Flashback

By Tashi Sangmo, Age 17

Inspired by the October '08 Memoir Workshop, "Between Blindness and Sight"

Certain memories of my childhood are always with me. Sometimes as I am riding on the subway to International High School in Prospect Heights, Brooklyn (where I am a junior), I think back to my childhood when I was a nomad traveling on horseback and passing days on the mountains as a shepherd. I remember, especially, the scariest day of my life in Tibet.

It was midday, and I was shepherding about one kilometer from my house. My mother had packed a cup of yogurt and two wheat breads for my lunch. The sheep were bunched into small groups and busy hunting grasses. While I was unpacking my lunch bag, I suddenly heard the sound of hooves. I looked up and saw that all the sheep had herded together and were rushing down toward our house. Surprised, I stood up and scanned the hillside. Then I saw a leopard chasing after the sheep. At that moment I froze, terrified, and had no idea what to do. Shocked with fear, I just stood there shivering.

Fortunately, the leopard failed to catch any of the sheep and had to turn back with a long face. The leopard was walking reluctantly and staring at me. When he reached the oak tree, he stopped but kept staring at me and waving his tail. My heart was pounding uncontrollably, and my head was spinning with so many questions: Should I run or stay still or shout for help from my mother? I was only seven years old and quite small.

Luckily, the leopard turned away from me once, and in that movement of opportunity, I ran home faster than I ever imaged I could. When I reached home, my mother came toward me with fear and curiosity on her face. I couldn’t say what had really happened except for the words “Ama! Ceeg! Ceeg!” “ Mom! Leopard! Leopard!” My mother rushed out of the house to look for the cows, which were sent daily into the forest without tending, since they would come back home on their own before it was too dark. She returned with the dead body of our cutest year-old calf. My mother told me the leopard had killed the calf by sucking the blood from its mouth.

The calf’s mother licked her dead baby’s skin while my mother was milking the cow. I felt bad for the cow and for losing the calf to that wild leopard. As Buddhists, we believe that all living beings are created equal, and normally we would have mourned for the calf. However, I was also on cloud nine: I was safe! My mother and my whole family were so glad that I was unharmed that, although we felt sorry for the death of that innocent calf, we celebrated my escape from the leopard.
Remembering this moment often makes me realize that I am a lucky girl. Lucky, first, to have escaped from the leopard, and then to have escaped from Tibet to study in India, and finally to have been able to come to America. Though the subway I take every day to school is packed with strangers, I am pretty confident that at least there is no leopard.

Watch Tashi read on YouTube
Buy the Girls Write Now Anthology