LITMIR.BIZ

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as it was; I told myself that cultures should be treated equally, that my own culture is terribly flawed and would appear even more so, I imagined, to outsiders. But I grew to despise the caste system during those long bus rides around the Ring Road, and that feeling has never left me.

      ONE EVENING, AFTER THE children had gone to bed, Sandra told us that she would be leaving for a while. She was heading out of the Kathmandu Valley to go trekking near Rara Lake in a region called Mugu.

      “Which is where, exactly?” asked Chris.

      “Western Nepal. Rara Lake—it’s a trekking route, but nobody goes anymore because it is far from tourist routes, and because of the Maoists. But I found a guide who will take me!” She was giddy with excitement. Sandra was an avid hiker and mountain climber—this sounded like exactly her kind of adventure.

      “And you’re not worried?” I asked.

      “About what?”

      “I don’t know—Maoists?”

      I didn’t know much about the civil war, but what I did know worried me. In early 1996, the Maoist Party—an extreme Communist wing—had launched an insurgency. Their objective was to end the 250-year “feudal” rule of the monarchy. For the first several years, the uprising was considered a police matter—a series of scuffles in remote villages. But the rebel army expanded its ranks, first with men, then women, then children.

      With their growing numbers and no effective counterforce, the rebel army grew stronger. Villages, then districts, then entire regions fell under Maoist control. In 2002 the Maoists dragged the Royal Nepalese Army into the conflict overnight with the bombing of an army barracks in western Nepal. Soon the Maoists controlled virtually the entire country, save the largest urban centers and the Kathmandu Valley. We were told again and again that it was simply not safe to travel in Maoist-controlled territory. Sandra’s destination, Rara Lake, was in Maoist territory.

      “It will be fine,” she assured me. “I will be careful. But there is more to it than just trekking. I am going to see if I can get some news of the children.”

      This got our attention.

      Mugu borders the region of Humla, where the children came from. Sandra believed that there was a chance she could visit the villages of one or two of the children to see if they had any surviving family members.

      “I should be back in three weeks,” she said. “Farid knows everything about how to run things here; if you have any questions you can ask him.”

      “The children will miss you,” said Chris.

      “The children, as always, will be fine,” she said with a smile.

      ONE WEEK AFTER SANDRA left, I was in the nearby field playing soccer with the older boys when I saw Farid approaching, past the mud huts and down the path that bordered the wheat field until he reached the edge of our makeshift pitch. It was unusual for him to come out to the soccer games. He preferred to hang out with the kids in the house.

      “Santosh—I have to go for a minute,” I called to my teammate.

      “No, Brother! You go, they score!”

      “One minute, Santosh.”

      I went over and sat next to Farid, who was squatting down and picking apart a long straw of wheat. We sat in silence while Farid watched the game.

      “They are improving, I think,” he said by way of greeting.

      “They’ve been practicing. We set up the match between Little Princes and the other orphanage, the one in Matatirtha. They’re really looking forward to it,” I told him.

      We watched the match for a few minutes. I knew he hadn’t come to talk about the children’s soccer skills.

      “I just heard from Sandra,” he said finally, not taking his eyes off Nishal, who was yelling about some foul committed against him. “She will be home tonight.”

      “I thought she was coming back in three weeks?”

      Farid shook his head. “I think something is wrong—she said she would tell us about it tonight.”

      The children were thrilled to have Sandra home. They leaped on her before she could even take off her backpack. It reminded me of what I must have looked like to the other volunteers when I first arrived more than two months earlier, back when that swarm of children had terrified me. Sandra waved to us but spent the afternoon playing with the kids, ignoring our questioning looks.

      It was only after daal bhat that night, after the children went to bed and mugs of tea warmed our hands, that she told us the story of what had happened.

      Sandra and Narda, her guide and a native of Mugu, had set out toward Rara Lake. It was a three-day trek from where the bus had dropped them off, where the road had ended. They walked for two full days, stopping occasionally in villages to get water and make sure they were heading in the right direction.

      On the third day, two men walked toward them from up the trail. Even from a distance, their gait was different from the village farmers they were used to. They walked quickly, with purpose. Narda stood and quickly put on his backpack. He motioned to Sandra to do the same. The men were armed.

      The men stopped several yards from Narda and Sandra and leveled their guns. Sandra understood enough to know that they were being asked where they were going, and why they were there. Narda explained that they were trekking, heading for Rara Lake. They asked about Sandra. Narda called back that she was a French citizen, in the country helping children. The men grew angry at this response, as if Narda had insulted them. They yelled now. They demanded to know how they had known about the meeting. Narda said nothing, but translated in a low voice for Sandra. The men yelled again, repeating themselves. Narda called back, calmly, that they knew nothing of any meeting. They were looking for Rara Lake. They were very sorry if they had interrupted something, and they would be happy to go on their way.

      The men had no intention of letting them leave. Narda and Sandra were taken to a rebel-controlled village, put into a room, and made to wait several hours. Another man came in, a rebel who appeared to be of a higher rank than the other men, and interrogated Sandra. He told Narda that Sandra was tricking Narda, that she was a spy, using him. Narda could leave, the soldier said. He was a local, he could be trusted. Sandra would have to stay, they needed answers from her.

      Narda didn’t leave. They were left locked in the room for two days. Sandra would not admit to being a spy. The commander offered to let her buy her way out for two thousand dollars. It was an absurd sum. Sandra had only perhaps twenty dollars with her. That was unfortunate, they told her, and they left her alone again.

      Narda, who was allowed to come and go, spent his time speaking with the Maoists in the encampment for hours on end, explaining the situation over and over, why they came to this particular area, who Sandra was and what she was doing to help children. He was an annoyance to them, and was ordered to go back to his village. He refused to leave without her.

      After the third day, the rebels gave up. They had searched everything she had. They found no money and no evidence that she was a spy. Resources were scarce in this part of the country; Sandra and Narda had become two more people the rebels would have to feed and shelter. So they took anything they deemed valuable from her bag and sent the pair back into the forest, ill-equipped to continue their trek. They survived the difficult trip back to Kathmandu.

      “It was stupid to go,” she said, taking a final sip of her tea. None of us said a word. “This war, these Maoists—they are real. It is too easy to forget that.”

      She put down her cup and walked up the stairs to her bedroom, looking more tired than I had ever seen her.

      SANTOSH WAS SICK AGAIN. I had never heard him cry before, and it scared me. The sobs of Nishal and Raju and the other young boys were common; their cries were for attention as much as anything else, and needed to be investigated only on the off chance that they were seriously hurt. They never were. But Santosh’s cries came from his bedroom, a place where he had hoped to stay undiscovered.

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