“Yes, that sounds familiar.”
“Yes. And during those years, and ever since then too, many Tibetans moved to India to get away from the Chinese, and closer to the Dalai Lama. India took us in very hospitably, but when the Chinese and Indian governments disagreed over their border in 1960, the situation became very awkward for India. They were already in a bad way with Pakistan, and a serious controversy with China would have been too much. So, India requested that the Tibetan community in Dharamsala make itself as small and inconspicuous as possible. The Dalai Lama and his government did their best, and many Tibetans were relocated, mostly to the far south. One group took the offer of an island in the Sundarbans, and moved there. The island was ours from that point, as a kind of protectorate of India, like Sikkim, only not so formally arranged.”
“Is Khembalung the island’s original name?”
“No. I do not think it had a name before. Most of our group lived at one time in the valley of Khembalung. So that name was kept, and we have shifted away from the Dalai Lama’s government in Dharamsala.”
At the sound of the words “Dalai Lama” the old monk made a face and said something in Tibetan.
“The Dalai Lama is still number one with us,” Drepung clarified. “It is a matter of some religious controversies with his associates. A matter of how best to support him.”
“And your island?”
Their pizza arrived, and Drepung began talking between big bites. “Lightly populated, the Sundarbans. Ours was uninhabited.”
“Did you say uninhabitable?”
“People with lots of choices might say they were uninhabitable,” Drepung said. “And they may yet become so. They are best for tigers. But we have done well there. We have become like tigers. Over the years we have built a nice town. Schools, houses, hospital. All that. And seawalls. The whole island has been ringed by dikes. Lots of work. Hard labor.” He nodded as if personally acquainted with this work. “Dutch advisors helped us. Very nice. Our home, you know? Khembalung has moved from age to age. But now …” He waggled a hand again, took another slice of pizza, bit into it.
“Global warming?” Anna ventured. “Sea level rise?”
He nodded, swallowed. “Our Dutch friends suggested that we establish an embassy here, to join their campaign to influence American policy.”
Anna quickly bit into her pizza, so that she would not reveal the thought that had struck her, that the Dutch must be desperate indeed if they had been reduced to help from these people. She thought things over as she chewed. “So here you are,” she said. “Have you been to America before?”
Drepung shook his head. “None of us have.”
“It must be pretty overwhelming.”
He frowned at this word. “I have been to Calcutta.”
“Oh I see.”
“This is very different, of course.”
“Yes, I’m sure.”
She liked him: his musical Indian English, his round face and big liquid eyes, his ready smile. The two men made quite a contrast: Drepung young and tall, round-faced, with a kind of baby-fat look; Rudra Cakrin old, small, and wizened, his face lined with a million wrinkles, his cheekbones and narrow jaw prominent in an angular, nearly fleshless face.
The wrinkles were laugh lines, however, combined with the lines of a wide-eyed expression of surprise that bunched up his forehead. He seemed cheerful, and certainly attacked his pizza with the same enthusiasm as his young assistant. With their shaved heads they shared a certain family resemblance.
She said, “I suppose going from Tibet to a tropical island must have been a bigger shock than coming from the island to here.”
“I suppose. I was born in Khembalung myself, so I don’t know for sure. But the old ones like Rudra here, who made that very move, seem to have adjusted well. Just to have any kind of home is a blessing.”
Anna nodded. The two of them did project a certain calm. They sat in the booth as if there was no hurry to go anywhere else. Anna couldn’t imagine any such state of mind. She was always in a tearing hurry. She tried to match their air of being at ease. At ease in Arlington, Virginia, after a lifetime on an island in the Ganges. Well, the climate would be familiar. But everything else had to have changed quite stupendously.
And, on closer examination, there was a certain guardedness to them. Drepung watched Anna with a slightly cautious look, reminding her of the pained expression she had seen earlier in the day.
“How is it that you came to rent a space in this particular building?”
Drepung paused to consider this question for a surprisingly long time. Rudra said something to him.
“We had some advice there,” Drepung said. “The Pew Center on Global Climate Change has been helping us, and their office is located nearby.”
Anna thought it over while she ate. It was good to know that they hadn’t just rented the first office they found. Nevertheless, their effort in Washington looked to her to be underpowered at this point. “You should meet my husband,” she said. “He works for a senator, one who is interested in climate change, and a good guy, and chair of the Foreign Relations Committee.”
“Ah—Senator Chase?”
“Yes. You know about him?”
“He has visited Khembalung.”
“Has he? Well, I’m not surprised, he’s been every—he’s been a lot of places. Anyway, my husband Charlie works for him as an environmental policy advisor. It would be good for you to talk to Charlie.”
“That would be an honor.”
“I don’t know if I’d go that far. But useful.”
“Useful, yes. Perhaps we could have you to dinner at our residence.”
“Thank you, that would be nice. But we have two small boys and we’ve lost all our babysitters, so to tell the truth, it would be easier if you and some of your colleagues came to our place. In fact I’ve already talked to Charlie about this, and he’s looking forward to meeting you. We live in Bethesda, just across the border from the District. It’s not far.”
“Red Line.”
“Yes, very good. Red Line, Bethesda stop.”
She got out her calendar, checked the coming weeks. Very full, as always. “How about a week from Friday? On Fridays we relax a little.”
“Thank you,” Drepung said, ducking his head. He and Rudra Cakrin had an exchange in Tibetan. “That would be very kind. And on the full moon, too.”
“Is it? I’m afraid I don’t keep track.”
“We do. The tides, you see.”
Water flows through the oceans in steady recycling patterns, determined by the Coriolis force and the particular positions of the continents in our time. Surface currents can move in the opposite direction to bottom currents below them, and often do, forming systems like giant conveyor belts of water. The largest one is already famous, at least in part: the Gulf Stream is a segment of a warm surface current that flows north up the entire length of the Atlantic, all the way to Norway and Greenland. There the water cools and sinks, and begins a long journey south on the Atlantic Ocean floor, to the Cape of Good Hope and then east toward Australia, and even into the Pacific,