AMONG the other officials of the Tibetan government, he stood out somewhat. No silk robes; no long plait; no five-inch earrings. Instead, short back’n’sides, and a business suit in which it was difficult to bow, sit cross-legged, or mount a horse. In the street people stared at his fair hair, and Tibetan friends refused to use his shampoo in case they, too, came to look like that.
Robert Ford was hired by the Tibetans in 1948 to create a modern communications network: more modern, that is, than treks by mule over the highest mountains in the world. His brief, bestowed with the Dalai Lama’s blessing, was to put the eastern stronghold of Chamdo in touch with the capital, Lhasa—and Tibet in touch with the outside world. Incidentally, he would help Tibet survive as a free country in the face of Chinese incursions. To Tibetans he was “Phodo Kusho” (Ford Esquire). The Chinese, when they caught him, called him an imperialist spy.
His life in Chamdo was fascinating, but hard. He learned to tolerate countless cups of butter-tea, as well as the lethal chang beer. A letter home would take five weeks to arrive, and even a message to Lhasa 15 days. But ham radio gave him friends round the world—including, by happy chance, a tailor in his home town of Burton-on-Trent. Conditions permitting, he could talk to his parents every Wednesday. Training Tibetans to understand radio was harder. Ordinary folk would search for the man in the box; high officials would bow to the microphone and present it with white scarves. There were very few clocks in Chamdo with which to fix two-way conversations. Instead, he had to time his broadcasts by the position of the sun.
As the Chinese army advanced in 1950, he was asked to put prayer flags on his aerial masts. Against Chinese machineguns and artillery, the Tibetans relied almost entirely on the gods. Aeroplanes were feared, because they might disturb the spirits of the upper air. Mr Ford took part in what ceremonies he could, but never felt he fitted into that religious scene. He was not only the loneliest Briton in the world but also, he wrote, the loneliest Christian.
In October 1950, Chamdo fell. Phodo Kusho could have escaped the country, but adventure was what he had gone to Tibet to find—not having found it with motorbikes, or in his job as a radio instructor for the RAF, or even in his 1943 posting to India. Besides, he felt unable to abandon his Tibetan staff and friends. At least the outside world should know that Tibet had not meekly surrendered. He made for Lhasa by riding over a precipitous 15,000-feet pass, mostly in the dark; only to find that, on the other side, the Chinese were waiting for him. He was imprisoned, enduring countless interrogations, for five years.
His captors were convinced he had poisoned the Geda Lama, a Tibetan priest with close ties to the Chinese. Mr Ford had in fact refused to treat him, though he was the best doctor in Chamdo, having learned first aid in the Boy Scouts; by contrast, the best the medical monks could do was recommend use of the Dalai Lama’s urine.
As well as that, his radio activities convinced the Chinese he was a spy; which he was not. How would Britain react, they demanded, if the Chinese sent someone to foment separatism in Wales? And what was the meaning of cryptic messages in his logs such as SRI OM CONDK PR? “Sorry old man, conditions poor,” he tried to explain. “Nonsense! How do you spell ‘sorry’?” snapped his interrogator.
The Chinese did not kill him. Instead, they tried to make him a Communist true believer by relentless psychological torture. His imprisonment grew harsher, until it was solitary confinement in a room under a staircase, overrun with rats. Threats of violence accelerated, until every morning he woke wondering whether this was the day on which he would be shot. Gradually, he resolved that only a confession (albeit phoney and partial) would save his life and sanity. He schooled himself in Maoist jargon, glibly denouncing imperialism, practising self-criticism and confessing to thought-crimes—all while displaying “truthfulness, dogmatic conformity and, above all, sincerity”. After four years he was allowed to write to his parents, who had feared he was dead. A year later he was considered reformed, and was deported to Hong Kong. Everest, he learned then, had been climbed—but “by a handful of brave individuals, not because a Party was glorious or a Chairman great”. Slowly, he began to decontaminate his mind all over again.
After retiring from Britain’s foreign service, he became an outspoken advocate for Tibet. As the years went by, his status grew: as the only surviving Westerner with first-hand knowledge of the country before the Chinese invasion, he was well placed to rebut the occupiers’ propaganda. Yes, China had probably raised living standards. Yes, progress in the old Tibet had been slow. But “a healthy well-fed robot is a poor substitute for a human being.”
His friend, the present Dalai Lama, led the mourning for his death. A few months earlier, one of the only foreigners the Tibetan government had ever employed received the country’s highest honour, the Light of Truth award—and also the last of his salary, a 100-srang note, still owing to him from before his arrest.