I see my old friend on Facebook. I stare at his page but I don’t say hello

I was chopping stuff for the wok last week, ensuring that the meat, peppers, onions and ginger were all cut to exactly the same size.
Twenty-five years ago a monk from Tibet came to our house and showed us how to use a wok. He could feed the four of us for a week on a couple of peppers and a few ounces of steak, cutting everything into thin slivers before tossing the lot into the wok and producing delicious meals.
He also planted a yew tree in the garden and over the years I could never pass the tree without feeling his presence radiate from its branches. It is not Facebook that has kept me in touch with him as I grow older. It’s the yew tree.
When we first met in India the internet had not been invented, never mind Facebook, but now I can follow his movements around Mongolia, Germany, or whereever in the world he stands with a phone in his hand taking selfies with city skyscrapers or vast deserts behind him as backdrops.
I stare at his page but I don’t say hello. I tried a few times in the beginning, but he never responded to any of my signals, and I suppose that he may have forgotten me or dislikes me for some reason.
A few years after meeting in India, I met him in Mongolia. We were in the back of a jeep and he had just completed a 30-day retreat, contemplating the Buddha Yamantaka – the Destroyer of Death. We were using the driver, who spoke English, as an interpreter. He produced a prayer mala, a string of white beads made from bone and amber, which he had used during his retreat, and he placed them in the palm of my hand. Years later in Beaumont Hospital they comforted me greatly as they lay beneath my pillow when I was experiencing my own entanglement with Yamantaka.
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Crossing Mongolia in the back of a jeep with him was fun because he was boyish back then and 90 per cent of our communication was with sign and gesture. He laughed and splashed about in rivers like young men do; a boyish delight still rippling in his body. He listened to birds singing above him and he traced the trajectory of tiny insects in the sand, and he was always sitting still in the jeep or when we camped for food or in the mornings at the mouth of his little tent. He lifted buckets of water for me. Got muesli for me. Spread plastic on the ground for me to sit on. He put noodles in a bowl for me. And like the Buddha, his expression was empty and the closer I got to his face the more distant he seemed to be.
Crossing Mongolia in a caravan of jeeps, we often stopped near villages where families waved at us from yurts as horses grazed in the near distance. Dogs barked. Villagers in long coats, high boots and traditional hats stared at us; rituals of introduction establishing our identities. Then everyone relaxed, smiled and a great amount of bowing and hand-shaking ensued, before we all went into the yurt for soup or bowls of horse’s milk.
Raw meat hung from the rafters inside the yurts. Babies with no nappies crawled on the floor. Women washed pots in reverent silence. Families sat around listening to the sound of boiling water in pots on the stove. And after the food I often walked with my new friend as the sun went down even though we didn’t speak each other’s language.
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Some days he was giddy as if he had decided to take a day off from being a monk. He would chase people around with a bowl of water as if he were going to throw it over them. When we met children in remote villages he would make apples disappear under his robes like a magician. He produced coins from my ear.
And about a year after my sojourn in Mongolia he appeared at the back door and stayed for a week and cooked with the wok and planted the yew tree.
And even though I see him regularly on Facebook, I feel there is never any need to press the like button or send idle messages about the trivia of my life. Because remembering is an act of love, and in the shadow of the yew tree at the end of the garden I can never forget him.