by Li Juan
Several days later, when Sister-in-law had a spare moment, she found sticks with which to skewer the sheep heads through their throats. After lighting a manure fire in the clearing outside, she burned off the fur from the heads. Only then did they close their eyes.
As for the large basin full of blood, it froze into a block of ice that we dumped in the snow nearby. This was the dog’s only snack, and he licked it all through the winter. It wasn’t until February, when the weather warmed up, that the dog had finally licked it clean.
7.
The Only Water
BEFORE I LEFT, my mother said to me with envy, “This winter you’ll be drinking the very best water there is!” I thought it must be true. After all, the burrow was in a desert, where the only source of water was snow. What could be better than snowmelt, which is distilled water fallen from the sky? By contrast, Akehara village is situated on the banks of the Ulungur in the scrublands. The well water in the village is very hard. It’s only gotten saltier and more bitter over the years. If you cook with it, there’s no need to add salt. And all our clothes come out of the wash stained with thick rings of mineral scum.
In reality, while desert water doesn’t taste bad—you might even say it’s sweet and refreshing; it certainly does not taste salty or peculiar—but in terms of clarity … in the past, seeing water like that would have made me feel faint.
Last year’s snowstorms were a disaster, but this year, it was record drought. There was decent snowfall at the end of November, but then it stayed dry until the end of December. On a few late nights, we did get a rare flurry that turned the earth white. But the following morning, when I went outside full of hope, all I saw was the same old black burrow settlement because the snow was always followed by strong winds. I envied the herders to the east. Our snow must have been blown over to them.
Luckily, once the winds died down, snow had accumulated in the ditches along the sand dunes and at the bases of tufts of grass. Unfortunately, collecting snow like this for half an hour only produced enough water to wash one pair of socks. Because the snow had been blown over the desert by the wind, it had collected dirt, hay, and bits of manure, all clumped together. When the snow melted, it was turbid, depositing over an inch of sand in the pot (no wonder it was so heavy!), a number of sheep droppings I refused to count, as well as objects as large as horse dung that, even when fully settled at the bottom of the pot, still left the water suspiciously orange—maybe my socks were cleaner.
On the other hand, my socks were stinky, while the water was odorless, so it must be cleaner than my socks. Drink up!
To be fair, we weren’t exactly careful about collecting snow. If we had been as meticulous as watchmakers, there’s no doubt that our snow would have been a little purer. But at the same time, it would have taken over a week to fill a sack.
I used a shallow plate to shovel small clumps of hard, wind-blown snow into the woven sack. Kama used a ladle. Ever practical, Sister-in-law simply used a broom to sweep the snow into a pile before filling her sack. Kama worked twice as fast as I did, and Sister-in-law was ten times faster.
Cuma never did things like collect snow, which made him rather picky. Every day, after bringing home the sheep, the first thing he did was to peek into the big tin pot. If there were only a few sheep droppings and not a single piece of horse dung, he would observe, happily, “This pot of water must have been brought to us by Li Juan.” Correct!
After three days of scavenging for snow like this, I decided I wouldn’t take another shower all winter. A week later, I decided I wouldn’t wash my clothes either.
The sacks we used for collecting snow had once contained fifty-five pounds of mixed animal feed. Once filled and compacted, they each carried thirty-three pounds of snow. The weight was bad enough, but the distance made it much worse. And each day, we had to travel farther than the last! Snow from the nearby sand dunes had already been collected long ago. Each trip required at least five rest stops, and by the time I got home, I was so exhausted I was seeing stars. Yet, each day required at least two trips to collect enough snow to make water to last a family a single day.
For our family of four, most of the water was used for making tea. Other than myself, everyone else drank massive amounts of tea. Six rounds a day was the minimum, and each round emptied a whole large thermos at least. The rest of the water was used for cooking. We only ate one meal a day, which was a proper dinner in the evening, consisting of noodle soup, hand-pulled ramen, and the like (at other hours, we ate dry nan soaked in tea). The remaining water was used to wash the bowls (one bowl of water could clean a whole stack). And the very last of the water was used to wash our hands and faces—pouring water straight from the kettle was the most economical method, using up less than half a basin for all four of us.
Even the little water we washed the bowls with was saved to soak pieces of dry nan for the dog or as a nutritional boost for the pregnant cow. When we first set up camp, the mud Cuma used to patch up the base of the stove, ceiling, and door frame was mixed using water we had already used to wash our hands.
* * *
IN THE MIDDLE OF DECEMBER, Kama had to leave. Her grandma was ill, so she returned to the banks of the Ulungur to care for her. As a tidy, self-respecting young woman, she refused to emerge from the wild with a dirty face and messy hair. She had to wash her hair. So that evening, after milking the cattle, Sister-in-law ventured out into the twilight in search of snow and returned with a big sack in the dark. Her little girl had enough to wash her hair, and some of her clothes as well.
Even though I had already determined I would never wash my hair again, watching Kama wash hers still left me green with envy. After that three-day journey through the wind and the three days spent working on the sheep pen, my hair had become a dirty clump. More than ugly, it was uncomfortable. So the day after Kama washed her hair, I forced myself to make three trips collecting snow. But when the time came to actually use it, I could only bring myself to use half a basin … although I had carried it all on my own, I would still have felt ashamed to use too much of it.
I washed my hair Kama’s way, using only a half-full basin to wash and rinse. When I was done, my head was still full of shampoo. The water that dripped from my bangs stung my eyes. Kama believed that when the hair gets to a certain level of filthiness, you had to opt for the strongest of cleaning agents. So, for the first wash, she used laundry detergent, and only for the second wash did she use shampoo. The shampoo had been given to her by her sister Sharifa. She used it sparingly.
Laundry detergent seemed a bit much.…
Still, how black that half basin of water had become. As a woman, I felt ashamed. But I consoled myself: Better than not washing it at all, right? And although my hair was still full of harsh chemicals from cheap shampoo, my head felt at least two ounces lighter.
Kama would use the water from washing her hair to wash her clothes. I didn’t do that because I worried it would make my clothes even dirtier.
In a grave tone, Cuma announced that he and Sister-in-law waited until April to bathe. I was speechless. Only later did I learn that it was a joke. How could it have been possible? You’d die from itching.
I resisted the urge to bathe precisely because I was worried about the itch; think about it: all lathered up with only a bowl of water to rinse off. A bath like that could only make you itchier. As a result, whenever I itched, I scratched. And if it was somewhere I couldn’t reach, I simply leaned into a post and wriggled. Cuma laughed himself into tears as he said, “Li Juan is just like cattle.”
Fortunately, I learned that after the itching got to a certain point, it gradually started to go away.
* * *
NO MATTER HOW DIRTY or scarce it was, at least we had water. The pastures thirty kilometers north of us didn’t have any water at all, not even the foulest of liquids! In the middle of December, on one of Cuma’s days off, he went north to help a relative dig a burrow. It was two hours by horse, which is plenty far.
Still, it was the same region—so why was it so different? Cuma said there was practically no snow there.
The reason, it turned out, was because it was too flat. When the wind blew, there was nowhere for the snow to collect. The herders there had no choice but to rent a car and drive farther north to the Ulungur River, where blocks of ice could be excavated and brought back. A fifty-five-pound sack of ice fetched twenty yuan … the herders could barely scrape by, but what about the livestock? The poor animals had to make do with the minuscule bits of snow stuck to the base of the grasses they ate (and impossible to collect manually). To ingest just a bit of snow, they had to swallow a mouthful of sand.
Cuma said he had never seen drought like that.
When he returned from helping his relative, Cuma also brought eight sacks of ice from the Ulungur River. On the coldest or busiest days, we didn’t go out to collect snow, but melted the ice instead. Even though Sister-in-law and I (Kama had left by this point) did our best collecting snow every day, and we all used water sparingly, we still managed to use up all the ice. It was already the end of December and it had still not snowed.
Herding sheep was hard on Cuma. On several occasions, while bringing home the sheep, he stopped at the top of a sand dune just north of the burrow, unable to move. When he got off his horse, landing butt first on the sand, he started slapping and punching his outstretched legs. They must have been frozen numb. There was nothing I could say to comfort him, only, “It’s all right, one more day and you can rest. It will be Shinshybek’s turn to herd the sheep.” He sighed, “Rest for what? Sitting at home is no good, nothing to do, just drink tea all day, and we’re nearly out of water.…” It was heart-wrenching to hear.
One morning, Cuma went to patrol the pasture’s western reaches on horseback. When he returned, he told us that the snow by the dune ridges was thicker and asked Sister-in-law and me to head there once we had finished the household chores, to fill up as many sacks as we could. On his day of rest, he’d drive the camels over to retrieve the sacks.
At midday, the two of us set out with six huge polyester sacks under our arms. After walking nearly two miles across a flat expanse, we gradually entered an area with sand dunes. Sure enough, on the wind-facing side of the dunes were patches of perfect, porcelain-smooth snow as deep as five centimeters. I was thrilled; the sheer number of snow sacks we could fill! If only we could share a few with our neighbors to the north.
Bracing against the cold, howling wind, we shoveled for two hours without pause. The sacks were filled until they were full and hard. We fastened them shut with metal wires and piled them together. As we walked away, I turned to see them still huddled together as if afraid of something. So conspicuous against an empty background … might some curious beast come at night and ram them over or kick them down?
Two days later, at the crack of dawn, husband and wife, along with a camel, went there to haul snow. It was amazing to me. A place so far away in the vast wildlands where everything looked the same. Without a road or any markers, how was Sister-in-law planning to find those snow sacks? But they did. This haul of snow lasted us more than three days. Even though it was a bounty, the time and energy involved was still too high a price to pay. Had it not been for our desperation, we would not have resorted to such measures.
* * *
THE NEED FOR SNOW led me to observe the clouds. On warm days, when weird-looking clouds appeared in the sky, I’d run to ask Cuma, “Does that mean it will snow?” He would only throw me a glance, unwilling to humor me with a response.
But if they weren’t the harbingers of snow, then why did those clouds look so weird? Sometimes, clouds occupied half the sky in long arrays, radiating from the north, truly magnificent. Other times, they were like a pot of sticky rice balls bubbling up from the north. By dusk, they would begin to cluster against an emptying sky, growing massive and haughty. In the end, they would gather into a few wide rivers that ran in parallel, flowing from east to west, disappearing into the sunset.
During boisterous sunsets clustered like mountains, nebulous nights etched with the moon’s halo, and those dawns dim and gloomy … it must have been hiding, ruminating, brooding, equivocating—a whole month and still no snow! On foggy days, an odd flurry of hexagonal white flakes fluttered our way. At times, the starlit night sky cast off a nonchalant spattering. But those mere sprinkles took flight with the lightest of winds, how stingy.
It wasn’t until one dark morning when uneven clouds blotted the entire sky. I climbed a sand dune to the northeast and saw a wave of golden light stretching along the horizon from north to south, crashing toward us, blocking out the sun. I returned to announce with excitement, “It will snow for sure!”
This time, Cuma confirmed it. But then he added, “It won’t be much.”
Indeed, at ten o’clock that evening, dense snowfall whirled into our camp.
Indeed, it was short-lived, unable to stick.
After bringing home the sheep the next day, Cuma told us that it had snowed heavily six miles to the west, enough to cover your ankles!
I asked, “Oh no, that couldn’t have been it, could it? There’ll be more this evening, right?”
He laughed, “No, the snow’s moved on.”
I thought he meant it had gone elsewhere, so I asked in exasperation, “Where to?”
He said, “To Urumqi, to see the doctor.” Which was a joke. But it was clear that he was in high spirits.
Still, it was a good start. The sky had finally offered us an opening. From then on, the days remained warm and misty. The promise of snow seemed to hang thick in the air. Finally, at the end of December, before the real cold front came, it snowed three times in quick succession! The earth was buried beneath four inches of the stuff.
As soon as the sky cleared, I ran out to haul snow with glee, bringing back three sacks in under half an hour.
Cuma exclaimed, “Wow! Li Juan is certainly in a good mood!”
How could I not be? There was snow everywhere! A few steps out the door and I could start collecting it, no need to walk one or even several miles. Even more remarkable than its abundance was its purity; the water that melted from it had never been clearer. It was fluffy, soft, and light as a feather. Carrying a full sack home was child’s play! In the past, a sack that size would have left me dizzy by the time I got home.
After the sky cleared, it was bright and dazzling beyond words, as if it had been emptied of everything, giving every last flake over to the earth. The sky was no longer so heavy, no longer so burdened.
* * *
AND SO IT WAS, with the coldest days approaching, we said farewell to drought. Looking back, our month of drought was manageable, especially when considering our neighbors to the north.
To me, what felt most rewarding was the contrast between the difficulty of hauling half a sack of snow at the beginning to the feeling at the end, when I was transporting snow in leaps and bounds. That’s the kind of progress you could describe with a sentence that might begin with “Before you know it!”
Realizing that we didn’t need the remaining ice, I melted it all. The three of us closed the door and bathed ourselves in turn. Sister-in-law washed all the tablecloths and towels. Then the next day, she washed all the bedding and pillowcases. And the day after that, all our coats and sweaters. How extravagant!
By the way, Sister-in-law’s homemade sheep-fat soap was rather extravagant as well—the size of a basin, a thick, round cake of it! When she used it, she chucked the whole thing into the basin and simply rubbed clothes against it. She didn’t find it cumbersome, nor did she think to cut it into smaller pieces before using it.
* * *
THERE WAS SNOW, finally, but for a while, it seemed to never stop. It was all right during the daytime when light sprinklings fluttered in and out, but come night, the plastic sheet over the window began pitter-pattering. It was the sound of hail.
When there was no snow, everyone was extremely worried. Now that there was snow, it
wasn’t long before we started fretting again. Cuma looked up at the sky and said to me, “Last year was like this too, snow for two days, rest for one.…” Unfortunately for herders and the herds, the previous year had been a rare disaster.
But as it turned out, he didn’t need to worry. After a few large snowstorms during the cold front, the rest of the season stayed bright and clear. It had turned out to be a good year!
* * *
A FEW MORE THINGS about snow:
Every few days, whenever snow was carpeting the ground, Sister-in-law would carry the felt kiiz, syrmak, and tekemet that covered the bed outside and beat them against the fresh snow, one at a time. Once cleaned, she laid them back on the bed. Alas, everyone went to bed with their boots on and Cuma’s cigarettes were always ashing on the bed. So it didn’t last.
The biggest challenge on snowy days was cleaning out the sheep pen. Before the flock was led back in the evening, we had to shovel out the snow (if only we had a big bamboo broom!), then pad it with a layer of dry manure. If the pen had been cleaned but the sheep wouldn’t return for a while, several large plastic tarps had to be laid down to stop the snow from covering the pen again. Once the sheep were finally filing in, the tarps had to be yanked back out along with the snow. Sheep sleep crouching on their bellies, and if their stomachs get cold, there’s a risk of diarrhea.
Whenever snow covered the solar panel, we quickly ran out of electricity so we went to sleep early, which I liked.
I feared running out of snow so much that whenever the weather got warm, I began to fuss, “If it stays warm like this, we’ll run out of water!” To which Cuma only laughed.