by Li Juan
But going to the toilet in the middle of the night was a tragedy. I was loath to even poke a toe out into the frozen air. It took real determination to pull myself upright. In the dark, I clawed blindly at the tent’s felt cover (sleeping at the edge of the tent had its perks after all) before finally finding a flap through which to crawl out. It took a lot of fumbling about to find my shoes, which I had left outside. One of the brothers on watch, I don’t know who, sat beside the tent with a flashlight. With the aid of his light, I put on my shoes, walked away from the tent, and when I squatted the light turned off (the moment it became dark, the Milky Way lit up the sky), and when he heard the sound of my footsteps again, the light came back on to guide my way back to the tent.
What a fiasco—the cold air had sapped my body of all its warmth. Nestled under the covers, tucked in on all sides, a sweet, soothing warmness enveloped me once more. But the thought of someone standing watch outside left me with a heavy heart.
* * *
AT 3:00 A.M., I was nudged awake. The temperature was at its lowest point of the day. Kama used the hot tea she had stored in a thermos before going to sleep to pour everyone a bowl. She then brought out the bag of mutton on the bone that Apa had prepared for us before we left. Even though the frozen meat crunched in our mouths as we washed it down with our tepid tea, it was still delicious.
Oh yes, for the trip, Kama had made the extravagant decision of bringing packs of instant noodles. Sadly, the tea bowls were too small to soak them in. So she tore open one side of the packaging and poured hot water directly into it. Everyone sat, tightly pinching the tops of their bags in anticipation. It was so cold that the water quickly cooled. Pieces of solid grease floated on top of the noodles, which were still dry. Even so, everyone slurped them down with relish.
Though the noodles were likely terrible, they were nonetheless appealing in the frozen wilderness. I was looking forward to a bag of my own, but, somehow, I had given them the impression that I didn’t eat instant noodles. All I could do was drool at the aroma. At least my sacrifice allowed the two men to eat a little extra, which was good. They had been working the hardest.
I didn’t understand why we had to wake up so early. It wasn’t as if we did anything but drink tea for an hour and a half! And there wasn’t much to talk about. Most of the time, we just sat there nursing our bowls in silence. I couldn’t tell if it was because they found it enjoyable or because they were too tired to move. Indeed, even though I had slept, comfortable and warm, the night watchmen had had a much rougher time and needed some hot tea to recover.
After our teatime in the dark came to a close, we got to disassembling the tent, packing the supplies, and loading the camel (a few hours was all the pack camel had had to wander before it was trussed up again). I was responsible for using the flashlight to light up everyone’s tasks and occasionally lent a hand propping open a sack. Everyone worked patiently and methodically.
At 6:00 a.m., as the sky began to glow, we were ready to go. After a final head count of the cattle and sheep, everyone mounted their horses and we set off. When I glanced back, the ground was as clean as when we had arrived; we had left no trace of our passage.
By the light of dawn, the team advanced southwest in silence. Little by little, the sky turned red. Its color deepened as it spread, swelling into a cascade, setting the eastern sky ablaze from south to north. At 6:30, the sun ascended steadily up a sea of red clouds. Sunbeams swept the land, stretching our shadows out toward the horizon.
With the slow passage of time, our shadows gradually returned to us. They inched behind us, then crossed over to our northeast. Like that, another day passed.
It was a day not unlike the one before, about eight hours of riding. But the land we passed was even emptier and more monotonous. Cuma had once taught me that if no one was around to help me down from my horse, I should look for a depression in the ground and park the horse in the ditch. That way I could step onto the rim where the distance to the ground was not so great. But finding a ditch on land that is flat enough to gallop across was as unlikely as finding a mountain.
When the surroundings started to look like the salt flat of the day before, I couldn’t help but feel like I was hallucinating: Did we just make a big circle in the desert? But of course, we had only been going southwest.
* * *
YESTERDAY’S LI JUAN was only responsible for leading the camels. She sat comfortably on her horse’s back and followed the team. Seeing that I was still in good spirits, Kama decided to assign me a new task today: fetch the wandering camels. As a result, on the second day, I ended up miserably tired. By the time we reached camp, my legs were aching and stiff, my buttocks were too sore to sit on a saddle. As for the intractable camels—I dare not put my rage in words here.
Starting at midday, our camel team entered a stretch of hills where the road meandered. In theory, we were already in the desert, where yellow sand stretched as far as the eye could see. Except, given the extraordinary snowstorms last year, spring burgeoned from an abundance of water. The pasture grew so lush that the area before us was more like a furry desert. Never mind the cattle and sheep, even the mice lived lavishly. The sheer number of holes in the sand stood as testament to their long and prosperous lives. No matter how cautiously the horses walked, they couldn’t avoid occasionally stepping in the holes. With each stumble, the rider was met with a violent jolt.
At 2:30 in the afternoon, the camels stopped in a narrow valley between two hills. The ground was littered with broken twigs—evidence that it was an especially well-trodden camp spot. Nearby, saxaul shrubs grew on a ridge. Wonderful! Half the kindling brought by the camels had been used up the day before. I was almost worried that we might run out.
We had more than enough firewood, but there were only five matches left. In a panic, I asked Kama, “Are you sure there are no more?” Filled with skepticism, I watched her light the matches. When there were only three matches left, I snatched them from her to try for myself. Down to the last match, we exchanged looks of horror. Neither of us wanted to touch that final match. But, of course, it failed too. As fast as the flame licked into life, it fizzled out in a mighty gust of wind.
This was when Kama rummaged through a sack and fished out … a lighter. She could have mentioned it earlier! I nearly had a heart attack.
As with the day before, we started the oshak stove and put up the tent before the herd arrived. But here the snow was much thinner and I had to walk quite a ways before I managed to find a hilltop with enough snow to fill a bucket. But that Kama, after a small loop, she came back with a whole sack full of snow! It was like sorcery.
The melted snow was packed with sand and dirt, but after settling, the water was clear enough. When the young men came charging into the camp that evening, they were so thirsty that they leaped from their horses, scooped bowls full of cold water, and guzzled down. How could they swallow such icy water, I marveled. But by the time I had herded the cattle back to camp, I too was so thirsty that I gulped down the water even more fiercely than they had.
Herding cattle in the sand was full of challenges. As I ran, I stumbled over a mouse hole (poor little mouse, digging the hole can’t have been easy either …). What’s more, in the past I’d herded livestock by shouting and throwing stones at them. But in the desert, even stones the size of a thumbnail were hard to come across. The next best thing was tossing dry horse manure at them. But manure was too light and didn’t scare the cattle at all.
* * *
OTHERWISE, IT WAS JUST like the day before. The fading light provided a sense of urgency. It wasn’t until dark that we could finish the day’s work. Inside the tent, we huddled, drank lukewarm tea, and chomped on icy meat shards. Under the flashlight, we puffed thick white breaths in silence.
Suddenly, Shinshybek said, “This is ter-mos,” as he pointed to a thermos. He added, “This is chyny,” as he presented me the bowl in his hand.
It was a little unexpected. Even though I alre
ady knew both of those words in Kazakh, I still repeated them back to him as best I could. He smiled, triumphant. Then he proceeded to teach me the name of every last utensil in our little tent.
I was told that, at first, they didn’t think I could make it to the end of the journey, and even complained about Cuma’s decision to take me along. They thought that I would be a nuisance, nothing more—if I tried to quit halfway or cried about wanting to go home, or if I fell ill, or fell off a horse … it would have ruined their trip!
So, I wondered, were they assured yet?
Earlier that morning, when the cattle and camels were still walking together, the brothers had assigned me a few simple tasks. For example, to keep the flock on course by flanking them from one side, or to intercept a breakaway camel. I don’t know about them, but I thought I had done a good job. As they say, “Even the littlest toad has some kick in its legs,” so in spite of my size, I hoped I was good for something!
Like yesterday, it wasn’t until deep in the night that Kama laid out the bedding and went to sleep with me. The men wrapped themselves in their blankets and sat in the darkness to keep watch, exchanging a few words every now and then. During the sleepiest of hours, they took turns dozing off.
Despite the sunny weather, it still felt cold during the day, especially when the wind picked up in the afternoon. But when I checked the thermometer, twenty-six degrees was all it read! And at the very coldest point of the night, it wasn’t even as low as minus four. At first, I suspected there was something wrong with the thermometer. But then I thought about it some more: perhaps the temperature wasn’t so cold after all, but prolonged exposure distorted my perceptions.
* * *
THE THIRD DAY BEGAN at 3:00 a.m. as usual with an hour-long breakfast tea. In the murky dark, we pulled down the tent, packed up the sacks, and loaded the lead camel up with heavy gear. Under the starry sky, we set out toward Orion, half sunk beneath the horizon. A crescent moon hung on the eastern sky.
Again, our progress followed that of the slow, majestic sunrise. Before the sun emerges, the whole world is a dream, the only real thing is the moon. After the sun emerges, the whole world is real, only the moon fades into a dream.
The camel team and sheep flock advanced quietly side by side, apparently now accustomed to the pace, as if they’d accepted this as their fate, entirely unaware that this was their last day of travel. The two groups broke apart much earlier than before. The camels set foot onto the true desert at half past eight in the morning, while the sheep stayed back. They were intent on eating their fill.
It really was the “true desert.” Looking east, a sand dune. Looking west, a sand dune. As far as the eye could see were towering waves of immaculate golden sand dunes where not a single blade of grass grew. Unlike the white expanse of the previous days, the earth was only dotted with thin scatterings of snow. The air was warmer too.
For around an hour at midday, I led the camels by myself while Kama was off chasing after one of the team that had wandered far from the rest. Before she left, she said, “Follow the road! Just follow the road forward!” Scanning the vast world before me, I was intimidated. But to reassure her, I promised to do just that.
Compared to the roads on the scrubland, the desert trail was a blur. Worse, we had entered other people’s pastures so the trail was crisscrossed with all sorts of cattle tracks that made my head spin. At first, I tried to look for the most densely trodden trail and pulled the reins left and right to steer us along that course. Later, I gave up, slackened the reins, and let my horse find its own way. Of course, the horse knew better than me all along. After a long stretch of dry grass, we came upon a clearly defined road.
Alone with a team of camels, I moved timidly through the desert. The earth was bare, the sky was like the dome of a yurt. A single cloud hung at the center of the sky. It was shaped like a stairway. There wasn’t a soul in sight, emptiness in all four directions. It didn’t feel melancholy or exuberant; rather I experienced a tranquilizing ennui. Over the past thousand years, how many herders had walked this same land alone, feeling the same as I felt?
The six-month-long winter and the infertile land imposed a nomadic “lifestyle” onto the Kazakh people’s ancestors. Year after year, survival demanded obedience to nature’s rhythm. From the depth of the Altai Mountains to the open expanse north of the Heavenly Mountains, the herders covered nearly six hundred miles every year. Those that migrated the most frequently did so on average every four days. The Cuma family’s winter pasture wasn’t far from their summer pasture, so they traveled little by comparison. Still, I calculated that on average they had to pack up their home every twenty days—such is their unforgiving life; such are their lonely, implacable hearts.
* * *
DURING THOSE FIRST three days, as soon as afternoon rolled around, I would begin asking Kama over and over, “Have we arrived?” in Mandarin.
At first, she didn’t know what daole—“arrived”—meant, and I had no way of explaining it. Then, the more I asked, and because I announced, “Arrived!” whenever we got to the site where we would set up camp, she figured it out. From then on, whenever I asked, she replied with either “Not arrived” or “Arrived, we have.” The former meaning it was still early. The latter meaning soon.
It was half past noon when Kama took a sharp turn directly south off the straight southwesterly road—I knew at once that we had almost arrived! My heart leaped for joy. I asked her the same old question and she simply smiled. But this new road seemed to go on forever. Each time we followed it across an expanse of open desert and found ourselves on top of a dune, we were greeted by another expanse of interminable desert, in the middle of which the trail continued to stretch … promising more exhaustion ahead.
That day’s journey was the longest, the most tiring. Seeing how well I had handled myself the day before, Kama basically put me in charge of the whole camel team.
Horseback riding is a rough sport. If by “riding,” you mean sitting still on the back of a horse, then anyone can “ride.” But if you also have to chase down cattle and sheep, crack your whip, yank on the reins, spur the horse, and shout at the top of your lungs … well then. After a whole day of riding, your bones will be ready to shatter. You’ll feel like you have just taken a beating.
When at last, in anger and frustration, I had rounded up all the deviating camels back to the main pack, I ascended a sand dune and my jaw dropped. On the other side was a patch of black dirt! Kama was dismounting! She turned to shout, “Arrived, Li Juan! Today has arrived! Tomorrow, no walk! Tomorrow of tomorrow, no walk!”
Then, “Mother and father will drive here!”
I looked at my watch: it was 3:30 in the afternoon.
Then came the snow and a strong wind. After unloading the supplies from the lead camel, before we even had a chance to get organized, we sat on top of the packs and nibbled on dry nan in the wind and snow, basking in the joy of “stopping.” There was still a lot to do, managing the livestock, setting up shelter, preparing dinner … but we had arrived! It felt like an arrival that could have lasted forever.
The flock and the camels waiting in the morning mist to set off
3.
The Importance of Sheep Manure
WHEN SOMETHING IS HARD, locals say it’s like chewing kurt. Kurt is a hard cheese made by straining boiled yogurt. Especially when it’s made from aged yogurt, the stuff is harder than a rock! Even with the strongest of teeth, you’ll struggle to even make a dent in it. To eat this kind of cheese, you have to roast it on the stove until it’s soft, or soak it in scalding tea until it becomes chewy. A single lump of Kama’s kurt can last three or four rounds of tea over the span of two days. When a round of tea is finished, you can store the cheese in your pocket to be soaked again with the next round. Kama had endless patience for this process, because it was fun.
At any rate, eating kurt is an ordeal. But whenever I got hungry while herding the team southward, I chewed on kurt. Once, as I wait
ed for the camels to get back on track, I was so famished I managed to eat an entire big lump of the thing. It was like I was possessed by some supernatural force. The point I want to make here is: cleaning up a sheep pen is like chewing kurt.
We arrived on the third day. Yellow sand stretched across the vast, monotonous winter pasture, dotted with white patches of snow. But the dip in the sand dunes in which we lived was pitch-black. The sheep had lived in this spot for many winters, their manure accumulating year after year. The repetition of the manure being broken down and replenished was what had turned the depression black.
Inside the sheep pen, there was a layer of especially thick and hard manure. Cuma said that every month, it would rise by half a foot, and so it needed to be cleaned out several times over the course of the winter. The first cleaning, upon arrival, and the final cleaning, before departure, were the most important and most laborious. The first cleaning meant digging out a layer of mostly dry manure. The final cleaning happened during the warmth of spring, when a thick layer of soft, wet manure is dug up and spread around the sheep pen to dry for the following winter. Once dried, this manure is black and pure and just the right size. There is no better fuel for the winter.
The lowest layer of manure is close to the earth. Mixed with sand and soil, it becomes hard and clumpy. After a whole summer exposed to the sun and air, it can be dug up in slabs as straight as concrete. These manure slabs can’t be used as fuel, but they are the desert’s most important building material. The Chinese national anthem goes, “Use our flesh and blood to build a new Great Wall.” For the sheep, it’s “Use our poop to build a shelter from the wind and cold.” A sheep pen built from manure slabs is both neat and sturdy. What else could you use to build it with anyway? In the desert, there are no trees, soil, or rocks, only tufts of brittle grass jutting out of soft sand.
