The heat had filled the room to the point where I couldn’t nap anymore on the bed, surrounded by curtained windows. So I moved to the couch. And by evening, the earth had cooled, and typical of the Himalaya, cools so rapidly I knew I would be clasping my arms for warmth in an hour. Aamir and I stepped outside and took the road to Tukcha, a neighborhood in the capital city Leh, whose path led directly from the corner of Abbass’ office. Down the road Aamir wheeled on his beaten red bicycle, faded a wan pink, the pedals broken off so only two metal prongs twirled while he padded the earth with his sneakers to move the bike rapidly along the road. White dust was thrown up into our faces, and settled down again.
Down the pathway we moved, the rhythm of our evening walk interrupted by the occasional car erupting around the corner, in the wake of more dust. I shouted to Aamir to move to the side, and like a little beetle, he wheeled his bike responsively to a corner away from the main street. He wanted to stay on the main road, rather than take the many stoned pathways that branched from it, whose curves followed the ancient irrigation rivers that are the circulation system of the city, veins that border every garden in every house in Leh. These walkways shaded by trees whose branches seem like a thousand fingers dipping into the fresh air. No one can tell me how old the waterways are; they go back for generations.
The earth smelled sweet and freshly cut. That is the sign for the September earth, when the Ladakhis cut their barley crops. The scent rose from a particular garden, whose stone fence Aamir had insisted on walking on weeks before, stone by stone, leaping like a spry grasshopper while I held one of his hands for balance. This time there was clear spring water gushing out of two pipeways out of the garden onto the street. He dipped the wheels of his bike into them and moved the bike back and forth like he always loves to do. The water hit the street and a coolness rose from where it splattered.
Beyond the road the diminishing sunlight held small flies in its rays. They buzzed around in random circles and appeared like grains of gold dancing in the warm light. I pointed this out to Aamir, who decided he didn’t want to go towards them.
We turned left. We spotted an old Ladakhi woman dressed in a black goncha, her hair covered by a patterned cloth, delicately holding the arm of a tall young girl whose body and face were slighted contorted, indicating some type of mental and physical disability. Slowly she walked with the girl, taking each step with patience. The old woman smiled at Aamir and cooed at him as he walked past.
A young brown cow studied us as we walked behind it on a curved stone pathway bordered by water.
Leading to a crooked, private wood gateway, a small bridge made out of corrugated metal with large holes punched at regular intervals was placed tenuously across a canal.
We came to a large swath of river that had obviously been ripped apart by the flash flood. The right bank was bordered with stacks of sandbags, colored yellow and orange, like a stack of products in a storefront. We walked down to the edge of the rushing water, where I let Aamir do his favorite thing these days: throw stones into the water. They plopped and blooped. He wanted to make “roti”, so he dipped his hands into the rich mud near the water and did the “flap-flap” with his hands, as he calls it. He took the mud and smothered the rocks with them, taking deliberate care to make sure the hard surfaces were adequately covered with the dark gray, cool dirt. He didn’t want to leave. I held his torso as he washed his hands of the rich soil in the river.
Every evening here in Ladakh is its own poem. I wonder how my son Aamir will be able to cross the continents with ease when he gets older. They each have vastly different messages. Time is not fixed here; it breathes. The mountains, huge fortresses, do not seem to change year after year, but everything in fact changes here: the form of the water, the freshly cut threads of the earth, the rocks Aamir collects in his small palms on the side of the river. It changes with the rhythm of the human mind, and not with the contrived speed of a machine.
Aamir, you were born in a hospital room where I was able to gaze at the pink dawn light bathing the Hollywood sign, and now you have landed here, where your great-great-great grandfathers were salt traders who drove small Zanskar valley horses and yak across the Silk Road route, across high mountain passes into Tibet and China. The Aryans from the west married with the Asians from the East to produce someone like your father, whose eyes glint copper in the sunlight, who has wavy black hair. Before cars, your very own grandfather walked from the capital city all the way to Srinigar in Kashmir, before guns showed themselves on the borders here, and the apple trees could blossom freely without the pollution of war. It took him a month as he slept in caves and ate barley.
When you were born, he planted 100 apple trees in your name. Today, 40 stand in the field in Chushot village, growing stronger every day. The land on which you reside has been passed down through five generations, perhaps others not recalled on top of that. You are the youngest inheritor in a long line of old souls.
Already at two years old, you have sat atop the Empire State, in front of the Capitol Building, looked through a telescope from the Eiffel Tower, and soon, we will visit the Taj Mahal together. You are more than aware of the computer, know how to operate the iPhone. You have climbed the Alps and the Himalayas. You know how to pray in the mosque by yourself, have gazed skyward at the spires atop European cathedrals, and ran through the prayer halls of century-old Buddhist monasteries. You have eaten the bread of Kashmiris and the Germans, sat with Rinpoches and NHL players both, and have already met the man we named you after. You have done all these things, although when you are older your memory perhaps will not have a clear grasp of where you were and what you were doing.
In a generation, you have crossed centuries. The idea is almost beyond the imagination of a single mind.
