by Li Juan
* * *
OF COURSE, THESE AIMLESS strolls sometimes led to my getting lost. It was usually on the cloudy days, when no sun shone. The only landmarks were the dummy on top of our burrow settlement and the metal tripod nearby. As I walked, I would turn back to check they were still there. Still, there were times when I looked back to see nothing! Then I found myself walking in circles; I lost all confidence in my sense of direction. The earth undulated under the towering sky. Everything looked the same. There wasn’t a horse or cow in sight.… I nervously picked a direction and walked until I could climb a nearby dune to scan the horizon—only to find that the lifesaving tripod was in the opposite direction! People have one leg shorter than the other, as they say, so who can blame them for walking circles in the wilderness?
A month passed. The sun’s arc shifted slowly northward. Daylight lingered, which meant more and more idle time. Whoever’s rest day it was—whether Cuma or Shinshybek—was inundated with idleness, with hours of sleep, and boredom without release. Idle Cuma leaped up without warning, wrapped his arms around busy Sister-in-law, and with the melodramatic tone of a long-awaited reunion cried, “This old woman is the greatest!” His overenthusiastic clap on her back knocked the wind out of Sister-in-law, sending her into a fit of coughing. Anyway, boredom.
Only I was as cheery as ever, to everyone’s bewilderment. I worked with gusto and ate heartily. After finishing my work and eating my meal as quickly as I could, I disappeared behind a sand dune. There were times when Cuma couldn’t help but ask, “Always walking here and there, what are you doing?”
“Playing.”
“How is walking here and there playing?”
“I’m playing a game of ‘walking here and there.’”
Unable to understand, he simply smirked.
Because I was enthralled by the walks through this boundless land, herding the calves became my favorite chore. The calves plodded slowly, so I plodded slowly behind them. Strolling like this allowed me to look like I wasn’t doing nothing.
Before heading home after a stroll, I would climb up a nearby dune to scan the horizon. That way, when I arrived home, I could report to everyone: “The cattle are to the northeast, and the camels and calves too!” It was further proof that I wasn’t just doing nothing.
What I named “Clingy” grass popped up everywhere.
The bustling world of animal tracks
17.
Isolation
IN THE PRESENT ERA, there are no longer any secluded corners. Even the moon’s surface has lost its mystery. Even our burrow settlement, tucked in the heart of the desert, maintains a degree of contact with the outside world. This fact was apparent from everyone’s day-to-day conversations—always so much to talk about! Chatting in the morning, chatting in the evening, once the chatting started, it never stopped. The speaker alternated from one pitch to another. The listener reacted in varying registers of hmms and awws. There had to be a constant flow of fresh information entering the wilderness for there to be so much to talk about.
Most of the information was passed via conversations between herders on horseback. Then, there was Shinshybek’s satellite phone. But how many days would go by before you saw another person? And that junk of a phone hardly ever had signal, a bar or two at most in the middle of the night. Every conversation on the phone sounded like a shouting match: “Can you hear me? I can hear you! What! Come again? I can hear you! Allah! You can’t hear me? …” But for the wilderness, it was good enough.
We arrived at our burrow and everything seemed to have settled down; all the important jobs had been finished. It was time for dear Kama to return north to Akehara to care for her ailing grandma. But how was she to make the journey? Where would she find a ride?
When I stitched, my needle moved quickly. Cuma was always praising: like driving down an asphalt road!
The vans that pick up passengers on the pastures were unregulated. Their frightening condition would horrify city folk. The vans crawled slowly through the barely visible sand road at twelve miles per hour. Only when the vans snuck their way onto the asphalt road along the Ulungur River’s south bank could they finally enjoy the thrill of being a motor vehicle.
But even the vans were a rarity. If you found one when you needed it, it felt like … felt like … felt like firecrackers going off! Indeed, only firecrackers, our Han toy, with its maniacal “cracking, popping, snapping” bursts of energy, could accurately express the sense of excitement.
Finally, one day, Cuma came back after helping relatives in the north dig their burrow with news that a car would be passing through a nearby pasture the next day. After dropping people off somewhere to the south, it would return northward by the same route two days later. Kama hurried to prepare.
As I mentioned before, by “prepare,” she simply meant washing her hair. I found this difficult to understand. Not merely because we were experiencing drought, so water was precious—but wasn’t she about to go home? The banks of the Ulungur had no shortage of water, why didn’t she go home to wash? If it was for the benefit of the driver and other passengers, wasn’t that a tad vain, not to mention extravagant?
But it was so much more than mere “vanity”! Her life was already so modest that to be careless about a detail like this would have been like shouting, “I’m indigent.” Lives of the poor need dignity too, and dignity starts with taking care of the smallest details. Even being clean and presentable for a driver and a couple of passengers for a few hours was nothing to sneeze at!
Just picture it—traveling across a vast, empty expanse, the figure of a girl on the side of the dirt road draws closer and closer. The driver pulls up to look: so neat and elegant! She must have fallen from heaven (not crawled out of the dirt …). In this quiet and rugged world, such a sight would be miraculous and comforting, not to mention a reminder of hope and joy.
So Kama not only washed her hair, she also tidied herself from head to toe, unpacking a new pair of socks to wear. Then she sat down for a whole morning putting on makeup, greasing her hair, applying her foundation. She spent half an hour just brushing her hair! And it wasn’t some fancy hairstyle either, just a clean, sleek ponytail.
In my view, the information about the van was far too unreliable. It was only hearsay and we had no way of getting in touch with the driver to confirm. There was no way of knowing if there had been a sudden change of plans, and yet nevertheless everyone treated the information as irrefutable.
It was a cold day. That morning, there was only a single set of footprints in the snow revealing the black manure underneath, winding across the burrow settlement before vanishing over a dune. With Kama preparing to leave, Sister-in-law had boiled a pot full of meat the evening before. In the morning, we ate the leftover meat and broth. After that, everyone went about their individual tasks, leaving Kama to pretty herself in peace. When it was time, she put on all her jewelry, a clean coat, and leather flats (so thin!). Suddenly, the girl wrapped her arms around Sister-in-law and kissed her, purring in Mandarin, “Mother, my love!” Sister-in-law smiled and kissed her back.
I said, “It’s still early, how about one more haul of snow?”
She turned her hip sassily and ignored me. She was thrilled to be leaving the wilderness.
Kama had already packed her bags the evening before. Sayna brought over a bag of sweets to give to Grandma. Sister-in-law prepared two horse sausages, a bag of cooked meat, two sheepskins, and one nan that had been baked in the ashes of sheep manure (nan baked this way was the tastiest!). Everything was bundled up in a sheet of white cloth. In addition, Sister-in-law handed Kama a few of the pricier sweets, which made her scream out loud. Then Kama held out her empty wallet to Cuma—she needed money. Without hesitation, Cuma slipped a hundred yuan inside, which made her even happier. She’d only wanted fifty. Finally, Cuma added five hundred yuan for Grandma to use for groceries and medical expenses.
When picking a hat, Kama held out two and asked her father for his honest opin
ion. Cuma said that the lilac one looked best, so she put it on, low over her forehead. Watching his neatly dressed daughter merrily skipping about, Cuma smiled. He quietly rolled a cigarette while waiting patiently for her to be ready. Next to his well-groomed daughter, Cuma looked woefully drab. He wore his patched-up, oversized boots and the raggedy overcoat that was wrinkled and out of shape. Next to her excitement, he looked down and listless, but explained that it was because he had slept badly: “That meat broth was too invigorating.”
Then the two went out the door and mounted their horses. Cuma took her to the road (by “road,” we simply mean two car-tire tracks in the desert) to wait. According to the information, the van would be passing through at around noon.
Their horses disappeared behind a dune ridge far to the north. I stood on a dune and watched for a long time.
With the two gone, Sister-in-law and I felt alone. She worked in the sheep pen. After collecting snow, I went over to Sayna’s to help with the embroidery, not returning until two in the afternoon. But when I pushed open the door, I found father and daughter sitting around the low table munching on the leftover meat.…
They said they had waited four hours at the roadside until they could no longer bear the cold so they came home. The van, it seemed, was either still a long ways off or was long gone.
Kama and I had already shaken hands and said our goodbyes. Now, face-to-face over a plate of meat, we shook hands once more as if it was a long overdue reunion: “Hello! Are you well?” It was hilarious.
Kama changed out of her clean clothes and nice shoes to collect snow. Cuma continued to patch the sheep pen. Sister-in-law unwrapped the white cloth bundle to return the sausages and other treats to the yurt.
I asked Cuma, “Why don’t the vans come to pick people up?”
He explained patiently, “If it was your car, would you drive all this way? Fuel is expensive!”
That evening, the money for Grandma and Kama’s allowance were returned to Cuma. Though it was agreed that it would be handed over again when it was time to leave, Kama wasn’t pleased. I thought it strange as well; why take the money back? Was he afraid that she might spend it? But where in these wildlands would she spend the money?
Days later, a phone call (there had been no signal for over a week …) garnered some reliable information: there was a truck heading north delivering ice for the pastures where the drought was especially severe. So, father and daughter made a plan to go to their relatives’ home up north to wait for the truck.
But it was far away, about three hours on horseback. Taking into account the time spent waiting for the truck, Cuma most likely wouldn’t make it there and back on the same day.
Another round of goodbyes began. The neighbors came over to repeat their well-wishes for Grandma. Sister-in-law started rewrapping the food parcel. Cuma gave the money back to Kama and noted it in his accounts, this time with an additional twenty yuan and a handful of change. Kama counted it twice with a gleeful smile, each time sighing, “So much money, so much money …”
With the previous experience in mind, I realized how significant goodbyes were, so I decided to give her something too. After some thought, I decided to give her the small bag I used for storing toiletries. She was surprised and a little overwhelmed, politely declining several times. Until then, she only had a plastic bag with which to carry her small things, which wasn’t at all durable. I told her, “The plastic bag could easily break if you hold it in your hand on horseback. Your phone will be gone in no time. Then your mirror too, then your purse … and then Kama will be crying!” She hugged me, rocking back and forth to show her gratitude.
Again, early in the morning, she spent a long time brushing her hair, greasing it, applying foundation, clipping in a hairpin. No stage of the process was skimped on.
When father and daughter once again disappeared beyond the distant dune ridge, I thought: Just wait until dusk, I’ll open the door and the two of them will be inside giggling. “Hello! Are you well? Ay, still no car!”
However, this time, she really left. When Cuma returned around midday the next day, he described the truck that came and said that he watched until it was out of sight before turning to leave. Sister-in-law asked for more details. After that, husband and wife sank into a deep silence.
* * *
KAMA WAS GONE! It felt like a hundred people leaving us! How lonely we were.
From then on, the nights grew long and quiet. By the light of the solar-powered lamp, I studied Kazakh, Sister-in-law made yarn, and the kitten practiced catching mice. Cuma pored over a pile of old Kazakh-language newspapers. Every time he finished reading one, he folded it several times and cut it into long strips that he rolled up—for rolling cigarettes. If some item caught his attention, he stopped to read it out loud for Sister-in-law. When he reached the end of the article, Sister-in-law would put down whatever she was doing to quietly read the passage to herself. Husband and wife had learned the Latin alphabet as children, and although both had later tried to learn the Arabic alphabet, they could only sound the letters out.
On evenings like this, Kurmash often came to visit. First, he talked with Cuma awhile, then handed me his phone so that I could help him fix some problem he was having. The phone’s operating system was in Chinese, which he couldn’t read.
During the day, I helped with the scrubbing, washing, sweeping in the morning before going outside to herd cattle and collect snow. In the afternoon, I went to Sayna’s to help her embroider. Sister-in-law cleaned out the sheep pen and cattle burrow, baked nan, and mended felt mats. When it was Cuma’s turn to rest, he repaired and patched everything under the sun. Then he slept. Then he sat in a daze smoking for a long time before finally searching for more things to fix. When there was nothing more to do, he turned his attention to the kitten. Once he managed to catch the cat, he pinched its little head between his big hands and “massaged” it because he thought it might have a headache—once, when he had a headache, I gave him a head massage.
When he saw the cat sleeping on its back with both front paws resting on its chest, he waved us over to look. Then, he lay down beside the cat to imitate it … anyway, that’s loneliness.
Were a guest to show up, it would have been like saving his life!
There’s a Kazakh saying that goes, “When there are forty guests, one must be the god of happiness.” Which tells us two things: first, Kazakhs love guests; second, there are too few guests.
Yet no matter how plain life is, no matter how little happens, won’t there always be something worth sharing, worth pursuing?
* * *
ONE DAY WHEN CUMA came home, he was silent for a long time. When he finally opened his mouth, he said, “Li Juan, today, when I was herding, I saw a mouse. It only had three legs so it had to hop.” I gasped, desperate to learn more.
When he saw that I was genuinely curious, he began to perform: “Then, I saw another mouse. It only had one eye.”
I was skeptical: “Really?”
He said, “And there was another mouse. It had no tail.”
I no longer believed him. But he couldn’t stop himself. “Then there was this fox with red fur. It was real handsome, but it also had no tail.”
I was actively ignoring him now. But he only got more excited. “Last night when I got up to relieve myself, I saw a bear!”
I told Sister-in-law in Kazakh, “He said there are bears!” Sister-in-law warned him to stop.
Over the days that followed, he kept telling the same joke over and over. What lack of imagination. It was like he’d seen every animal on the planet that was missing an arm or leg.
Yet, there was no other news.
Ever since we arrived at the winter pasture, I’d grown an enormous appetite, especially when it came to greasy foods that made my mouth water. At first, I suspected that it had something to do with the lack of a diverse diet. But, on second thought, was it really different from the meals I had back home? They might well have been less varie
d than what I was eating here. I pondered the question some more and concluded that it must have had something to do with my sense of security. I was subconsciously experiencing an existential crisis—trapped in the wilds with no transport and no way to call for help.
I was lonely, and when there was nothing to do, I took longer and longer walks. Returning home, Cuma would say, “You’ve been walking for ages, what have you seen?”
I answered impatiently, “A bear, with no eyes!”
One day, Cuma came back from herding and told me, “Seven inlanders coming! They’ve been walking for days through the desert!”
At first, I thought this was more of his nonsense, but he turned to report the same news to Sister-in-law, in Kazakh. That’s when I believed him, though I still couldn’t believe it!
Cuma said that they were out here for trade, mainly to sell clothes. Since entering the desert, they had stayed with one herding family. Every day, each of them set out with two or three poly-weave bags toward nearby pastures to peddle their wares. By “nearby,” he meant more than six miles on foot! They couldn’t leave until they’d sold everything. When Cuma met them, he invited them to show their wares here. But when they heard what direction we lived in, they shook their heads. That’s too far, they said, it’d take five hours to walk and they wouldn’t make it back that evening.