By S.R. Ayers
Artwork by Dennis Huang
I was recently in Dharamsala, India (popular destination for Tibetan refugees), to listen to some high-ranking monks from Lhasa. My intention was to get an interview with one or all of them. His Holiness the Dalai Lama himself was there only months ago but alas, I could not get close enough. I didn’t get close enough to his buddies either but I didn’t come away empty handed.
I was in the back of the auditorium with a Tibetan monk I had befriended named Rinchen. He was going to help me with whatever I didn’t understand from the speaker. Behind me was a man in a heavy robe with a shawl wrapped around his neck, coming high on his face to cover his mouth and nose. The upper half of his head that was exposed was pudgy and sweaty and vaguely familiar. I turned back to the front to see if the speaker was on stage yet. When I turned around again to get another quick look at the pudgy man, he was gone.
I still had about 10 minutes before anyone would be enlightening me so I told Rinchen I would be right back, I needed to use the little monk’s room. While I was in there the man in the stall next to me was passing something horrible and deadly. It was so intense my fight-or-flight instinct was sparked. I felt I had to do something, regardless of it being none of my business. I stepped around the partition with the collar of my T-shirt up over my nose and held out my hand for assistance. I realized that it was the pudgy man. He was squatting down over the basin in the floor and had his robe bunched up under his arms and his shawl undone and over his shoulders. Then it clicked; I recognized him. It was none other than the President of China, Hu Jintao! I couldn’t believe my luck.
As he reached out for my hand I pulled it back fast. He tried to stop himself from falling over but his outreached hand slipped into the basin and he toppled over anyway.
“You did that on purpose, you fool!” he screeched.
“It was an accident. Honest. Now listen up, Jintao. I have some questions.”
I pulled out my pen and notepad as he re-perched himself over the basin.
“Why are you here? I thought you were just as content as your predecessor with the destruction and oppression of the Tibetan people and their faith.”
“Is that what this shindig is for? I was trying to get to the Beastie Boys concert. I must’ve gotten turned around somewhere.”
“Don’t toy with me, you snake. This pen and paper can be a guillotine or a prayer depending on the answers I get,” I threatened.
“Alright, alright. I came to see them for myself,” he said.
“Who?”
“The Tibetans. They’re like a fading memory in China now,” he explained. “We’ve either killed them, destroyed their heritage and backgrounds, relocated them, or they’ve fled the People’s Country. Then I heard of this place. I thought it was a scam but I see now that it’s true.”
“Your incessant babbling almost makes sense but I still don’t understand it” I said. “Make yourself clear, you asshole.”
He began to weep lightly, as did I. The difference was that he was overcome with sudden and unexpected emotion; I was overcome with the brutal stink wafting out from his tail end.
“After all we’ve done…all we’ve tried…all we broke, bent and maimed…we could not annihilate the Tibetans,” he moaned. “Their land is ours, their wealth has long been absorbed into ours, their history is a jagged and bleak falsification that we feed to our children in hopes that it will erase itself completely and still…”
“And still what?” I said quietly, prompting him.
“And still… they have the audacity to smile; to have no home and laugh; to have many empty chairs at their dinner tables and not cry; to pray amid burned and demolished temples; to have a future even after we’ve worked so hard to take their past!”
He shifted his weight from one foot to the other for a minute or two, staring down at a spider walking along the floor near the wall.
“ I just had to see it for myself,” he added finally, like a child scolded for stealing a cookie.
“So what’s next?” I asked breaking him out of his self-indulgent state.
He looked up at me with a fresh sparkle in his eye and a devious grin across his toothy mouth and said in a hiss, “We’ll just have to try it again with Taiwan, of course. I’ve got Bush Jr. in my corner this time and we’re gonna have us a good ole’ party, Texas style.”
“You’re lying, of course. It could never happen again,” I said wondering if it was true.
“We met back in 2003 and talked it over. We learn from our mistakes, friend.”
I remembered this. In exchange for trade embargoes the U.S. would ‘overlook’ any pleas that might come down the line for assistance in independence for Taiwan.
I looked him square in the eye and stood proud, letting my T-shirt drop down off my face.
“You’re lying again, hate-monger. If you had learned anything then you would not oppress Taiwan’s independence as you did in Tibet. If you continue in this way there will be many more moments that find you weeping in a toilet. It’s nothing personal; it’s just the nature of the world. Farewell, you sick bastard.”
I left the bathroom and joined Rinchen in the auditorium. The first speaker had taken the podium and was only past the introductions. I hadn’t missed anything.
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