‘Two Sherpas’ gives life, dreams and texture to anonymous heroes – 12/20/2023 – É Logo Ali
[ad_1]
“Two
Sherpas peer into the abyss. The heads searching the nadir. The bodies stretched out on the rocks, hands resting on the edge of a cliff. They seem to be waiting for something. But without anxiety. With a repertoire of serene gestures that balance between resignation and skepticism. (…) He points with an ambiguous gesture towards the void, the rock where the body of an Englishman lies stretched out and motionless, and says:
— These people… —And so the silence is broken. If we can call the deafening hiss of the wind crossing the Himalayan peaks silence.”
Whoever makes this report is not a mountaineer, he has never been close to a high peak, much less the Himalayas. But Argentine writer Sebastián Martínez Daniell, 52, delved deeply into everything he found about the highest mountain on the planet, Everest, to put together a narrative that, above all, is a call to civilization, civility and the humanization of those who we often imagine are around us just to serve us and endorse our own victories.
The story “Two Sherpas” told by Daniell is not linear, it intersperses moments of contemplation between two characters, identified only as old Sherpa and young Sherpa, who look at the fallen body of the English mountaineer without deciding whether or not to attempt to rescue him.
“A certain degree of anonymity for the characters was important to my narrative,” Daniell told the blog. “They are there because of what they represent, not because of what they are, they have a role within a system of power, an economic system, even though each one has their own inner life, their dreams and desires”, he adds.
The absence of names has to do with the intention of offering a perception that “they are not exceptional, unique cases, but part of a phenomenon that has to do with exploration, colonialism, a very Western view of the mountain”, explains Daniell. By not giving them an identity, the author also disconnects them from any culture and allows a parallelism to be drawn that is valid for both Everest, Aconcagua, Mount Roraima, and any other summit — or challenge.
It is precisely this perception that gave life to “Two Sherpas”, which initially, says Daniell, was a completely different story, about the son of an English ornithologist who, to surpass his father’s achievements, decided to climb Everest and, instead, he fell to the ground. mid climb. “When I imagined this scene, it was the moment I decided to abandon the original story, imagining the Sherpas there, watching, they have a high level of specialization, but are treated by tourists, never truly intimate with the mountain, like pack animals”, remembers Daniell.
Several examples of contempt are cited throughout the narrative, such as when John Hunt, Baron of Llanfair and officer in the English crown army, was tasked with mounting an expedition and taking the British flag to the highest peak in the world.
In Kathmandu, the capital of Nepal, Hunt hired a group of Sherpas. At night, the British mountaineers retired to their rooms, and when the Sherpas asked where they would sleep, the answer was that they should sleep on the floor, “as they do on the mountain”. As a sign of protest, the Sherpas urinated on the sidewalk in front of the British barracks at dawn.
Hunt was unable to plant the Union Jack, the British flag, on the summit of Everest. The feat of being the first to conquer the mountain was done by New Zealander Edmund Hillary and Nepalese Sherpa Tenzing Norgay. They reached the summit on May 23, 1953. Back in London, on July 3 of that year, Hillary was made a Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire, the first of many honors that would be bestowed upon him. Norgay, who had saved Hillary’s life a few meters from the summit, and who, through affinity and knowledge of the environment, had been the true strategist of the climb, was given a medal with the effigy of King George IV, the stutterer. Maybe a discreet pat on the back, too, as the British phlegm recommends.
By interspersing the narrative with these and other contrasts, reflections of a moldy colonialism, Daniell constructs an ideal work for those who practice mountaineering or not. Because it never hurts to remember that, on the mountain as in life, the greatest victory is sharing each day’s achievements with those who helped us make them possible. And, no, the book is not for the self-help section. But it has a good dose of useful reflections, oh, it does. To read, think and rethink. And, as a bonus, admire the beautiful graphic design developed by Luís Fernando Protásio.
As part of the Todas initiative, Folha presents women with two months of free digital subscription
TWO SHERPAS
Price R$ 89.00 (280 pages)
Authorship Sebastián Martínez Daniell, Translation Mauricio Tamboni
Publishing company Pontoedita
[ad_2]
Source link