In the evening the tent was the best place to be. After the yaks had been tied up everyone sat around the fire and we talked and laughed, played cards and ate our supper, usually tuckpa or momos, which we made together. The children collapsed after a day of hard playing. There was a conscientious search for nits in their clothes, then they were put to bed in a row in a sheepskin, three heads poking out of the top. They lay listening to the soporific lull of family chatter in the firelight, the distant howl of a lone wolf, the dogs barking, their father sucking on his pipe.
The last few days with my parents were spent picnicking. On the first day, the whole family set up tent by the Yellow river – the Tibetans call it Ma Chu. We piled the children, food and tent into Rhanjer's truck, then bounced the half-mile or so through the grassland to the river on the back of the boys' bikes. Annay rode the stallion in a Stetson, one of the dogs running alongside. The flat plain was covered in flowers, and birds trilled. (Skylarks, my father said.) Butterflies flitted from daisy to daisy, and the misty mountains rolled on into the infinite haze of the summer-blue horizon. We made momos together as the sun shone and the children made flower garlands for our heads. Then they ran naked and shrieking into the water as Tsedup's grandmother cried out warnings from the hillside. The current was fast. The Yellow river had been given its name for a reason: it churned up silt into an opaque, ochre flow. Froths of bubble-mush collected along the banks. Tsedup showed off his swimming skills, while his brothers sploshed crudely. It wasn't appropriate for a woman to expose her flesh, so I watched jealously from the bank. Then we played volleyball until dusk.
On the second picnic, we made a trip deeper into the Valley of the Rocks to see Tsedup's uncle. His home was at the foot of a mountain. He had erected a tent for us on a grassy knoll and we sat inside and ate as the yaks grazed in the drizzle outside. Then we climbed to a cave high up on the side of one of the valley slopes. Outside it were the rubbled remnants of an abandoned chorten. It had been the site of worship for an old monk, a lama who lived in the cave three hundred years ago in complete isolation. He spent his entire life in contemplation of the holy mountain peak visible through the crack of light at the opening to the cave. When he died a rainbow took his soul, so the story goes. We looked down through the valley from our rocky outcrop. He had not been the only one to die here: on one particular day during Mao's Great Leap Forward, fifty women from the tribe had been widowed. When the fighting was over, they came down from the mountain to perform the traditional sky burial. It was usually the task of men. They had to scalp each father, son, husband, brother. Then they chopped up their bodies and left them as carrion for the vultures on a mountain peak.
As we said goodbye, Tsedup's uncle gave my father a book wrapped in soot-stained, burgundy cloth. It was a long, rectangular Tibetan manuscript, which had been in the family for generations and had survived burial during the purges by the Chinese. It was dedicated to the second reincarnation of the founder of Labrang Monastery, Genchen Jigme Rhongwo. It was three hundred years old.
The night my parents left Machu we all stayed in the town-house near the monastery. Tsedup's parents had invited them for a last supper. Annay walked the six-mile journey, since she couldn't face riding in the jeep my parents had hired – it made her sick. Amnye arrived from the town on his brakeless bicycle. The house stood in a field of tall grass surrounded by a stone wall. It was ramshackle with odd windows and two steps up to the wooden door. Inside were two cobbled rooms, a clay stove in the first. On the wall there was a collage of faded posters: a wooded lake glistening in the morning light; two fat cherubs holding a hundred-yuan note; galloping horses, snorting dragons, fierce tigers. There was a picture of Tsedup at school with cropped hair and flares, a skinny boy, smiling. Behind a woven cloth sacks of barley husks, stored for twenty years, nudged boxes of butter covered in skin. By the door was a collection of musty canvas bags, the brush made from a yak's tail, the dung tray, some old boots. In the second room there was a sleeping platform of straw and wood, a metal stove and an old Victorian sewing-machine, with 'Flying Angel' painted in scrolled gold lettering on its side. Next to it, the altar cupboard stood in the corner. A rotating light illuminated the lamas' images and brass cups, like a small, silent siren. On the wall were photographs of Tsedup and me and my parents, in a frame. It was strange to see them here. We had sent them so long ago. It was like a shrine to their missing boy.
That night we talked, a sensitive task for Tsedup, since he did all the translating and most of it was about him. Annay and Amnye told my parents how grateful they were to them for having taken care of him in England and bringing him home. My parents said that they had been happy to help their son and to have him for a son-in-law. By knowing him their lives had changed. The tears flowed freely down Annay's cheeks. She left the room to fetch a stained cloth, then sat dabbing at her eyes, thanking them over and over. My parents said it was a wonderful thing for them to be there with his family.
Until that point, Ama-lo-lun, Tsedup's tiny octogenarian grandmother, had sat silently reciting her mantra and turning her korlo, prayer wheel. Suddenly she looked up at my parents. 'Please look after him. He is my heart,' she said, clasping her bony hands to her breast. Amnye got up from his seat and pretended to fuss with the butter lamps on the altar. Then he walked out of the door. It was not the thing to do, to stay and cry.
I had just one thing to say. I said it to Amnye when he came back in. He readjusted his wooden cosh in his tsarer and sat on the platform cross-legged, then removed the white Tilley hat that Dad had brought him.
I said, 'How do you feel that your son has married a western girl?' I knew that I wasn't quite what he had expected for his son.
He lit a cigarette, drew in a lungful of smoke. 'All my sons are free to do what they wish with their lives,' he stated simply. That was it. He smiled at the very corner of his mouth, giving nothing away. Did he like me? Was I a social embarrassment? He was an important man in the tribe and in the town. I guessed that Tibetan fathers-in-law were not used to such impertinence in the average namma.
Maybe I should have kept quiet, but I said, ‘I know how much Tsedup loves Tibet. I love it too. I don't want to take him away from his home. I want to be part of it.'
Annay wept again. I had meant it. I wanted to be a part. Surely it couldn't be that hard.