I HAD NEVER READ A BOOK AS PITILESS, terrifying and inspiring in my life: a Tibetan woman's account of twenty-seven years of torture in labor camps for resisting China's occupation for her homeland. Ama Adhe: The Voice That Remembers (Wisdom Publications) is a memoir that describes--with unutterable calm--acts of unthinkable evil, and the unwavering spirit of the woman who withstood them. But meeting her was the true shock: when I sat with Adhe in my home, she took my hands in hers--strong, vital, calloused, caressing--and it was I, the baby boomer American journalist, who drew strength from her.
She was dressed in typical Tibetan garb--peasant style--and counted her prayer beads from time to time. Now in her sixties, Adhe lives in exile in India under the protection of the Dalai Lama. She has remarried, and speaks reverently of "waking each morning and realizing that I am in freedom, living in the same town that his Holiness the Dalai Lama lives in, and then I am very happy."
The facts: In 1954, when Adhe's son was just a year old, and she was pregnant with her second child, her husband was poisoned and died in front of her. Her husband's mother died soon afterward, of grief. In 1958, nine armed men cam to Adhe's home, beat her in front of her children, and arrested her. Several months of physical torture followed, and finally she was brought before a large crowd and forced to watch as her brother-in-law was shot in front of her. "Pieces of his brain and his blood splashed on my dress," Adhe recalls. Her sister, his wife, lost her mind and died soon after.
Adhe, however, was not killed. "They said, `We want you to suffer for the rest of your life. Now you see who has won.'" Almost three decades of imprisonment, forced labor, near starvation, and beatings followed. Moved from prison to prison, Adhe was not allowed to change or wash her only dress-known in Tibetan as a chupa--for year. When she menstruated, she let the blood dry and scraped it off. At one point she fainted while carrying stones; she was believed to be dead and was put in a hut that held the bodies of other dead prisoners. "The bodies looked like skeletons," says Adhe. "The eyes had blackened, the cheekbones were protruding. The sickening smell was overwhelming."
Over time, Adhe became something of a cause celebre and was finally allowed to visit friends and family in 1979, twenty one years after she was first imprisoned. She discovered that a friend had raised her daughter, but her son had gone insane after her arrest and one day fell into a river and drowned. "My surviving friends came to see me in the night," she says, "and told me of the fates of most of the women who had worked with me in the resistance. Now they were dead." That may have been Adhe's darkest moment: "There was nothing left. All these years I had been living for nothing, and now I didn't have to try anymore. A terrible restlessness came over me, and I began to wander around muttering to myself, totally unaware of my immediate surroundings."
How does one even use the word "resilience" in this context? It seems too small. There is a quality of indestructible strength and joy in Adhe that seems inborn. However, in her story, one does find the common traits of resilience that researchers have pointed out. For instance, perhaps the cardinal finding about the resilient is that they do not survive alone. Too weak to say her daily prayers (or even to remember them), Adhe sought the advice of an imprisoned monk who crafted her a shortened version of the prayer. Mourning the deaths of fellow women prisoners, Adhe began to make a quilt from their old dresses, and after a few years, it was large enough to sleep on. To this day she keeps the quilt: "My daughter used to beg me to get rid of it, saying, `I can't stand it. Please throw it in the river.' But somehow I couldn't. It is with me even today."
Later, Adhe was sent food by her brother, and when prison officials wanted to take it away from her, a Chinese doctor at the labor camp who had taken an interest in Adhe's welfare intervened. "He said he would keep the food and give it to me slowly. `If you overeat at this point, you will die.'" Adhe asked the doctor to use the food to prepare a special soup for all the prisoners. In her memoir, she recalls: "All the prisoners were so happy in getting their share that although it was still very hot, they drank it immediately. You could see their faces glowing red. Some licked the cups, then put in some water, shook the cup, and drank again. Some kissed my hand. They said, `At least before we die, we are having our native food.' "One Tibetan, a man too weak to walk or stand, gave her his hat, in which a tiny portrait of the Dalai Lama was tied with thread. "After that, I always wore the hat. This most precious gift game me hope."
When asked who she survived, Adhe says it was through daily prayer. Today, she lives in two rooms with her husband, in Dharmshala, India. She wakes at dawn, makes an offering at her altar, and prays until noon. She then goes to meet and help new Tibetan refugees. She says that though the jailers, labor camps, and suffering of her fellow prisoners comes back to her constantly in dreams, every morning, as soon as she awakens, she is happy again.
The Chinese told her long ago, as they shot her brother-in-law to death in front of her, "Now you see who has won." Yes, now we see who has won.
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