Touching Tibet by Niema Ash & The Dalai Lama

Author:Niema Ash & The Dalai Lama
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Eye Books
Published: 2003-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

INSIDE THE POTALA

There is a slow start to the next day. Some people, including Tibetans, partied all night. I wasn’t among them, but feel like I was. The balcony talk is exclusively about the party. Texas Dave is the man of the moment. When he finally makes an appearance, and we enter the Banak Shol kitchen for late morning tea, he receives a hero’s welcome. He is ringed by Tibetans shaking his hands, clapping him on the back and just gazing at him in silent acclaim. I’m sure if there was a palanquin big enough, they’d carry him through the streets of Lhasa. He responds with atypical low-key nods and a barely concealed desire to escape. We sit alone at a long table, consuming cup after cup of tea, immersed in morose silence.

“Can I get you some aspirin or something?” I offer, as much for my sake as his. His silence is making me nervous and I hate seeing him looking so miserable, it’s like seeing a magician without his magic. He doesn’t reply and I try a different approach. “That was a very professional performance you gave last night.” I note a flicker of response and press my advantage. ‘What are you, some kind of closet Flamenco Kid?’

Texas Dave surfaces, rubbing his temples, “Something like that, I reckon.” Then, like a reluctant narrator obliged to relate a tale, he continues, “When I lived in New Mexico I became a member of the Spanish Dance Club…I had to…I was in love with the teacher, the beautiful Margarita, and that’s the only way I could get to her. I took so many damn classes, they made me president, and I ended up doing demonstrations with her. But that’s all I ended up doing with her … Margarita had no use for Gringos, presidents or otherwise…can’t say as I blame her. Some fool Texan messed with her brother and to her I was just another no good Gringo.” He sighs, but the memory of Margarita has ignited a smouldering spark; he tilts his cowboy hat, winks and says, “But I sure did learn to cut a mean Spanish rug.”

“You most certainly did.”

Ian wanders in looking uncharacteristically pale and depleted. Ian is the only Westerner I know who never suffered the effects of altitude, but at this moment he’s suffering the effects of something. “Someone spiked my chang,” he mutters between gulps of tea, his head heavy in his hands. “It’s that Chinese guy from the Number One, he did it in revenge for the Coco-Colas.”

“He wasn’t there,” I am quick to point out.

“Doesn’t matter. He did it anyway.” His voice is almost a monotone.

“How?”

“How did the Chinese take over Tibet? How is Lhasa on Beijing time? Don’t ask me how the Chinese do anything. They just do it. ‘Vee haff vays und means of making you talk.’” he says slowly, in a thick German accent twanged with Australian. I desist from further comment.

One by one the others straggle in. Suffering celebration withdrawal,

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