Lacking work and fearing violence in their homeland, Tenzin, his mother and three brothers walked over the Himalayas from their village in Tibet to seek refuge in India–a journey of many months and hundreds of miles.

“I don’t remember much about it now,” he recalls, “just walking.”

He was just five years old.

Illegally crossing the border, they smuggled themselves into India, finding work in hopes of making money to restart a better life once they could return to Tibet.  Eventually, his mother would return home, leaving Tenzin and his brothers to work and send money home.  Finally, five years ago, and nearly eighteen years since he arrived in India, it was Tenzin’s turn to return home—leaving one brother in jail and the other working in New Delhi.

I sat in their humble two room home in Lhasa, as Tenzin translated his mother’s version of their family story for me.  Framed by long strands of gray shoulder-length hair, the broad smile that had greeted me dissolved into despair as she spoke of Tenzin’s younger brother, still working in the outskirts of Delhi, who she hadn’t seen in years.

After finishing my seven day tour of Tibet, I had hoped to find a ride to India via Nepal, but I was having a surprisingly difficult time securing such transportation.  This predicament left me to wander the streets of Lhasa for a week, hoping an opportunity for a ride would turn up.  Due to the confusing permits required to travel within Tibet (see previous post), I had abandoned any thought of public transport or hitchhiking, as I didn’t want to be caught in a place I didn’t have permission to travel through.  I had come to Tenzin to ask his help in arranging such a ride.  “I want to go to Delhi,” I told him.  “My brother lives there,” Tenzin responded, and this conversation had led me to his home.

After his return to Tibet, Tenzin took a job with a tourism company.  Because he had lived in India for part of his life (his Indian accent being a telltale sign) he was not allowed by the Chinese government to be a tour guide in Tibet, one of the better paying jobs in the country, because of the risk that he may be working on behalf or have met the Dali Lama (who has been living in exile in India for years).

“There are monks who are spies in the temples and monasteries and they would turn me into the police if they caught me in the temples with tourists,” he said.

Tenzin’s brother was still in New Delhi, hoping to raise the necessary $4600 USD to pay a company that said they could get him a work visa in the US—a dream that held up all the hope the family seemed to have.  $4600 to a family that makes less than $100 per month is a fortune—and that was just for the visa.  I couldn’t find the courage to tell them that the plane ticket could cost $2000, living expenses in the US might be a few thousand dollars a month and that, is all assuming the promise for the visa was not a scam.

As I sat there on that couch across from Tenzin’s mother, being poured endless cups of hospitality and butter tea, I could see sadness in her eyes that came from the space separating her from her youngest son in Delhi, but I could also sense the hope in her voice as she spoke of her faith that her son would, one day, find passage and work in my country.  When she heard the news that I was headed to Delhi, she turned to me and looked deeply into my eyes before speaking.  Holding my hand, I could not understand the meaning of what she said, although I could feel the emotion that enveloped her words.

Tenzin translated, “She says, please when you get to Delhi, help my son if you can.  You are his hope.”  She continued, “I must ask you to give him something if you get there.”

“Of course,” I responded.

The broad smile returned to her face, wiping away any hint of despair, and she began exchanging words excitedly with Tenzin.

“My mom wants you to come back tomorrow.  After she gets done with her morning prayers at the temple, she will go buy something for you to take to Teslling, my brother.”

We sat together in the family room for another hour sipping tea and exchanging bits and pieces of our lives, before I said good night and slipped into the shadowy ancient streets of Lhasa, to return to my guesthouse.  I stopped by the next afternoon and though Tenzin was no where to be found (or to translate), his mother greeted me with a big hug, a smile and an offer once again for more butter tea.  Despite the fact I didn’t speak her first language and she didn’t understand mine, it seemed we both knew enough basic Chinese to have a rudimentary conversation for a few minutes, before she handed me a box.

“For my son,” she said with a proud smile, reaching out to touch my arm.

Inside was a simple pair of cheap white basketball shoes, but as I stood their in their humble home, in front of a kind old woman who possessed a faith that had carried her through a lifetime of struggles that I could never truly understand, I sensed that between the tissue paper and rubber soles in that box was not just a pair of shoes but a little piece of her family’s hope.

“Thank you,” she said with her eyes, as I tucked the box tightly under my arm and turned to walk out the door to begin the long journey to India.

(photo: carrying the shoes across Tibet, Nepal to the outskirts of New Delhi)

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Another Man’s Shoes