might
be going after all – and
instantly the confusion became unbearable, as the Simra coolies had been impatiently loading the cart with
their
luggage before
our
luggage was all unloaded and now the piles on ground and cart were inextricably muddled. As no definite statement had been made regarding the Pokhara flight it had become a matter of opinion whether our luggage or the Simra luggage should be unloaded or reloaded and on this point the coolies were disagreeing violently – so after some moments I decided to rescue the medical supplies before they were whisked off to the Terai.

Time passed and the coolies squabbled and bits of luggage went flying around like shuttlecocks. But then there came a new flurry and fuss, followed by joyous exclamations from my fellow would-be passengers, and it was confirmed that we had indeed been reprieved – because, as I later discovered, the American Ambassador and his wife were booked to Pokhara on our flight, which circumstance had inspired someone to filch the crew from another unfortunate plane.

When we finally took off at 2.45 p.m. I was not as nervous as I might have been, because RNAC’s multiracial team of pilots and engineers has established during the past eight years a safety record that many more experienced and disciplined airlines might envy – and this in a country where high peaks, treacherous valleys, swiftly changing weather and scanty technical equipment increase the normal hazards of flying.

At this season cloud hides the Himalayas, and our thirty-five-minute flight to Pokhara was quite tame. As I gazed down at the 4,000- to 8,000-foot hills below us I longed to trek through them instead of merely having a quick, teasing glimpse. Yet this would be a gruelling trek in May, for now the broad, stony riverbeds are mere thirsty trickles and the terraced hillsides a series of dry, brownish undulations, only relieved by the thick green forests that cover the higher ridges. Few villages were visible, for their mud-walled houses blend perfectly with the surrounding earth: but on the highest hills we could see straggling little hamlets set amidst strips of maize, and it was possible to follow for miles the thin connecting thread of porters’ paths, endlessly winding around the mountains.

We made a perfect landing in this broad valley and stepped down from the plane into a chaos of Nepalese, through which could be glimpsed five conspicuously tall Peace Corps volunteers, struggling through the mob towards their Ambassador and his wife. In every direction swarmed dirty, inquisitive, laughing children, and vigorously-elbowing, barefooted passengers eager to embark for the onward flight to Bhairawa before our cargo had even begun to be unloaded. We were at once surrounded by predatory, dictatorial porters – mainly women, wearing tattered, vivid clothes and heavy, noisy jewels – and by a vast number of interested locals, few of whom have ever flown anywhere or will ever fly anywhere and most of whom have nothing whatever to do with passengers or cargoes. Having disentangled myself from this throng I was at once pursued by a young policeman in creased khaki, armed with a cumbersome ledger in which all arriving foreigners are requested to write down ‘particulars’. For political reasons the country north of Pokhara has recently been made a Restricted Area and one gets the impression that the Government, which only opened its frontiers to foreigners in 1951, would be quite pleased to have an excuse to re-impose restrictions on all tourist travel outside the Kathmandu and Pokhara valleys.

While I was doing my duty by the ledger a tall, thin Tibetan in European dress came towards us, welcomed me warmly and introduced himself in a mixture of Tibetan and English as Amdo Kessang, the proprietor of The Annapurna Hotel – a new, one-storey, Tibetan-style building which overlooks the airfield from a rise of ground about one hundred yards away. Prayer-flags flutter happily beside the arched gateway and though this establishment is hardly a hotel in our sense of the word, its easy Tibetan friendliness more than compensates for the disadvantages that may strike the passing visitor.

Kessang next introduced his cousin Chimba, a Lhasa-born trader who has spent some years in India and speaks fluent Chinese, Hindi and Nepali – and adequate English. Chimba is now the Pokhara Refugee Camp interpreter and general dogsbody and it was a relief to have someone to take responsibility for the medical supplies while I went to drink tea with Kessang.

Twenty minutes later Chimba reappeared and offered to introduce me to Mrs Kay Webb, the infinitely resilient and resourceful English grandmother who has been in sole charge of this camp’s health since last December. For three years Kay worked as doctor-cum-nurse among the thousands of Tibetans in the Mysore settlement and, though she has never had any medical training, apart from a Red Cross course, in certain respects she is the more effective for being untrained; too much conventional knowledge would inhibit one from practising those unorthodox improvisations which are often the only way to achieve results in places like Pokhara.

It was no more than a ten-minute walk over level common-grazing land to the village of Pardi – a strung-out collection of wood, brick and mud houses situated at the western end of the airstrip. Here Kay lives, on the outskirts of the village, in a two-roomed house with a rickety wooden ‘staircase’, a rat-infested thatched roof and uneven mud floors. She uses the downstairs room as the camp dispensary and upstairs is her bed-sitting-room, where she cooks what little food is available on a tiny oil-stove.

Kay and I had been talking for less than fifteen minutes when Chimba came rushing back to inform us that the American Ambassador and his wife would like to tour the camp – so we all hurried off down the rough village ‘street’ to that other stretch of level common land where some 500 Tibetans of all ages have been camping since their trek last winter from the northermost part of the Dholpo region of Nepal. Most of these Tibetans belong to the independent nomad tribes who tend flocks of sheep and yak in the Nepalese– Tibetan frontier areas, and they have never been accustomed to discipline or control from any quarter; they do acknowledge some tenuous link with His Holiness as their religious leader, yet they were never within the political sphere of influence of the Lhasa Government or the spiritual sphere of influence of the Potala. In Kathmandu one hears many different versions of the same stories about the intractability of Tibetans in Nepal – depending on the teller’s racial, religious, political, social or personal biases – and it is almost impossible to sift out the truth. But I suspect it
is
fair to say that in
general the Tibetan refugee in Nepal differs considerably from his compatriot in India and is much more difficult to cope with.

At present these Tibetans are being issued with a weekly ration of US Surplus Food – Bulgar wheat, cotton-seed oil and dried skimmed milk – and they are living in 120 ragged cotton tents; but we hope to provide better shelter for them before the monsoon breaks in
mid-June.

During our tour of the camp I made an impulsive purchase. As we walked between the tents my attention was distracted from what His Excellency had to say by an object lying on the palm of a Tibetan’s hand. The object in question was very small, very black and very vocal; its piercing squeaks fatally attracted me to Ngawang Pema’s side and a moment later I had done a deal and one twelve-day-old Tibetan mongrel bitch was promised to me for all of ten-and-sixpence. I wonder what the astrologists would make of the fact that this pup and I entered Nepal on the same date – the first of May.

Penjung, the camp leader, had just invited us all to drink tea in his tent when a rainstorm broke and the Ambassador’s Peace Corps escort decided that he and Mrs Stebbins had better be transported at once to the comparatively luxurious Peace Corps house some four miles away in Pokhara Bazaar. So Penjung hurriedly produced a pair of white scarves and draped them around the Stebbinses’ necks before the rattling Tourist Department jeep arrived to rescue the visitors.