Dorje Phagmo

I was not Dorje Phagmo; I was Lotus Flower. I became a woman like other women but not like Tibetan women who were forced into poverty and servitude they had never known. I was like a few Chinese women, kept by the important soldiers. When I became pregnant the baby was strangled as soon as it was born whether boy or girl. One, two, three, four, five babies. I cried and shrieked like any woman would. I was not an ani; I was an ordinary woman, used as ordinary women are by powerful men.

I learned their language. I never, never told him the truth when he asked about my childhood. I spoke of helping my mother harvest barley and make tea. He wanted to take me to Beijing but I did not want to go. I became willful and spiteful and mean to him. I said I could never leave Tibet. He left me as a gift to the next commander. But I was not so beautiful then, my body was used and wear-weary, the new commander did not fancy me. He made me the caretaker of the other young women he favored. Now I was trusted to go into the streets and shop for food.

At first I was afraid but I longed to go into the holy Jokhang even though the Chinese stabled their horses in the courtyard. No woman was safe alone on the streets but I had a card to carry saying I was in the Commander’s household. I began to go into the desecrated Jokang where some precious images remained. In a dark little shrine there I met an old woman who had been an ani who began to tell me that women had once been strong. She told me my own story just as I had been told when I was a small child. She said, “She, of all women, was allowed to ride in a sedan chair.” I asked what a sedan chair was. She told me her mother once made a pilgrimage to our monastery. “We think she may still live. She was second only to the Dalai Lama in the hearts of the people.”

I had learned not to cry, but I knelt with my head in that old woman’s lap and shook with sobs. She stroked my head as no one had stroked my head since my teacher died. “She may still live,” I whispered to the woman. I cried many nights. Dorje Phagmo had died and been reborn, even in the same lifetime, as Lotus Flower who did not recite the prayers, who sometimes longed for pleasures of the body, who had learned to be sad that she was ugly in the eyes of men.

I found others like this old woman, many had been anis, many had been in jail and tortured, many were toothless, some lame or deaf. I found lamas, old and bent and scarred from torture, many bitter and angry and ugly. Yet, just as I loved the old anis, I loved these old lamas. I decided to disappear from the city. It was not so hard to slip away. I had a sense that told me when I met older people who I could trust when I asked directions. I wandered, begging, letting my hair go wild, wearing rags, covering myself with dirt and charcoal. I told only one or two whom I came to trust some part of my story. From one I learned that my teacher had been reborn in India. She was now studying with her teacher, a lama who lived near Dharmsala; she was now over thirty years old. My teacher lives! For the first time I could remember I cried tears of joy. I knew I must reunite with her. She had been a mother to me. I felt a tether pulling me toward her.

I knew many Tibetans were finding paths over the mountains. Some paid men they called snakes to guide them. I had no money and I did not want to go with others. I wanted to walk alone, trying to remember the scriptures, softly chanting. A few monks and anis were allowed to live in the ruins of former monasteries. Not all were trustworthy, I had learned to read expressions and the shifting of eyes, the language of bodies. I was careful where I stayed but I stayed a whole winter with a tiny group of anis. I played the thigh bone horn and chanted with them. They asked me where I had learned to chant but I did not mention Samding except to ask if anyone survived. They spoke sadly about the dead Dorje Pagmo and hoped she would reincarnate although she had no home. Sometimes they saw tears at the edge of my eyes and held my hands.

In the spring I went alone, walking over the mountains, following landmarks I had been told were there. I walked at night and sometimes walked a short way with others I met who were escaping. When I met a soldier I raved like a crazy woman begging for a crust of bread to feed my long dead children.

I believe the strength of our age-old connection helped me find my teacher. She knew me instantly and I knew her. She was young and strong; she cried to see me old and bent and filthy. She lived in a small nunnery with thirty other anis. Her teacher lived in a monastery nearby. He did not recognized me. For five years now we have lived together in that holy place, but we have not told anyone this old ani’s story. I studied what I had not had time to study before. Strange to say, just as I became beautiful in prison while others sickened, here I am becoming younger as I grow older. My teacher’s teacher looked at me a long time one day recently. “Perhaps we met once long ago,” he said.

The time is nearing when I will tell the Dalai Lama my story. I will never ride in a sedan chair but I will return to the ruins of Samding, my home, and begin rebuilding with my old, bent hands. The Chinese will think I am a crazy old Tibetan woman. I believe the people will help me. I will minister to the people and ask for a sow in return for my prayers. The time will come when I will say, “I am Dorje Phagmo.”

June Calender has retired from writing plays in NYC where her plays were seen off-off-Broadway and nationally. She now lives on Cape Cod, is writing a much researched book about a traveler to Tibet (1937) and also writes prose, poetry and memoir. She teaches writing at the Academy for Lifelong Learning and edits their annual anthology.