SASS EL P2 Narrative Package Texts

NARRATIVE PACKAGE 2022 2 TEXT 1 The text below describes the experience of a man who is on an expedition to climb Mount Everest. 1 On April 10, 1996, after ten days of hiking through the steep, walled canyons and flowery forests of northern Nepal, I walked into Everest Base Camp. My altimeter read 17,600 feet. Our mess tent, a huge canvas structure, was wired with a stereo system and solar-powered electric lights. A communications tent housed a satellite phone and fax. Despite the many trappings of civilisation at Base Camp, there was no forgetting that we were more than three miles above sea level. It seemed like there was no air to gasp in from that bluest of mountain skies. Walking to the mess tent at mealtime left me wheezing to catch my breath. If I sat up too quickly, my head reeled and dizziness set in. I developed a dry, hacking cough that would steadily worsen over the next six weeks. My arms and legs gradually began to wither to toothpicks. 5 10 2 From the beginning, Rob Hall, our experienced guide had planned that May 10 would be our summit day. On May 8, our team started climbing the Lhotse Face. The night had a cold beauty that intensified as we ascended. More stars than I had ever seen filled th e frozen sky. Far to the southeast, enormous thunder clouds drifted over Nepal, illuminating the heavens with bursts of orange and blue streaks. A huge moon rose over the shoulder of 27,000 foot peaks, washing the slope beneath my boots in ghostly light, e liminating the need for a headlamp. I led the way throughout the night with Ang Dorje, our head Sherpa, and at 5.30pm, just as the sun was edging over the horizon, I reached the crest of the Southeast Ridge. Three of the world's five highest peaks stood out in jagged relief against the pastel dawn. My altimeter read 27,500 feet. 15 20 3 Ascending above the South Summit with my regulator delivering two quarts of oxygen per minute, I had to stop and draw three or four heaving lungfuls of air after each painful step. Climbing along the edge of the summit ridge, sucking gas into my ragged lungs, I enjoyed a strange, unwarranted sense of calm. The world beyond the rubber mask was incredibly bright and clear, but it seemed not quite real. I had to remind myself over and over that there was 7,000 feet of cliff on either side, that everything was at stake here, and that I would pay for a single wrong step with my life. Plodding slowly up the last few steps to the summit, I had the sensation of being underwater, of moving at quarter -speed. And then I found myself atop a slender wedge of ice decorated with a discarded oxygen cylinder and a battered aluminium survey pole, with nowhere higher to climb. A string of flags snapped furiously in the wind. To the north, down a side of the mountain I had never seen, the brown, dry Tibetan plateau stretched to the horizon. This tiny platform, the size of a living room, was the summit of Mount Everest. 25 30 35 4 Reaching the top of Everest is supposed to trigger a surge of intense elation. Against long odds, after all, I had just attained a goal I had wanted since childhood. But the summit was really only the halfway point. Any impulse I might have felt toward self-congratulation was immediately extinguished by knowledge of the long, dangerous descent that lay ahead. As I turned to go down, I experienced a moment of alarm: a glance at my watch showed that it was after 1 pm; my regulator showed that my oxygen was almost gone. 40

NARRATIVE PACKAGE 2022 (TEXTS) 3 Adapted by TYH 5 It was after 2.30pm when I made it down to the South Summit. By now, mist was wrapping across the top of Mount Everest’s sister peak, 27,000 -foot Lhotse. No longer did the weather look so good. I grabbed a fresh oxygen cylinder and hurried down into the cloud. Moments after I dropped below the South Summit, it began to snow lightly and the visibility went to hell. Four hundred feet above, where the summit was still washed in bright sunlight under a blue sky, my companions were wasting time, celebrating their arrival at the top of the planet with photos and high- fives, all the while using up precious ticks of the clock. None of them imagined that a horrible ordeal was drawing near. None of them suspected that by the end of that long day, every minute would matter. 45 50

NARRATIVE PACKAGE 2022 4 TEXT 2 The text below describes the experience of a girl who is caught in a civil war. 1 Most of the village sat along a single street, the homes unvarying in style and size. Exposed cinder block was the prevailing façade in those mountains and the grey brick appeared perpetually unfinished. Riddled with shell fragments, the pockmarked houses looked dismal. My eyes burned. The sun sat on the horizon and I walked towards the main road. A spiral of smoke twisted up from the valley, beckoning me with a wispy finger. I followed the smoke. It led me to the centre of a village, down a rocky street lined with houses. A woman wrapped in a purple shawl was feeding leftover crusts to emaciated chickens in her yard. I felt her looking but kept walking. As I got closer, her mouth slackened at the sight of me – a tiny blood- crusted zombie. She approached, called out to me. I stopped in the middle of the street. 5 10 2 She came to me and kneeled, asked my name, where I was from, what had happened. I tried to determine from her accent whether or not she was a Serb, if it was safe to speak to her. I couldn’t tell, and decided it didn’t really matter, that I had nowhere else to go and I might as well answer. But somewhere along the way my body had taken a vow of silence, while she talked and talked. She reached for my hand, and I vomited on the asphalt. In the end she grabbed my arms and led me to her house. She stood over me and rinsed blood from my wrists. It was only cold water but the cuts were dirty and it stung. My eyes welled up, but no tears escaped. 15 3 For the first week I sat on her kitchen floor with my back to the wall and my knees to my chest. I counted the squares in the linoleum, stared at the crack in the dining table leg, scratched at my gauze-wrapped wrists. I blinked rarely, and moved with a halting, mechanical edge. At night I slept in the same spot, curling into a knot on the floor. 20 4 The woman’s son, a boy a few years older than I was, left the house early each morning and came home after dark. He stomped around in combat boots and talked incessantly of the “Safe House.” It was a phrase I’d never heard before, and I assumed it was the village’s bomb shelter. The boy never spoke to me, walked in wide arcs around my spot as if I had a contagious illness. I felt like I did. The woman gave me water in a tin cup and bread with butter, but it was hard to eat. Even breathing was a conscious effort. The first few times the air raid siren sounded the woman tried to coax me into going to the shelter with her, but I stayed in my corner. The explosions of that first week were inconsequential; I was anesthetised to fear. 25 30 5 The woman had visitors who entered under various pretences and examined me from the corners of their eyes but spoke as if I wasn’t there at all. Eventually my novelty wore off and the gossip became less frequent. 35 6 I left the house for the first time when the chickens exploded. As the bombs fell, they released showers of tiny metal balls. They fell indiscriminately, like combustible hail. The blast shook the floor, and I jumped and ran out of the front door. Behind the house a cloud of feathers was settling, and I tried not to look. 40

NARRATIVE PACKAGE 2022 (TEXTS) 5 Adapted by TYH TEXT 3 The text below relates the experience of a young boy with an