Namaste, Stranger
Copyright© 2026 by Art Samms
Chapter 7
Jack stood at the edge of the landslide with his boots sunk ankle-deep in mud, clipboard damp in his hands, trying to reconcile the hillside he’d walked so many times before with what remained of it now. The slope had collapsed inward, tearing away trees, soil, and a section of footpath as cleanly as if it had been sliced. Below, a cluster of homes sat stunned and half-buried, their outlines softened by clay and debris.
People moved quietly.
There was no shouting, no frantic energy—just the steady rhythm of recovery beginning before grief had finished announcing itself. Men passed buckets hand to hand. Women sorted salvaged household items on tarps. Children hovered at the edges, silent in a way that made Jack more uneasy than noise would have.
Jack worked without pause.
He measured the scar left by the slide, marking erosion lines with a stick, sketching drainage routes that no longer existed. He photographed damage to retaining walls, irrigation channels, footpaths—anything that could later become evidence, justification, or explanation.
At one point, an older man stood beside him and asked, “Will it move again?”
Jack hesitated. The honest answer was maybe. The responsible one was we don’t know yet.
“It depends on the rain,” Jack said finally. “And how the water moves now.”
The man nodded, unsatisfied but accepting. That was how most conversations ended.
By midday, representatives from two NGOs arrived, boots still clean, notebooks pristine. Jack walked them through the site, explaining what he knew and what he suspected—how water had pooled above the settlement, how the soil composition made it vulnerable once tree roots were gone.
One of them asked, “Why wasn’t this addressed earlier?”
Jack didn’t answer right away.
“We were in the assessment phase,” he said carefully. “Implementation hadn’t begun.”
The words sounded hollow even to him.
He moved on quickly, redirecting attention to immediate needs: drainage channels to dig, temporary barriers to reinforce, areas that had to remain evacuated until further notice. Action filled the space where blame might have settled.
As the afternoon wore on, exhaustion crept in—not the kind that came from physical labor alone, but the heavier kind that came from witnessing loss without being able to fix it.
Jack watched a woman retrieve a cracked cooking pot from the mud, wash it carefully at a communal tap, and set it aside as if it were intact. He watched a man straighten a doorframe that no longer led anywhere. He saw children drawing shapes in wet soil with sticks, turning destruction into temporary order.
He felt acutely, painfully visible.
People did not accuse him. They did not thank him either. They simply watched—measuring whether his presence now meant something more than explanation.
The days blurred.
Jack woke before dawn, left with a thermos of tea Sarita pressed into his hands, returned after dark with his clothes stained and his mind buzzing. Meetings overlapped. Notes piled up. Decisions were made without him, then brought to him for comment as an afterthought.
Tom caught him once, leaning against a wall during a break, eyes unfocused.
“You good?” Tom asked.
Jack smiled weakly. “Define good.”
Tom nodded. “Yeah.”
There was no time for more.
On the fourth day, Jack noticed something that unsettled him more than the damage itself. People had begun rebuilding in silence.
No rituals. No public mourning. Just the quiet insistence of life continuing because it had to.
Jack stood near the edge of the site as the sun dipped behind the hills, turning the exposed earth a deep, bruised red. He felt hollowed out—not defeated, but scraped raw.
He wrote notes that night with shaking hands, aware that no report could fully capture what had been lost, or what trust now required.
This was the work, he realized.
Not just soil and water and plans—but standing inside the aftermath long enough that people could decide whether he belonged there.
And as the night settled over Pokhara, heavy and still, Jack felt the full weight of it press down on him—unsure whether what he was giving would ever feel like enough.
Jack noticed the change by accident.
He was walking the perimeter of the landslide site early one morning, the air still cool and damp, when he saw fresh trenches cut along the upper slope—shallow channels guiding runoff away from the exposed earth. They were not perfect. The angles were uneven, the spacing inconsistent. But they were there.
The thing was—he hadn’t ordered anyone to dig them.
He crouched beside one, tracing the line with his finger. It followed almost exactly the path he had sketched in the mud two days earlier while explaining water flow to a small group of men who had listened without comment.
No one acknowledged it. The men continued working as if this had always been the plan.
Throughout the day, Jack saw more signs. Sandbags placed where he’d suggested—not neatly, but intentionally. A footpath rerouted to higher ground. Children redirected away from unstable areas without explanation or ceremony.
No one came to tell him they’d listened. No one asked for validation. It was collaboration without credit, trust without affirmation.
So, Jack adjusted his approach accordingly.
He stopped giving large-group explanations and spoke instead to individuals—quietly, practically, with his hands in the dirt. He made suggestions framed as questions. He let people adapt them freely.
The tension remained, but it softened—like a rope no longer pulled taut.
Anjana watched all of this from a different vantage point. She didn’t visit the site. That would have drawn attention she couldn’t afford. Instead, she listened—at the guesthouse, at home, at the tea shop where people talked more freely when they thought they weren’t being recorded.
She began posting again. Not about the landslide itself, at least not directly. Her videos focused on voices: a shopkeeper describing how floodwater changed his routine; a farmer explaining how he’d learned to read the slope of his land; a woman talking about how her grandmother had warned of heavy rains long before there were forecasts.
Anjana translated carefully, choosing words that preserved tone rather than drama. She did not name Jack, nor did she assign blame. She let the community speak for itself.
The posts traveled quietly at first, then farther—shared by people who recognized their own experiences reflected honestly.
Jack came across one of the videos late one night.
He sat at his desk, exhaustion pressing in, scrolling absently when a familiar cadence stopped him. The camera panned slowly over the hillside—not the scarred center, but the edges where green still held.
He recognized a voice. Then another.
This is what he had been trying to say. Not in words, but in presence.
He did not message Anjana immediately. Instead, he closed his laptop and sat in the dark, letting the feeling settle—a mix of relief and humility.
The next day, an older man approached Jack near the site.
“You said water remembers paths,” the man said.
Jack nodded. “Yes.”
“We are helping it remember better ones.”
That was all.
Jack watched him walk away, chest tightening—not with pride, but with something steadier.
That night, Anjana messaged him.
Anjana:
I shared some stories today.
Not explanations. Just listening.
Jack replied slowly.
Jack:
I saw.
Thank you for letting them speak.
A pause.
Anjana:
Sometimes that’s all people want.
Jack looked around his small room—the maps, the mud-stained boots, the half-finished notes—and felt, for the first time since the rains came, that the ground beneath him had stopped shifting.
Trust wasn’t returning loudly. It wasn’t even returning fully. But it was moving—quietly, steadily—like water finding a new course.
And for now, that was all Jack could ask for.
The invitation came folded in half, carried by a boy who stood uncertainly at the edge of the ward office until Jack noticed him.
“For you,” the boy said, offering the paper with both hands before darting away.
Jack unfolded it carefully. The handwriting was neat, deliberate.
Please return to Shanti Secondary School. Students would like to continue the discussion.
No apology. No explanation. Just an opening.
Jack arrived at the school the following morning with measured expectations. The principal met him at the door, expression reserved but courteous.
“We had many thoughts,” the principal said as they walked down the corridor. “About what you said before. About the water.”
Jack nodded. “I’m glad to continue, if it’s useful.”
The principal paused outside the classroom. “It is.”
Inside, the students sat straighter than before. The earlier skepticism had not vanished, but it had transformed into something sharper—attention.
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