Read Online Among Flowers by Jamaica Kincaid - Free Book Online Page B

took even stronger objection to the words President Powell had spoken in Kathmandu.
    We headed out of Uwa at half past seven, so very glad to be leaving. No one spoke to us, not even to say the usual Nemaste! What a great hurry we were in. And we started up again, going up away from the Arun. It was good to be up but by going up high so early in the day, it meant something bad for Bleddyn. He had wanted to take a short hike up the Barun River and collect some seeds. How disappointed he was to see it, a thin streak of milky white coming down the mountain and ending in the Arun, which was way below us. He cursed the Maoists. We had been walking for six days now and there had been nothing substantial to collect. Nothing for me anyway. I would have done this, even if I had not been interested in the garden. Just to see the earth crumpling itself upward, just to experience the physical world as an unending series of verticals going up and then going down—with everything horizontal, or even diagonal, being only a way of making this essentially vertical world a little simpler—made me quiet. I saw the people and I took them in, but I made no notes on them, no description of their physical being since I could see that they could not do the same to me. I can and will say that I saw people who looked as if they came from the south (that would be India) and people who looked as if they came from the north (that would be Tibet). I saw some people who were Hindus (they were the same people who looked as if they came from the south), and I saw some people who were Buddhists (they were the same people who looked as if they came from the north).
    As usual, we were walking along a ledge and a false step in the wrong direction could land any one of the four of us a few hundred feet down, either in the crown of trees or on sheer rock, for sometimes below us was thick forest, or sheer cliffs at other times. We stopped for lunch after one o’clock. The Arun was in full view and so was the Barun running into it. Even from so far above we could hear the roar of their waters. We stopped for lunch and it was memorable to me because that was the last time we had bread. For dessert, we had toast with marmalade and tea. It was the best toast and marmalade I had ever had, and when eating it I thought, This is all I’ll eat for the rest of the time I am here. But when I requested it that night for dinner, I was told that the last of the bread had been eaten at lunch. It dawned on me then that requests were out, and I stopped asking for anything with the expectation that I would receive what I asked for. On again we marched after lunch, feeling a lot better because we could see our village in the distance and also because the collecting was becoming exciting, at least for any gardener who lives in at least two zones warmer than the one in which I make my garden. We were at an altitude of a little under six thousand feet and among the things Dan and Bleddyn collected were some Hydrangea aspera subsp. strigosa, Boehmeria rugulosa, Costus sp., Acer (maple), Paris polyphylla, Woodwardia sp., Anemone vitifolia, Rubus lineatus.
    It was about three o’clock when we arrived in the village, feeling pleased with ourselves for having avoided the Maoists, but something made Sunam change our camping spot. We had met a man who had just lost the tips of three of his fingers on the left hand. Someone must have told him we were coming for he was waiting for us with his hand outstretched, and he was crying. Dan, who always carries a little first-aid kit in his backpack, cleaned the wound and then put some Mercurochrome and a Band-Aid on the man’s fingers. We had a little debate over whether to give him any of our Tylenol to relieve him of pain right away since we could not part with enough that might give him some comfort for many days. This ended with Sunam telling us that the village would not be where we would spend the night. We would have to