reality check | finding resilience in troubled times
Women of Courage… ANI PACHEN, 1950 Tibet Short Story Adapted by Deb Rodney From “Sorrow Mountain” by Ani Patchen and Adelaide Donnelley
I
was seventeen when I stood on the roof of our four-story house and threatened to jump. In my stomach a frightened bird fluttered.
Om Mani Peme Hum. The nature of mind is clear light, and our experience in the world only passing waves on its surface. If my father’s servant, Tashi didn’t take me to the monastery to escape marriage to a man I didn’t know, I would fly off the roof. So, on horseback, he and I secretly escaped into the Tibetan wilderness. That night as I tried to sleep, the icy wind cracked against the stones and whistled over the barren ground. I thought I heard the call of a leopard and I took my knife out of its leather holder. I moved the cold prayer beads through my fingers until I fell asleep. Om Mani Peme Hum. Om Mani Peme Hum. When I woke up, eight of my father’s men were standing over me. Tupten, with his fox-skin hat low on his brow said, “Your father misses you and has been sick with worry because there are wild animals and bandits here. He said there is no need to run away. He will break the marriage contract and you will be free to live as you want.” My name is Lemdha Ani Pachen, chieftainess of Lemdha born in 1933, the female Water-Bird year. The time when my country was at the roof of the world, a place where the great spirits lived. I was my father’s only child. He was Chieftain elder and Lama of the Lemdha clan. Having escaped marriage, I was studying with Gyalsay Rinpoche at the Tromkhog monastery when the Chinese invaded Tibet, and began moving ever closer to my village. His holiness, the 14th Dalai Lama had been enthroned. Six months later he was forced to sign an agreement turning over Tibet’s policy-making to the Chinese. In exchange the Chinese promised
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to recognize His Holiness’s authority and respect Tibet’s religion and culture. They put words, like honey on a sharp knife. My father organized a group of trusted advisors and invited me to their talks. We heard reports of children being stolen and taken to China. There were confrontations, arrests and executions. The world I had been seeing with my innocent eyes was fleeting like lightning. Like dew. My father gave me a rifle and showed me how to shoot it. “Hold steady…don’t breathe. Now fire!” he said. I squeezed the trigger as tightly as I could. Bang! The rifle recoiled and a pain like the kick of a horse struck my chest, but I hit the target. “You’ve got it,” my father said. “But if that were a Chinese would you dare to kill him?”
