Pemba

Pemba is a Sherpa accompanying Alleluia Cone on her descent from Everest. His practical warnings and parting gift mark two moments when the mountain’s peril interrupts her experience, while his message intensifies rather than resolves her attachment to it.

Role on the Mountain

As Alleluia descends from the summit, she sees an immense city of ice west of Camp Six, across the Rock Band, below Cho Oyu. She briefly takes it for Shangri-La, but when Pemba warns her to maintain her concentration, she looks back and the apparition is gone. She is still at 27,000 feet. The scene places Pemba’s immediate concern for safe attention beside the mountain’s capacity to draw Alleluia into visions that unsettle the boundary between the physical climb and the impossible.

The Parting Gift

When Alleluia and Gibreel Farishta later say goodbye to Pemba, he shyly presents her with a wooden model of Everest, saying it comes from the Sherpas as a group. The attribution is generous, but it is evident that Pemba carved it himself. Its detail follows the danger and difficulty of the route: the model includes the icefall and the Hillary Step, and the climbers’ path to the summit is deeply scored into the wood.

Scratched carefully into the model’s base is Pemba’s message: “To Ali Bibi. We were luck. Not to try again”. The warning turns the souvenir into more than a record of the successful ascent: it carries a plea not to repeat it. Alleluia does not tell Gibreel how deeply the prohibition frightens her, or how strongly it sharpens her desire to return. She keeps the warning to herself even as the mountain continues to exert its pull, including through her concealed fantasy of a solo ascent.