Our family traipse – not unlike Viking forbears who once sailed the Volga and traded wares on the Silk Road – began long ago in a Minnesota winter, with ports of call like Shanghai, Hong Kong, Penang, Rangoon and Chittagong, mostly aboard plucky freighters. In time, we came to live on the verge of the Subansiri (‘ladder of gold’) River that cascades off the slopes of the Himalayas through a cathedral-like gorge, and spills into the sacred Brahmaputra before losing itself in the Bay of Bengal.
In that exquisite valley, now the proposed scene of India’s largest hydro-electric project, there once stood midst the thatch and bamboo villages a rest house built of timbers from the surrounding forests. On the evening of August 15, 1950 everything changed. A cataclysmic earthquake (8.6 on the Richter scale), still ranked among the strongest ever recorded, shattered the valley and the hills. It triggered soil liquefaction, the disappearance of river islands, and land slips in the mountains. Even rivers shifted course. Pilots overflying the scene later said the topography no longer corresponded to their air charts.
But what most puzzled the survivors in the aftermath was what had become of the Subansiri. Its ample water dried up. Soon people were wading across what had once only been passable by boat. Government helicopters dispatched into the upper reaches of the river found that half a mountain had slid into the river’s course creating a dam. Behind that barrage the roiling water was piling up. An alarm was raised for downstream residents to flee. Columns of refugees soon abandoned the valley on foot, by ox cart, bicycle and the occasional lorry (truck). And then people waited.
The days slipped by without event. Rumors began to fly that the alarm was only a ruse and that mischievous neighbors were now looting abandoned homes. People swarmed back into the valley to defend what was theirs. No sooner had the villages filled up with anxious returnees than the mountains groaned from the weight of the accumulated water, the landslide gave way, and a 20-foot wall of water rushed out of the mountains engulfing everything in its path, sweeping away nearly every recognizable landmark. Except that small rest house – where a few lucky souls, clinging to its rafters, were spared.
The timbers of that house were later dismantled and re-erected on safer ground. It was then our family came to live in that stout, but modest, dwelling whose rafters whispered of life snatched from nature’s wrath. My only clue to its singular history came when older neighbors, survivors of that terrible day, came to sit in the shade of the house, head in hands, there to shed silent tears of remembrance. Of survivor’s guilt. Of loss and deliverance. Of bitterness and gratitude.
And sometimes, when the summer monsoons had called forth the valley’s sea of tall grasses, the roof of our house, barely floating above their flowered plume, seemed like the legendary vessel of old which became a means of deliverance from the waters.
Wow! What a great story! How sad that the authorities couldn’t keep the villagers in a safe zone!
Hello, Mark! Your note comes to remind us that calamity comes in many forms- as in Christchurch! So many are left outside the ‘safe zone’. For certain, survivors will return to shed their own silent tears of remembrance. Kyrie eleison!
You gild the lilly (and the sad!) with such beautifully flowing prose.
Thank you – Edgar Stoesz
Hello, Edgar! Good of you to read and respond – with affirmation! Somehow it is in the nature of memory that luster is added as poetry and meaning come into focus.
I disagree with whoever it was that advised you to keep your blogging pieces short. This reader wants more.
I agree. I need more of this story. Greg Hartman
Christine Nofsinger commented on A House Called ‘Deliverance’
I disagree with whoever it was that advised you to keep your blogging pieces short. This reader wants more.
Jonathan, what a beautiful and sad story. Your writing moves me to tears. Thank you.
I am having difficulty finding your book to read; where can I purchase it?
Hello, Jean!
Lovely to see your note! The account of Dan Terry’s amazing life in the Hindu Kush mountains of Afghanistan is available through most bookseller’s sites – e.g. at https://www.amazon.com/Making-Friends-Taliban-Jonathan-Larson/dp/0836196651. There is also a companion 60-minute video documentary called ‘Weaving Life’ which aired on ABC-TV.
I agree with others about your powerful writing style, Jonathan. I hear echoes of myths and legends. You are a contemporary writer with ancient overtones.
Hello, Shirley! A delight to know you’ve paused to read the blog and found it worth the while. If the sprig of a story finds harbor in the heart – yes, even for years – well, then, it has a chance to stir both writer and reader, can turn itself into something like poetry.
Hello Jonathan!
This is lovely — and such an appealing little house in your picture! It seems hard to believe what it survived, and the people it saved on its roof!
Warmest best from Princeton, New Jersey!
Doug.
PS I notice one of the others who responded is named Christina Dondero, who might be the same person who was our neighbor on Westchester Avenue in Decatur, along with Tim Dondero? If so, very best regards. ….
Jambo, Bwana Douglas! Great to hear from you! Yes, the force of the flood blew out all the walls and carried the contents away. But the superstructure stood firm, and was later slightly enlarged. From that house it was not unusual as children to hear the tigers roaring in the sea of grass. Let’s say it had ambience! Christina and Tim are good friends! We will remember you to them next!
Hi Jonathan! Your sister, Bette, here. Thanks for writing about our humble home for 11-12 years where we found such wonderful community and made incredible memories. It truly was a house of deliverance for many who came after the flood to hear the true Gospel message of God’s love and forgiveness as they sat under its rafters listening to the Gospel Recordings of scripture in their own language and stories of the amazing miracles and sacrifice of a man called Jesus. Within the walls of that flood-ravaged house of deliverance our parents served many cups of tea, swabbed many feet and hands of lepers, harbored many hurting souls, showed and taught God’s love tirelessly.
You forgot to mention that most important epilogue – the part that should really be gilded.
Hey, there, Bette! Yes, it’s all there for safekeeping in a house called ‘deliverance’.
I’m impressed that in your travels you find the time to offer up such exquisite reflections, thank you as always!
Hey, Tim! Thanks for reading and responding! One thing I’ve found helpful – to travel those hours without the chatter of radio or other audio resulting in a chance to think long thoughts, a kind of meditative prayer – to allow the creative process to cast up images and phrases that might serve the telling. (The road – like a river – is strong stimulus to a half-dreaminess upon which great story and poetry depend.) When I finally sit down at the keyboard, I am following a path through country that is fairly buzzing with possibility, drawing in what seems fitting and faithful.
I can hear your voice as I read your words. What fun it would be to sit under your teaching once again! You made the book of Mark come alive the first Bible study we had.
This is lovely Jonathan. It’ll be “logged away” in my own mind. I’d definitely enjoy more of your musings on the Larson family lore. With pictures, of course!