Nima

Nima's story 1

Nima's story

Nyarong, a small town in east Tibet - August1975

"Come with me" Greg said a determined note in his voice. "I have a horse. I know where I can find others. It is your one chance. We would be miles away before your absence is discovered. If we cross the border alive I promise not to ask anything of you in return; not even your affection."

Nima looked at him concertedly as if trying to make up her mind, then replied slowly, "No I cannot go. It's not me. I am not afraid of you. I know I can trust you much more than I can the Communists, and I have little to gain by staying. It's my mother. They would kill her if I escaped. There has to be another way."

Greg's heart sank. "Your mother" he said dismayed, "Why does it always come back to your mother?"

"Yes," Nima said wearily, "It does. Doesn't it? Let me tell you a story. It's not a very good story, for there is too much pain in it, and so very little hope. But that does not make it the less for the telling.

It opens in a prison in 1960; a forty-five year old woman and her little daughter. The woman is in prison because, it is said, her husband has joined the anti-government guerrillas. The woman on her part has demonstrated 'green-brains' by shouting anti-Chinese slogans during Lhasa street protests and possessing religious objects. The girl is there because she has nowhere else to go.

Life isn't always easy for the pair. The little girl isn't officially inside, so both of them have to make do with prison rations for one. As the girl gets bigger, with the growing appetite of a child, it becomes more and more difficult for the old woman to manage.

So when in 1963 the girl, now six, is accepted for the minority school, it is cause for rejoicing. For while it is said that the minority schools are propaganda mills for the communist party, at least the little girl will get an education; and perhaps two real meals a day.

After she arrives at the minority school the girl learns that her mother has been released and sent to work in the borax mines north of Nagchuka. At first she is relieved. Then she hears stories of the mines, and how Nagchuka is the coldest place in the world, and she is worried again.

But the young forget quickly, their minds are malleable. Her teachers assure her that there is no truth in the rumours; that the right-minded workers of Tsala Karpo and Nagchuka march in the forefront of the Red Revolution. She is duly impressed and stops worrying.

The next time she meets her mother is six years later in Lhasa. She is twelve-years-old now, and already secretary of her class unit, a young soldier for the Red Revolution. It is an achievement that makes the hardships of school and the stigma of her reactionary background appear more bearable.

So when she comes to visit and finds her mother ranting on about the murderous Red Chinese she accepts it as the resentment of an jealous, uninformed brain for the leaders of the great revolution that must any day now sweep cross China's frontiers and liberate the world's poor. Even her mother's unusually rapid ageing, the sores on her hands, the hunch in her back from being run over by an overzealous handcart driver, do not impress her. Workers are making sacrifices everywhere. It is a small price to pay for the liberation of the world.

Eventually the old woman gives up trying to reason with the girl. Her mind has been too greatly influenced by the Communists, the woman's enemy. This round too they have won. Grudgingly she accepts the inevitable. This does not in any way diminish her love for the child.

The old woman has no employment at the time. For although released from prison and reclassified as a good serf, none of the hundreds of communes around Lhasa is willing to accept the good worker with no assets to bring to the commune beyond her tired old body. The old woman is forced to find work wherever she can and, when that is not available, beg outright. It's not that beggars make any money in Communist Lhasa, but it gives her something to do.

Those are really hard times because of the ravages of the Cultural Revolution and successive famines. The old woman never has enough of anything. But poor as she is, wretched as she is, not a day passes that she will not manage a gift for her child --a piece of ribbon, a worthless little trinket; starving herself so her little princess can have that extra piece of cabbage in her Thukpa.

 It is heartrending to see her, and yet it seems even more unkind to ask her to stop. There is so much she seems to want for the child, yet so little she can actually do.

It is painful watching her helplessness, her increasingly futile efforts to please, and the girl is relieved when the vacation is over. 

After that one time the girl is always afraid to return to her parent. Afraid of the difficulties it might cause. Afraid the party find out about the old woman's tirades against them and send her back to prison again. Afraid of the enormous burden of disappointment and heartbreak the old woman carries, and that she, the child, might be overwhelmed by it. She always finds a pretext to not go back.