A Defiant One
3:35 p.m. ET (2035 GMT) February 11, 2000

By Tracey Middlekauff

The Free Tibet movement
has become something of a chic cause in recent years, attracting the support
of celebrities like the Beastie Boys, Rage Against the Machine and, of course,
Richard Gere. The rich and famous can be spotted wearing expensive reproductions
of Buddhist prayer beads, and an appearance by the Dalai Lama can cause
the sort of frenzy once reserved for rock stars.

Kodansha International

In the shadow of big-ticket events like the Tibetan Freedom Concert,
one can lose sight of the fact that real individuals have been affected
by the Chinese occupation of Tibet in deeply troubling ways.

In Sorrow Mountain: The Journey of a Tibetan Warrior Nun (Kodansha
International, $25, 288 pages), by Ani Pachen with Adelaide Donnelley,
the Tibetan struggle is brought back to the individual level, and the
political becomes intensely personal.

In this memoir, Pachen tells of her childhood in Tibet as the daughter
of a powerful local chieftain. At the age of 17, she was promised in marriage
to the son of an influential family, but she convinced her parents to
allow her to pursue the monastic life.

Unfortunately, Pachen was forced to interrupt her spiritual journey.
Her father died shortly after the Chinese invasion of Tibet began, and
she vowed to take his place and lead her people in resistance. Although
it conflicts with Buddhist teachings, she resolved to kill if necessary.

After two years of living in the hills and ambushing the Chinese, Pachen
was caught in 1960 and sent to prison, where she was tortured, beaten,
put in leg irons for an entire year, and placed in solitary confinement
for nine months for refusing to denounce her actions or the actions of
her fellow Tibetans. She was not released until 1981.

Although the book deals frankly — and at times graphically —
with the murder and torture of Tibetans at the hands of the Chinese, there
is often a dreamlike quality to the narrative. Time seems oddly compressed.
Although Pachen was in prison for 21 years, only the last third of the
book deals with her time there; the rest deals with a loving recreation
of her childhood, her home life and the community’s growing dread as the
Chinese drew closer to her village.

Memories of her former life float back to Pachen during some of her
most difficult times; sometimes offering comfort, at other times causing
aching pain. When Pachen is locked in a pitch-black cement room, she calls
for her mother, her father, her aunt: “I fell to my knees and began to
sob. ‘Mama,’ ‘Papa,’ ‘Ani Rigzin.’ I cried for my family, I cried for
my home, I cried for Gyalsay Rinpoche [her teacher]. After I could cry
no longer, I prayed.”

Pachen’s intense religious conviction and deep desire to eventually
meet the Dalai Lama is what ultimately kept her alive throughout her long
ordeal, she writes. When a Chinese guard repeatedly urges Pachen to accept
Mao Tse-Tung as a great leader, Pachen, as she does throughout the story,
simply closes her eyes and visualizes “the face of His Holiness.”

It was sudden and unexpected when Pachen was finally released from prison.

She began to lead protests against the Chinese shortly after her release,
and soon became a marked woman. Fearing further imprisonment, she fled
to India and was finally able to fulfill her dream of meeting the Dalai
Lama.

Pachen eventually settled in Dharamsala, India in 1989, where she still
lives and takes part in demonstrations for a free Tibet.

Tracey Middlekauff is a features reporter for FOXNews.com