The Inquiry · Eleven Steps From the Edge · Pulse Beat
The government held an inquiry, as governments do, in a grey room in Kathmandu. Three men in suits and a woman with a clipboard asked him questions for two days. They were not unkind. They wanted the…
The government held an inquiry, as governments do, in a grey room in Kathmandu.
Three men in suits and a woman with a clipboard asked him questions for two days. They were not unkind. They wanted the facts: the time of the radio call, the position of the ropes, the oxygen settings, the decision on the ledge. He gave them everything, in a flat voice, without excuse.
At the end, the oldest of the men, a retired mountaineering official with white hair, folded his hands. "Mr Sherpa. On the ledge. You decided to hand the German to Dorje. Was that a reasonable decision?"
"Yes," said Tashi.
"Would you make it again?"
He looked at the table for a long time. The honest answer was yes, and it was the thing that frightened him most. "I don't know," he said.
The report, when it came, found no fault. A sequence of reasonable decisions in difficult conditions, it said. Tashi read it once in a cheap hotel room, and tore it carefully in half, and did not know why.