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Outside Magazine September 2001

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Mountain Kingdom (cont.)

My speech is a huge hit, although I have no idea what I said. With dusk approaching, Strong Man drags us onto the platform for a ceremonial welcome. Chairman Gore-Tex pins us with red ribbons and smears a thumbful of pink dye between our eyebrows, the traditional tikka blessing. As he lays a garland of lali guras flowers around my neck, he explains that these red blooms grow only at high altitude—"like the revolution." I try to run for it, but it is too late: They push me at the microphone.

The second I open my mouth ("Greetings to the people of Rolpa district") the crowd starts giggling. In a region where even radios are an unknown luxury, most of them have never heard a foreign language, and my brief clichés about peace and justice are buried beneath a rolling wave of laughter. After a lal salaam and a pathetic clenched fist, I slink offstage to a ragged cheer. I'll never survive my Senate confirmation hearings now.

I'm replaced by another speaker, and then another, on through dusk, politicians, newly appointed cadres, the women's representative, and then, in the dark night, a string of guerrilla officers, hard men in camouflage speaking hard words about "taking on" the army in a coming war.

By 10 p.m. all 10,000 Maoists—armed men and women, kids and babies—simply lie down where they are, some sleeping, others smoking, everyone wrapped tightly in shawls against the mountain chill. I head for the alfresco bathroom, trailed by the usual guerrilla guard. This time I'm ready. Hidden in my backpack, I've found a handful of chemical light sticks, and I break a green one and give it to him. He's never seen one before and rushes off in delight to show it around, leaving me in peace. The beam of my flashlight illuminates the bushes around me: wild cannabis, the source for Nepal's hashish industry and one explanation for the laughter during my speech.

Back at the hut, my guard sits in a circle of Red Army men, their faces glowing green from the soft chemical light. One of the guerrillas throws an arm around me and says, "Good speech." The valley still echoes with the words of the Red Army's top officer, Comrade Lifwang. "War is a challenge," he says. "Without war, nothing can be changed." So many military terms here are borrowed from English that I can follow along as he describes a battle just days ago, in eastern Nepal. He tells of the first platoon attacking the police. He pantomimes a police helicopter circling overhead, trying to relieve the besieged POP, the machine finally chased away by rifles cracking in the night. The second platoon comes forward, and finally the POP is overrun. Victory for the revolution. I pass out.

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