My Amma has long been a good actress. Like a word merchant from blogs of ages past, she'll squawk anything in her ads to get lazy tourists' attention: "Witness Tibet In All Her Glory!" or "10 Ways Yak Butter Tea Cures Cancer!" (though butter tea involves female yaks, dri, so it's dri butter tea -- but in the real world, the intricacies of Tibetan are worthless).
Appa, Amma and I stand at attention, wind wrangling our hair, as a copter descends on our barley field. Out come two females: Galina Tsiklauri, blonde and prim, and her daughter, Daria, who takes delight in scowling at me. Ether had given us their identities, but we exchange Chinese greetings as a matter of courtesy.
By lunchtime, Daria is waist-deep in plastic, investigating the synthetic marsh. "It's broken," she yells. "Can I fix it?"
I gape at her from the field. "With your hands?"
"No, with money." She wades out to ask her mother, who is sipping tea, if pretty please, could she help?
Daria runs back, face red (clearly not from running). "My mother said you should take better care of yourselves," she announces. "You shouldn't waste money on silly things, like paint."
Without the colored walls of our home, the mystic tapestries even we cannot explain, few tourists would find us compelling enough to throw money at. We would be not dirt-poor, but dust-poor. Culture, if profitable, is good.
YOU ARE READING
Rog Pa Je (Help!)
Science Fiction2084. The Ether, which internally connects and tracks humans, permeates global society. Tibetans are one of many groups that face oppression, their language nearly snuffed out. One Tibetan family has chosen to sell itself to tourism.
