Those two neared the sleeping soldiers. The tall one was first to wake up.

“How is he?”

“Sleeping. Doesn’t feel any pain.”

“We must take him away.”

“How?”

“The ‘Comet’ is leaving in an hour.”

“How are things back there?”

“As usual.”

“Who’s going to attend him?”

“I’m staying here.”

“So am I.”

The sun was rising. The bombing would start again soon.

2005.

SAMDO

Samdo is a village in West Nepal. It’s the last village in the Guri-kandak gorge, near the Tibetan border.

High up in the gorge several villages are inhabited by Tibetans. The gorge is pretty long. It may take six to seven days to walk from one end to the other. There is no transport there at all.

The locals mostly go in for cattle-farming; some of them grow potatoes too. The people are all poor, but there are slight differences as well. My host, Tsowang Yurmi, has a guesthouse. He lives there with his family, and he can take in ten people at a time. His wife, Kumri, is in the kitchen all day long, cooking vegetable dal-bat[7] for her visitors.

Tsowang and Kumri have three daughters. Nevertheless, they have no family yet. According to the local Tibetan tradition, the family should have a son to be considered a real family. So poor Yurmi is not considered to be a real man.

I have visited Samdo for the fourth time already with an interval of two or three years. Every time I arrive here, I stop at Tsowang Yurmi’s nameless guesthouse. The couple are praying for all their spare time; they are extremely worried for not having a son.

“They even don’t invite me to the village authorities’ session, for they don’t consider me to be a real man,” Tsowang complains to me. I try to cheer him up, but I can’t manage it well. It seems, I’ve started to think like Tibetans myself.

“I’m praying nights through, but the Almighty doesn’t take a pity to me,” the poor man says.

“It’s good you are praying,” I say, “But prayers alone won’t help.”

He agrees.

Trip from Samdo to Tibet takes a day’s ride on a horse-back. Tsowang often goes on that trip. He takes there sacks of potatoes and brings back rice and other products.

At the end of the month my wife and I will go to Tibet and walk round the Holy Mount Kailash. We’ll spend there the whole month praying. We shall pray a lot! We’ll leave our girls in Zimtag with my wife’s sisters.

In the morning I say good-buy to the couple and feel that we are not going to meet for the several following years.

***

I have to go back to Samdo only four years later. We arrive in the city of Beshishapar after a tiring seven-day trip across the Larkia range. From there I leave for Samdo and visit my old friend. I’m too tired and need a good rest. I don’t know exactly how long I have been sleeping, when some noise wakes me up. Someone snatches my hat from my head too, and I sit up in my bed swiftly, feeling a bit giddy. In the end, when I come to myself at last, I see two little boys standing in front of me. They look alike and both are wearing Tibetan gowns. They have Tibetan daggers in their belts and are holding wooden swords in their hands. They stand still, smiling at me. One of them is holding my hat in his tiny fingers.

I gesture at them, asking them to come up to my bed, but they shake their heads in refusal and continue to scrutinize me. I search for some sweets in my pockets, find a few and offer them to the boys. They are still hesitant, but in the end they take the sweets and rush out into the yard.

Some time later, Tsowang Yurmi, sitting by the Tibetan fireplace, tells me how happy he is now and how proudly he walks in the village. The Almighty gave him two sons instead of one! He watches his sons running about with the eyes full of affection. His wife, with a kind, round, happy and smiling face, is silently baking something.

The warmth makes me weak again and I fall asleep once more.

It’s four in the morning, and it’s quite dark when I’m leaving the village. I try to go out silently, not to wake up my hosts, but I already hear Tsowang Yurmi’s prayer:

“Ium, mane padme hum.”

- Great is thy name, O Lord!

KARAKUM

Agsar lived in Tezebazaar, in a small, flat-roofed, mud brick house inherited from his grandfather. The house was fenced with a mud brick fence running round a tiny yard. The majority of the houses in Tezebazaar were one-storey buildings, all looking alike. Only a few of them were plastered with the mixture of clay and straw, and had two floors, the first decorated with wooden balconies.

From the mount Karatau, which Agsar frequented in his childhood, one could get a wonderful view of Tezebazaar and Berun. The world view of the local children was limited to these two villages. From the top of the mount they used to see the flat roofs of the square buildings that looked alike. In the distance though, wrapped in the yellow mist, they could also see the Karakum. All of them were terribly afraid even of this word, for they had heard a lot of terrible stories about the desert: nightly storms, enormous burning ball of the sun, hot golden sands, low, dry plants covered with thorns, the hole of Akjakar and the Kara Kurt – a huge deadly spider.

Agsar was fourteen when his grandfather took him to Khiva, the wonder of the Asian architecture, for the first time. There he saw the real mosque with colored minarets, spacious squares full of people, buzzing narrow streets where people could hardly move. But most of all he was impressed by the Khivan bazaar. What not could be seen here: colored fabrics, silk, jewels, horse decorations and saddles, and the stocks of different arms. The piles of fruit were too impressive as well. It was here that he tasted the Asian watermelon of unforgettable taste.

They spent the night in a tea-house. They lay down on the wooden dais on the embankment. Agsar couldn’t sleep till dawn, for he was extremely excited.

In the morning grandfather bought everything he wanted, put his purchases into the sacks, loaded his dark blue, obedient donkey with them, and only after that he woke his grandson up:

“Wake up, Agsar. We have a long way ahead us.

Agsar jumped up. He was a bit ashamed to be sleeping while his grandpa was awake. He ran to the river, washed his face and hands, then ran up to the grandpa’s donkey, saddled it, and tied its bridle to the saddle of the loaded donkey. Grandpa was sitting on the dais with his eyes closed and his legs crossed, and sipped his tea. At times he glanced at his grandson with satisfaction, and closed his wrinkled eyes again. “I’ve bought salt at good price today”, he thought and a memory of something forgotten, faded and broken into small fragments came to his mind.

The camels were walking lazily in a long row. They were led by the guide walking ahead. The camels were mainly loaded by salt purchased in Chelekend. They traveled from the seashore across the desert. The desert was divided into two parts – the Karakum of Zaunguz and the main Karakum.

The caravan consisted of forty camels and about twenty guides. The trip took them about two months. Crossing the Karakum, they could stop at the only inhabited place, Darvaz. They filled their waterskins with water and proceeded their way.

The Karakum is a real wonder with its contrasts: an incredible heat in the daytime and sandstorms at night. The travelers solved the problem of clothes long ago – they wear heavy clothes both in the daytime and at night: warm Asian gowns with huge cloth belts wrapped around their waists several times, heavy trousers; high, woolen boots – paipaks – and white, woolen, embroidered hats.