The Buddha of Brewer Street. Michael Dobbs

      More confusion. Raised voices. Even the ancient hinges joined in with screeches of complaint. It took the combined efforts of several senior monks to turn the abbot yet again, by which time the Chinese had drawn much closer, but at last he was persuaded. The heavy wooden gates were barred tight.

      While his elders argued, Kunga climbed the outer wall of the monastery. From here he could see the Chinese troops clearly, ragged in dress but tight in formation, their faces and uniforms smeared in the eternal dust blown up from the dry Tibetan plains. The officer rode a mule, the rest were on foot. No vehicles, none of the great grinding tanks Kunga had heard about. And no way through the gates. The monastery was safe, for a while. The monks had food for weeks, and they had the well. A few old rifles, too. Kunga desperately hoped the weapons would be used. To a Buddhist all life is sacrosanct – flies, worms, even Chinese – but there is a bit of cowboy in every fourteen-year-old. It would be like hitting a mad dog. Why, it was almost a public duty, he told himself.

      Boys are creatures of wild imagination, and suddenly Kunga wondered if the troops had come to look for him, to punish him for his ribald song. He felt sure that somehow they had found out. He grew afraid, and the butter tea turned to stone in his stomach. Cautiously he peered over the parapet of the monastery wall as the Chinese assembled on the other side of the bridge. There were more than two hundred, he reckoned, many more than had come last week. He wasn’t to know that another bomb had gone off, inside the town hall at Nagormo, killing the Chinese administrator who had recently taken up residence. After that there weren’t going to be any more warnings.

      The officer sat on his mule on the far side of the bridge and through an interpreter demanded to speak to the abbot. In the name of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Tibetan Autonomous Region, open the gates! Hesitantly, the abbot raised his head above the parapet. Who was this Central Committee of the Communist Party of whatever it was? he responded. He’d never heard of such a thing. The officer shouted back that the abbot was speaking like an agent of imperialism. Even through an interpreter there was no hiding the anger. I owe allegiance to no one other than His Holiness the Dalai Lama, the abbot answered, growing emboldened, his head held higher – he always enjoyed a good debate. Your Lama, the monk-king, is gone, the Chinese replied. Impossible! His Holiness’s position is guaranteed under the Seventeen Point Agreement between Tibet and China along with many other … You’re wasting your breath, old monk. He’s gone. Deserted you. Crawled away to India. Exile. So open your stinking gates.

      Kunga had never seen a weapon bigger than a rifle, and most of those he’d seen were ancient, single-shot affairs left behind by Younghusband and the British. Nothing like that could break down the great gates to the monastery, and there was no chance the officer’s scraggy mule could kick them down. It seemed simple, the Chinese could sit outside and stew until the next Losar holiday. So the argument continued with the abbot disputing the point, much as he was accustomed to do in the formalized debates that were held within the courtyard. But the officer appeared to be taking little further interest. Perhaps, thought Kunga, he had accepted that he’d lost the argument and was looking for a means of withdrawing from his position. The officer was gesticulating, but not in the proper manner of courtyard debates. The Chinaman didn’t seem to know the rules, Kunga thought contemptuously.

      But in Tibet, the Chinese made up their own rules.

      As the boy watched, a soldier knelt on the far side of the bridge and put something to his shoulder that was considerably larger than any rifle. He raised it, seemed to take aim. Then, with a single grenade, the soldier reduced the abbot’s arguments and the great monastery gates to matchwood.

      With a ferocious cry the troops threw themselves across the narrow bridge, their boots pounding upon the wooden boards like the clatter of machine guns. They swarmed into the central courtyard, forcing the monks back with rifle butts and impatient boots. But there was no resistance.

      High on the monastery wall, Kunga Tashi discovered that his youthful bravado had been left in pieces along with the gates. He found he couldn’t move. His senses had been dragged away in terror while his body was left frozen and far behind. Below him in the courtyard, events were unfolding in what appeared to be a new and altogether different world. It was a world unknown to Kunga, of disharmonies and great dangers, but it was a world through which he would have to pass. He had risen that morning a mere boy, not fully formed, inexperienced. Come the night he would have changed, grown. If he still lived. The great Wheel of Life was turning.

      Once the courtyard had been secured the officer, now dismounted, strode into its middle. Behind him was dragged the abbot – quite literally dragged, his arms tied in traditional Chinese style, diagonally behind his back, which made standing very difficult. It required only the lightest prod of the officer’s riding crop to force him to his knees upon the time-sanded stone. A growl of objection rose from the monks, quickly extinguished by a few well-directed rifle butts. The abbot began to recite a mantra, trying to focus his mind elsewhere, but before he could utter more than a few syllables the leather riding crop was under his chin, forcing his head back and exposing his throat like a whipped dog. The officer said not a word, simply allowing the abbot time to contemplate his own extreme vulnerability. For many painful moments the abbot was held there, neck stretched, shuddering, until the whip was removed and his head fell forward in submission.

      A rough-hewn wooden bowl was produced, one of the bowls from which the monks normally ate their staple diet of ground barley tsampa, and was placed on the flagstones directly in front of the kneeling abbot. Then, with almost comic arrogance considering his short stature and the action he was taking, the officer unbuttoned his trousers and proceeded to piss into it, allowing the stream of water to rise and fall but never to miss its target, until the bowl bubbled and steamed in the ice air and eventually overflowed.

      Two soldiers picked up the bowl and put it to the abbot’s lips.

      Kunga wanted to shout at the top of his lungs, to scream his outrage at the wickedness of the Chinese invaders, and he took a deep breath, so sudden that the back of his throat burned. But no sound came. He noticed he was trembling, and not from the cold.

      The abbot shook his head in disgust, trying to spill the bowl and its contents, but both the bowl and its contents came back. A second time he wriggled, trying to thrust the foulness away from him, but once more it was brought back to his lips and this time the crop was beneath his chin, forcing his head back again, stretching the vulnerable neck, until his eyes stared directly to the heavens with his lips prised apart.

      And they poured until the liquid spilled down his chin and stained his robes.

      Still the officer said nothing. He was bored with debate, with words. He didn’t need words to put a Tibetan in his place, only a mule crop and a bowlful of Chinese piss.

      The abbot slumped forward, retching. The officer strode around behind him. He had not been long in this uncomfortable world of Tibet and he didn’t care for it, this frozen, relentless land, full of strange disease. And a very long way from his family in Chungking. He had no particular dislike for the ordinary Tibetans, even though they were stubborn, with their strange superstitions and miserable food. But their monks were worthless. They contributed nothing, parasites who lived off the labour of others. And now far, far worse. They had started killing Chinese. They had left the administrator in Nagormo in so many pieces that his wife wouldn’t be able to bury anything other than scraps. So it must be brought to an end, all this bloodshed, before it spread like rats through a harvest. Otherwise he and his troops would never get back to Chungking.

      As the sun rose above the monastery walls, the officer’s shadow scythed across the bowed figure of the abbot. The Tibetan was an old man, shaven headed with skin like the husk of a walnut. Harmless, in his own way, the soldier thought, and perhaps even innocent. But what did innocence matter? It was his very existence that posed the threat. No, all this had to stop, right here.

      The officer cleared his throat. It was the only sound he had made since entering the monastery. His mind was made up. For the peace of the community, the good of the many. The Chinaman raised his arm, which he stretched out stiff before him, pointing. Then he put a bullet through the back of the abbot’s head.

      The two