“Hell-lo!” and then, “Well-come!” My host-mother seemed to be reciting, greeting me as she held open her front door. Plump and friendly, Batma had a warm way about her that could put anyone at ease. With a layered, bobbed haircut to match Jennifer Aniston’s old Friends coif, Batma had a youthful, energetic look, as if she’d stopped aging when she was a little girl and had only grown bigger.
“I am sorry,” she said, giggling, eyes creasing with her wide smile. “I do not speak English. Only little,” she said, pinching her thumb and forefinger to illustrate just how little.
“Me neither,” I said, pointing at myself and shrugging. “Well, Mongolian, of course,” I added, trying to make a joke. Batma looked at me blankly for a minute, then laughed anyway.
While she served tea to Urna, I went back outside to collect my bags. The wind had picked up, and I stood still for a moment, taking in my surroundings. Sitting on a cement stoop in front of my host family’s apartment building was a wrinkled old woman wrapped in a neatly pressed green-and-gold silk robe, her sagging bosom dangling down to her waist.
“Sain bain uu,” I said to her. “Hello.”
In return, the old woman tilted her head forward ever so slightly, offering me a vague nod, looking at a point just beyond me. The rich splendor of her evergreen-colored robe and gold sash clashed with the peeling paint of the apartment building’s sea foam–colored exterior.
The woman turned out to be Batma’s mother, and in just a few weeks I would spend a weekend with her in the Mongolian countryside, sharing a meal of boiled goat and fermented horse milk. For now, though, I regarded her with thinly veiled curiosity.
Crossing the gravel parking lot, I walked to Urna’s car to gather my luggage. A couple of children sitting on a rusted swing set stopped what they were doing to watch me with interest.
Heaving under the weight of my backpack, I squeezed past the old woman and went back into the apartment building, climbing the four flights of stairs to my new home.
“Come, come!” Batma said, jumping out of her seat and beckoning me into the hallway. Built railroad-car style, like a series of small offices, my host family’s apartment extended from a kitchen on one end to a child’s bedroom on the other, a second bedroom and a sitting room in between.
“You,” Batma said, pointing from me to the bedroom at the end of the hall. “You. Sleep. Here.” Tugging on my sleeve and beaming enthusiastically, she led me to my new quarters. Spacious and decorated in varying shades of warm reds and bright blues, it was furnished with a narrow bed, a desk, and an old television. The bed was covered with a thick, furry throw rug, and the writing desk had been set up next to a window that looked out over a building construction site.
“Good?” Batma asked, surveying me carefully and suddenly looking worried. There was an innocent, generous quality to her, like an eager child you just can’t bear to disappoint.
“Yes, good, very good,” I said, smiling furiously to assure her.
“I will go now,” Urna announced from the sitting room, bidding us an abrupt good-bye.
“You’re leaving already?” I asked, wondering who was going to answer all the questions I had about how to live politely with my new family. So far, miming with Batma had been useful in being introduced to my bedroom, but I wasn’t sure it would help me answer the more difficult questions, like where I should hang my lacy laundry to dry and what limitations I’d face flushing certain items down the toilet.
“Questions like what?” Urna said.
“Well, I have quite a few,” I whispered, and Batma giggled again.
“Like what?” Urna said, scowling at me.
“Well, how do I get back into town, for starters?”
Slowly, she tore a tiny corner of paper from her notebook. Scribbling a note on it in Cyrillic letters, Urna pushed the piece of paper at me and left.
“Thanks,” I called out, really meaning it, until I later realized that she’d played something of a practical joke on me.
“Hello,” two quiet little voices said in shy unison, perfect replicas—a girl and a boy—of Batma. I’d later learn that Batma had another son, much older, who lived in America.
“My children!” Batma cried from the hallway. “They can speak very good English with you!” She sounded as excited about this as I was.
“Awesome!” I said with palpable relief, launching into a series of questions about household etiquette, like what I should eat and if I could share space in the refrigerator. The boy and the girl crouched down and sat in the doorway, politely smiling at me. Neither spoke, and it didn’t look like they were going to do so anytime soon.
“So, about the fridge and the bathroom?” I said again slowly, obsessing over how I was going to share a single toilet with four other people. Because the Mongolian diet consists mainly of meat and dairy, I’d brought an entire bottle of fiber pills with me to remedy any shortcomings in my intake of roughage, and I’d already consumed three of the pills.
“We do not speak English,” the daughter said. “Only little,” she added, holding up two pinched fingers, just as her mother had done earlier.
“Patricia!” Batma said suddenly, as she leaned into my bedroom. “Shul!” She said it as if it were of grave importance. I unpacked my Mongolian-English translation dictionary and quickly thumbed through it until I’d found what shul meant.
“Soup?” I asked.
“Teem!” she nodded vigorously. “Yes!” Tugging on my sleeve, Batma led me into the kitchen, where, armed with my dictionary, I sat down at a small Formica table across from a man noisily slurping a bowl of dinner.
“Badaa,” Batma said, introducing me to her husband. Hollow eyes in a cadaverous, bony face, Badaa looked up briefly to return my greeting. Judging by the mutton soup he was relishing, Badaa liked his meat dishes. But he was emaciated and gaunt, and it would be a long time before Batma would reveal that he had a severe case of diabetes. After glancing briefly in my direction to return my greeting, Badaa grunted and left the kitchen to head for the sitting room, slurping from his soup bowl as he did so.
“Sit, sit,” Batma offered, issuing another set of commands in Mongolian. Nodding, I did as I was told, and she ladled soup into a bowl and put it in front of me, watching my reaction expectantly. The broth was delicious. Thin and light, it was salty and savory, just like the juices that had squirted out of the buuz dumplings I’d eaten earlier that day with Urna. Made from stewed mutton, the flavor could have been a lot stronger and a lot more pungent. Most ovine dishes are. But because Mongolians tend to prize fatty, chewy gristle over leaner cuts of meat, which they regard as too soft, the country’s soups have a delicately balanced flavor. Generous hunks of fat and thin slices of cabbage and carrot make for a kind of minestrone. Eagerly, I tucked into Batma’s shul.
“More?” she asked, after checking the English pronunciation in my dictionary resting on the table.
“Teem, I said. “Yes,” agreeing to just one more bowl. When she offered me a second refill, I pushed out my stomach to an exaggerated bloat and thanked her anyway. Besides, I didn’t have time. It was time to meet Evan downtown. Earlier that day, we’d e-mailed each other and arranged to have a drink at a local bar.
“Me,” I began. “Tonight. Airport. Friend—new friend! Bar. Ulaanbaatar. City. Meeting!” I finally finished minutes later, after looking up each word individually.
“Bish, bish, bish,” Batma said, either to my translation or my plans. “No, no, no.” I couldn’t think of a single reason why she would tell me that I shouldn’t go, so I kept on trying to explain.
“I have to,” I insisted, wondering how I was going to explain to her that, just weeks prior, back in New York, a fortune-teller had read my tarot cards and divined that I’d soon meet my future husband, whose name would begin with an ‘E.’ But now, bewildered by my hopeless attempts to pronounce the mangle of consonants in front of me, I tried to explain in as few English words as possible.
“Tonight, friend, bar,” I
said, waiting for Batma’s blessing.
“Okay!” she finally declared in English, and walked off.
Weighing my options, I decided not to shower. It wasn’t that I thought I didn’t need to before my first night out on the town, and it wasn’t even that I hadn’t yet been given permission to use the bathroom or the shower. I’d just run into a situation requiring knowledge of protocol I didn’t yet have.
In between my bedroom and the bathroom, which was all the way at the other end of the apartment, was the sitting room. That room now held my entire host family, and they seemed to be taking a special interest in everything I was doing. While I appreciated their attention, I had not brought a robe with me to Mongolia, which made showering, and then walking the length of the apartment to return to my bedroom, all but impossible unless I wanted to parade myself in front of my new audience.
Instead, I decided to brush my teeth twice and apply a lot of makeup.
“Good-bye?” I said hesitantly, armed with Urna’s Cyrillic driving directions tucked into my pocket. Batma looked up from the TV program she’d begun watching with Badaa, shrugged, giggled, and returned to the program. Badaa grunted.
Outside, a rain of biblical proportions was coming down, and I hopped over yawning gravel puddles and into doorways, trying to remain as dry as my undersize and flimsy New York umbrella would allow. As I did so, I made mental notes of where I’d come from so I could find my way home again: Batma and Badaa’s sea foam–colored apartment block, then the gravel lot next to the swing set, then the convenience store, and then the main road.
“Taxi!” I shouted into the roar of the downpour as I watched the only car on the road slow down to approach me, the driver poking his head out of its steamy window. He seemed to be debating whether or not to let me in. Most taxis in Ulaanbaatar are not actually taxis, but drivers of private cars who simply agree to take you to your destination for a fee. It’s a guessing game whether you’re in a taxi or a private car, but in the end it doesn’t matter, as you usually end up at your destination and you always pay a fare.
“Please?” I begged, leaning into the open window. The driver reluctantly reached out to open the car door, and I quickly got in, dripping cold rain all over the front seat, although he didn’t seem to mind.
Clutching Urna’s soggy instructions as if they were a ticket to a sold-out concert, I pointed to the open road in front of us, urging the driver to begin our journey. Narrowing his eyes, he pointed from me to the road behind us. Both of us were bewildered, and it would take me awhile to realize that Urna had translated only the return portion of my ticket—the directions from downtown back to my apartment—but not the directions to my destination. Clearly, she’d had the last laugh with our morning altercation, but I’d have to deal with that later.
Now, I simply said, “Grand Khan Irish Pub,” and we were finally on our way.
CHAPTER 5
The Unlit Spark
A lead consulting team of Mongolian and Japanese executives has undertaken a project to replace old and worn-out industrial steam-boilers. If the project goes as planned, by the year 2010, air pollution in Ulaanbaatar and surrounding areas is expected to decrease substantially.
—Lead story, MM Today broadcast
Apparently, nights out in this town began in just one place—at the Grand Khan Irish Pub. It was the place to see and be seen in Ulaanbaatar. Outside on a patio facing the main road, backpacking foreigners would sit at picnic tables and drink locally brewed Chinggis Khan beer. Inside, the mood was cozy and somewhat sophisticated, a modern Ian Schraeger version of a quaint Norman Rockwell setting. Against a backdrop of cherrywood paneling and dim lighting, local celebrities donned oversize faux Tom Ford sunglasses and sipped whiskey from heavy glass tumblers. Behind the bar, plasma TVs broadcasted the latest local news updates, reminding you in that jarring way that you were having a drink in a very foreign locale.
Sitting inside on a barstool was Evan. Dressed in a lime green polo shirt with an upturned collar and wearing pleated khakis, he had sandy brown, slightly receding hair. He wasn’t exactly thin, but his frame was slight. Intellectual and bespectacled, he looked just like a twenty-something guy who was getting a second academic degree from a top American university, which I’d soon find out was exactly the case. In other words, it wasn’t difficult to figure out who this mysterious Evan was.
“Evan?” I ventured coyly, pretending to be unsure that he was the right guy.
“Patricia?” he responded, looking up with a noticeable lack of enthusiasm.
“Hi,” I said politely.
“Hi,” he repeated politely. Apparently, we were off to a slow start. Neither of us seemed to be falling head over heels for each other.
“Let’s get a table,” he said as he gathered his belongings stashed beneath the barstool.
“Sure,” I said, sneaking a glance at my watch.
It took a long time for the waiter to bring us two tall steins of very cold local beer, but it took him no time at all to deliver a plate of French fries so heavily salted it was as if the potatoes themselves had been an afterthought. By the time the beers finally arrived, I was so thirsty that I gulped down one lager and immediately ordered a second, as well as a round of water. The water never came, but another round of beers did, this time right away. It wasn’t long before I was engrossed with Evan and his story.
Evan was twenty-six years old and from Texas. He’d graduated from Harvard University and had gone on to study law at Georgetown. But just after he was accepted at Georgetown, he’d had a crisis moment similar to mine. As Evan explained it, it was three o’clock in the morning and he said to himself, “What the fuck do I want to do? I’ve become an entitled nerd with soft hands! Is this all there is to life?” At the time, and in true nerd fashion, he was reading a double issue of the Economist cover to cover. In it, there was an article about Mongolia, and it was entitled “The—Best Place—Last.”
Evan was sold. He deferred going to law school to enter the Peace Corps instead.
Applicants to the Peace Corps program are required to commit themselves to spending two years in a foreign country. They must also spend several weeks learning the local language once they arrive, and many of them stay with a local family. Although the Peace Corps makes the final decision, the applicant designates a region in which he’d like to live and work during those years. Evan was desperate to go to Mongolia. It was his dream. However, a technicality in the Peace Corp’s application process forced him to apply to the Central Asia region, which did not include Mongolia. So he was sent to Turkmenistan, where he lived with a local family in a placed called Koneurgench and worked as an English teacher.
Two years later, after he’d completed his Peace Corps assignment, he was at Georgetown Law School and heard about a summer job clerking at a small private-practice law firm in Mongolia run by an American from New York. Finally, his dream had come true. Not long after, he found himself in Ulaanbaatar, and he’d arrived just a few weeks before I had.
Evan had moved from Turkmenistan to Mongolia, and he spoke fluent Turkmen as well as a little bit of Russian, both of which he’d picked up during his Peace Corps stint. He was certainly an intrepid adventurer, and I couldn’t help but admire that. But still, our conversation was somewhat stilted, and it was getting late.
I sneaked another glance at my watch. “Oh, my God,” I cried. “It’s nearly midnight!” I flew into action, depositing my share of the bill onto our table, and bid Evan a hasty farewell. Although I had Urna’s scribbled instructions to rely on, I still wasn’t confident I’d actually make it home. The last two times I’d relied on her had not worked out so well.
“Coffee tomorrow?” Evan asked as we planted breezy kisses on each other’s cheeks. “There’s a French bakery called Michele’s that serves a great cappuccino. Meet you there at ten?”
“Sure, I’ll find it,” I said as I dashed out the side door of the Grand Khan.
The cold, pelting rain had subsided,
leaving in its wake enormous puddles. Tiptoeing around them in the pub’s parking lot, I hailed a makeshift taxi, displaying again Urna’s instructions to the driver.
It wasn’t until after he’d begun driving that the driver made it clear he didn’t know where he was going. Grimacing, he pulled over to the side of the road. Then, squinting one eye shut and then the other, he concentrated out loud, reading and rereading what Urna had written. Frowning deeply, he put the car back into gear and we drove off once again into the stillness of the night’s empty streets.
A long time later, we circled back onto the road from which we’d just come. Maybe we’d done this several times before; it was hard to tell, but a few billboards had begun to repeat themselves. What should’ve taken five minutes had taken fifteen, and I was getting worried.
“Turn left at the shop in the fourth microdistrict,” was all that Urna had written, which was something like telling someone in New York to meet you at a diner but not specifying which diner.
Finally, the driver pulled into a gravel lot and drove slowly past a rusty swing set, which looked just like the one I’d seen earlier that afternoon. As his headlights inched closer to the small apartment building on the edge of the lot, I made out its color. Sea foam green! I’d recognize that color anywhere!
Relieved that we’d finally managed to find our way, I gushed, thanking him, and tried to pay.
“Naim,” the driver insisted.
I wasn’t sure what he meant, so I offered him what I’d been told the typical fare would be—1,000 tugrug—or about one US dollar.
Belligerently batting my hand away, he repeated, “Naim,” as he now poked his fingers into my wallet.
Live From Mongolia Page 5