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There is a new food runner at my restaurant. When I heard people calling him “Tenzie,” my little Tibetan attuned ears perked up. But I didn’t approach him for weeks—he looked so serious with his prominent cheekbones and weatherworn face, polishing silver and bustling around the dining room. I tried to figure out how to introduce myself without saying “Hi. Tenzin? You’re Tibetan, right? Guess what—I like Tibetans!”

In the end, that’s sort of what I did. But when my usual, “I studied in Dharamsala” failed to elicit much of a response, I asked him where in Tibet he was from. “Northern India.” He told me. “Where?” “Zanskar.”

I’m not sure who was more surprised—me to hear that response or he to see that I knew what he meant. He used to be a trekking guide in the Himalayas and now he’s running food in New York City. I don’t know why he came exactly, except that an American friend, probably someone he guided on a trek, encouraged him. His family is all still in Zanskar—mother, father, and a couple of sisters—farming and raising animals in a small remote village.

Most Ladakhis will not say their land is beautiful—they say there are no trees, that it is so cold, that the life is hard. They have heard of New York, seen images in Bollywood movies and Indian soap operas where everyone lives in huge immaculate houses and never works. Even before I moved to New York, I told people in India I was from New York  because New York and California are the two places everyone has heard of. They don’t know that there are rats on the subway.

Tenzin gave me a documentary called Journey from Zanskar about a monk bringing a group of children from Zanskar to a school in Manali (a hill station in Himachal Pradesh that begins one of the two land routes into Ladakh) where they will learn about Buddhism and Tibetan culture. Many of the children will not see their families again until they complete their schooling in ten or twelve years. Mothers and grandmothers, wrinkled prematurely from the sun and wind, wipe tears from the leathery corners of their eyes. One wails that her karma must be very bad that she should have to say goodbye to her daughter.

 

One night, I overheard one of the servers say to the manager, “Tenzie looks so sad it breaks my heart.” I wonder if he misses the mountains. In Zanskar the sky is so big you could loose yourself in it. Here, you see it only in gray stripes between the buildings.

Every time Tenzin sees me, he says “I can’t believe you been to Zanskar. I can’t believe you went to so small village.” I say, “it’s so beautiful there.” He smiles, and his forbidding face is completely transformed. “Julay,” I say, which is hello and goodbye and also thank you.