“See what you can find about those men from Larung Gar,” Shan told his son, then gave him a quick embrace, wishing he could part from him the way other family visitors parted, with the number of months and years left before their loved one’s release. But Ko’s sentence had become indeterminate. He could be out in two or three years, or twenty. “Strength,” he said instead. It had become his usual parting word.

Shan tried to recall what he had been told by his Tibetan friends about the destruction at Larung Gar as he drove back to Yangkar. Thousands of monks and nuns had been relocated from what essentially had become a huge Tibetan seminary, forced to sign pledges that they would never return, under threat of imprisonment. Many were also forced to swear they would remove their robes and never pursue religious activities again. They had been herded onto buses then driven hundreds of miles away and dumped into city depots, strangers in a very strange land. But he had not heard of any being imprisoned. He had also never heard of a warden allowing Tibetans to keep a vigil over a dead prisoner.

Yangkar seemed quiet as he drove in. Spotting Yara standing by the fence as students played in the schoolyard, he stopped to let her know he had seen Ko, and his son eagerly anticipated their coming visit.

As he turned to leave she spoke in an uncertain voice. “There’s been complaints from the Committee of Leading Citizens,” she reported. “I tried to help, to keep her here since that woman with her, her aunt or nanny, I guess, asked if the girl could experience a Tibetan country school, but she ran away and I couldn’t leave to retrieve her. She stomped on Mrs. Lu’s sprouting vegetables, kicked a cabbage off the barber’s front step. Choden brought her back here but she bit his hand and ran away again.”

“You’re speaking of the girl who ravaged the town square?” Shan asked, not sure why the girl would have returned to Yangkar.

“The same little demon.” Yara shrugged. “I’m sure they’ll be gone soon. Visitors don’t find much to keep them in Yangkar.”

When Shan arrived at the station Choden was bandaging his hand. “She saw some yaks on the slopes,” his deputy reported when Shan asked about the girl, “so now that woman with her took her up one of those paths above town, praise Buddha. What a brat. Reminds me of one of those cartoon characters who spin around like a cyclone and have jets of steam coming out their ears.” He gestured to a printout of a bulletin. “You must have just missed the excitement in Lhasa. Makes you want to laugh, though I’m sure that poor bastard wasn’t laughing.”