Four:
Nepal

The women of Pathan are washing their laundry.

Dip, smear with soap, scrub, dip, swish, knead. Dip, smear, scrub, dip, swish, knead. Then a muscular wring and reach behind, to a growing mound. And ahead, to an eroding knoll. Dip, smear, scrub. Barefoot, squatting in bright salwar kameez above tin tubs. Dip, swish, knead. Working quietly, breaking rhythm only to borrow a neighbor’s clay-colored soap ball, or tender a lean limb of conversation. Dip, smear, scrub. The washing place is a sunken stone courtyard adjacent to a temple. Centuries of gentling by water and feet have worn its rocks smooth. Dip, swish, knead. A stream gushes from the side of the temple into a trough in the square, giving way instantly to extravagant suds, iridescent pinks and purples glistening voluptuous in the early evening light. Dip, smear, scrub. Occupying the center of this courtyard—as with most—is a shrine, a small cement replica of the temple, surrounded by oil candles and festooned with the vivid litter of devotion: smears of tikka red, plucky yellow marigolds. Dip, swish, knead, wring, reach—

“Look! See child!”

I am so startled that I jump, nearly falling off the wall where I sit cross-legged above the square. Before me stands a tiny Nepali woman, holding a girl who looks too big to be carried. She is at least five, her forehead marked with the tikka thumbprint of devotion.

“Namaste,” I say, bowing my head slightly, smiling.

“Namaste,” responds the woman, grinning broadly. She looks to her daughter. “No, she no talk.” Responding to a query that had yet to surface. She laughs at me as I watch the girl, rocks her on a plush hip garbed in swaths of flowered burgundy. The child is slack, folded into her body. I reach forward to touch her hand and she whimpers; the hand lifts, drops, then opens to mine. Her mother laughs, sets her down on the wall beside me. The girl’s rolling eyes meet my gaze for a second, holding it before knocking off like pin-balls. I am confused, emotionally adrift and clutching. In the United States, this child would be pitied, as would her mother. Without warning, she releases the child. Her spine buckles instantly and I jerk forward breathless with horror, but her mother is quicker. She holds the impassive girl gently and throws her head back, laughing and laughing at me, at the absurdity of my reactions. Eventually I join in. The child’s gaze drifts languid back to mine. A drop slides from slipshod lips, idles down her chin. Together her mother and I laugh, bells pealing incandescent through the slithering light of dusk. The women are leaving the square now, filing out in a leisurely rosary. They tap the shrine as they pass, ascend the stairs in loose constellations. The low hum of leave-taking; the wide sweep of hips lilting the day’s labor home.

50

I return to the U.S. from Israel in the fall of 1997 for my final year at Berkeley. I decide to write my Interdisciplinary Studies thesis on the status of the West Bank as an illegally occupied territory. This topic will fuel me with sufficient energy, I explain half-jokingly, to power eighty pages of material. I construct a historical argument, maintaining that while the occupation of the West Bank is inimical to peace, nonetheless the expansion of Jewish settlements within it has been actively encouraged or covertly permitted since 1967 by both right-and left-leaning governments. I struggle to remain objective in the writing of this, not to allow my analysis of the settler movement to stray into the arena of condemnation. One of my thesis advisors is a Palestinian professor. He gives me an A and requests that I meet with him. “Your work is good, Marisa,” he says. “But you fail to take this to its obvious conclusions. If you want to get it published, you need to close your argument. For any kind of lasting peace, the Occupation has to end.” I nod. “And Palestinians must win the right to return.” I am silent. If all the Palestinians who once lived in Israel proper chose to return, they would outnumber Jews. Israel as a Jewish homeland would cease to exist. I cannot, in good conscience, take this step. “But this is an academic text,” I finally respond. “It’s not a polemic. I’ve tried very hard not to take sides.” “You can’t avoid it when it comes to this issue, my dear,” he tells me, speaking slowly, deliberately. “You are a Jew. You have come this far. There is no such thing as neutrality.”

No such thing as neutrality? But the two sides on this issue are miles apart. How will they ever meet if there is no middle way? I decide that I’m not ready to pick a side. I’ll take my A, thank you, and forgo the publishing.

Thesis completed, I graduate from Berkeley in May of 1998. I stride out of its green patinaed gates and wait with bated breath for the next dazzling thing to fall into my lap. Why would I expect otherwise? In school, I knocked down awards and A’s like flies. But life after university proves rather a strain on my ego. I have been studying voice, and I decide I want to sing. I want to sing, and I will support my musical career by working at a nonprofit. Where I will save starving children/ the whales/the planet.

The only glitch is that the nonprofits, to my amazement, aren’t clamoring for me. I finally settle for a job as the coordinator of a program for teenagers at the Jewish Community Center—not quite the platform I had envisioned for realizing my hazy dreams of saving, or stunning, the world. After this job I work as an associate producer at a kids’ media company, then as a counselor with severely emotionally disturbed adolescents. Yet while I learn a lot in these roles, none of them fits quite right. I feel aimless, frustrated. I want to give more to the world, but remain unclear about how and where to best apply my energies. While I am performing with some regularity as a singer-songwriter, my gigs earn me roughly enough to buy a burrito. This can’t be it, can it? There has to be more to life than cubicles, art compressed to the margins, the desperate respite of weekends. There has to be more.

I am twenty-four when I decide I want to go to India and Nepal. I can’t explain why. The region intrigues me. And I need a journey. I need to prove my mettle. If life isn’t going to provide me with suitable stimulus, I’ll just have to go off and create my own. Over the past couple of years I have also begun freelancing as a writer for local newspapers, which I enjoy immensely. I want to write, and I want to travel, and I want to do it by myself. I tell Eric, my boyfriend of a year, that I need my freedom.

“Why?” He is hurt. “What are you running away from?”

“Nothing,” I say unhappily. Am I running away from something? Am I running away from him? Reality? “I’m running toward… something… I think.”

He pulls back, away from me. “What about me?”

“You’ll be with me.” I’m suddenly unsure. Do I really want to do this, really want to risk losing him? I reach my hands up to cradle his face, looking at him imploringly. “I just—I just—have to do this. On my own. Without any strings or crutches.” I know I sound cold, but commitment feels like a shackle right now. What I crave is adventure, the bliss and thrill of honeymoon piled upon honeymoon. I scrape up my savings. I buy a three-month round-trip ticket to Delhi (which I later extend). I quit my job, apply for visas, get my shots. But I’m panicky and suffused with doubt. Why am I doing this?

Life since college has been a disorienting and generally bumpy ride. A year into working at the kids’ media company, I realized I loathed my job but lacked the volition to leave it. At some point it dawned on me that I was depressed, and I started seeing a therapist. When the tech bubble burst, I was laid off. Vastly relieved, I set about trying to arrange my life in line with my values. But unemployment and the subsequent structurelessness of part-time work and freelance writing left me anxious, and I found myself neurotically constructing an iron scaffolding of assignments from which to drape my patchwork of a life. I proved a far more grueling taskmaster than any of my bosses; my expectations were sky-high, I tried to do everything, and I ended up exhausted and dismayed at any dropped stitches. Romantically, it took me half a year to extricate myself from my first boyfriend, and of late I have been fixating obsessively on Eric and a couple of other men who keep circling. I need to go cold turkey on men, even Eric.

In the murky haze that is my life right now, I’ve been having real trouble separating what I want from what others want of me. It may not be a particularly rational or sensible choice, but I feel that this trip will bring clarity, a stronger sense of who I am. Still, I can’t help but suspect there’s something gravely amiss with me. Everyone else seems content to figure out who they are without flinging themselves across the planet. Not to mention that so far my only experience traveling alone has been a five-day trip to Portland, at a friend’s suggestion that I “try it out.” Sure, that was great. But that was Portland, for crying out loud. South Asia? Alone? Am I certifiable?

53

Three weeks before my departure date, planes crash into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. The world shifts on its axis. Out of the ashes and grief shrills the strident war-hawking of the Bush administration. “Marisa, you can’t go now,” my mother tells me over the telephone. “It’s just not safe.” My parents are baffled by my desire to go in the first place. Every time I visit them in Southern California, my father grills me on my plans for the future. When am I going to fulfill all that potential? Grow up and get a doctorate? “I’m still going, Mom,” I say. Moreover, I now have a mission: to write about socio-politics in the region. The mainstream media’s coverage of political developments following 9/11 largely strikes me as biased rhetoric, thinly veiled support for Bush’s warmongering over Afghanistan. Afghanistan shares borders with Pakistan, which is itself adjacent to India. There is very little reporting coming from the area, but I know that Washington’s newfound chumminess with Pakistan bodes ill for perennially tense Indo-Pakistani relations. Here is an opportunity for me to put the skills I have accumulated writing for local papers to good use. U.S. foreign policy affects millions of people around the world, but very few of those people appear in the mainstream U.S. press. I want to amplify their voices. I pitch myself as a freelance stringer to the foreign news editor at the San Francisco Chronicle, and he is interested. I’ll be reporting on how ordinary people view the global political forces that shape their lives, and whatever other intriguing stories I may stumble upon along the way.

First stop: Taiwan. A weeklong stopover en route to India proves a wonderful introduction to traveling solo. I am lucky enough to meet people with whom I immediately connect, and realize with some relief that traveling alone can also be a highly sociable affair. I spend the week traversing the island with new friends Sigal from Israel and Sean from Canada (who lugs around a bag full of miniature Canadian flags and pins and distributes them liberally, educating locals and fellow travelers alike about his motherland’s distinctive geography and politics). We are reclining on Chichi beach, a palm-bedecked, unpopulated paradise on Taiwan’s east coast, when we get the news.

It is a warm night. A colossal yellow moon is slowly disrobing from the clouds quilting the horizon. Surf pummels sand with soothing insistence. We are drinking Taiwan beer and engaging in an early variation on a discourse with which I will become all too familiar: the Backpacker Dialogues.

“I mean, you have to be seeking something. No one just ups and leaves their country for months without, you know, some kind of deep need propelling them.” Sean is adamant, eager to share.

“Sure. I guess. Well, like, I want to figure out who I am, you know. How to speak my truth, whatever that is. Stuff like that.” I am cagey, waiting to see how much he’s willing to reveal. “You?”

“I want balance. I need to figure out how to live a more balanced life, so I figured removing myself from normality altogether would be a good start.”

“Sigal?”

Sigal is belly-down on the sand, playing with her cell phone again. Israelis and their pelefons. It’s an enduring love affair. “Basically I needed to escape the reality of living in Israel.” She looks up, dragging deeply on her cigarette. “The army, the bombs, the terrorists, all that shit. I just can’t deal anymore.” Silence. We nod sympathetically, look elsewhere. I stare at the chalk line where the waves break, thinking of my time in Israel. Shlomit, Mohammed, the Kotel. Tanks in the desert. A nameless Arab boy whose eyes still blaze into mine.

“Well, I’m learning a lot already.” Sean is back on track like a bloodhound. “I mean, these people, they just live more simply. You can see it in their eyes, they’re peaceful, they don’t have to figure out how to—”

“Oh my God!” Sigal is staring at her cell phone. “Oh my God. You’re not going to believe this. You are not going to believe this, Marisa.”

“What?” I am at her side, reaching for the phone. “What?”

“It’s from my mother.” She hands it to me. “Afghanistan, you know?”

55

I nod. The message is in capitals, incontrovertible black blocks straddling the wan lime screen.

HI HONEY, it reads. THE WAR HAS STARTED.

And so my journey begins. I spend the next five months switching between two very different identities. Not that this feels new: immigration left me well versed in the subtleties of rapid adaptation and with an ambidextrous knack for carrying incongruous vantage points simultaneously. For weeks at a stretch I am a backpacker, straying in and out of a tribe of the grungy like-minded. Yielding to my lust for adventure, savoring the redolent pleasures of solitary exploration, indulging in the fruitful narcissism of self-examination. India and Nepal are ripe grounds for all of this: theirs is a compendium of cultures that contrasts sharply with my own, and I am fascinated by the differences. By a mother who neither resents nor pities her disabled child. By the surfeit of faith—Hindu, Buddhist, Muslim—that greets me wherever I turn. Alongside the grinding poverty, with its trusty henchmen—disease, child labor, urban filth—there is also crushing beauty: the sumptuous hues of saris and streetfoods, the ornate, fragranced innards of temples, the smiling overtures of children and vendors. I take it all in, revel in the delights, rise—albeit shakily —to the challenges, and record the details lovingly in my journal. And then every few weeks I pause, retreat to my three-dollar hotel room, scrabble about in my backpack for its least-wrinkled contents, and emerge a Journalist, Not to Be Taken Lightly. I do research using the ancient and frustratingly slow computers in cybercafes. I interview street vendors and muckety-mucks alike with humorless pragmatism. I compose my articles in cybercafes, ramming plugs into my ears and shushing overenthusiastic email-checkers. And then I click send, praying that my drafts reach my editor.

I am in India for only two and a half weeks before I fly to Nepal. It is a relief after my hectic introduction to the subcontinent. India’s graces have yet to sway me: I have been cursing the dirt and bony cows (and omnipresent cowshit), appalled by the poverty, hounded by the endless crowds shoving through the streets. “I don’t like that,” I say in Hindi to the diminutive Indian men who stare me down. Whereupon their eyes shift elsewhere for two tenths of a second before flicking back to me. I am a western woman traveling alone: an object of endless intrigue. I fume quietly beneath the weight of their collective gaze, occasionally pulling a face to see if they react. This evokes nothing but further fascination on the part of my groupies. Finally I wise up and buy some salwar kameez, the dress-over-pants worn by modern Indian women, which helps a little.

In contrast, when I reach Nepal in late October, it feels heavenly: it is slower, cleaner, quieter, and far less populated. My first stop is Kathmandu, and I am at once besotted with its narrow cobbled streets and elaborate temples, with the Himalayas arrayed about the city like a sleeping army. Kathmandu is also a backpackers’ paradise, and I partake liberally of the western cuisine and handwoven wares.

Yet I soon discover that there are two Nepals: they trundle along next to each other, but they virtually never touch. Most places have a twin: there is the glossy variety offered to tourists, and there is the gritty fare of locals. But in Nepal the contrast is particularly striking. One morning in late November, I am hiking a popular mountain trail near Pokhara, a central Nepali city that rests in the lap of the Annapurna range of the Himalayas. The vista is sumptuous. Below, Lake Phewa glints turquoise. Behind, the white shark-tooth of Machha-puchhare peak slices into a cobalt sky. I am with friends and we wend our way up the narrow paths and through the small villages that dot the mountain. When we reach the summit, there are soldiers everywhere. “What’s going on?” I ask one. He motions me to the captain, standing nearby. I approach him.

“Can you tell me what’s happening?”

“Nothing, nothing.” He is contemptuous of my curiosity, dismissive, eyes half-visible beneath his khaki cap. “Normal procedure.”

His disdain and his uniform intimidate me. I study the ground, waiting until I am sure my voice will be steady. Reminding myself I am a Journalist, Not to Be Taken Lightly.

“It’s normal procedure to have fifty armed soldiers on the top of a mountain at ten in the morning?” I pull my notepad out of my bag. I am morphing slowly but surely into my alter ego.

57

“Normal.” He waves me away. “Go be tourist. Everything normal.”

“I guess that depends on what normal is. Can I have your name, please? I’m a journalist.”

He refuses.

On the way down the mountain, I stop locals we pass to ask them what happened. They too are evasive. Finally one man, a prosperous-looking Nepali who is visiting Pokhara from Kathmandu, fills me in. “There was a massacre here last night. Fourteen people killed. The Maoists, you know.”

“What? Last night?” I struggle to digest this. In these tranquil villages, on this dew-laced summit?

“Yes. The Maoists and the government, at each other’s throats again. And who gets killed?” He gestures angrily ahead of us, to where two children are coming up the path, barefoot and laughing. “Civilians. Peasants. The same people they both say they’re representing.”

Nepal was an absolute monarchy until 1990, when King Birendra conceded to calls for reform by creating a parliamentary monarchy. But he retained control over the army and police. In 1996 the Communist Party of Nepal called for an overthrow of the monarchy, and Maoist insurgents began waging civil war in the countryside. Nepal is one of the poorest nations on earth, and tourism is a crucial industry for its economy. So there is an unwritten covenant governing the violence that sears the countryside: leave the tourists out. Terror may reign among the locals by night, but by day a veneer of normalcy is scrupulously enforced.

On June 1, 2001, only five months before I arrived in Nepal, eight members of the royal family were massacred. King Birendra, much loved by the Nepalis, was among those slain. The Palace released little information, but the story that eventually emerged was that Birendra’s son, the Crown Prince Dipendra, had shot his father, mother, sister, brother, five other relatives, and himself in a drugged rage over his parents’ refusal to allow him to marry his girlfriend. In any event, that’s the version I read while still in the United States.

Despite the statements of eyewitnesses that Dipendra committed the crime, I discover while in Nepal that no one believes the official story. Most believe the massacre was contrived by Gyanendra, Birendra’s brother, who subsequently took his place as king. On the night of the massacre, Gyanendra was in Pokhara, 120 miles away. But his son, Paras, a royal thug implicated in three separate cases of manslaughter (and unprosecuted thanks to royal immunity), was present. He escaped unscathed. Many of the Nepalis I talk with think that Paras, now the crown prince, was somehow responsible. Neither Gyanendra nor Paras are popular in Nepal. Nepali journalists who print stories challenging the official version are arrested for treason. Maoist revolutionaries exploit the conspiracy theories in an effort to mobilize resentment against the monarchy.

58

Believing that Nepalis should not fight each other, Birendra had refused to use the military to combat the Maoists. Gyanendra, however, has no such qualms. Following his succession to the throne, discussions between the government and the Communist Party of Nepal disintegrate. The country begins lapsing into disorder. On November 23 the Maoists unilaterally withdraw from peace talks with the government. They launch a series of attacks on the military and other targets, killing over a hundred people in four days. On November 26, the day before I go hiking near Pokhara, Gyanendra declares a nationwide state of emergency, suspending a host of civil liberties and authorizing deployment of the army. Nearly ten thousand of the twelve thousand slain in this war have died since November 2001.

I pitch to my editor at the Chronicle to cover the royal massacre and ensuing events, and he gives me the go-ahead. But the story proves a thorny one to write. Nepalis are loath to discuss the matter with a foreigner. Those who will talk to me invariably refuse to go on record. Officials decline to speak with me or return my calls. It is in Pokhara, after a frustrating afternoon of abortive interviews, that a shopkeeper mentions he has a journalist friend. Would I like to meet him? Why yes, I would. My head is killing me and I’m fed up with being shunned for trying to write this story. For the love of god, yes. He takes me to an apartment building just off Simalchaur Street and introduces me to Kiran.

“A pleasure,” says Kiran, shaking my hand and flashing a dazzling grin. He is young, sympathetic, easy to talk to. I unload my litany of woes upon him. “Yes, this is an article that must be written,” he declares with great resolution. “The whole world believes Gyanendra’s story. I am happy to help. You must only tell me who you need to speak with.” I almost weep with relief, and thank him profusely. “Of course, of course, it is nothing. Would you like to have dinner tonight?”

59

“I’d love to. Can I bring a friend?”

“Certainly. I’ll cook dal baat.”

I head over that evening with Amanda. I met Amanda in Chitwan National Park a couple of weeks earlier. We get along wonderfully, and have decided to trek the Annapurna range together once I file my story. She is a New Zealander, irreverent and side-splittingly funny. I warn her to tone it down for dinner.

We arrive armed with chocolates. “Welcome, welcome,” says Kiran, ushering us into the steaming kitchen. He lives with his mother and sister, who appear to be helping him with dinner. Both receive us politely and then make a swift exit. The kitchen is tiny. On the wall hangs an outdated calendar depicting Shiva, trident militantly upright, locks flowing. Kiran gestures to the rug in the middle of the room. “Please, sit. Dinner is ready.” He begins dishing up steaming plates of dal baat with naan and aloo gobi. We arrange ourselves on the floor. “How cozy,” says Amanda drily, inspecting the rug with great interest. I glare at her.

“Take, please take.” Kiran hands us the plates. “It’s my special. Would you like spoons?” I decline, preferring to practice eating with my hand. “Very good,” he graciously fibs, observing my technique.

“It’s delicious. Where did you learn to cook?” I swat discreetly at a stray chunk of potato on my chin.

“Mostly from my big mother.”

“Did you just call your mother ‘big’?” Amanda is alarmed. “My mother’d put me over her knee and give me a good hiding. It’d be an icy day in hell before she let me get away with that.”

“Oh no,” Kiran laughs. “You misunderstand. My big mother is my father’s first wife. We are very close. My own mother is my father’s third wife. She was his love marriage.”

“Ah, I see,” says Amanda. “Indeed. That makes perfect sense.”

“Yes,” Kiran continues genially. “My mothers are happy. In the west you have so much suffering over love. It is the result of too much freedom.”

“Too much freedom?” Amanda’s voice is shrill. “You think the freedom to be able to choose who you marry is too much freedom?” Her temperature is rising in visible degrees, a flush creeping from her pale chest right up to the roots of her red hair. “Stop,” I mouth angrily. But she’s oblivious. “What about the so-called freedom to have three wives? Seems to me like freedom here depends on being male and that’s the end—”

She catches my eye.

There follows an awkward silence during which all present stare avidly at the closest inanimate object. In my case, the rug. Faded, threadbare in places. But certainly an attractive pattern, I muse. An altogether suitable dinner rug.

Eventually, Kiran resumes. “Women deserve respect,” he says haltingly. “On that I believe we agree. For example, I myself have had three girlfriends. All of them I have respected. I have not tried to kiss even one.”

“But how can you know there’s chemistry if you haven’t even tried kissing?” I am genuinely curious.

“Chemistry?”

“You know, if there’s a spark, if your bodies, uh, enjoy each other.”

“You mean sex?”

“Well, not necessarily. But I suppose that could include sex.”

“Women who have sex before marriage are cheapened.” This isn’t news to me. At Chitwan, a drunken Nepali finally just came out and said it: All western women are whores, he told me, features twisted with contempt. He pointed his finger in my face, leaned in hot-breathed. I can see just by looking at you that you are not pure. “Anyway,” Kiran continues, “Nepali women do not enjoy sex. It is considered a duty.”

“Now that is tragic.” Amanda rejoins the conversation, notably subdued. I nod. “That’s terrible, Kiran. What a huge loss for both women and men. Sex can be such a beautiful thing if both partners are enjoying it.” Good lord. Someone rein me in.

“How can a woman enjoy sex?”

“Um. Well. She just naturally does, I suppose. If you take the time to find out what she likes.”

“How would I do that?”

Am I seriously speaking to a grown, educated man here? “You could just ask her. But also you need to listen to her. Listen to her body. If you’re paying attention you’ll be able to tell what makes her happy.” Ladies and Gentlemen of the Venerated Kingdom of Nepal. Meet yours truly: Scruffy Backpacker, Journalist (Not to Be Taken Lightly), and Doctor Ruth Without Borders. At your service.

61

“I see.” Kiran is looking at me rather intensely. “I will definitely listen to my wife to find out what is making her happy.” He gets up and begins collecting the dishes. Amanda stares pointedly at me. “He wants to root you,” she mouths as soon as he turns his back. “No he does not,” I mouth in adamant response. “Root you,” she mouths with a wicked grin, and begins twitching her pelvis lewdly and jerking her elbows back and forth. I can’t help myself. I erupt into hysterical giggles.

“What’s going on?” Kiran turns from the sink, smiling like an indulgent father. Amanda looks up at him, eyes wide, pure as driven snow.

“Nothing, dearie. Just girl talk.”

Kiran makes the article. He knows the people I should talk with and how to get them to talk to me. He escorts me patiently around to neighbors and officials, introducing me formally as his friend the journalist from California. Together we interview individual after individual who challenges the official story.

“If the prince was so drugged that he needed four men to help get him to his bedroom, how could he kill the whole royal family in a palace full of guards?” a shop proprietor asks me. An “official” committee of four appointed by Gyanendra recently concluded that Dipendra was guilty of the massacre, and that he acted alone. “How could he kill eight people in different rooms using different weapons?” demands the proprietor. I shake my head, scribbling away, suppressing the urge to voice my sympathy. That’s been a hard one for me to master as a journalist. Particularly when I agree with the person I’m interviewing.

“Princess Prekshya’s death was no accident,” a librarian tells me emphatically. Prekshya was the estranged wife of Direndra, Gyanendra’s younger brother, who was also killed on June 1. She was one of the few eyewitnesses to the massacre. On November 12 she was killed in a helicopter crash. “It’s just too convenient,” says the librarian.

Another eyewitness cited in the report is Gorakh Samser Rana, husband to Birendra’s daughter Sruti, who was also killed. Rana survived three bullet wounds. “He’s lying,” Aakash, a journalist, tells me. “Everyone knows he’s lying. He saw his wife and family killed. He’s afraid.”

62

“Why no autopsy?” Kiran challenges. “Why is the Palace refusing to release any forensic evidence?” I have no answers. When I ask people to explain the events of the night of June 1, I hear not a single theory that holds water. How do you account for the eyewitnesses who say Dipendra did it? I ask. Witchcraft, an old woman tells me. Paras stole Dipendra’s soul, says another. Paras was wearing a very convincing mask, offers a vendor.

I am mystified. Has grief driven these people half-mad?

Kiran takes me to interview Prasad Kumar Koirala, a political science professor at a leading Nepali university. Koirala is a member of the Raj Parishad, the royal council that formally proclaims each new king. “The members of the Raj Parishad are quite powerful,” Kiran tells me. We are walking toward Koirala’s apartment, having caught a bus to this markedly more affluent suburb of Pokhara. The streets are clean and the apartments stacked in neat, freshly painted blocks. “The King turns to them for unofficial counsel. And Koirala is a Brahmin. That is the highest caste, you know, the priestly caste.”

I ask Kiran which caste he belongs to.

“I am Chhetri, or Kshatriya, the warrior caste.” He delivers this with some pride, tweaking at a near-invisible crease on his immaculate pink button-down shirt.

“Cool. So, I’ve been wondering. Where would a non-Hindu rank in the caste system? Where would I fit in?”

“Well, that depends on several things. For example, have you eaten cow meat?”

“Beef? Yes, I have.”

“I see.” He looks fixedly ahead. Obviously that doesn’t bode well for me. I ask him if that means I am a Sudra, the fourth and lowest caste. Members of the Sudra caste traditionally occupy positions of menial labor.

“Not exactly.” Kiran is reluctant, avoiding my eyes. His walk turns into a restrained jog and I have to scurry to keep up.

“What then? Am I a Dalit?”

An untouchable. From the Sanskrit dal, meaning “broken.” Considered outside the caste system altogether, the Dalits are leather-workers, beggars, subsistence farmers. In some traditional villages in rural India, Dalits are still required to sweep the ground where they walk in order to prevent “contamination.”

63

“You are not a Dalit.”

“So what am I?” I’m astonished at the shrillness of my voice, at how much I suddenly care.

“You are…” Kiran’s voice trails off. He stops abruptly, turns to me. “Marisa, for eating cow meat, I am afraid you are even below the Dalits.” He lets this drop gently, watching my face with great concern.

“Oh.” And you, I regret to inform, are a goy, while I am a kosher-certified member of the chosen people. I do not say this, of course. Instead I pat his arm, assure him it’s okay. I ask him why it is that every religion has to convince its followers that its way of organizing the world is the best way, that it alone was chosen by God.

Kiran is unhesitating. “Because we are terrified of what we do not know and cannot control.”

We walk the rest of the way in companionable silence, each lost in our own private musings.

The professor, unsurprisingly, is the only person I interview who defends the official story. “Dipendra did it,” he says. “He killed because of love. The rumor about Paras is propaganda circulated by the Maoists.” Koirala is tall, dignified, bespectacled. We are sitting on an overstuffed couch in his comfortable living room, drinking chai.

“How do you explain Dipendra managing to kill eight people in different rooms with different weapons if he was so drugged that he had to be carried to bed?”

“I have consulted with people close to the palace,” says Koirala. “My brother-in-law was Dipendra’s bodyguard, and he believes he did it. Even Dipendra’s maternal grandmother blames him.” He uncrosses and crosses his legs, takes a sip of chai. Behind him an elaborately carved, gleaming grandfather clock burps out a subdued chime. I watch its brass pendulum swinging from side to side at a measured gait. This is not easy for me. As a child in a hyperdisciplined environment, I was thoroughly instilled with a respect for authority figures. And society has taught me, as a woman, to pacify, to avoid offending at all costs. I respect Koirala and am grateful for his time and hospitality. I want him to like me.

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The silence is growing heavy. I clear my throat, reminding myself where my obligation lies. Reaching for the nerve to say no. No, Koirala, that’s not enough. I watch him until his eyes meet mine.

“I understand that they believe the story. But I’m asking you to explain to me how he did it.”

Pause. Koirala will not hold my gaze. He contemplates the brown leather of his expensive-looking loafers.

Finally: “Dipendra did it. He killed his family.”

There is a new edge to his voice. I am officially out of favor. But now that I’ve crossed the line, it gets easier. I ask him why the palace initially called it an accident.

He answers quickly. “As you can imagine, there was great confusion at first.”

He’s hedging. Protecting a man who may have killed his own brother, thrown his entire nation into unrest. I feel a surge of righteous anger.

“I’m sure you’re aware that most Nepalis do not believe Dipendra did it—or at least not alone. Many are suspicious of Paras, who will one day be king himself.” I’m on a roll now. I’ve scented the prey and I’m stalking it raptly. “There are a number of details that point to the Palace attempting a cover-up, not the least of which is the fact that journalists who challenged the official story were charged with treason.” Breaking out of the bushes. Going in for the kill. “Tell me, why no autopsy?”

“Listen, my dear.” Koirala removes his glasses and leans forward, looking me straight in the eyes. “Dipendra committed the massacre. It was a terrible tragedy, and Birendra is deeply missed. But Gyanendra is king now.”

He doesn’t believe it. It’s as clear as day to me, although I also see that he’ll never admit it. He can’t admit it. But if he believed the official story, he’d be making more of an effort. My anger sputters, awash in a wave of sympathy for this man, for what must be a difficult position. Yet I am also frustrated that I will not get to the bottom of this, resentful that he refuses to bow before Truth, Justice, History, et al. We watch each other in silence as the great clock ticks. Then Koirala looks down at his teacup, replaces it delicately in its saucer on the coffee table. “The kingship is not an individual,” he pronounces with finality. “It is an institution that we need. Rajas come and go. Gradually, people will be in favor of Paras.”

65

We thank him for his time, and head back into town.

The next day I interview Putali Khadka, the grandmother of a close friend of Kiran’s, in her bedroom. “Putali will tell you exactly what she thinks,” Kiran assures me. “And what she believes, the people of Nepal believe.” Putali is eighty-six and lives with her daughter’s family. She is in bed when we arrive, but eases herself up creakily to greet us. White-haired and shriveled, she gives me a warm, gummy smile, and takes my hand into her own. She does not speak English, so Kiran serves as translator.

I ask her if she believes Dipendra killed his family.

“No.” She is unequivocal. “Gyanendra did it.” She fixes me with a beady stare while Kiran translates. I sense that she sees more of me than I would choose to exhibit.

“But Gyanendra was here in Pokhara. How did he do it?”

“Through Paras. I do not know how, but I know they did it. They killed Birendra.” She looks behind her, to two ornately framed photographs hanging above her bed. They are of Birendra and Aiswarya, the slain queen. “Gyanendra killed our beloved father and mother.” When she looks back at me her cheeks are wet. She pulls out a handkerchief and trumpets loudly into it.

I don’t want to keep asking questions. I want to end the interview and give her a hug, make her some tea. But I am still missing a crucial piece of the puzzle. A piece I know Putali holds. I press on.

“Putali, nearly all of the Nepalis I speak with do not believe the official story. Why don’t the people of Nepal do something about it? Technically this country is a democracy. What about protesting? Removing Gyanendra from the throne?”

“No, my dear. Nepal needs a king.” She smiles at my naivete as Kiran translates. “The king, you know, is an incarnation of Vishnu.” One of the three principal Hindu divinities (Brahma and Shiva are the other two), Vishnu is worshiped as the protector and preserver of the universe.

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I ask her if she really believes that a man she has labeled a murderer is an incarnation of Vishnu.

“We cannot understand the workings of the deities.” She raises her eyes heavenward, shaking her head at the unfathomable antics of those tricksters populating the divine realm. “We need a king, or there will be a civil war. Gyanendra killed his own brother—it was a matter of the palace. God will punish him.” Satisfaction settles briefly over her features at this thought. She folds her hands deliberately in her lap, waits for Kiran to finish translating. “But we need a king.”

I never thought the concept of democracy was anything other than crystal clear. Either you have a democracy or you do not. And if you do not, you want one. Apartheid South Africa was not a democracy. One man, one vote, cried the black population. Amandla, awethu! Power to the people! There were external boycotts, internal riots. De Klerk stepped down. Mandela stepped up. South Africa became a democracy. When you don’t have a democracy, the goal is to create one, right? “Democracy is a child in Nepal,” Aakash the journalist tells me. “We have a constitution, but the Nepalis are not well educated. We don’t know our rights. The police are the same people who were in place before democracy. The system has changed, but not the minds of the people.” As I discover in Nepal, it isn’t only the monarchy that believes in the need for a monarchy. The people also believe. Not everyone: generally, the younger the Nepali, the more ardent the embrace of democracy. “But the minds,” I respond to Aakash, “are changing.” “That is true,” he says. “But your ideas are too simplistic. The people must be ready, or there will only be chaos.”

And if some of the people are ready and some are not—what then?

Chaos.

If the king clings to power while faith in the monarchy erodes?

Chaos.

If the only available options are an autocrat or a violent revolution?

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Chaos.

The situation in Nepal today?

The Maoist insurgents control roughly 70 percent of the country. Thousands of people, most of them wanting nothing to do with power, wanting little more than to live in peace, have been killed in a civil war that exalts their name. Chaos.

My story appears in the Nation & World section of the Chronicle on December 13, although I don’t see it in print until I return months later. It has been edited liberally. Sentences I crafted with care have been coldly chopped up into news-speak—a language, to my editor’s frustration, that I am still mastering. But it is my article, the fruit of my labors, and I swagger about for a day or two feeling terribly proud and professional. I am also gratified that the other side of the story is being heard—somewhere, at least, if not in Nepal. Still, I wonder what difference this article will make in the grand scheme of things.

Certainly it helps convince my parents that there is some merit to my harebrained journey. Finally, some serious ammunition with which to face the burbling parents of all those lawyers-and doctors-to-be. We’re so proud, my mother gushes in an email. Such an interesting story, and on the front page of the section too!

I can see my father smiling, his brow clearing, thinking, Maybe she’s going to make something of herself after all.

The community of Boudhanath is walking kora.

The devout circumnavigate the holy dome in a steady clockwise orbit, accumulating merit as they meditate in unhurried strides. The faces—old, young, eastern and western—are tranquil, near beatific in the half-light. The sun has just set, and the world remains briefly, strangely bright, as if our local star paused to reconsider just below the horizon. As if it did a double take. This is an apt time for the expression of devotion: faith in the unseen but nonetheless present.

I am sitting on steps beside the whitewashed hemisphere of Boudha, the massive Buddhist stupa just east of Kathmandu. Historians estimate that Boudha, the largest of these holy sites in Nepal, dates back to the fifth century. Each segment in the ascending structure of this sacred mound of earth and plaster corresponds to one of the five elements: earth, water, fire, air, and space. Atop the dome, red-rimmed blue Buddha eyes survey each of the four cardinal directions. Between the eyes, painted in Nepali script: the number one, representing universal unity and interdependence.

Unity. What a beautiful dream, I think. Reality, on the other hand, is by all indications galloping madly in the opposite direction. I think of Kiran, Koirala, Putali, Aakash. Of George Bush and Osama Bin Laden. Nuance, I muse. That’s the key. Life is endlessly nuanced, and growth implies an unfolding to ever-greater degrees of subtlety. I dig my journal and pen out of my bag.

Nuance. I have my ideas. I love my ideas. I bask in them, cling to them, noisily impose them. And then I move beyond my bubble and they get wrecked. I grieve them. They really were beautiful, in their oblivious idealism, in their purity. Later I am grateful: I see that the intention behind them was good, the intention remains—but it has been stretched in its applications. It’s a little humbler, a wee bit more generous. Life, it seems, pushes me ever wider, deeper, in an ongoing struggle to accommodate things I never imagined existed.

In the prayer area, devotees are prostrating themselves. Rising, kneeling, lying down, rising. Monks in their billowing saffron robes, laypeople in their shawls and caps. These rituals feel so foreign to me. Yet the intention behind them is no different from that behind the lighting of candles on Shabbat. Or kneeling in a church. Ritual, I think, is a reminder of what matters. It carves out a space in which to exercise our sense of connection with the divine. I glance up, and the colorful peace flags ringing the stupa catch my eye. They quiver in the breeze, and I have a sudden impression of Boudha as a living being, a place so thoroughly suffused with devotion that it breathes. I lean back, back, until I see only peace flags against the sky.

Faith is simply a home for love. Faith is a place to express our love. It gathers love, aims it at a higher power, and opens us to receive in turn. In the face of the unknown, as Kiran pointed out, faith lends us security, a sense of meaning. But all too often faith boxes us in. It dictates who and how and what we should love. In defining the unknown, it confines the unknown, circumscribes the mystery. And then it narrows who we are. It limits our love, even distorts it. And I am more and more convinced that the fundamental nature of our being is love. I can’t explain this. I just know it in the deepest, quietest part of me. As a solo traveler, I meet this truth on the road every day. I encounter amazing people, know them for a few hours, a week, and then move on. More amazing people turn up. Guaranteed. Just about every face I come across holds goodness, and I am slowly learning how to recognize this essence. There are times when I lack the courage to meet it. There are times when it is too deeply buried to discern, and then I snap closed. But when two people are open, it doesn’t matter where they come from or what they worship. Yes, the world is a bewilderingly complex place. But in that moment, it is all simultaneously piercingly simple.