Sun.

I frowned quizzically at first when I saw the foreign number on my cell phone. Then, a familiar "hello?" with a slanting accent from a thousand miles away, and tears oozed out my eyes immediately.

"Zahina*?" I cried. And the tears just kept coming, they wouldn't stop. And I could hear her crying over the other end too.

It's been so long.

I first met her when I first visited Sophia's Home, the orphanage Kitesong supports in Nepal. She was one of the caregivers there, a young Nepali lady no more than 2 years older than myself. When I first arrived at the Home, she was cold as frost. Busying herself with household chores, you could feel a smouldering intensity underneath her chocolate skin, and something about her bristled with quiet, undecided hostility, even from across the room. I thought she didn't like me. Her tone was curt, her voice resonant and always bordering on rebuke as the children would sometimes fall into mischief. One thing I knew though, she loved the children with a fierce, fierce love, and the children adored her, for all her sterness, even.

I was often very lonely in Nepal. That being my first mission trip alone overseas, and the longest one I've ever been on, it was challenging, especially since I spent Chinese New Year there, without family not festivity. It was a terrible winter, and the dank basement room I lived in gave no comfort. The missionaries were lovely, but they all had their own families, which made my lonliness and singleness even more apparent.

It was Zahina who showed me the most warmth, after her frosty demeanour melted away. In Nepali, Zahina means "Sun".

We became the best of friends. And when I left, I missed her much.

Many times in Nepal, I felt out of place. Pampered through my growing years, my incompetencies stood out there like a sore thumb. It was Zahina who taught me The Proper Way to peel potatoes, clean floors, make Nepali tea, wash jeans, cook, discipline children and love them tough. To say I was embarrassed by my handicaps might have been an understatement. The children, as young as five, could wash their own clothes thoroughly and Properly. Early in the chilly mornings, they'd trod up to the open rooftop where the sun peeked through the Himalayan ranges and wash their clothes, squatting on the icy cement floor with a cake of buttersoap and a hard washboard.

One day after a hard day's work of shifting furniture as the orphanage was shifting locations (again, because of the high rent), my jeans were soiled. One of the missionaries told Zahina in a mix of english and Nepali, "Wash her jeans for her, will you. She mightn't know how to wash them."

My face was hot with embarrassment. I was adamant not to have anyone clean my clothes. And I can wash my jeans myself thank you very much. Whether I knew how to or not, I had my pride. No, I said, I'm fine. A little polite tussle ensued, and in spite of my denial, I was vilified already. But Zahina knew better. "She can wash by herself, she's a big girl, you know," she defended me.

That night, she sneaked into my room. "Come with me to the rooftop," she said in her thick Nepali accent. " Come now. No one's here, children all asleep. I teach you Proper Way to wash jeans ya, then when they ask you how come so clean ya tomorrow, you tell them because you know how to wash. Don't need to tell I taught Proper Way. Come now, everyone's asleep."

So on that icy biting night on the windy rooftop, where temperatures dipped to subzero degrees, we got on our knees on the harsh bitter floor and slapped our wet clothes on the cement. Our hands numb with cold, we squatted and washed and talked and sang like professional washerwomen in the chilly air.

Inside, rinse, outside, rinse, squeeze, beat on floor, rinse, hang, dry.

That night I cried. I cried into her arms. I was a temporary visitor but she treated me like a sister. We talked about everything, and she confessed to me she had never felt such a connection with any visitor to the orphanage, or for that matter, anyone for a long time. We just, connected, in the way some people do when they're of the right fit, despite different races, language, backgrounds.

"You know I love these children so much that's why I live here with them, day in day out. In Nepal, people do arranged marriages you know. But I don't want. But how I'm going to find a husband and everything in the future..." she sighed a deep sigh, and it evaporated into the air in despair and yet hope... "only God knows. "

I think about her ever so often. Each time missionaries travel to and fro from Nepal, I send them a gift to her, too. I never once received one from her, but I never resented it- she is from a different culture, and she lives on very, very little. She taught me so much. Because of her, I saw the sun, felt warm in the intermittent periods of chilliness when the children were at school or when a bout of homesickness struck. She never laughed at me, never judged me. She had every right to snigger at my inadequacies, but she never did. She only taught me The Proper Way, the way a sister would.

So you can imagine how I felt when I heard her voice over the phone last night, and she told me she was getting married. "This one I do everything myself you know, no arranged! It is going to be Big Day for me." she beamed, and she was crying too because I was.

She doesn't have much. She really doesn't. Every cent she has she spends on the children, or now that she's moved on to serving at a hospice, on the elderly there. She's a typical Brahmin beauty, with eyes large as the moon and yet always dressing plainly except on church days. Careful with her money, always. But she called me. She called me from miles away, and it cost her so much. But she wanted to tell me, she wanted to tell me herself that she was getting married.

I couldn't stop crying.

"When you coming to Nepal again?"

And that question pierced me because just two nights ago I thought to myself how it's been too long since I returned. Just, too long. And though the children just sent me a card not too long ago with their photo, I think I should like to see just how much they've grown.


Zahina made a difference to my life I will never forget. She taught me humility, independence and the Proper Way to wash jeans.


Inside, rinse, outside, rinse, squeeze, beat on floor, rinse, hang, dry.


Congratulations my dear. You're getting married. And you remembered me. I'll visit Nepal
when God opens a way again, okay?


Zahina. Her name means Sun.


*name changed to protect identity