The Eagle Huntress

by Liz Welch

  The translator knew this because when he brought tourists to visit, I would always help my father demonstrate for them how we hunt with eagles: I would hold his eagle and he would call to her while dragging a rabbit pelt. The tourists loved that I was so comfortable with such a big bird. What the translator did not know was that I had started going on hunts as a scarer, or that I was working with my brother’s eagle. That was just lucky timing.

  After my father invited Asher and the translator into our home, Asher opened his backpack and pulled out a thin silver book, which I now know was a computer. We did not own one, nor did we have them at our school, so it seemed like magic to see it open up to images of the two young eagle hunters Asher had photographed already—a thirteen-year-old boy called Erkabolen and a fourteen-year-old boy named Bahkbergen, both dressed in hunting clothes, standing on hilltops with the Altai Mountains in the background, either holding or flying their eagles. Seeing the boys in those images made me feel a bit jealous. Why couldn’t I do that? I knew I could be just as good as they were—maybe even better.

  Asher then asked my father if he could photograph me with my father’s eagle, and when I heard the translation in Kazakh, I held my breath and prayed my father would say yes. I wanted to be like the boys in those photos.

  Asher did not know that I was already learning how to hunt and that I had been training with my brother’s eagle. That I had been studying my brother’s every move since he began training. And that my father had been working with me in anticipation of my getting an eagle of my own.

  Still, I watched my father contemplate the request. He pinned his chin to his chest and paused for what felt to me like a very long time but was probably only a few seconds.

  “Aisholpan has been feeding my eagle since she was very small,” my dad explained to Asher. “She takes care of her brother’s eagle and already knows how to take on and off the hood, and can put the eagle on her perch. She has even been learning how to become a scarer.”

  I saw Asher’s eyes light up. He knew enough about eagle hunting to realize that was a big deal.

  “Aisholpan, do you want to do some more training tomorrow?” my father asked.

  My smile was the answer. “Jaksi!” I said, which means “all right,” or “I am good,” in Kazakh. Both my mom and dad laughed. Either could have answered for me.

  “This man wants to take your photo with the eagle,” my dad added. “Is that fine, too?”

  I smiled and nodded.

  “You promise you won’t cry when your picture is taken?” my dad teased in Kazakh. The translator did not need to translate into English for Asher. Neither would get the joke.

  The next day, we set out in the late afternoon. Asher wanted me to wear a traditional outfit for eagle hunters, so my father pulled out Samrakhan’s dark blue velvet jacket and matching pants, which had golden embroidery down the lapels and around the wrist and ankle cuffs. I slipped this on over a white turtleneck sweater and cinched my brother’s thin leather belt, which is encrusted with small stones, around my waist. I then slipped on my black leather boots before placing his fox-fur hat on my head.

  As I emerged from the house to join Asher and my father outside by the van, I saw my father smile.

  “Jaksi,” he said. “Good.”

  “Rakmet,” I responded, and I meant it for more than the compliment.

  I climbed into the back of the gray Russian van, which was already idling, with Kazakh music blaring from the radio. The twang of the stringed dombra melding with the growly hum of the mouth harp filled the van.

  My father climbed into the front seat, holding my brother’s eagle. Her hood was on and she was bobbing her head back and forth, seemingly to the beat, as we drove toward the tallest mountain nearby, roughly forty minutes away.

  Asher wanted a tall peak with a dusting of snow on the ground, something that was not hard to find in Bayan-Ölgii in October. As we drove, Asher scanned the horizon and shouted and pointed when he saw a mountain peak emerge—a majestic and sprawling pyramid covered with a layer of snow that made it stand out above all the rocky hilltops that surrounded it—brown, brick red, and muted gray against a soft white backdrop.

  “Perfect!” Asher shouted as the van sped up toward the closest hill. As usual with any driving in Bayan-Ölgii, there was no road—just hard-packed terrain that trucks, motorbikes, horses, and camels alike could traverse. Our van splashed through a lazy, meandering river and past a herd of drinking goats before coming to a halt.

  I climbed out and met my father at the base of the small, rocky hill that Asher had chosen for the first photo. My father gave me the leather glove, which I slipped on my right hand, and then he placed the eagle on my arm.

  I felt her weight—fourteen pounds—and she was so tall that her head rose higher than mine as she wrapped her strong talons around my wrist. She was still wearing her hood, and my father advised me to wait until I was settled in the spot where my picture would be taken before removing it, so that the eagle would remain calm.

  I began climbing to the top of the hill, using my left hand to pull my body up while balancing this toddler-sized bird on my right arm, and experienced the same sense of joy I feel whenever I gallop my pony up into the mountains.

  My dad climbed behind me, saying nothing but a few words of encouragement—to me and to the bird.

  “You have a good way with her,” he said as we made the ascent. “I can tell she trusts you.”

  I felt that as well.

  Once we got to the spot where Asher asked me to sit, I looked down below. Asher, this big, burly guy, looked so small in the distance. He gave me the thumbs-up and then started pointing his camera lens toward me and the eagle. That was my sign to take off her hood.

  Once I slipped it off her head, she looked right at me. Her eyes were pitch-black and shiny. They locked with mine, and I felt a tingling throughout my whole body. Then she turned her head from side to side in quick, deft movements, starting and stopping abruptly to take in the scene around her. Her entire body tensed, as if she were ready to launch. Long leather straps were attached to the cuffs on her feet, just above her claws, and I wrapped them around my right hand in case she wished to fly sooner than I wanted her to.

  My father had a skinned rabbit leg in his bag. He clambered down the hill and got to a spot that was out of the camera’s view. Once he was in place, he gave Asher the thumbs-up and then pointed at me and did the same. I stood up and held my arm out straight to one side, and then my father yelled, “Huka!”—his signal for my brother’s bird to launch.

  I knew that Asher wanted to document the ancient practice of eagle hunting, and how the tradition is passed on from father to child. But I had never been photographed in this formal way before. Yes, tourists took snapshots of me, my father, and my brother. But this felt different. As if both my brother’s eagle and I were on a stage, not just out on a practice hunt. I think she knew this, too, because when her talons tightened around my arm this time, just before she launched into the air, her ascent felt lighter, easier, and more free than it had in the past. As she rose, she spread her wings so quickly that a shadow was cast over my face, and for a second her wings shielded me from the late-autumn sun. I watched in awe as she soared into the air and toward my dad, who was waving the skinned rabbit leg in the air. In the stillness of that chilly afternoon, I could hear the sounds of Asher’s camera—click, click, click, click, click—carried on the breeze and mingling with my father’s “Huka!” call.

  We did that several times, until the sun started its early descent. It was tiring, but I was too excited to notice. Asher put his camera in its bag and waved both hands in the air as if he were doing half a jumping jack. Time to come down.

  I placed the eagle back on my arm, which now ached from the exertion, and held on to her tether as I made my descent.

  Back at the van, Asher looked neither happy nor sad. Sort of in between.

  “He did not get the shot he wanted,” our translator sai
d. “He wants to try one more location.”

  My father and I said that was fine, though my stomach was starting to rumble. We climbed back in the van, and I dug a piece of rock cheese from my coat pocket. We drove another half an hour, the sky turning from a bright blue to a more muted lavender with every passing minute.

  Asher saw another clump of hills in the distance, without the big snowy mountain in the background, and he shouted to the driver, “Let’s go there!”

  This time, the ascent was a breeze. My father and I had had a good practice run, and both the eagle and I had had our snacks. We were ready.

  For this shot, Asher asked me to do the same thing: let the eagle fly to my father. But something changed. When I took off the eagle’s hood, she looked at me for a short time. My father called her, as he had done earlier that day, but the eagle kept looking at me. She then spread her wings, which spanned six feet, and instead of springing into the air, she wrapped one wing around me and gave me a hug. The love I felt for her at that moment was so big that I forgot why we were there. Instead of encouraging her to fly, I put my cheek next to her beak and she nuzzled me, as a child does its mother.

  My father’s “Huka!” pulled me out of that magical moment.

  “Huka!” We both heard it again.

  She darted her head in the direction of my father’s voice. With my heart, I felt her talons grip and release and watched her leap into the air, and with my eyes I followed her as she landed on my father’s arm with such grace and beauty that I was overcome with emotion.

  By then the sky had turned from lavender to a darker purple, with a strip of bright orange that made the pale brown-and-tan desert glow golden.

  We heard Asher yell “Got it!” from below.

  Perfect timing, as the sun had all but disappeared.

  We walked back to the van, smiling. Both my father and I knew something magical had just happened.

  7

  Otto, Not Just Another Excited Tourist

  That winter, I had a habit of asking my father the same question over and over: “When can I get my own eagle?”

  I knew that the babies hatched in March and stayed in their nests for four months before learning to fly. My birthday was in May, and twelve or thirteen is the age when most boys traditionally start training.…

  Asher had been gone for months, and life had gone back to normal. School during the week, home on the weekends, helping my parents with the goats, sheep, and cows. Still, what I looked forward to more than anything was taking care of my brother’s eagle.

  I was relentless. “Wasn’t I supposed to get an eagle for my birthday?” became my new joke. My father never laughed. But he did nod every so often.

  And then one evening, after he had been out herding the goats, he called to me as he rode his horse up to our stable. I was helping my mother with washing the clothes in a large bucket, laying the wet pants over the rock wall behind our house as he clip-clopped up to us.

  “Aisholpan, I spotted it this afternoon!” he said, smiling.

  “Spotted what?” I asked.

  “Your eaglet!” he said as he slowed his horse to a stop and threw his leg behind him to dismount.

  “Where?” I threw the wet, still-sudsy pants onto the rocks and ran over to him. His horse was thirsty and needed a drink.

  “Just a twenty-minute ride from here, by the plateau where the goats are now grazing,” he said. I knew the exact spot. There was a small cliff that had a rock ledge jutting off it. The perfect place for a nest.

  “I was out herding the goats when I saw the mother fly into her nest,” he said excitedly. “Then I saw two eaglets with my binoculars. Now we just need to protect them from anyone else trying to steal them.”

  It made me think that Asher had watered the seed that I had already planted in my father’s mind. I remembered that after we had finished the photo shoot that day, months before, he had asked my dad, “Would you ever let Aisholpan hunt with her own eagle?”

  And my dad had answered, “We have already been discussing this.”

  And when tourists came to visit that summer, my father had let me hold his eagle for a few photos. That was a first.

  Scouting an eaglet for me to train was the next level. It was happening.

  And then, like magic, Asher came back to see us the following week, this time with another tourist named Otto Bell. He was from Britain but lived in New York City. My dad still describes Otto as the guy with the crazy hair because it stuck up all over the place. He also ran his hands through it whenever he got excited or when he was talking, which meant his hair was always standing up because he was always talking and usually excited.

  Asher showed us the photos he’d taken of me the summer before. He had them stored on his computer, but as gifts, he’d also made a few prints, which he took out and laid on the table. Otto started talking with his hands and running them through his hair. He was talking very fast, and the translator was trying to keep up.

  “I fell in love with this photo,” he said. He pointed at one of the prints that Asher had brought me. It was the one in which my brother’s eagle had just launched from my arm and was in midair, its wings spread as wide as my smile.

  I remembered that moment.

  “It tells a whole story,” Otto continued. “The story of eagle hunting, of the Kazakh nomads. Of the strength of girls. Of this extraordinary life you live.”

  My father was nodding along, thinking this was just another excited tourist.

  But then Otto said something that was different.

  “I want to make a movie about eagle hunting,” he said, still very excited. “And I want it to focus on Aisholpan.”

  “Something similar to what Asher did?” my dad asked.

  Both Asher and Otto agreed: Yes, similar, but more involved.

  “It would mean my living with you and your family, and filming you training Aisholpan to hunt,” Otto said.

  My dad smiled. He knew how much I enjoyed having my picture taken with his eagle. “We are about to steal a baby eaglet. Is this something that interests you?”

  Otto’s eyes went wide, and he nodded up and down many times, before he said, “Yes, that would be great!”

  My father told Otto that we would take him to the nest the following day. Then he turned to me and said with a wink, “You said you wanted to be an eagle huntress, right?”

  The next morning, we saddled up our ponies and packed rope and a big blanket that we would use to wrap the eaglet in once captured. We then set off for the nest. Otto followed behind us in a van. Once we arrived at the spot, my father found the eaglets with his binoculars. When I placed them to my eyes and saw two bobbing heads, my heart skipped a beat.

  The eaglets were alone—their mother must have been out hunting for food, and they were still too young to fly on their own—but old enough to leave the nest. My father had timed it just so. And Otto’s timing was lucky.

  Before my father and I began the ascent to the top of the ridge, Otto placed a small camera on me, attached to my sweater.

  “I am going to film you snatching the eagle,” he explained through the translator.

  I had no idea how this device worked, but it did not get in the way of my climbing, so I did not question him. I did question his enthusiasm.

  I found it odd. I was excited, since this was something I had wanted to do for so long. And I knew from the dozens of tourists who had come to visit that others found eagle hunting as fascinating as I did. But I had no idea at the time that what Otto was doing would get so many others interested.

  I know now that people find the idea of taking a baby eagle from its nest very strange, and perhaps even cruel, but in my culture we have such profound respect for these birds that we treat them like beloved family members. This ritual, of obtaining an eaglet from a nest before it can fly, is something my family has done for many generations. And it is not something we take lightly. There is a sacred ritual when you take a baby eagle. You must either tie a p
iece of white material to the nest, as a sign to other hunters that this nest has been marked, or you must drop a piece of jewelry, either a ring or an earring, into the nest. This is a way of offering something of great value—our way of giving thanks. It is purely symbolic, of course, since the mother eagle has no use for jewelry, but it is how we acknowledge just how precious we know the eaglet is, to us and to Mother Nature.

  My father had a silver ring that he slipped into my pocket and said, “Leave this, so we are also offering a gift instead of just taking one.”

  With the ring in my pocket, my father and I started to climb.

  The higher up I got, the more I started to understand how difficult it was going to be to descend to the nest, since it was on such a small ledge. The only way to get to it was by rope.

  My father had brought several long lengths of thick rope, which he doubled up and then looped around my waist, tying it in a double-tight knot. He tied the other end of the rope around a rock and tugged hard on it to make sure it would hold my weight. Then he sat behind another rock and used it to steady his feet as he slowly started to let out rope, and I started my downward rappel.

  I had never done anything like this before—and, I will admit, I was scared. But I would not let fear get in the way of my dream. My father coached me: “Place your foot on that crevice,” he shouted. “Grab onto that stone.”

  I slowly made my way down the rock face, feeling the rope tighten around my waist as the cliff got steeper. My heart was now pounding so loudly that I could barely hear my dad’s instructions.

  Just breathe, I thought as I slowly made my way down toward the nest.

  “Steady,” I heard my father coach from above. “Take your time.”

  Just then, I placed my foot on a rock that crumbled beneath my weight, sending a shower of pebbles bouncing down and off the rock face. My heart jumped into my throat as I reached quickly for another rock to hold on to and steady my now-shaking body.