by Li Juan
Even the place where we humans eat and live—our burrow—requires sheep manure. A burrow is a six-foot-deep pit. In the sandy desert, its four walls would easily collapse if not for the manure slabs. A few logs are laid on top of the manure-lined pit, some dry grass is spread on top, then smear some manure crumble on top of that and you have a “roof.” Finally, dig a sloping passage to enter the sealed cave. Of course, the passage walls must be tiled with manure slabs as well.
Even the wide platform on which we slept was built with manure slabs. Basically, we lived in sheep manure.
“Living in sheep manure” might sound unappealing, but in reality, it’s great. Not only is sheep manure the sole building material available in the desert, it is also incomparable—in the dead of winter, only animal feces can magically, continuously radiate heat. This was never more apparent to me than on the coldest nights when we herded the sheep into their pen. The northern winds howled. It was so cold, I could barely open my eyes and the pain was like I had just been punched in the face. But the very moment I came near the thick manure wall, the cold vanished and a feeling of warmth washed over me.
* * *
ON THE EVENING of our first day at camp, a snowstorm raged. Cuma, who arrived by car, was drunk as usual. Amid the pandemonium, it was impossible to organize our things. Soon it was nighttime. Exhausted, everyone fell asleep in their clothes on the manure slab bed that hadn’t been made yet. Our heads rested against the manure wall. Every time one of us rolled over, bits of manure stuck to our faces and necks. If you had the habit of sleeping with your mouth open, then you were in big trouble! But even with your mouth closed, the next morning, well …
Fortunately, after a good night’s rest, everyone woke up in high spirits, ready to make up for lost time. A collapsed manure wall was rebuilt. Inside the burrow, the bare walls were covered with tus-kiiz and embroidered syrmak (patterned cotton wall hangings and patterned felt rugs or tapestries, respectively; it was a pain getting nails to stay in those “walls,” they just wouldn’t stay put). By the afternoon, the burrow was unrecognizable from the day before—it was as good as new, beautiful even. The manure slabs were all covered up like background actors on a stage, hidden well behind the curtain.
It wasn’t only us humans who had the sheep to thank for our manure homes—even the cattle were in their debt. Their burrow was built from sheep manure slabs as well. In the winter, cow dung doesn’t have much use. Because it’s so wet, cow manure becomes icy and hard in the winter; it wasn’t until we moved to the drier and warmer spring pasture that we replaced sheep manure with cow dung for fuel.
Our top priority when we arrived at the winter pasture was to set up the burrow, because people need sleep. The second priority was to clean out the sheep pen, because sheep need to sleep too. As for the cattle, well, they could wait. After all, there weren’t as many of them.
Previously, the sheep pen was only used by Cuma’s family. Now, with Shinshybek’s family sharing the pasture, there were suddenly two hundred extra sheep, so the pen needed expanding. On the first day, we tried to cut corners. We cut the pen’s three-foot-wide wall by half into a foot and a half. In other words, we scooped out a ring from the center. Next, we tore down some partition walls that had made a space reserved for the goats. But when the sheep returned in the evening, there were still a hundred-some-odd that couldn’t fit inside. The next day, we duly removed the entire west-facing wall, adding a hundred and thirty or so square feet to the pen.
Cuma used a pickax to break apart the solid manure floor, and while Shinshybek and his younger brother, Kurmash, used pointed shovels to dig up slabs of manure, Kama used a square shovel to toss the resulting debris over the wall. From there, Shinshybek’s wife, Sayna, and I used our hands to pass the larger slabs over to Sister-in-law, who in turn erected a new wall with them. With the new wall built, the leftover manure had to be removed from the pen, which the other women and I hoisted out in woven polyester sacks, one sack at a time. The job took a whole day. How tired we were! And not to mention the manure dust that filled the air, choking up our noses and mouths. Everyone coughed incessantly. Our necks were caked with manure. In this pit’s cleaning session, we removed at least a foot and a half of the manure floor.
There was no time to herd the sheep, so the flock was left to wander about nearby. We worked without rest until the afternoon, but the job was still far from complete. My lower back was hurting more and more. Once when I stooped to lift a heavy slab, I barely managed to stand back up. But I was too embarrassed to let it show, so I pushed myself, even as my movements grew ever more sluggish. Fortunately, I wasn’t the only one. By noon, we had all slowed down. When the wind picked up in the afternoon, Kurmash was the first to give in, slumping on his shovel in utter stillness. Not long after, Shinshybek joined in this slumping posture. Cuma worked for a bit longer in silence before suddenly shouting, “Allah!” as he dropped the heavy pickax and plopped bottom-first to the ground. First he took out a towel to wipe his face, then he pulled out his can of yellow Mohe tobacco and papers to roll a cigarette. I thought, it’s time, I can finally complain about my back now. But before I had time to open my mouth, Sister-in-law pulled out a long strip of something—painkillers wrapped in plastic. She offered each of us two of them as if she was passing out candy. Like jelly beans, we chewed and swallowed them. Another bout of silence. I was silent too. Thank goodness I hadn’t opened my mouth.…
* * *
THAT NIGHT, WITHOUT CONSULTING anyone, Kama boiled two pots of water to wash her hair, which was immediately met with her parents’ disapproval. Cuma said angrily, “There’s more work to do tomorrow, your hair will get dirty again. Don’t waste water!” Kama pouted, but there was nothing she could say. It was true; in the desert, water is precious.
After another full day of work, we were finally finished. As soon as we set our tools down, Kama and I changed into clean pants (they were so dirty they had hardened) and boiled a little extra water to wash our faces and arms.
But as soon as we had cleaned ourselves up, we received nightmarish news: the flock still couldn’t fit in the pen, so the following day we’d need to expand the pen by another hundred square feet.…
Just because you’ve washed your face and changed into clean clothes doesn’t mean you can avoid work—we had no choice but to change back into our dirty pants.
On the third day, everyone threw themselves into the work and we finished in time for afternoon tea. We were all exhausted. At noon, when we had sat down to eat boiled mutton on the bone, no one had said a word.
Though the work was hard, I took comfort in the fact that the meals had all been excellent. There was meat to eat every day! And wheat porridge stewed in a meat broth to slurp, with yogurt paste mixed in … and potato and cabbage stewed with dried meat, the meat having been first seared in sheep fat … and plov (pilaf) steamed with chunks of meat. More importantly, the tea those days was spiced with black pepper and cloves. Oh my—the aroma!
As for the sheep pen, this time the size was just right. The sheep were crammed in shoulder to shoulder, so close together that they couldn’t even turn around. I imagined that on those long, cold nights, it must have felt warm to be pressed close like that. But herding the flock into the pen became a challenge. To get the last dozen or so in, you had to shove their butts as hard as you could to squeeze them all in.
Still, work on the pen was not over. To prevent snowstorms from covering up the manure bricks surrounding the walls, which would have made them difficult to access, Sister-in-law and I spent another afternoon erecting a wide portico out of manure along the outer walls under which we could store a winter’s-worth supply of black bricks.
A problem arose from having removed the manure floor from the sheep pen, which was that their “mattress” had become too thin. The air close to the ground was so cold and wet that the frailest of the sheep would struggle to survive the winter. It was up to Kama, Kurmash, and me to spend the next two sunny, breezy days
filling up dozens of sacks with wind-dried bits of manure from near the burrow to give the pen a bit of padding. But that still wasn’t the end. Every day thereafter, when the flock had gone out to pasture, the people who remained at home would dig up the wet manure from the part of the pen shaded by the wall, then break up the manure, spread it under the sun to dry, and at night flatten it back down. Every few days, a few more sacks of dried manure would be added to the floor of the pen.
Cleaning out the sheep pen made of manure bricks
4.
Winter Pasture
ON THE FIRST DAY of our journey south, the camels and livestock traveled for a long time through endless hills. It wasn’t until midday, after ascending a final peak, that the world before us opened up to a plain that was flat enough to gallop through. The earth was pale and boundless, but the sky was as dark as metal—heavy, lustrous, and hard. Nothing else existed between heaven and earth. There was another world across from our world, one beyond the curtain at the world’s edge, a seemingly impenetrable world. Yet, slowly and silently we crossed into it.
In the middle of this expanse, I could fully feel the roundness of the earth—the earth curved down in all directions as our team of camels inched along the crest of the sphere.
After about two hours, a metal fence appeared in our sights. It went from east to west, cutting across everything. We continued, and eventually we were near enough to see that where the dirt road met the iron fence, there was an opening. Passing through, we continued farther southwest. After a long time, we saw the other side of the metal fence—still running east to west as far as the eyes could see.
Why would anyone undertake such an enormous effort to fence in empty land in a desolate, rocky desert?
According to Cuma, it was an effort to turn the scrubland into Kanas (Altai County’s most famous prairie national park). They didn’t want our sheep grazing there anymore; only the wild horses can eat there, so the grass can grow back. Otherwise, when the tourists come from inland, they will say, “I heard Xinjiang is a beautiful place, but there’s nothing here besides the desert!”—without grasses and wild horses, there would be nothing to film, nothing to photograph, nothing at all worth looking at. That would be embarrassing! So it has to be protected.
I assumed this was an impromptu explanation some grassroots cadre had offered to the nomads during a propaganda meeting. The real reason likely had to do with the “Grassland Restoration” policy implemented a few years ago to prevent overgrazing. The land was to be partitioned and rotated into use. The metal fence was to remain for five years. So far, it had been there for three.
* * *
OUR NEIGHBORS WERE a family of four, husband, wife, a young man, and a baby. Shinshybek was the man of the house. After arriving at the burrow, I asked Cuma what the wife’s name was, but Cuma said he didn’t know. So I asked what the boy’s name was, and he didn’t know either. Then I asked about their ages, and he still didn’t know. I was perplexed: “Aren’t they your neighbors?” I later found out that this was their first year they were neighbors, so they didn’t actually know each other.
Until that winter, only Cuma’s family had used this pasture of thousands of hectares. Then, Shinshybek’s family’s land was fenced off because of the restoration policy. For the loss of their pasture, they were compensated with a subsidy. Using the subsidy, they were able to rent pasture land so that they could continue to graze their sheep. That winter, Shinshybek paid Cuma’s family four thousand yuan to use their pasture. Given last year’s heavy snow, the grass was especially lush. As a result, Cuma’s family was happy to rent it out.
After some further probing, I learned that these neighbors owned over two hundred sheep and more than thirty large livestock (mostly camels). In other words, each animal was paying less than twenty yuan for a whole winter’s worth of food! They were the model of thrift.
Not long after settling into my new life, on a foggy moonlit night, two travelers who had lost their way arrived, bearing bad news. Apparently, they were headed for a pasture to the north but had gotten lost. They claimed to have been driving a car, but it couldn’t have been much of a car, as they were dressed for horseback. One had on a pair of oversized rawhide pants, and the younger man wore a heavy fleece vest with fancy sapphire-colored embroidery. The pair were in a hurry to get back on the road. After sharing the news and asking for directions, they left without even a drink of tea. When the guests left, Cuma flew into a rage. He began arguing loudly with Sister-in-law, and harangued her nonstop as if it was all her fault. Sister-in-law continued to spin yarn on her spindle in silence.
As it turns out, the pasture didn’t only belong to Cuma’s family after all. Originally, it had been shared by three families. But many years ago, one of the families moved to Kazakhstan. Not long after, the other family changed trades and went into business. In the years since, Cuma’s family continued to make use of these thousands of hectares, alone, without bothering about ownership. But as soon as they had rented the pasture to Shinshybek, the family who had gone into business decided to solicit their share. They believed they had a right to half of Shinshybek’s rent, so they had petitioned the county authority. Cuma yelled, “He never even comes here, how can he blame me? Never mind the county authority, even if he went straight to the Central Committee, I would still be in the right!” But I really didn’t think he was.
After two days of discussion, the Cumas had prepared their arguments and waited for the other family to come reason with them. But the other family weren’t fools; why would they bother to come all this way just to argue? Naturally, the government mediator wasn’t going to come either. The government is poor, where would they get the money to reimburse the cost of fuel?
So it was that nothing more came of the matter, and everyone heaved a sigh of relief. But I still felt troubled by the precariousness of the life of herders and their pastures.
* * *
IN FABLES, THE FINEST pastures are the ones where “milk flows like a river and skylarks build nests to warm their eggs atop the sheep’s woolly backs”—a promise of peace and plenty. The reality, however, is more one of desolation, loneliness, and helplessness. In reality, year after year, everyone must submit to nature’s will, oscillating endlessly between south and north. In spring, the herders follow the melting of the snow northward, and come autumn, they are driven slowly back to the south. They are forever departing, forever saying goodbye. In spring, lambs are delivered; in summer, they are fattened; in autumn, they breed; in winter, they are pregnant again. The lifetime of a sheep is but a year in the lifetime of a herder, but what about the lifetime of a herder? In this homeland stretching over six hundred miles, in every secret wrinkle on the earth’s surface, every nook and cranny in which shelter can be sought … youth, wealth, love, and hope, everything is swallowed up.
Much later, a trader came to buy horses from us. He declared that in two years—at best—families of nomadic herders would be a thing of the past. Next year, when these southbound flocks return north to the Ulungur plains, he said, they will never make another journey south again.
I was shocked. “So soon?”
My reaction angered him. He put down his bowl of tea and turned to look at me solemnly. “Have we Kazakhs not suffered enough for you yet?”
I kept quiet. What I’d meant was, even though this age-old traditional way of life is indeed drawing to a close, wouldn’t such an abrupt end be traumatizing and disorienting to these people’s souls?
After a long while, I couldn’t help but ask again, “Are you sure? Who said this? Are there official documents?”
He said, “Of course, there are documents, but not for our eyes. In any case, it’s what everyone says.”
Cuma yelled out the name of a national leader and barked, “He said it! He called me yesterday on the phone!”
Everyone laughed, and we changed the topic.
I still wanted to ask, “Do you look forward to settling down?” But I realized it wa
s a stupid question. Of course, settling down is good! Who doesn’t yearn to lead a stable life of comfort and ease?
In the end, this wilderness will be left behind. The herders will no longer be its keepers. The cattle and sheep will no longer tread its every surface. The grass seeds that drift onto the earth in autumn will no longer feel the force of stomping hooves that bury them deep into the soil. The masses of manure that fertilized their growth will no longer fall on them. This land will remain forever open, majestically alone in its vastness. The wilderness will be left behind.
While to the north, along the banks of the Ulungur, vast tracts of badlands will be cultivated into farmland. Crops will greedily suck on the solitary river. Chemical fertilizers will engorge luxuriant grasses with fats and juices, more than enough to nourish the livestock over the long and cold winters. What better option is there?
* * *
WHENEVER CUMA GOT DRUNK, he yelled at me to get out. Had I been the willful type, I would have kicked the door open and left. But after kicking the door open, where would I go? Outside, in every direction, there is only sand and snow. No matter which direction I chose, I would have to walk for a week and still not find a road. Besides, I would have to lug a bag bigger than I was, not to mention the wolves. There was no choice but silent resignation.
When I first arrived to the winter pasture, while the weather was still good, at the end of each day’s work I would go on a long walk by myself. Using the black patch around the burrow as a landmark, I set out for several miles in every direction. Crossing stretches of open desert plain, whenever I climbed up a sand dune to gaze out at the landscape, all I saw was another stretch of open plain and another endless ridge of sand—from where I stood, how I wished to see people and homes and chimney smoke! But there was nothing, not even the shadow of a figure on horseback. The sky folded into the earth seamlessly, blue, singular, unchanging. When the light of dusk swept across the plains, the grasses shimmered. The most beautiful among them was a slender white grass. In the waning light, the luminescent stalks stood tall. Their darkness was perceptible only in their shadows, shadows that stretched long and thin eastward like schools of fish swimming mightily in formation over the earth.