The Eagle Huntress

by Liz Welch

  Copyright

  Due to language barriers, the authors worked closely with a translator chosen by the family, Yerlan Amankeldi, to ensure that the words in English were the right ones.

  Copyright © 2020 by Aisholpan Nurgaiv

  Map illustration copyright © 2020 by Virginia Allyn

  Cover photograph copyright © 2013 by Asher Svidensky. Cover design by Karina Granda. Cover copyright © 2020 by Hachette Book Group, Inc.

  Hachette Book Group supports the right to free expression and the value of copyright. The purpose of copyright is to encourage writers and artists to produce the creative works that enrich our culture.

  The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book without permission is a theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like permission to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), please contact permissions@hbgusa.com. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.

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  First Edition: May 2020

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  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Aisholpan, Nurgaiv, author. | Welch, Liz, 1969– author.

  Title: The eagle huntress: the true story of the girl who soared beyond expectations / Aisholpan Nurgaiv with Liz Welch.

  Description: New York: Little, Brown and Company, [2020] | Includes bibliographical references. | Audience: Ages 8–12 | Summary: “Eagle huntress Aisholpan Nurgaiv shares her story” —Provided by publisher.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2019031299 | ISBN 9780316522618 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780316522601 (ebook) | ISBN 9780316417952

  Subjects: LCSH: Aisholpan, Nurgaiv—Juvenile literature. | Falconers—Mongolia—Biography—Juvenile literature. | Girls—Mongolia—Biography—Juvenile literature. | Women hunters—Mongolia—Biography—Juvenile literature. | Falconry—Mongolia—Juvenile literature. | Kazakhs—Mongolia—Social life and customs—Juvenile literature. | Golden eagle—Mongolia—Juvenile literature.

  Classification: LCC SK17.A34 A3 2020 | DDC 639/.1092 [B]—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019031299

  ISBNs: 978-0-316-52261-8 (hardcover), 978-0-316-52260-1 (ebook)

  E3-20200406-JV-NF-ORI

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Epigraph

  Map

  PROLOGUE: Seeing My Story for the First Time

  CHAPTER 1: The White Eagle

  CHAPTER 2: My People Are Eagle Hunters

  CHAPTER 3: Nomadic Life

  CHAPTER 4: A Rite of Passage

  CHAPTER 5: Tourists

  CHAPTER 6: Asher Arrives

  CHAPTER 7: Otto, Not Just Another Excited Tourist

  CHAPTER 8: How to Train an Eagle

  CHAPTER 9: Blessings and Opinions

  CHAPTER 10: The Road to Ölgii

  CHAPTER 11: The Golden Eagle Festival

  CHAPTER 12: How to Catch a Fox in the Winter

  CHAPTER 13: Famous in Mongolia—and Beyond

  CHAPTER 14: The Aisholpan Effect

  Photos

  Acknowledgments

  Further Reading

  Kazakh Glossary

  A fast horse and a soaring eagle are the wings of a nomad.

  —KAZAKH PROVERB

  PROLOGUE

  Seeing My Story for the First Time

  Nothing was familiar.

  It was my second time in the United States and this time it was really hot. I started sweating before we even left the hotel room. The sun beat down in a way that felt totally unfamiliar. In Bayan-Ölgii (pronounced Ul-ghee), the northwestern corner of Mongolia where I am from, there’s a long, very cold season and then a couple of not-as-cold seasons. Even in our summer, it never gets that hot.

  Otto told me I should dress up, so I wore my best outfit: a gray suede embroidered suit that I had bought for special occasions and a white fur hat that I was given as a gift after I won the Golden Eagle Festival back home. Winning was a big deal because I was the first woman ever to win the contest, and at thirteen years old I was the youngest, too.

  That was why I was here, in Los Angeles, California, sweating in my gray suede suit.

  But I did not care about the heat or the crowd of people surrounding me. I was finally going to see The Eagle Huntress, the documentary film that the British director Otto Bell had made about me and my family, and our love of eagle hunting.

  I could hardly wait!

  Technically, I had seen it when I first came to the United States—that was eight months earlier, back in January, when the film premiered at a festival called Sundance. I was excited and a bit nervous. I did not know what to expect. At least there was snow at Sundance. That felt familiar. Otherwise, my parents and I stood out among the people that swarmed the town. They all had parkas and snow boots and wool hats. They reminded me of the tourists who came to visit us in Bayan-Ölgii. Only this time, we were the tourists.

  Two years before, we had never even met Otto, who had traveled to Mongolia to meet me after seeing a photo of me with my brother’s eagle. He wanted to make a film about me, he told us, and about eagle hunting. Now here we were, in this foreign country for a second time, because of him.

  When we were at Sundance, so many tourists wanted to take a picture of me and my mom and dad, and so many journalists wanted to talk to us that by the time I made it to the theater, I was so overwhelmed and exhausted that I couldn’t concentrate on the film! I would not let that happen this time. I knew at last that I would get the chance I had been waiting for since January: to truly see this story that people kept telling me was already inspiring the world. To take in every detail. I had already become famous in Mongolia as the first girl to win this famous contest. But for me, all the attention was still so strange. To have people from such faraway places so interested in my story did not feel real. It was like being in a dream. Everyone in Los Angeles was treating me like a celebrity, which I found so funny!

  I am just Aisholpan. A sister, daughter, student, and best friend. A nomadic girl whose happiest moments are still the ones when I’m on my pony, galloping across the steppes of Mongolia. A girl who just wanted to do what boys have always been allowed to do in my culture. I knew in my bones that I could do it better than most—boys or girls.

  The crowd at the Hollywood theater was different from the one back at Sundance. The women wore dresses that looked more like underwear, showing so much skin. My mother and I were shocked. The shoes were even more alarming—most of them had heels so high and pointy that I had no idea how these women could stand, let alone walk. The men, however, were mostly in suits, also sweating, like me.

  Once again, people shouted my name as I walked down the red carpet with my dad. They wanted photos, so we stopped to let them take a few, but it was so hot and there were so many people that I started to feel dizzy. So I poked my father in his ribs after a few shots and pointed to the theater door. I could not wait to get inside, where it was dark, cool, and quiet.

  Otto helped us find our seats, and once the theater was filled, he walked to the front of the room to introduce the film.

  I heard him say my name, and the audience clapped. I got up and waved, along with my mom and dad, as Otto introduced them. It was so strange to be surrounded by so many strangers applauding for me. I looked at all these smiling faces, trying to under
stand why they were so excited to see a film about me. I knew why I was excited.

  Then the lights dimmed to darkness, and the red velvet curtains parted.

  The opening shot made my heart grow big in my chest: It was of the vast desert landscape of the Mongolian steppes, the grasslands interspersed with rocky mountains that I call home. I felt this bursting sense of joy—and longing. Los Angeles felt so foreign to me, with its six-lane highways and mirrored buildings that reflected the sun. And it was so, so far away. Just to be sitting in this seat took four separate airplanes—one from Ölgii, the city closest to my home, to Ulaanbaatar, the capital of Mongolia. Another to Seoul, South Korea, where we flew in at night, when the city looked like a bright, pulsing dream. From there, we flew eighteen hours to New York City. So many tall buildings pierced the sky, earning their nickname “skyscraper.” The fourth and final flight brought me here. It took twenty-eight hours in the sky for me to get to this seat in this theater to watch a movie about my life back home.

  What was six PM in Los Angeles was eleven AM the day after tomorrow in Ölgii. Perhaps that was why I felt upside down and inside out. I was lost in time and space, eating strange food and surrounded by funny-sounding and -looking people who all knew who I was. No wonder I felt dizzy.

  For centuries, my people, the Kazakhs, have roamed the northwestern corner of Mongolia, where we have been practicing the ancient sport of eagle hunting. It is a sacred part of our culture. I had no idea that it was rare or in threat of extinction. I just knew that I loved doing it, as does my father, as did his father, and his father before him. In my family, eagle hunting goes back seven generations.

  Still, seeing the snow-dusted Mongolian steppes fill the screen took my breath away.

  When I saw my grandfather appear on the screen, I gasped again. In the film, he is sitting at our family table and we are eating a big plate of noodles and meat. My stomach ached for that very dish, and my heart ached for my grandfather. He had died suddenly six months earlier. Oh, how I wished he could have been in the theater next to me, and not just up on the screen.

  In Kazakh culture, eagle hunting is a male rite of passage. Fathers historically teach their sons how to hunt, as my grandfather taught my father. While I have since found out that women hunted in the past, I was the first in my family to do it. When I learned, I did not know another girl who was as keen to become an eagle huntress as I was.

  After the film ended, the entire audience leaped to their feet. The applause was so loud, it rippled through my body. I stood up and waved, and may have uttered “Rakmet” several times. “Thank you” in Kazakh. All these faces were beaming at me. Some people were even crying, too.

  They made me feel like a movie star, just as seeing myself on that big screen had! When Otto Bell had asked if he could make a movie about me, I’d said yes because I wanted to share eagle hunting with the world. All I cared about was what that might do for my people, and for other Kazakh girls especially.

  Sitting in that theater, as the applause continued to roar around me, I was beginning to understand that this movie I had agreed to participate in had not only documented my life but was changing it as well.

  1

  The White Eagle

  My mother often tells the story of the day before I was born.

  “Your grandmother came to visit, and her face was lit up in a way I had not seen before,” my mother says. “She had a dream that the White Eagle flew into our house and sat on the perch.”

  The perch that she is referring to is called a tughir. It is more than a century old. It was carved from the roots of a river birch and was handed down from my great-grandfather to my grandfather and finally to my father, who is known as Agilay. It is where all my father’s eagles have perched in our home, and his father’s eagles had perched in his home before him.

  It was also where the real great white eagle—the one my grandmother dreamed about—had once sat.

  My father comes from the Tolek tribe of the Kazakh nomads, legendary eagle hunters, who have lived for centuries in Ulaankhus, Mongolia, near a mountain called Khuren Khairkhan, where the great white eagle once soared.

  My people, the Kazakhs, are descendants from the Turkik, which means we all speak a similar language and have lived a nomadic life. One theory is that the word Kazakh is derived from the Turkish verb qaz, which means “to wander.” Another theory is that it comes from the Turkik word quazag, which means “to gain,” as nomads roamed with their herds of animals from one grazing spot to another, trading their animals or products made from them along the way.

  Even today, my family lives a seminomadic life, which means that, depending on the season, we move with our animals to bring them to better pastures. Both my parents grew up in nomadic families who lived off the land. Nomads eat what they raise—in our case, goats, cows, and sheep. Not just the meat, but all the things we can make from cows’ and goats’ milk as well. So we move with our herds, which is why we have moveable homes, which we call gers. They are like fortified tents, made of felt and covered in heavy canvas that is wrapped around a wooden structure, which can be easily assembled and disassembled when we move our animals to the next pasture.

  Our winter home is permanent, made of wood and plaster, and then lined with animal skins and rugs to keep us warm during the cold Mongolian winters, when temperatures dip to negative sixty degrees Fahrenheit. In the spring, summer, and autumn, we move our herds to different pastures—first over to a valley for the spring, when everything is starting to bloom; then, in the summer, up to the mountains, where the grass is sweet and tender after the snow melts. In these seasonal grazing spots, we erect our gers. Growing up, my father had heard the stories of the White Eagle. All the nomads who lived in the area knew about her. She could catch foxes and baby lambs with great ease and take down big-horned wild sheep in one fell swoop. Someone once witnessed her kill a fully grown wolf, and from then on, her reputation grew.

  Legend has it that one day, Dauit—a wealthy nomad who was the governor of that region and had many cows, goats, and even camels, the most expensive animals—made an announcement: “Whoever can catch the White Eagle and bring her to me to hunt with will get a great prize!”

  Bulanby was a nomad and one of the best eagle hunters in the region. In Kazakh, we call them berkutchi. When he heard of this competition, he decided he would be the one to catch that eagle.

  He was not alone.

  All the hunters wanted to catch this famed bird and collect the prize. They placed traps and nets throughout the area. But nobody could catch the White Eagle. Except for Bulanby.

  He brought the great eagle to Dauit.

  Dauit was thrilled. “What is your price?”

  Bulanby said, “Train the eagle to hunt for you. I will tell you my price later.”

  Dauit trained the eagle and went on to catch so many foxes, wild sheep, and even a wolf cub that stories of this great white eagle started to spread beyond Ulaankhus throughout the entire Bayan-Ölgii Province, the area where Kazakh nomads have lived and have hunted with eagles for centuries.

  Many months passed, and finally Bulanby returned for his prize.

  “You are back, finally!” Dauit said. “What is your asking price for this magnificent bird?”

  Bulanby smiled and replied, “Your beloved daughter to marry my younger brother, Bosaga.”

  After much consideration, and a conversation with his willing daughter, Dauit agreed. When the couple married, Dauit said, “This amazing eagle has the power to feed your family. It is a sign that you will continue the great tradition of eagle hunting for future generations.”

  Bosaga was my father’s great-grandfather.

  Dauit’s daughter was my father’s great-grandmother.

  This story is famous in my family, and proof, my dad insists, that we come from one of the greatest eagle-hunting families ever known.

  This explains the tears in my grandmother’s eyes when she told my mother about her dream. Happy tears, my
mother insists.

  “It was a good sign,” she says.

  My mother was looking for them.

  After my older brother, Samrakhan—my parents’ first child—was born, my mother could not stay pregnant, or “hold” a baby, as she says. She lost four pregnancies, one after another, which is why there is a nine-year age difference between Samrakhan and me.

  My parents imagined that they would have a large family, as they live off the land and need many hands to help care for our animals. My father has nine siblings; my mother has eight. They thought their family would be of a similar size.

  The first time my mother became pregnant after Samrakhan was born, she lost that baby in the spring.

  Spring is the hardest time for nomads—my parents had twenty-five sheep, twenty-five goats, and one cow back then. Spring is when baby animals are born, so at that time my parents hardly slept, as they were always getting up in the middle of the night to check on the pregnant animals.

  One night, my mother was awoken by the baying of the cow in distress. My father was gone, likely dealing with other animals. So she quickly got up and ran outside, following the sounds of the crying cow. The moon was bright and cast a silvery glow over the grassland that surrounds our home. She found the cow, on her knees instead of lying down and wailing as if in pain. As my mother came closer, she saw tiny hooves emerging from beneath the struggling cow and started to run toward it. That was when she felt a sharp pain in her own stomach. She ignored it. The mother cow was in trouble, so she grabbed the tiny hooves and tugged. The calf emerged, and as she helped it find its mother to suckle, my mother felt another pain in her own belly.

  She was only five months pregnant then, and she believes that the baby was not ready for the world.

  After that, each of her three pregnancies ended quickly.

  She insists that her womb was still grieving.

  So when she got pregnant with me, she went to see a shaman. These are holy men who treat every type of illness—including a grieving womb.