Thanks, everybody. Something else puzzled me, too: when Kim first meets the lama, he is surprised that the lama tells the truth to a stranger. And in another part, one of his mentors "oils his tongue for the road" as they're getting ready to leave. Are/were there really cultures where not being truthful to strangers is routine? Why on earth would anybody do that? (I don't mean when, for instance, you're accosted in a dark alley and tell the person you have no money when you do; I mean as a matter of course.)