“I wasn’t a baby when the bomb dropped,” said Samuel. “I was almost twelve.” Ralph and he were in their favorite den, known as ‘Lhasa’, because it was forbidden to all the others. It was a dense thicket of acacia growing courageously along the highest boundary of their little world. This boundary was the only one the boys were never tempted to transgress, being the edge of a vast, precipitous escarpment. You would have to be able to walk on air to get to the far side of the valley below. Just to peer over that edge made you dizzy, so clear-cut and final was it.
The valley itself was nicknamed “Hell” because it was “the last place you wanted to end up in”. The tiny community, demoralized by fear and insecurity, had spent long hours arguing over the location and distances of the other limits to their isolated domain, but this border fixed itself.
Recalling certain events of the past associated with it, Samuel shuddered, and was glad to have Ralph present beside him. They came to the thicket whenever they wanted to be alone and talk. Once you were in, you could not be seen, unless a spy were able to creep up without breaking a twig or rustling the branches. They had practiced doing it many times for fun, but hardly ever had either of them succeeded in surprising the other. In the very center of the thicket was a completely open patch of lush sward. There they would sit, or lie gazing up at the sky above them and gossiping about themselves or their companions. This place was sacred, like Tibet’s own mysterious heart.
As you stared upwards and outwards, you could imagine an enormous celestial tree spreading to infinity above and around you. Its trunk was a distant mountain, far away across the mighty Rift. Its branches were the horizontal clouds, in which there now hung a full, ripe, tropical moon, a beautiful fruit just ready for the picking.
Ralph sat down on a wide, bench-like boulder and watched Samuel, who stood gazing up at the sky. Suddenly Samuel asked, “Do you remember mangoes?” He stretched out his arms as if to pluck down the moon and bite into it with those gleaming teeth and fleshy lips of his. “I wish they would grow again,” he sighed.
