Live From Mongolia

by Patricia Sexton

  Laughing so hard he could barely choke the words out, Pimples finally managed to admit, “Yep, that was me. Brill-iant, wasn’t it?”

  Truth was, no one much liked Pimples, not even the girl with whom he’d made use of all those condoms. But everyone was afraid to say so, because when it came to seeing a person for who they really were, Pimples wasn’t always right, but his shot was sharp. He often hit at some deep insecurities, and he even dared to follow up with unsolicited therapy. He was the kind of guy you meet while traveling whom you’ll never forget but wish all the same that you could.

  Actually, though, this time Pimples had gotten it all wrong. Just because I hadn’t followed the usual script of marriage and kids didn’t mean I wanted to join the ranks of the vast majority. Truth was, I was still ambivalent about all that stuff. The closest Pimples had come to accuracy was in detecting that I’d wanted to want all that, but I wasn’t sure I actually wanted all that. Nevertheless, it was a sore spot, and he’d found it.

  “Let’s go,” I said to Meg, shrugging Pimples off. Quiz night had ended abruptly for at least one of us; it was time to leave. In a protracted silence, Meg and I walked home together. The sun was dipping into the western horizon, a quivering orange light framing the outline of the Soviet housing blocks off in the distance. Behind us, our shadows tagged along, elongated versions of ourselves and just as quiet.

  CHAPTER 11

  Off the Beaten Puddle

  The team of executives is currently discussing cooperation between the fields of geology, mining, transport, trade, and investment. The Japanese representatives offered proposals on intensifying Mongolian-Japanese relations, while the Mongolian representatives considered as their priority the availability of trade with…Asian countries as well as opportunities to penetrate the Russian market.

  —Evening news voiceover, MM Today broadcast

  That night, it rained hard, and I woke up the next morning to the tinkling sound of a storm that was just ending. The sky shone a leaden silver, relieved to have finished emptying itself. Outside my window and down the alley leading to Peace Avenue, enormous puddles had formed in the pockmarked pavement.

  After sharing a breakfast of fried bread, an egg apiece, and instant coffee, Meg and I headed downtown. Batma had already shown Meg the ropes around the apartment, and it was my job to show her the way to town. I decided on a quirky shortcut.

  Circumventing the main road and its traffic and dust, Meg and I ducked into the alley extending from our apartment block to Gandan Khiid monastery. From one end to the other, it was the length of a couple of city blocks. We passed an underground billiards hall, a local schoolyard, and a milk seller living in a rusted train boxcar. Taking this off-the-beaten-path route into town, I felt I was getting a sneak peek into the real Ulaanbaatar, and this was what I wanted to show to Meg. After all, anyone can go for a stroll along a main road in any town, but finding the side streets that pass in front of people’s homes and through their lives is, to me, what adventure is all about. Besides, Meg and I were able to score points with local cabbies by explaining our shortcut to them in their own language—when we’d finally learned enough Mongolian to do so.

  The alleyway zigzagged from one ex-Soviet apartment block to the next, linking parking lots and rows of brick storage sheds. At its center was a puddle so enormous and so permanent that cars occasionally sank deep into it, especially after a hard rain. Mongolian sewers seemed to have been designed with Mongolia’s “Land of the Blue Sky” nickname in mind. That is, sewers were few and far between in the residential neighborhoods, and while there were plenty of them downtown, they were usually occupied by homeless people rather than rainwater.

  There are no official statistics on the number of homeless in the capital, but, like any capital city, there seemed to be quite a few. And during winter, they were forced to make the sewer system their home. Of course, sewer dwelling is fairly common in big cities, especially New York. In fact, it’s estimated that some twenty-five thousand “mole people” live in the tunnels of New York City’s subway system. Likewise, in Mongolia, hundreds of people, many of them children, scratch out a miserable existence living beneath the surface of society, huddled closely in large drainpipes. With winter temperatures hovering well below freezing for months at a time, getting out of the cold can be a matter of life or death.

  In fact, conditions in the sewers are so bad that death is always present and often imminent. Unbelievably, it’s often steam that is responsible for killing many of the underground homeless. After what is frequently a violent fight for a coveted sleeping spot near the warmth of the city’s hot water pipes, the victor must figure out from which direction the industrial-force steam will come. If he chooses wrong and sleeps headfirst toward the steam, he’ll die. Otherwise, he’ll end up with scorched feet.

  So, without sufficient drainage systems in place in the Soviet micro-districts, where Meg and I lived, rainwater runoff was left to collect in dusty gravel parking lots. Since gravel isn’t absorbent and dust is, those lots and alleys looked like a miniature version of an English lake district after a good, hard storm. And for whatever reason, there were plenty of rainstorms that summer. As the weather assaulted us relentlessly, puddles grew to epic proportions—especially our puddle.

  On the puddle’s south side was a high wall, sort of an embankment that kept it from leaking into the neighboring primary school’s playground. The drop-off between the puddle and the schoolyard was about fifteen feet, just enough to kill you if you fell off it. And you might, because walking this tightrope was the only way to cross it. Of course, you could head back to the main road and altogether avoid the exhilarating danger of this pockmarked ribbon of concrete, but what would be the fun of that? Besides, there’s no better roommate bonding exercise than facing down the fear of injury and death.

  “You go first,” I said to Meg, after explaining that we should take turns traversing the twenty or so feet across the puddle, in case one of us fell.

  “Okay,” she said a little uncertainly, looking as if she was about to risk much more than she intended. With her back turned to me, shoulders raised, I could tell she was holding her breath, terrified. Then, very carefully, Meg tiptoed across, stepping over and around the many cracks and divots in the pavement. Before I had a chance to wonder what I’d do if she tripped, she raised her arms in victory and whooped loudly.

  Following cautiously in her footsteps, I reached our finish line and inhaled deeply, that intoxicating swell of adrenaline and relief that is the aftermath of any unnecessary but successful gamble. Meg and I high-fived each other, only to glance back and see a Mongolian woman actually trotting across the wall in a pair of unbuckled strappy kitten heels!

  We were early for a lunch date with Evan, so we paid for a ticket to the Choijin Lama monastery in the south of the city. A complex of several temples with upturned, pointy-tipped roofs and rich red doors, it looked like a toy version of Beijing’s Forbidden City. Built during the first few years of the twentieth century, it was one of the many monasteries shut down during the Great Purge, but it was never demolished because the Soviets wanted to use it to “demonstrate the ‘feudal’ ways of the past,” as the Lonely Planet guidebook describes it. Located just a short walk from Peace Avenue, Choijin Lama took up little more than a city block and had a kind of boutique feel of grandeur.

  Aside from a security guard, Meg and I were the only people at the monastery, so we roamed its grounds aimlessly, which seemed to fit well with the ambiance of the place. Tufts of tumbleweed and dry shrubbery blew in the unseasonably cool breeze that day; an eerie silence smothered any attempts at conversation. Unable to absorb the heavy weight of its atmosphere, Meg and I glanced at each other and wordlessly agreed to leave, then headed to meet Evan at an American-style deli.

  One of Mongolia’s most popular restaurants, the American- and Cuban-owned Millie’s Café, prided itself on its fare as much as its clientele, who came from all over town to eat their Philly chee
sesteaks and club sandwiches. In Mongolia, where things like seasonings are regarded with some suspicion (locals always shook their heads when I’d try to put even a little salt on my mutton), the mere thought of smothering sautéed beef with Cheez Whiz, onions, and mushrooms was positively sacrilegious!

  So, as usual, Millie’s wasn’t just crowded, it was packed.

  Backpackers, camera-clad photojournalists, and diplomats hunched over cheesesteaks and burgers, probably discussing things like foreign policy or adventure. Occasionally, you’d overhear a snippet of conversation from a nearby table and realize your hunch was right; everyone was discussing adventure and diplomacy. Once Meg and Evan and I landed a much-coveted table, we paid homage to Philadelphia and ordered cheesesteaks.

  But it wasn’t the food that was on our minds or, for that matter, diplomacy. Adventure was. The following weekend, we’d all head to a place called Khustain, a national park southwest of Ulaanbaatar, which, long ago, used to serve as hunting grounds for the khans of Mongolia. Now though, it’s home to a rare breed of horse and is something of a destination for newly arrived expats looking to dip a toe into their very first Mongolian countryside voyage.

  Khustain wasn’t far from Ulaanbaatar, only about sixty miles, but this trip would still require some planning. We’d arranged to go with a group. Meg was on a tight budget, so she decided to camp in the steppe with a few others, not far from where Evan and I would stay in a traditional ger. It would be my first chance to stay in one of the round, felt, teepee-like structures so endemic to Mongolia. Tobie would also be there, as well as one of Evan’s colleagues. It was our first order of business to plan the logistics of this adventure and research just who knew what about Khustain who we could tap for information. Halfway through lunch, it dawned on us—we knew just the person to help us out. Right away, Meg and I arranged a meeting. And one night soon after, Meg and Tobie and I sat down to dinner with a horse researcher.

  Like many of us, the horse researcher had come to Mongolia under the auspices of an internship because she’d wanted to work in the country. She loved all things equestrian, and there are few better places to study horses than Khustain, which hosts some of the world’s only surviving truly wild horses.

  Tobie, Meg, and I met the horse researcher at a steakhouse. This would turn out to be a terrible mistake.

  She greeted us, but it was hard to tell that she’d done so at all. Plump and fair-skinned with hazel eyes, she was so soft-spoken and so shy that it was almost impossible to hear what she was saying. In fact, she didn’t actually speak; she whispered. Just as I leaned in to ask her to tell me her name, the waiter arrived to take our order.

  Page after page, course after course, the steakhouse menu offered just one item in varying forms—meat. Meat with “special sauce,” meat with Korean kimchee, sheep meat, cow meat, yak meat. And horse meat—but none of us knew that yet.

  “I’ll have the ‘Strong and Hard Man,’” I said to him without looking very carefully at the menu. I was more interested in finding out about Khustain’s horses. Tobie and I were hoping to pitch a story about just that to Gandima, and the researcher was our best shot at gathering information before we left for our trip.

  “Are you sure?” the waiter asked, pointing at the menu’s description of the “Strong and Hard Man” as a “flaming plate of grilled steaks fit only for consumption by a strong and hard man.”

  “Of course I’m sure,” I said, always eager to flex a bit of culinary bravado, especially when it’s on behalf of strong and hard women the world over.

  “I came here to study the horses,” the horse researcher whispered. She might’ve said her name was Heather, but I couldn’t be sure. “But mostly I came here to spend time with them.” She had a nervous way about her, eyes darting from us to her hands in her lap. “I’m really shy, but the horses seem to coax me out of myself,” she said, trailing off and smiling weakly. Just as Tobie began to tell her about our pitch to Gandima regarding the Khustain horses, our food arrived.

  “For you!” the waiter said with a flourish as he put my food in front of me. “The ‘Strong and Hard Man’!” The platter of grilled meats was dotted liberally with red and brown sauces and an awful lot of kimchee, a Korean side dish made of spices and fermented cabbage. In the center stood an erect meat bone, nestled into, and supported by, layers of steaks. The tip of this phallic display was wrapped in aluminum foil and doused with a strong-smelling alcohol.

  “What type of meats are those?” the horse researcher asked, leaning into my plate, carefully scrutinizing its contents.

  From his breast pocket, the waiter produced a book of matches. “Cow meat, sheep meat, and”—he paused as he lit the top of the bone—“horse meat.”

  With the tip of the bone alight, my plate turned into a sort of layered birthday cake of steaks, with an upright bone as a candle.

  “I’m sorry,” I said quickly and feebly to our guest. “I didn’t know about the horse.” I wasn’t sure which steak was horse steak, but I quickly pretended just the opposite, using my fork to disdainfully push one of the cuts to the far side of my plate.

  The horse researcher daubed the corner of her mouth with her napkin and looked as if she might cry. I really wished someone would change the subject. Meg did just that and told us about her first day on the job at her internship at the State Second Maternity Hospital.

  “You won’t believe what happened to me yesterday,” Meg said into the awkward silence.

  Meg had spent her first day at her internship performing abortions.

  This. Is. Not. Good, I thought, having already heard about Meg’s first day on the job. If just one story could make dinner conversation go from awkward to excruciating, this would be it.

  “Back and forth,” the doctor on duty seemed to be instructing as he demonstrated what to do with the long, thin rod he’d inserted into a patient’s vagina. Because Meg had only recently arrived in Mongolia, she hadn’t learned much of the language yet, and she certainly hadn’t learned any medical jargon. Thus, she and the doctor she’d been assigned to were relying on pantomime. Lying on her back on the gurney in front of them was a young woman, legs splayed out in front of her, wincing in pain.

  “Harder,” the doctor mimed, taking the rod back from Meg and thrusting it into the woman with exaggerated urgency. Once Meg seemed to have gotten the hang of what the doctor was teaching her to do, he left her alone with the patient to finish the job.

  Meg was shaken, but what could she do? She’d been given an awful lot of responsibility, especially for someone who’d not even been to medical school. Besides, she was alone with one woman after another and had been given orders. So, whether she felt right about it or not, she did as she was told.

  “So many vaginas, so little time,” Meg quipped, tittering politely, finishing her story.

  Still, the horse researcher was silent, and so were the rest of us. Dinner had all but ended, and it seemed best that Tobie and I research our pitch on our own. Of course, this was disappointing, but little did we know that the horses would serve as only a backdrop to an adventure in Khustain that would change a few lives. For now though, we needed the check.

  “Check, please?” someone said to the waiter, and wallets were quickly produced from pockets.

  CHAPTER 12

  Dreams come True

  A famous local academic is the second Mongolian to be awarded the Asian Cultural Prize of Fukuoka. Just days ago, Mongolia’s Mr. Bira was honored with the state title of “Hero of Labor.” During a press conference at the Ministry of External Relations, the announcement was made by the Secretary-General of the Fukuoka Asian Cultural prize committee.

  —Lead story, MM Today broadcast

  The next morning, I walked to work in the flawless brilliance of an azure summer’s day.

  At the station, Tobie was already at his desk, head hung low and mouth slightly open. Deep in concentration, he was editing the Roaring Hooves piece we’d filmed earlier that week at the State
Philharmonic Hall. Lifting his head briefly to mumble a hello, he immediately went back to work. I gathered up a stack of scripts and began my task of correcting spelling errors.

  “Patricia?” Gandima said as she poked her head into our office. “Come with me; I need to speak with you.”

  Hearing “we need to talk” is rarely a good sign, especially when your boss summons you, but Gandima had a playful look on her face. This was very unusual. Although I’d known her only a few weeks at this point, I’d known her as nothing if not stern.

  I followed Gandima to her office and sat down opposite her. “You are doing good work here at the station,” she began. “In fact, your spell-checking is really very good indeed. And I know you want to do more,” she went on as I held my breath.

  “So,” she said, pausing before she delivered her grand finale, “Enkhtuya and I would like you to begin teaching English to the staff here.” With that, she broke into a wide grin and waited for me to follow suit.

  Teach English to the staff? I thought. Surely if I’d wanted to teach after leaving banking, I’d have found myself somewhere sunny and warm and tropical in which to do it. But I kept my thoughts to myself and vowed right then and there that I would do whatever she asked in order to get a shot at doing what I’d actually come to Mongolia to do, which was to report.

  “So, would you like to teach?” Gandima asked.

  “Absolutely,” I said.

  Strangely though, this was the first and last time I’d hear of it from Gandima or anyone else at the station. Whether it was her test of my commitment to MNB, I never knew, but she didn’t mention again the subject of teaching.

  “Good, because I’d also like you to begin reporting with Tobie.”

  “What, really?” I said. “Seriously?”