I step through the door to the balcony of my flat, a cool breeze carries the scent of imminent rain and hits my face. I can’t help but smile. My belly is full from dinner just 40 minutes earlier and my kids, by some miracle, play soccer quite nicely together within my view, making for the perfect moment to wind down. Relax. I gingerly dodge across the terrace and manage to block an attempted goal into the guest room door before climbing the black iron spiral staircase to the rooftop. As I ascend, the kids’ laughter fades and my gaze shifts to the city, my city, sprawled out before me. The setting sun is now faintly lighting the bustling streets below which results in one last rush of errands before darkness takes over and the electricity is shut off for the day. The man who sells potatoes and garlic from his bicycle yells out trying to make some final sales as he pushes his bike home. I watch the exchange as a young girl from a house across the street races out and buys a half kilo or so of potatoes. He pulls out his handheld scale and rummages through his inventory knowing the exact size and number of potatoes needed to make the scale balance. She pays him what must be 50 or so rupees and scurries back to her house calling out to her mother who is waiting by the gate and watching the whole transaction. As the potato man walks out of sight, I can only imagine he is off to the butcher shop to surprise his family with a little bit of meat that he can now purchase with the money from his last sale of the day. I look to my left to the patch of road near the brick pile and smile as seven children play a little game of cricket. A boy is wielding the bat shouting out a mile a minute, pointing this way and that most likely giving a little coaching, or perhaps explaining to Sangita, the new girl, about how ghost runners work.
I set my Sony Digital SW-33 pocket radio down on the ledge and tune it to 103.1 FM, the BBC World Service just as Gareth Mitchell wraps up his live report from Mexico City on the economic toll of the swine flu pandemic. I shift the radio to the right, then a little more, forward a little, just to get the reception clear enough.......oh, there it went, back left a little.... perfect. "And now a world sport update. The Bayern-Munich Football Club has just sacked its head coach after only 10 months at the job."
I didn't know Bayern-Munich had fired the last coach.
The sky quickly changes from orange to peach to light blue to purple as night settles in. Slowly the lights of those lucky enough to have battery back-ups pop on and light up the valley as though I am looking down on the starry sky. The scent of rain becomes overpowered by the smell of smoke from a fire in the field just to the south of our gate. Not that plastic smell of a trash fire, but the woodsy smell of a brush pile burning. The neighbors have been clearing that field and tilling it for days getting it ready for planting corn as well as preparing for the monsoons that are just around the corner. Three men are working diligently to get all the brush they had cleared that day into the fire. As one man deposits another handful of dead branches and grass into the fire, their tall shadows cast by the sudden flare of firelight dance on the walls surrounding several of the nearby houses.
I take a long sip of my iced-mocha and savor the scene. Now this is no Starbucks Cappuccino by any means. One-and-a-half packets of Cappa Roma's Mocha Cappuccino powder mix and a spoonful of sugar stirred together and left in the fridge for 14 hours. Not perfect, but it beats that Sanka crap the guys are drinking on their breaks at Indian Call Centers.
The sound of the city is quickly overpowered by the roar of a Beechcraft 1900DS turboprop, operated by Buddha Airlines, on its final approach to Tribhuvan International Airport located approximately 1 mile directly southeast of our flat. I follow the plane and watch it until it sinks out of sight below the horizon of shanty shacks and crumbling buildings just before touchdown. Moments later I catch glimpses of it between buildings as it taxies to the domestic hangar. The sounds of the city return. The faint horn of a taxi honking, the chatter of people, cows mooing, and from a nearby house the din and racket of dinner being prepared as a pressure cooker lets off a spray of steam for the third time.
A cigarette. Well, I don’t smoke, but if I did, this would be a perfect time to smoke it. Something about Nepal just makes one want to smoke. Maybe it is the fact that literally everybody is doing it, even kids. After reading statistics about how the air quality in Kathmandu is equivalent to smoking 2 packs of cigarettes a day, I can't help but think, "Hey, what’s one more cigarette?" I am not a smoker and I do consider myself somewhat health conscious, nevertheless, I do see how a cigarette has the potential to elevate good moments into great ones.
The cricket game by the brick pile has just about run out of light and run out of steam. The streets are all but empty and the hush of evening that falls like dew on the valley is beginning to settle, broken only by the occasional bark of a dog on the street excited about a discovery he made in a trash pile: a shoe, a bone, a discarded apple, a scrap of meat. All the while, not a soul has noticed me above the scene watching it all like an unseen deity. I can't help but to put myself in their shoes for a moment. To imagine what they have done today, or will do tomorrow. To imagine what they might be doing in those houses where I hear the sounds through open windows, but see nothing through the curtains. The boy getting yelled at for not doing his homework. The wife asking her husband how his day was, and his half-hearted response. The family dinner. The brother and sister arguing. The wind rustling the tr.......oh wait, those are my kids arguing. The pleasant aforementioned terrace soccer game has turned into something more akin to a bar room brawl and....uh huh, just as I thought the ball just got thrown off the roof.
So also the scene wraps up below me. My moment of relaxation has passed. I turn off my radio, take the last sip of my now luke-warm mocha, descend from my sanctuary and think, "Some poor schmuck on the other side of the world is just now beginning his Thursday sitting down with his morning paper and getting ready to wash down the bad news to a breakfast of 2 eggs over-easy, 2 sausage links, 2 buttermilk pancakes with extra syrup, a tall glass of OJ and a cup of coffee - cream, no sugar."
"Americans."
No automated sprinkler system are seen from my perch. No manicured lawns or shiny new business parks anywhere in sight. But this is my life, my paradise.
-Joshua Wilson, Kathmandu, Nepal May 2009
