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ROCK-BREAKING GIRL
Dear B,
You almost go unnoticed, but I see you.
āM
THE RIVER IN Surkhet is on Nepali time. It wanders slowly down from the mountains in the Karnali Zone of midwestern Nepal, arriving quiet and exhausted, at barely a trickle, in the center of town. Crawling past the pushcarts and vegetable stands, the cobbler and the transient sacred cows, the water dries up completely, leaving nothing but its luggage of silt and trash in a bone-gray cradle. Rivers are considered holy in this part of the world. You bathe in them and worship in them, whether they rush clear through the foothills or squirm through the mud. Many of the people Iāve met here say that the river is where you go when you die. But the river is where Hima lives.
The first time I see her, sheās a streak of orange, a curl of tangerine skin sitting in the dirt. Rising from the belly of the riverbed, she dusts off the bright, puffy sleeves of what in a previous life mustāve been a party dress, and gets to work.
She canāt be older than five, I guess, standing at the lip of the bank.
I watch her weave between slabs of plastic and cinder blocks and scoop up a stone the size of a soccer ball, waddling it back to her pile of gravel and grunting like a quarryman. She sits cross-legged and whacks the rock over and over, brows scrunched so close that they meet.
No matter where I go, I always seem to end up in places like this oneāalleyways, outskirts, trash heapsāthe back pockets of a place where less desirable things and people get stuffed away. Iāve been traveling all over the South Pacific and living in India on my gap year, but still, a mix of sadness, fear, and shame hits me under my tongue every time I see these hidden, tucked-away places. Little kids go to work in some places. Theyāre porters, laborers on construction sites, domestics, agricultural workers. Watching them work is jarringāwatching them work with a smile, even more so. The girl pulls herself up, shakes the pebble from her skirt, and sizes up a new hunk of shale.
Beyond the territory sheās staked out in the gully, there are others, all women and children as far as I can seeāa coalition of them. Some look thin. Some smile through their sweat and red tikka and patterned, beautifully colored deutis. Nearly all of them look tired, worn ragged and caked in a layer of dust from the riverbed. They wander up and down, looking for rock material they can crush into gravel and sell to developers and road construction projects. After roughly a decade of civil war in Nepal, money is coming in again, and people are building homes, especially in this tiny trading post of a town. In 2006, unsuspecting Surkhet, with its rickety mango stands and freewheeling livestock, is beginning to grow. Plots that were once rice paddies are sold off by the kattaālots of about 3,600 square feetāand transformed into boxy mud, tin, and brick homes.
Although Surkhet was never fully infiltrated by the Maoists or the government forces, there are quiet, almost polite remains of conflict. Checkpoints with armed guards surround the valley. Soldiers do their morning patrols through the streets, jogging with long, symmetrical strides. Despite these reminders of conflict, itās borderline idyllic, a paradise in one of the poorest regions in one of the poorest countries in the world. In the town center, children hang on the statue of beloved King Birendra like heās Mickey Mouse (though I think he looks more like Jack Nicholson), and a bakery that could have been plucked straight from Beauty and the Beast shows off perfectly crescent-shaped samosas and pao roti from behind a window. There are more baked goods than bullet holes. The remains of hammer-and-sickle graffiti are worn and almost washed away from monsoon rains. The Himalayan districts just north of here are still in tatters.
Crossing the river is the quickest way back to my hostel, so I start to shimmy down, clods of dry, sun-bleached earth buckling under my feet and turning suddenly into mud in the basin. The peppery smell of chai that followed me here from the tea shop refuses to go any further. Cardamom and clove dig their heels in. The scents of human waste and sweaty goat take over. Breathing through my mouth, I ignore the ominous squishing sound that comes up from the bottom of my trekker boots, the wetness that tickles my toes. I try to go unnoticed, feeling a little ashamed, as always, to be happy and fed. Meanwhile life in the river rushes on, starving.
A baby strapped to the back of an older child begins to wail. In Nepal, the girl, about fourteen, could be either his sister or his mother. Another baby starts, pitching his apricot-sized fist into the air. Then another. A tiny infant union forms instantly and decides to go on strike. Caregivers start off toward the block of shanty homes made of old rice bags and corrugated metal.
My friend in the orange dress looks up from her hammering. Her eyes, flecked with gold and lack of sleep, lock onto mine. After traveling and traveling and traveling, I canāt go another step.
What am I supposed to do? In this moment, in this life? What are we, as a human family, supposed to do and be?
She drops her mallet, and I look at her as if she has the answers. She looks at me like she is the answer.
āNamaste, didi,ā she shouts, frantically waving her leathery doll hand my way. A giant sun-soaked smile practically explodes between her cheeks.
Hello, big sister. My Nepali isnāt great, but I know this phrase. Everyone is everyoneās didi here.
I take a long look at her. She takes a long look at me.
āNamaste,ā I say back.
The population of the universe dwindles to exactly two: a teenager from Jersey who spent her childhood bouncing on an enormous backyard trampoline and trying to get good grades, and a dalit, an āuntouchableā who has never seen a school or a toilet. Sifting shoeless through the trash and grinning like a goofy cartoon, there she is, the worldās most unspeakable failure and its unending promise, all tied up with a thin orange ribbon. The plates inside me begin to shift.
I keep walking, knowing with certainty that Iāll see her again, crossing the river and letting her perfect bird voice echo in my head. Namaste, didi.
In another life, she could be my sister.
In another life, she could be me.
I HAVENāT ALWAYS known to ask the big questions about humanity, or try to understand why some people had so much and some people had hardly anything, why most of the people I met that did have so much seemed exclusively white and beautiful. When you grow up like that, you donāt know to question it. I have always loved my home, a blue split-level in New Jersey, with two sisters, progressive, earthy parents, and a trampoline bigger than the mud huts where people sleep in Nepal. I was grateful for everything I had but you can also only compare to whatās around you.
The questions got bigger as I did, and though school was a joyful distraction, with algebra and boys and soccer, it never gave me answers I needed. In 2005, I sat down at the breakfast table and told my parents I wasnāt going to college right away. There were things I needed to figure out. I was going on a gap year. I would be a useful human while trying to understand what being a good human meant. Theyāre free-spirited adventurers at heart, so they didnāt seem to mind at all.
My first semester was with a group of other seventeen-to-twenty-year-olds focusing on travel, cultural immersion, experiential learning, and life skills outside the four walls of a classroom. While it was still a group of privileged young adults who looked mostly like me, it did give me a taste of the world outside what Iād been exposed to. We spent a month under palm leaves as big as canoes, building a seawall in the South Pacific. Then there was the silent retreat at the Buddhist monastery, learning the power of meditation with nuns and monks. They asked us during our orientation to leave the toilet lids down so bugs wouldnāt fall in and die. We moved onto a farm and learned how to WWOOF (organic farm), which in my case was just scooping chicken poop and getting sent out on the hundreds of acres of farm to cut manuka, an invasive and devilish plant. We took an outdoor survival course in New Zealand. In Australia, we explored the outback and got eaten alive by bush flies. I got my belly button pierced and learned to surf.
My friend Hannah, who Iād met during the first semester, convinced me that we just āhad toā go to India together for our last and final few months before starting college and resuming the lives that our small upper-middle-class towns had plotted out for us. Because we just āhad to,ā we did. We worked at a school and childrenās home and center on the banks of the Ganges.
There were a lot of children at Ramanaās Gardenārefugee kids from Nepal, young girls and boys who had been trafficked, abused, and discarded, children of the war. It was different there than the monastery, the farm, or the outback. I was learning so much every day being there taken in by the kids, the tiles in the house, the banyan tree. Life inside the gates of Ramanaās was filled with laughter; there was song and cheerfulness, defying every sorrow from which it was born. I spent my days playing marbles in the courtyard with the boys and showing the girls their faces over and over in the Canon PowerShot my parents got me for graduation. With every giggle and silly face and pair of pee-soaked pants, the answers to the big questions inched closer.
Am I supposed to be a teacher?
Am I supposed to head back to New Jersey and go to college?
We were supposed to stay for a few months. But Hannah returned to the United States to start college at Cornell and I decided to stay on for another year. I felt like I had more to learn. Prabha, the director of Ramanaās, saw something in me. She took me under her wing and taught me everything she knew. She gave me one responsibility after another. I learned the most from the people working there. There was a kind man named Tope who managed the day-to-day logistics of life around the compound and the various outreach programs. He was always helpful, seemed to know the answers to everyoneās questions and problems, and worked hard, while whistling and smiling and blaring Nepali music in his old blue jeep he called the gypsy. Tope and his wife, Kusum, were Nepali refugees themselves. They cared for the children, cooked meals, drove them to the doctor for checkups, and tucked their little bodies into bed, as though it were the most important, most revered work in the world.
The longer I stayed there, the surer I was that they were right.
I MET SUNITA at Ramanaās. Unlike me, Sunita knew exactly where she was going in lifeāto medical school to become a doctor. Her big question in life was where she came from. It had been eight years since Sunita had returned to her country and her village, and as her memories started to fade, she had questions. Sheās Topeās niece. We became fast friends and we made a plan to go to Nepal and find her village.
Weeks later, she and I are staying at the Namaste Nepal, the glitziest, most touristy hostel we could find in Surkhet. Itās no Four Seasons, but it has hot water, bed linens, and a restaurant that serves cloud-shaped dumplings called momos, filled with a meat Sunita convinces me is goat.
āMaggie!ā she practically screams my name. I plow through the door and almost knock her over. She mutters a string of what I imagine are filthy Nepali swear words.
āI met someone!ā I scream back.
Sunita is sixteen, only two years younger than me, but sheās tougher and wiser. Being forced to leave your village and...
