CHAPTER SIX

Arrest

“John’s been arrested,” Julie said, when she found me eating tukpa (noodle soup) at a Tibetan restaurant the next day. “Two policemen saw John’s sticker of the Tibetan flag. They interrogated us for hours. John got the police to let me go. You have to get all of your books out of your room—”

“John’s books,” I corrected her. The Tibetan woman in the market had warned John to take that damn sticker off, but he kept it, insistent on making a point—on not being intimidated. Julie immediately got up to leave. “Where are you going?” I asked.

“To clean my room before the police do. You’d better, too.”

I thought of racing back to the room to retrieve John’s books and my journal. Sitting there, I envisioned the police catching me when I tried to leave the room with the incendiary publications. I decided to finish my tukpa and then walk slowly back to the hotel. When I arrived, five policemen were already crammed into our tiny cubicle. John was with them.

“We have some trouble with your friend,” a Chinese police captain said in English. “Wait outside.” John looked with forlorn eyes at the books, papers, our passports, and my journal on the night table. Two Tibetan men in plainclothes sat next to John on his bed. One man was balding and had a paunch. The other was a teenager trying to grow sideburns. Two Chinese policemen in uniform sat on my bed.

Our possessions lay strewn about the room. “Wait outside!” the captain said again.

I did not have to be told a third time. To my surprise no one followed. Long, panicky strides took me down the stairs to my bicycle and the street. If the police found John’s resolutions where they were hidden in the ceiling, he could go to prison. I did not think the police would physically hurt him, but he could be learning Chinese the hard way for an indefinite period of time. I was sure I too would be arrested once they read my journal. Although I had liked the individual Chinese people we had met, every page of my journal mourned some aspect of China’s occupation and colonization of Tibet. I resolved to eat as much as I could while I remained free.

A stiff hand on my shoulder interrupted my second steaming bowl of tukpa. “We got the stickers in Hong Kong,” John whispered quickly. “They don’t know about the resolution yet.”

“I told you to take that damned sticker off,” I whispered back, before seeing the two Chinese policemen behind John. “Ni hao,“ I greeted the first man in Chinese. He led me out of the restaurant and prevented John from getting into the jeep that had brought them. I dropped my bicycle key out the window for John before the police and I sped off through the cobblestone streets.

The jeep’s screeching siren warned the pedestrians and bicyclists who fled from its path. I felt a visceral sense of helplessness that reminded me of when I had been arrested twice, in New York City, when I worked on the United Farm Workers grape boycott in 1976. Still an idealistic teenager, I had been arrested for posting colorful “BOYCOTT SCAB GRAPES AND LETTUCE” stickers in the subway, then a week later for singing, “We Shall Overcome” in a supermarket that sold scab grapes. Both times a judge heard my case and released me within twenty-four hours.

A Chinese woman selling preserved apricots outside the Banak Shol hotel jumped as the jeep skidded to a halt inches from her stand. A Swedish couple registering at the desk paused to watch us. I had no thought of fleeing as the police led me up the stairs.

“You will call me Mr. Chen,” the police captain said, standing at attention. He had a hard face and eyes that gave nothing away. He picked up my journal with its sticker of the Tibetan national flag and said, “First we have trouble with your friend. Now we have trouble with you. Where did you get this flag?”

“It’s not a flag,” I said. “It’s a sticker.”

“It is Tibetan flag!” Mr. Chen screamed. “Tibet is part of China!”

Even if the five policemen and I had been friends we would have been uncomfortable in such a cramped space. I opened a pack of Marlboros and offered one to Mr. Chen. He refused automatically, refused a second time, then finally accepted a cigarette. So did the Chinese deputies and the undercover Tibetans.

“You don’t smoke?” Mr. Chen asked.

“It’s bad for your health,” I said.

Mr. Chen proceeded to attack me with a barrage of questions: Where did I get the flag? How many did I bring into Tibet? Who did I give them to? Where? Why? I tried to answer each question correctly. None of the police seemed to mind when John walked in and sat down next to me. After an hour, Mr. Chen grabbed my journal and our passports. The deputies took the stack of evidence. “You are forbidden to leave your room tonight,” Mr. Chen said. “You will report to the police station tomorrow morning at ten.”

After they left, John said, “The young Tibetan trying to grow sideburns and the Chinese mute took Julie and me off the street at gunpoint. I had a resolution in my camera bag. They took us to the police station and interrogated us for three hours. The deputies kept looking at the Tibetan flag. They inspected it, fondled it. In a way I think they were fascinated by it. I was terrified they were going to open the bag and see the resolution.”

A grin broke across John’s face. “It didn’t take long to figure out how to try to get rid of the resolution. I stood up and grabbed the bag. They were as surprised as I was. Then I pretended that I had explosive diarrhea. One of the policemen led me to their bathroom. He tried to watch me go. ‘No way!’ I shouted, and slammed the door shut. Then I dropped our resolution into the black hole.”

The siren from the departing police jeep drove us to the window. The two deputies had been stationed as guards at the hotel’s front door.

“Thanks for getting me arrested,” I said.

“We wouldn’t be if you had cleaned the room before the police came. Didn’t Julie tell you?” he replied. For a second John became livid with anger, then said, “What does Chen mean by having us return to the police station at ten? Let’s find Julie and get some beer,” John said.

“What about the deputies?”

“You must be flustered,” John chided. “If the chance to see Julie doesn’t make you want to sneak out of here now, think what miserable company you’ll make in prison.”

Even when I was mad at John, I couldn’t stay mad at him for long. John’s good humor had enabled me to rappel twenty pitches in a blizzard off El Capitan, to almost enjoy shivering all night in a boxcar going east when we wanted to be going west, and to tease that Julie wanted me, not him.

That night I could feel myself losing the ability to distinguish fantasy from reality, paranoia from fear. I lay awake worrying that the police would read my journal and discover that I despised the Chinese occupation of Tibet. What I had seen in Tibet affected me deeply. The Tibetans were tourist attractions in their own country, the way native Americans are in parts of the United States.

The next morning, John assembled paper, pen, money, cigarettes, and condoms on his bed in preparation for our trip to the police station. For John, going to jail was another adventure, like hopping trains or climbing Everest. I asked if he thought we were going to summer camp. John didn’t take the bait. Looking out the window and seeing that there were no guards and no jeep to drive us to the police station, he said, “If they won’t drive us, I’m going to take my time getting there.” I put water purification tablets in my left sock, antibiotics in the right.

We pedaled slowly through the park behind the Potala toward the station. The smell of rotting leaves made me homesick for New England’s fall explosion of color—anywhere but this windswept desert. Then John stopped his bicycle next to a beautiful Tibetan girl and motioned for her to get on. She hopped sidesaddle across the back of the bicycle and wrapped her arms around his waist. Her long black hair swayed as John wobbled to a start. Soon the three of us were laughing as we wound our way through the park.

Under different circumstances the Tibetan rugs and couches that decorated the station might have lent it a pleasant air. Mr. Chen stood up from his desk. His face looked stern. “Sit down” he ordered, pointing to the couch near his desk. “You will begin by telling me your professions, and where you live.”

“We are students,” I said.

“You are not student!” Mr. Chen shouted. “Mr. Ackerly. Where are you from?”

“Washington, D.C.” John said.

“Washington!” Mr. Chen yelled. “Home of CIA! What is CIA doing in China?”

“We are tourists,” John protested.

Mr. Chen slapped the table and screamed. “Tibet is part of China! You are not tourists! You work for CIA. You come to China to make trouble.” The jugular veins on Mr. Chen’s neck bulged as he repeated the same questions that we had already answered. John maintained that we had gotten the flags from a street vendor in Hong Kong, and that neither of us could remember what the man looked like or where his shop was. In spite of Mr. Chen’s yelling, John remained pleasant and calm. He also tried to appease Mr. Chen.

“What does ‘national’ mean?” Mr. Chen yelled, holding John’s camera bag with the sticker of the Tibetan national flag inches from John’s face.

“We have the same thing in our country,” John said. “Each state has its own flag. It represents its own distinct area, the way Tibet is a distinct part of China.”

“National means independent. Tibet is not independent. What does ‘national’ mean?”

“In the United States,” I said, hoping to distract Mr. Chen, “native American Indians used to live all across the country before the Europeans came. Now there are relatively few Indians left.”

“Yes!” Mr. Chen exclaimed. “What would you say if your Indians cried, ‘Free America’?”

“They still cry, ‘Free America,’” I said.

“Tibet is part of China.”

“Just since your military invaded—” I interrupted. John kicked me under the table.

“Tibet has never been independent,” Mr. Chen screamed. “Tibet will never be independent. Tibet is part of China.” Mr. Chen did not hit me, but I think the thought crossed his mind. Instead of yelling at me again, he said, “In China, we have ways of changing your attitude.” He walked to a back room to yell first at his deputies and then into a phone.

“Do you want to get your passport back?” John hissed. “I forgot to tell you—they found the picture of us with that Reagan cutout.”

“No wonder they think we’re CIA.”

“They thought Reagan was for real,” John said. “I didn’t say any thing. I wasn’t sure if it would help us or hurt us.” After a long silence, John said, “China doesn’t put U.S. citizens in prison.”

“They will if they read my journal.”

John laughed. “I’d be worried too if I had written what you did. So don’t argue with Chen,” he whispered, as Mr. Chen emerged from the back room.

“China signed the Geneva convention in 1981 regarding the acceptable treatment of prisoners,” John announced. “I would like to see the statutes that we have violated. In English. It’s international law.”

Mr. Chen pointed to a poster behind his desk that I had been too scared to notice. “‘Article Five,” Mr. Chen said. “Aliens are forbidden by Chinese law to endanger the national security interests of China, harm its public interests, or disturb its public order.’”

“How have we endangered China’s national security interests?” John asked.

Mr. Chen slammed his fist on the table. For a second I thought I might get to kick John. John’s face turned the same shade of red as Mr. Chen’s, but he managed to suppress his anger.

Our interrogations took on a regular pattern. Mr. Chen repeated the same series of questions. John tried to placate Mr. Chen and kicked me under the table when I argued. I began to sense that underneath Mr. Chen’s hard police exterior, he himself was seeking answers to the questions that he asked. John’s training as a lawyer gave him remarkable grace under the pressure of interrogation. Before law school, John had been defenseless when anyone yelled at him. As for me, I was a victim of passion and mood, which had just been made worse by medical school.

A group of French trekkers came into the station to get Alien Travel Permits. Mr. Chen retreated into the back room while one of the deputies issued the permits. John produced a deck of cards and played solitaire. I became so curious about the back room that I meandered over to the slightly open door. Mr. Chen stood over the Tibetan trying to grow sideburns; both men were intent on my journal. Seeing this—even more than John kicking me under the table—prompted me to stop arguing with Mr. Chen.

“The Dalai Lama say many things to your government,” Mr. Chen said when he returned. “China get bad press. We don’t know what we’re going to do with you. But we’re going to punish you.” Mr. Chen let the seriousness of our situation register on our faces before he continued, “Report here tomorrow morning at 10:00. You must write self-criticisms and bring them with you.”

After being interrogated for eight hours, John and I were allowed to ride our bicycles back to our hotel without a police escort. We should have been elated, but we continued to argue. I said we should consider trying to leave Lhasa immediately. John said he wasn’t going anywhere until he got his passport back.

“How’s this for a self-criticism?” John said, reading from a page in his journal later that night. “‘I apologize for any trouble I may have caused the People’s Republic of China. I have always been an admirer of the People’s Revolution, and supported the People’s Republic of China. It was not my intent to harm anyone by bringing postcards of the Dalai Lama to Tibetans. I am sorry for the trouble that this careless deed has caused me, and for the shame it has cast upon my ancestors.’” John looked up with glee. “They’ll love the line about bringing shame to my ancestors,” he said. “The Chinese really relate to that kind of stuff. What did you write?”

“Nothing.”

“But Mr. Chen—”

I interrupted John by asking if he still had his map of the Dalai Lama’s escape route in 1959. “Now you’re talking like the old Blake,” he said. John retrieved the folded paper from his pack and surveyed the route from Lhasa across the Himalayas to Bhutan. “It took the Dalai Lama several weeks to cross the Himalayas,” John said. “It’s a direct route. If we’re considering an overland escape, I think we should cross into Nepal near Everest, where we already know the route. It’s almost October: if there’s a storm, if we choose the wrong pass, we could freeze to death. We’ll have to avoid being seen the whole time. The border will be intense. We could say that we lost everything in an avalanche.”

This John, the one I knew and loved, disappeared again after only a moment, replaced by the poised lawyer. He refolded the map. “The more I think about sneaking out of Tibet,” John said, “the more it makes sense to stay. Mr. Chen will return our passports tomorrow. He has to. China has to officially notify any foreign national’s government within forty-eight hours of his arrest.”

“Our superiors in Beijing have decided to release you,” Mr. Chen announced at four the next afternoon, after we had spent six hours that day in the station. “You will pay $200 each for a flight to Beijing tomorrow.”

“We don’t have enough money for a flight anywhere,” John lied.

Mr. Chen disappeared yet again into the back room. I knew that John was pushing him, testing the limits. This time it worked. Mr. Chen returned our passports and John’s camera bag and said that we had four days to leave by bus. John argued that we should have at least ten days, and got the extra time. My journal was brought out next. It had a clean rectangular patch in the center where the sticker had been torn out. The police, it appeared, had not been able to decipher my handwriting. Mr. Chen sat next to John and opened my journal to the last page.

“What is this?” Mr. Chen yelled, his voice sounding enraged.

“It’s nothing,” John said, easing my journal from Mr. Chen’s hands and dropping it into my lap. “It’s just about the demonstration. Everyone’s talking about it. It’s no secret.”

I said that I had only written about the demonstration on the last page. Noticing Julie’s name in the paragraph before the demonstration, I pointed this out and said, “This is about, you know…sex.” Mr. Chen blushed when I moved my index finger in and out of my fist. He approved while I shredded the pages into the ash tray. Soon after, John and I were racing our bicycles down the street, away from the station.

Lu let us cook dinner in his kitchen that night. Julie and I chopped garlic and ginger while John stirred the wok. Otto supervised. We played rock and roll too loud on Lu’s rickety tape deck as I put eleven cloves of garlic into the stir fry and Julie poured in a healthy splash of warm beer. My arm tingled expectantly when it touched hers as we worked side by side in the kitchen. Earlier, as we had walked to Lu’s place from the hotel, Julie and I had first discussed the prospect of spending the night together.

“Tomorrow is Chinese National Day,” John said to no one in particular.

“Like Fourth of July in America?” Otto said. “Lots of boom-boom. Tomorrow I make my own boom-boom. Today I bought a Chinese flag to burn.”

“They’ll shoot you,” John said.

“Is no problem,” Otto said and waved his hand. “In Germany, I burn already ten, eleven American flags at demonstrations. Tomorrow I burn one Chinese flag. No problem.”

Lu stormed into the kitchen. He looked disgruntled. “I had trouble with police,” Lu said. “Three come in earlier. They want to eat free. I let them eat, but not for free.”

“Won’t that cause trouble for you later?” Julie asked.

“Everything cause trouble for me later,” Lu said.