Among Flowers Read Free Page A

Bleddyn is the one that dove off the cliff after Jennifer when she fell in 1995. He will be very good to have along for us both.
    This is going to be so fun Jams—an experience that we will never forget and you will tell your grandchildren … (There are none yet, are there?)
    Much love—my best to Harold and Annie. I am sorry that Harold is not coming along but it will happen next time, yes?
    Dan
    I had faithfully gone to a store nearby that sells just these sort of clothes, clothes for people who are going mountain climbing or hiking, or just generally going to spend time outdoors for the sheer pleasure of it. I bought everything on Dan’s list, though not in the quantities he recommended (more underwear, less socks, sock liners, and glove liners).
    My hotel was in that area of Kathmandu called the Thamel District. It is a special area, like a little village separate from the rest of the city. It is filled with shops and restaurants and native European people, who look poor, dirty, and bedraggled. But this is a look of luxury really, for these people are travelers, at any minute they can get up and go home. I had read so much about European travelers in Kathmandu, none of it leaving a good impression; seeing these people then in that place did not make me think I ought to change my mind. Of course, I was traveling with Dan, who is of European descent, but Dan had a real purpose for being in Kathmandu: he is a plantsman, and a gardener, and such a person needs plants. There are many plants worthy of being in a garden in Nepal; Kathmandu is the capital of Nepal.
    But to think of Kathmandu again: when I suddenly was in the middle of that part of it, the Thamel, I was reminded of feelings I had when I was a child, of going to something called “the fair,” something beyond the every day, something that would end when I was not asleep, when I was not in a dream. I did truly feel as if I was in the unreal, the magical, extraordinary. People seemed as if they had no purpose to being themselves, as if the only reason to be there was just to be there. The tiny streets came to an end abruptly, going immediately from the confusion of authentic and imposter to the solidly real, and the real was always poor and deprived and self-contained. Just outside the window of my hotel was an area enclosed by concrete, of perhaps forty feet by forty feet. It had pipes, with water constantly pouring out of them—it was a communal place for doing things that required water. People were bathing, washing their clothes, or filling up utensils with water. Because of my own particular history, every person I saw in this situation seemed familiar to me. But then again, because of my own particular history, every person I saw in the Thamel was familiar also. The person in the restaurant complaining about the lack of some luxury was familiar, the person at the public baths longing for luxuries of every kind was familiar, the person confused and in a quandary was familiar.
    On the night of that first day I spent in Kathmandu, we ate dinner at a Thai restaurant. I cannot now remember what I ate. I did notice that my companions, Dan and Sue and Bleddyn, seemed especially kind and gentle toward me. I thought then that it was because I kept looking up for bats; I am very afraid of them. In Roy Lancaster’s book about his travels in Nepal, he mentions the fruit bats in Kathmandu, saying that they look like weathered prunes, and the idea that bats could look like something to eat was unsettling. I had not seen the fruit bats in any tree so far, and so while sitting at dinner, since we were outside, I kept looking out for them. I thought I would see them swooping around in the deep blue-black night air, hoping to realize the sole purpose of their existence: settling into my hair. But I never saw them, not even one. My companions’ kind concern toward me was because going back and forth in back of me was a very busy other kind of