Seventy-Four

The very day they arrive in London, at Heathrow international airport itself, a press conference. A journalist asks about the moment of the expedition when Norgay saves Hillary’s life. The New Zealander expresses once more his gratitude towards the Sherpa. He speaks of his reflexes and mettle. Norgay scratches his chin, thoughtful, circumspect. Journalists listen in reverent silence to the account of that critical moment. Then they ask Norgay how he felt when he reached the top of the world. He answers at least eight words in Nepali. An interpreter translates laconically: ‘He was very happy.’ And all of them – Hillary, the journalists, the translator, Norgay himself – burst out laughing. As though that happiness, or even the mention or the chance of that happiness, could only result in uncontrollable laughter.

But one of the journalists takes offense. Guilty, vindictive, he approaches Norgay. He asks him: ‘Don’t you feel, Mr. Tenzing, that you are being discriminated against? Don’t you think that you, too, a Sherpa, ought to have been made a Knight of the Realm by Her Majesty? Did you not reach the same summit as Edmund Hillary? Do you not think, Mr. Tenzing, that the Crown of Great Britain and the whole of the West have done an immense injustice to you for purely racial reasons?’ Norgay responds: ‘Would a knighthood give me wings?’