Paying homage to the people in Tibet today whose culture, language, and identity have been suppressed after China’s invasion of their homeland, Meadon Lhamo* says she wrote this piece to show that even when voices are silenced, memory speaks and silence too can burn with truth.
Silence, they said, was the language of obedience. I learned to speak it fluently.
Still, some mornings I wake up to the sound of rifles ringing inside my head, echoes gnawing through the silence that I have built. I see my mother’s trembling hands, the butter lamps flickering in fear, their light folding in the darkness. Outside, chants broke against the march of the boots. My father’s voice rose sharply one second, and went the next. Then, came the sound of metal cracking the air, and suddenly, the world felt still.
That silence follows me everywhere.
Now, the sky over Lhasa has forgotten color, washed in shades of gray, thick with smoke that never seems to leave. The city hums with the new rhythm of loudspeakers, marching, and Mandarin words that cut sharper than a knife.
We line up at the courtyard before dawn, our breaths freezing into tiny ghosts. The flag above us snaps in the wind, red and loud, daring us to run from this horrid dream.
We are told to repeat the slogans.
We do.
Our tongues twist into unfamiliar sounds, heavy as stones.
When I stumble over the words, the teacher slams the ruler against my desk. “Again,” she says in Mandarin. “You must learn how to speak properly.”
I nod. It’s all I can do to stop the words that are burning my mouth, words that we are not allowed to use.
ང་བོད་པ་ཡིན། — I am Tibetan.
But I only whisper it to the cold, wooden floor, each syllable sinking like a buried seed.
Nights are colder than days allow it. The dormitory smells of salt water and straw. Sleep is something we borrow in shifts. There are three of us sharing a mattress, Tenzin, Dawa, and me, huddled like coals that refuse to die.
Tenzin remembers whispering jokes to her friends beneath the thick air of incense in the temple, laughter rippling softly through a sea of murmured prayers.
Dawa remembers the warm, comforting taste of her mother’s thenthuk- handpulled noodles swimming in broth, rich enough to silence the wind.
When it’s my turn to share, I narrate stories of my mother lighting a butter lamp, how it danced in the moonlight, trembling like frightened animals before the hunt.
Sometimes, I dream of relighting them. But in my dream, the lamps never relight; the wicks crumble to ash before the flame takes over.
Days blur together in an endless cycle: drills, lessons, and silence. The teachers call us the “new citizens.” They say the past is a sickness, and they are the cure.
Each morning in our classes, I write the same characters on the same page, my hand stiff from the cold ink. Beneath every Mandarin stroke, I imagine the hidden curves of our own letters, ghosted underneath, hidden like roots beneath the ground, waiting to sprout.
From the window, I can see smoke rising beyond the city boundaries. Prayer flags, books, maybe even houses, it doesn’t matter now. Fire eats everything the same way.
One afternoon, I found a scrap of paper stuck in between the fence: half a mantra, singed at the edges. Om mani padme hun. The ink has bled out like a wound but the message remains.
I slip it into my pocket before anyone sees. That night, beneath my blanket, I trace the words until they stain my fingertips ashy black.
སྐད་ཡིག་འདི་ངའི་ཡིན་པས་རྩ་མེད་དུ་གཏོང་མི་ཐུབ།– This language is mine and it cannot be destroyed.
At the crack of dawn, they gathered us at the courtyard. A mountain of books waits in the center, school books, prayer books, scraps torn from temples. A soldier stands nearby, his face carved from stone.
“Burn them,” he orders, “Old thoughts must die.”
The matchbox feels foreign in my palm, too light for what it holds. Around me, no one moves. Dust spirals upward, stinging our eyes.
The first match hisses alive. It’s flame faltering, like a question. I think of my mother, my father, every forbidden word that has lived beneath my teeth. Then, I lower the flame.
The paper sighs disappointedly as it catches. Smoke curls upward, dark and sweet. The air fills with the scent of ink, dust, and something older– juniper, maybe. The heat claws at my throat.
Someone behind me begins to hum. It’s soft, almost threadlike, but the sound ripples through us like embers. Others join in. The melody is ancient, forbidden, and unstoppable.
The soldiers shout, but their voices drown beneath our song. The hum grows louder until it’s a single pulse of sound, shaking the sky itself.
The fire leaps higher, drunk on orange light. Pages curl and blacken, heat biting my face, as words turn into ash and prayers all at once. I reach into my back pocket and pull out the half-burned mantra. The paper has grown warm from my body. I watch the letters shimmer, our letters, and for the first time, the silence in my throat breaks open.
ཨོཾ་མ་ཎི་པདྨེ་ཧཱུྃ།– Om mani padme hun.
The words spit out like breath, like surrender, like freedom. The language of my homeland lives inside me still.
I don’t know what happened next. Maybe the soldiers rally us away, maybe the flames devour everything, maybe nothing changes at all. But for a heartbeat, I see it, the smoke rising like a flag, curling above the city, carrying our voices where we physically cannot go.
When the fire wanes, ashes drift through the air. I open my hand and catch a flake on my palm. It leaves a gray print in the middle of my hand, light as dust, heavy as memory.
Somewhere, a bell rings in the distance. Somewhere, the wind hums an old tune.
Silence, they said, was the language of obedience.
But even silence burns.
—
* Meadon Lhamo is a 9th grade student in Boston MA, USA
(NOTE: I wrote this piece to give voice to the silenced, to pay homage to people in Tibet in the present times whose culture, language, and identity were suppressed after the invasion of Tibet in 1959. It wasn’t a fully imagined story, as it was based on the accounts people in exile had heard from scattered reports and media in Tibet. The stories of the invasion came from my grandparents, who fled Tibet after the invasion, down to my father, who grew up in Nepal away from his homeland, and then to me. All through this story, I have tried to capture the feelings of the people left behind by my grandparents, the pain of losing a homeland, and quiet strength among the people living in exile that refused to be extinguished. Writing was a way of keeping their voices alive, turning inherited memory into resistance. Every scene, the burning books, the forbidden use of speaking Tibetan, and the whispered prayers, was a reflection of the struggle to preserve an identity when everything is taken away. I wrote this to show that even when voices are silenced, memory still speaks, and that silence too can burn with truth.)