by Li Juan
I met Sharifa when she was still young, before she went to Ili for school. She had spent the whole winter sewing a quilt with an intricate landscape. At the time, she was worried about running out of scraps of yarn, while I happened to have a bunch left from my embroidery, so I offered them all to her. She was so delighted that she wrapped herself around my arm like a twisted dough snack, begging me to take her to my house to get them. Back then, she was just like Kama, carefree, witty, and playful. Now that she was far from home, she dated frivolously and didn’t save a penny of her paycheck. At family gatherings, she was conceited and aloof, perhaps even a bit distant.
But no matter what, Kama was growing up too. Sooner or later she would have to leave her parents and the home that she had been so reliant upon. She had at most two more years at home, listening to her parents, helping out the family. But what would happen after two years? When Kama leaves (for work or marriage), who will herd the sheep? By then, the two youngest children will have graduated middle school. I asked Cuma if they could continue their education or whether they would be called home to work.
The question caused Cuma to ponder for a long time. By the time I’d given up on an answer, he exclaimed, “Guess we’ll see what the babies want! If they don’t want to go to school, then they’ll receive a share of the property and join in the work. If they want to keep going, then they’ll keep going. If there’s no one left to herd, then we’ll sell the sheep, keep twenty or so cows, and go back to Akehara to farm. If other people can get by farming, why can’t I?” Not long ago, he’d been laughing at farmers for being so poor that they couldn’t eat meat more than a few times a year.
Although Cuma claimed to be ready for both eventualities, I knew that he was already crystal clear what his children’s decisions would be. Their youngest daughter had worked hard in school, having determined that education would be her way out of this life. And their son was in love with machinery, and was determined to become a mechanic.
So in the end, the fate of the family rested solely on Kama’s shoulders.…
* * *
EVERY DAY I WROTE a little in my notebook. When Kama asked me what I was writing, I replied, “Kama’s story.” She said, “Koychy, that many stories?”
As time went on, she became inspired and decided to write something herself. Once, before taking the sheep out, she asked to borrow a pencil and a sheet of paper from me. When she returned that evening, she filled the sheet with pretty Arabic script. At dinner, she read it aloud to her family. Her parents put down their tea bowls and listened keenly. When she was done, they both said, “Great.” They even took the page and read it over and over in silence. I asked, “What’s it say?” Cuma said, “A letter to Li Juan.” I was astonished and demanded that he translate for me. But the man only translated one sentence: “The state of Li Juan’s work with our family.”
Only one month after we had settled in the wilderness, Kama had to return to the spring and autumn encampment on the banks of the Ulungur River. Apa was sick and had been admitted to a hospital. There was no one else to watch the cows and goats. That left only the three of us at the burrow, which made me feel lonely just thinking about it. Kama, on the other hand, was thrilled. Could it have something to do with the Black Horse Trot Ballroom she was always daydreaming about? A world of young people, the prospect of love, the chance of finding a job, the possibility of life changing … I wondered if this winter, our big girl Kama suluv might finally gather the courage to stand up and sing for the world.
After Kama left, we all felt lonely. In early January, she sent us a letter by way of the vet. This time around, Cuma earnestly translated the whole thing for me. It began with: “Dear Papa and Mama, and Li Juan, out there in the winter burrow, how are you? How is your health?” That was enough to bring tears to our eyes.
The trappings Kama embroidered over the course of the winter would adorn her mount in the future.
11.
Cuma
CUMA WAS A NOTORIOUS drunkard-cum-rascal. So when I decided to stay with his family for the winter, many people were shocked. Yet those who really knew him agreed that, aside from his drinking and his shenanigans, he had a lot of qualities that were worthy of admiration and even respect. He was a meticulous, dependable worker with a quick wit and charisma. People enjoyed his company. Whenever he opened his mouth in a crowd, everyone quieted down and listened to what he had to say. And how he loved to talk. When it came to bragging, he’d outdo himself, lining up his words like a string of pearls. Any joke that he told would circulate for a long time after. As a result, he had acquired a certain prestige among the herders.
Their world was something like this—a big sky and a big earth, in which they dwelt alone and far apart; where the days were quiet and dull, life hard and lonely, deprived of contact with the outside world; and where most people were resigned to a life of quiescence. So the presence of a character like Cuma offered people a sense of joy and relief! He could always unpack everything in the frankest of terms, saying what had been on everyone’s mind and—with a few well-chosen words—effortlessly untangle the most intractable matters of the heart. Of course, among the nomadic folk, there were the even more empathetic, eloquent Kazakh musicians, the aqyns, who were naturally revered by them, to the point of deification.
In short, little did it matter that Cuma the raving drunk was tyrannical and mean—people didn’t hold it against him, and were ready to forgive this foible of his.
Cuma was approaching fifty, had graying hair, stood tall at five foot nine, and weighed a hefty two hundred forty-two pounds. The earth shook when he walked. Although he was ostensibly old enough to be a grandfather, since I was over thirty myself, I ended up calling him “Big Brother.”
Cuma and my family have known each other for many years, so by this point we are old friends. Every time he shopped at our store, my mother would strong-arm him into buying only the goods with broken packaging. There was no love lost between him and my mother, but he had no choice but to keep shopping at our store. We were the only ones who allowed him to keep an open tab.
Cuma could speak a mouthful of Mandarin. Even if it was rather muddled, it was nonetheless expressive. For example, instead of “sand dune,” he would say “tall sand,” and instead of “a long journey,” he would say “a lot of desert!”
One day, after reading the supplement in a Kazakh newspaper, he pondered for a moment, then explained to me, thoughtfully, “This piece of paper says that here, where we herd sheep, was once used for moving this”—pointing to an embroidered fabric on the wall—“a road for bringing the fine, shiny string we draw it with!”
It took me a moment, but then I got it: oh, he means the Silk Road! It was true, Altai was on the northern route of the ancient Silk Road.
He didn’t know the Chinese word for sew, so he replaced it with “draw.” After all, Sharifa, his eldest daughter, was studying drawing. I imagine that in Kazakh, the two verbs must be the same.
Cuma was a quick learner. At first, the only swear words he knew in Mandarin were the “three-word classics.” But ever since his argument with my mother, who screamed at him that he was “not even human,” he finally learned a new phrase. When a cow was disobedient, he cursed, “Not even human.” When a camel was mischievous, he cried, “So not even human!”
Because he was always making up stories about the country’s leaders, saying, “Back when we were herding together, he did this or that,” I would tease, “You counterrevolutionary!” Delighted, he adopted this new phrase as well. While ushering the sheep into their pen at night, he shouted as he corralled them, “You, a counterrevolutionary! You, also a counterrevolutionary!”
* * *
I EVENTUALLY FIGURED out why Cuma spoke Mandarin so well. As a child, he lived in a production brigade on the outskirts of the county. His neighbors were Hui Chinese Muslims, so he was able to pick up on some Mandarin. Later, when the Akehara People’s Commune was looking for someone to drive horse-drawn carts,
his father took the gig and relocated his whole family. When all the people’s communes were disbanded, his family gradually became nomadic. Cuma once said, had he stayed in the town, he would have continued with school, found work, and would have become a city dweller by now, but instead, he became a herder … a disappointing turn of events. It left him with a sentimental sort of pride.
Yet, he was always cheery. At the crack of dawn, while everyone was busy running around, he had nothing to do. He tried to strike up conversations but no one paid him any attention. That was when he took down a mirror and told jokes to himself, putting on all sorts of voices. The more the family ignored him, the more he upped the ante, wearing a stern face and mimicking the tone and tempo of a CCTV newscaster as he recited a long list of leaders’ names. I couldn’t help but play along: “What, you know them?”
He boasted, “Of course! We used to herd together.…” He noted that a few of the leaders “were drunks too.…”
We couldn’t hold back our laughter anymore, and gave a collective “Koychy!”
* * *
IT WASN’T JUST THAT Cuma couldn’t control his jesting; he couldn’t keep his hands still either. When he wasn’t herding sheep, he spent the whole day rummaging through things, fixing this and that. In a single day, he managed to do all the following: help his wife patch up all her broken shoes and polish them until they shined, add a supporting pillar to a twenty-plus-year-old beam, repair the solar panel, plaster leaky doors and windows, mend the stove, fix a sieve, repair Kama’s crochet needle, fix his own sunglasses (herding for a long time in the snow without sunglasses leads to snow blindness), fix my glasses (I left them on the bed once and then sat on them, snapping the arms—it couldn’t be helped, I wasn’t wearing my glasses, so I couldn’t see), fix a handsaw, fix a knife, and, finally, lay a warped steel bar over the pickax and whack it straight, then whack it some more until it turned into a new pair of charcoal tongs! Sadly, they were a little short. He said, “Then let shorty here use them!” How rude—he was referring to me.
Only after finishing all these chores did he bother to reveal that his stomach had been hurting all day and asked Sister-in-law to prepare him a hot-water bottle so he could go to bed early and get some rest.
Granted, the guy knew how to make life comfortable and took care of his family like a good man, but there was something very annoying about him—while he worked on his own chores, everyone else had to act like his assistant. One minute I was sent to find shoe polish and a brush, the next moment Kama was asked to bring the hammer, and after that he ordered Sister-in-law to get up to fetch the hemp rope.
Sister-in-law refused: “I’m spinning thread!”
He snatched the spindle. “What’s so impressive about that, you’re just twisting a thread!” With that, he turned the spindle and started spinning for her.
She surrendered, slipping off the bed to fetch the rope. When she came back with the rope, her face went red—in the short time she was gone, he had managed to tangle the whole spool into a hopeless mess.…
Even this jack-of-all-trades had his moments of failure. Once he tried to mend a cracked plastic bucket. First, he set flame to a plastic bag and dripped the melted plastic onto the crack … nope. Next, he found a piece of hard plastic and used a red-hot poker to try to melt it onto the crack … that didn’t work either. After hours of struggle, he lost it! He got some clear tape, wrapped it around the bucket a few times, then chucked the thing aside, never to think about it again.
Worse, whenever he was trying to do something, regardless of whether he failed or succeeded, nobody was allowed to express skepticism. For example, once he was attaching a new handle to a hacksaw, and I asked in passing, “Is that gonna work?”
He lost all confidence. Days after it had been fixed, he continued to grumble, “Who was it that said it wouldn’t work? Who? Was it you? Take a look, does that look like it works or not?” And whenever he used the hacksaw, he wouldn’t forget to comment, “See, what a beauty! Sure works good! Li Juan didn’t think so at first!”
It was one thing fixing all the broken objects in the house, but what really amazed me was the day I saw him doing needlework! A bowl of tea at his side, he slowly mended his tattered sheepskin jacket. After that, he mended some gloves, then a pair of socks, all the while grumbling to himself, “My old woman doesn’t care about me anymore, doesn’t she love me anymore? … I have to do this myself, that myself, what if she stops cooking for me too.… This old woman, should I keep her or should I not?” Sister-in-law shuttled in and out of the burrow, busy with work up to her neck, and paid him no mind.
Then he would mumble on about how it was such a pity with Li Juan, one of these days, she must be given a proper meal and asked if I preferred dumplings or hand-pulled noodles. I was surprised and asked Kama if it could be true. She said, “Sure, my dad can do anything! Milk the cows! And bake nan too!”
I was impressed: “He’s practically a Han man!”
That was when Cuma told me that when he was little, his mother broke her hand, so as the oldest of his siblings, he took over all the housework.
As if afraid that I wouldn’t believe him, he immediately offered a demonstration—scooping up Sister-in-law’s half-sewn rug, he began threading the needle through the felt! He pointed out which of the flowers he’d cut and stitched, which ones were Kama’s, and which were Sister-in-law’s.… I couldn’t believe it! With those hands as big and rough as palm-leaf fans.
Still sewing, he continued, “When Li Juan gets married, this old brute’ll take this carpet he’s drawn, roll it up, strap it to a horse saddle, and send it to her house!”
Quickly I said, “No thanks!”
“Why?”
“Your embroidery can’t be all that good!”
Turns out, Cuma’s embroidery wasn’t bad at all! Granted, the stitches were a bit too close together, but just the way he held the needle was enough to prove that he knew what he was doing.
Later, I learned that he could even crochet a floral trim! And fix simple home electronics, working with tiny circuit boards.… Don’t let that pair of big hands deceive you, they could manipulate tiny objects with impressive dexterity. He even used his fat finger to pick Baby Karlygash’s nose! His hands may have looked clumsy, but really, they were patient and gentle.
Yes, Cuma adored Karlygash, he was always kissing the little one, offering more affection than she knew what to do with. He’d pinch her nose with chopsticks and pretend to pop it into his mouth, chewing it like it was the most delicious thing. When the little one watched him smack his lips, she rubbed her nose nervously, afraid that he had really eaten it.
Cuma loved to pick her up by her arms and dance with her, doing the Black Horse Trot. The quickness of the rhythm left her laughing out loud. He wrapped her up in his arms, lifted his shirt, and pretended to feed her “milk.” Karlygash stared at his big white belly and chest full of hair for a moment before bursting into tears.
* * *
BEFORE SETTING OUT for the winter burrow, my biggest worry had been whether Cuma would be drunk the whole time. Fortunately, there wasn’t much booze around—he only brought three bottles. On the drive to the winter burrow, he had finished off a bottle in the passenger seat (poor driver …), and what remained was only enough to get him into trouble a couple of times. His antics generally involved a lot of yelling, keeping the rest of us from sleeping. Other than that, there was bowl throwing, which was both infuriating and frightening. Had the burrow been a little bigger, at least there would have been somewhere to hide, but the place was only so big. Luckily, of all the bowls he threw, none ever broke. Thank goodness the floor was made of sand, the walls plastered with manure, and the bed covered in thick felt.
The worst thing about Cuma wasn’t even the drinking, it was the compulsive lying. He was always lying to me as a way to pass the time. One day, for example, he suddenly said that on top of the dunes far out west in the wilderness, there was cell-phone signal. So the fol
lowing morning, of course, I ran out, diligently trekking several kilometers up all the highest sand dunes.…
He also told me that only men can cook sheep hooves, women can’t. He spoke with such authority that I really thought it was some sort of tradition. Good thing I thought to ask him, “Why?”
He continued earnestly, “When women cook ’em, they get smaller; when men cook ’em, they get bigger.…” What did that have to do with anything!
Then, there was that night when he exclaimed, “The big black cow will be calving tonight! We all have to go help!” I couldn’t sleep all night, afraid that I’d miss the little calf’s birthing. It turned out, the cow didn’t give birth until a month later. And when it did, there was no need for “help.”
Because he was always like that, I could no longer believe anything that came out his mouth. No matter what he said, I had to verify with Sister-in-law or Kama first. What a chore.
The second most annoying thing about Cuma was whenever we were in an argument that he couldn’t win, he’d mock my mother, imitating her crying and sniffling. Then he’d complain that our store was full of fake goods and accuse my mother of “ripping off even her friends.” Clearly, that fired me up. Cuma had already burned his bridges with all the shopkeepers in Akehara, except us.
The third most annoying thing was when he bullied the kitten. I eventually learned that he really had nothing against the creature, it was just to annoy everyone else. If someone decided to show pity, then he’d hit him even harder. He threw the little kitten, who was barely four months old, mercilessly against the ground. I couldn’t help but scream. Then I realized that other than me, everyone else pretended like nothing was happening. Silence, it turned out, was the only thing that could stop this behavior—the more you tried to stop him, the more of a kick he got out of it. Like a spoiled child! Infuriating.
