Live From Mongolia

by Patricia Sexton

  But by the twentieth century, things had changed. The powerful Qing dynasty had more important things to worry about than their fragile peace with the neighboring Mongols. Slowly collapsing under the crushing weight of a rapidly growing population, a shrinking food supply, slowing economic growth, and battle wounds from a recently fought civil war, it was the beginning of the end for them.

  So in 1911, at the peak of the Qing dynasty’s domestic struggles, the Mongolians saw their opportunity and took it. Determined to finally be free of foreign subjugation, the Mongolians demanded autonomy and were granted it—but only partially and not for long. Although the Chinese had signed a treaty with Mongolia agreeing to the terms of autonomy, the Russians were also involved, and crucially so.

  In 1921, the same year that was displayed so prominently on the sign in front of the State Department Store, there was incredible turmoil in Mongolia. That winter, a Russian military commander stormed the capital and threw the Chinese out. This, of course, helped the Mongolians. But not all Mongolians wanted to team up with this particular Russian commander, who happened to be anti-Communist. Instead, by summer, their own General Sükhbaatar, who’d teamed up with the Soviet Red Army, threw pretty much everyone out. Having shrewdly sided with the Soviet Communists, Sükhbaatar had been determined to take back the future of Mongolia for Mongolians. It was no wonder there was a sign in honor of the year 1921, as well as the nearby town square that paid homage to General Sükhbaatar himself.

  With a whole afternoon ahead of me before my first day at my new job, I decided to take in a museum. And then I’d go see about Urna, the woman who’d left me stranded at the airport earlier that weekend. It was just no good having an enemy, especially in a new country, so I vowed to right whatever was wrong.

  Not far from the State Department Store and Sükhbaatar Square is the Zanabazar Museum of Fine Arts. The museum bears the namesake of Geghen Zanabazar, a descendant of Genghis Khan, who supported Manchu sovereignty over Mongolia back in the seventeenth century. Choosing the Chinese, he’d definitely bet on the right horse at the time and ended up being the first religious ruler of Mongolia under the Manchu government. And as it happens, the man was an amazing sculptor.

  Painted a bright shade of turquoise, the museum is impossible to miss. In fact, during my entire summer in Mongolia, Zanabazar served as the “true north” point on my mental compass. If ever I was lost and in need of directions, that turquoise building always showed me the way.

  Once inside, I paid 2,500 tugrugs, a little over two US dollars, and headed straight for the sculptures. I was one of the few visitors that morning, and my footsteps echoed in the hush. Behind a glass case sat a series of bronze Buddhas seated cross-legged on top of what looked like a platform of lotus leaves. Right hand resting palm up on the right knee, left raised in a sort of Zen-like peace sign, each Buddha wore an ornate and intricately sculpted crown. Gazing at a point just beyond, their serene faces and almond-shaped eyes looked to be deep in meditation. For a long time, I gazed in awe, and then I made my way upstairs to the thangkas.

  Thangkas are Buddhist paintings. Presented on cloth or silk, they depict deities or scenes from religious or daily life and are often referred to as “scroll paintings” because they easily roll up into and are transported by monks as scrolls. What’s fascinating about thangkas is that they manage to offer a peek into the window of a world completely foreign to someone from Ohio, who grew up knowing nothing about Buddhism. I took my time circling the displays of richly colored, utterly splendid thangka paintings. Their beauty wasn’t the only reason why I took my time; I actually wasn’t looking forward to what was next—going to see Urna.

  Back outside the museum, I consulted my map and located the office of the British company where Urna worked. It wasn’t far, and I made my way, trying to plan what I might say to her to make things right.

  As I crossed through a small city park, two young Mongolian boys ran toward me, shouting, “Photo, photo!” in English. Panting and pointing at the puppy zigzagging away from them, they were scrambling to keep up. A shoebox-size terrier had been carefully spray-painted in racing stripes of green, white, and a faded orange—the colors of the Irish flag. His raspy bark sounded like a soda can being dragged across concrete, and I bent down to pet him, snapping a photo in the process.

  “Bayarlaa, bayarlaa,” the boys called out as they ran off. “Thank you, thank you.”

  It didn’t take me long to find Urna’s office building, but it took awhile to find her actual office. There were no signs in the lobby and no security guard on duty. I climbed a few flights of stairs, knocked on a lot of unmarked doors, and, eventually, I found it and her. Sitting at a computer, she was smiling. And laughing. And twirling her hair. I barely recognized her, and I did a double take when I did.

  “Urna?” I said.

  “Oh, Patricia, hello!” she said sweetly.

  “Hi, I just wanted to come by and talk. Do you have a minute?”

  “For you, of course! But right now, I’m with someone else,” she said, and began twirling her hair again. Out from behind another computer popped a blond head. Ruggedly handsome with bright blue eyes, he was unshaven and disheveled in that way that only young backpackers with goatees can be.

  “Hi there,” he said to me in a Southern drawl.

  The backpacker, who didn’t tell me his name, was from Alabama and was using Urna’s office to facilitate a working trip to the Gobi, where he’d spend three weeks living with nomads. He seemed to be in his early twenties, about Urna’s age.

  “Patricia, would you like to check your e-mail?” Urna offered. “You can use my computer.”

  “Sure,” I said, no longer feeling the pressing need to resolve my differences with her. After all, she was busy, and I hadn’t exactly been looking forward to a shouting match.

  Instead, I logged on to my e-mail and read a message from an acquaintance back in Manhattan. About my age, she’d married recently and was expecting her first baby. Really, though, that was all I knew about her, and I was surprised to have received any correspondence from her at all, until I read on.

  First, she asked me how things were going for me in Mongolia. And then she confided in me that she was underwhelmed. That she wasn’t sure she was taking part in a life that she’d ever wanted for herself. “What if I’d followed my own dreams when I’d had the chance?” she mused, wondering where she’d be now, instead of stuck where she was.

  I couldn’t help it—I felt so incredibly relieved I nearly turned around and kissed Urna. In a capital city in the middle of somewhere very far away, I’d at least temporarily extricated myself from the Match.com dating scene, ticking biological clocks, and duty-bound careers and relationships. For better or worse, sometimes all it takes to urge you on is reading about somebody else’s regrets.

  “Patricia?” Urna said, interrupting my glee. Her coquettish voice had been replaced with a nervous one. “My boss would like to see you in his office.” Apropos of nothing at all, she added that his name was Oko and that his wife was pregnant, as if she were trying to quickly make idle conversation before I went inside to see him. It wasn’t hard to guess that Oko wanted to see me about Urna.

  I tapped on his office door and poked my head inside.

  “Come in, come in!” Oko roared. “Have a seat!” Beckoning me to an empty chair across from him, I did as I was told. Behind a large wooden desk sat a fat, happy Buddha with earlobes so big and fleshy that they dangled like pendulums. Oko didn’t just smile; he beamed.

  “So, I know what happened the other night with Urna,” Oko said immediately. “I listened to your messages. All of them.” Grinning broadly, his rosy, cherubic cheeks pressed the creases of his eyes into long slanted commas. “I am sorry.”

  Oko assured me that this sort of thing had never happened before and would never happen again. He was affable and warm, and I liked him. So I forgave Urna and changed the subject.

  “I heard your wife is pregnant?” I asked.


  “Well, I suppose, perhaps,” Oko said vaguely. His face darkened, and he appeared to regard my question suspiciously. Then, he seemed to make a decision. “Patricia,” Oko began carefully, “in Mongolia, we do not discuss these things.”

  “What things? Babies?” I asked.

  “Yes, things like that. Before those things are…”

  “Born?” I guessed.

  “Yes,” Oko said, looking relieved that I’d said it and he hadn’t. “It is—how do you say in English—taboo?”

  “Oh dear, I’m sorry,” I said.

  “Don’t worry. You didn’t know,” he reassured me.

  I later learned that some families in parts of Mongolia wait until a child is old enough to ward off evil spirits (usually around the time it’s able to walk), before he or she is given a name. In fact, the child will be referred to as “Not-here,” “No-name,” “Not-a-human-being,” or even “Vicious Dog.” This is a superstitious effort to discourage the spirits from kidnapping or killing newborns, especially in families that have previously lost a child.

  Obviously, I hadn’t known that, and I doubted even Urna was at fault for her belated attempt to make small talk with me. Oko and I shared a nervous laugh about the bad luck I’d nearly bestowed upon his unborn child. Fortunately, he had another son who was alive and well, and neither Oko nor his wife had exactly held back when they’d finally named their firstborn—after Genghis Khan.

  “Oko, thank you for your time,” I said, rising from my chair.

  “And Patricia, best of luck to you tomorrow at the station.”

  Tomorrow would be the first day of my internship at Mongolia National Broadcaster. I thanked Oko again, left his office, and gathered my pack to head back home. It was only late afternoon, but I wanted an early night, and I had a long walk ahead of me.

  “How is everything now, Patricia?” Urna said hesitantly as I turned toward the door. Her blond friend from Alabama was gone, and her concern seemed sincere.

  “It was fine, Urna. Everything is fine.” And it was. There’s just no use having an enemy, especially when it’s your opponent’s boss who’s doing the apologizing.

  Outside, I headed toward Sükhbaatar Square. A few blocks from Urna’s and her boss’s office, the square was empty, save for a pair of artists sketching and painting the square’s namesake, poised at their canvasses beneath the towering statue of the general astride his horse.

  In 1990, nearly seventy years after General Sükhbaatar had teamed up with the Russians to eventually declare the Mongolia People’s Republic, protests were held in the very same spot in Sükhbaatar Square, but this time to declare independence from pretty much everyone. Shrugging off decades, even centuries, of power struggles between their mighty neighbors, the Mongolians had finally, proudly, struck out on their own again, this time for good. The Communist Politburo government resigned and the Constitution was amended to allow for a multiparty system. In place of the old Communist Party, the Mongolians elected a new Communist Party, with no less than 85 percent of the vote. It wasn’t the Communists they wanted out; it was domination that they were finished with.

  As I strolled past the painters, crossing Sükhbaatar Square, I passed an unfinished statue of Genghis Khan, who looked just menacing enough to be an effective guard to the Parliament building entrance. I crossed the street and made my way toward Golomt Bank, the largest privately owned bank in the country, whose first one hundred deposit holders had been winners of the Mongolian lottery. With an ornate façade supported by columns and fashioned with balconied windows, its headquarters could have been mistaken for the headquarters of an old-fashioned European bank.

  Turning back toward the congestion of strangled traffic on Peace Avenue, I made my way home to my host family’s apartment.

  “Shul?” Batma asked when I returned. “Soup?” There were guests in the sitting room, speaking English. They sounded American and like they were reading passages from the Bible.

  I ate my soup slowly and accepted Batma’s offer of a second bowl. The voices had begun to pray, and Batma left me alone in the kitchen so that she could join them. Between a rock and a hard place, I chose more soup, ladling myself another bowl of mutton shul. By the end of my third helping, the guests were still praying and I could now hear Badaa participating. I wasn’t sure what to do, but I knew I couldn’t manage a fourth bowl of soup. So I headed to my room, passing the visitors as I did so.

  “Come sit,” an older man said in English. Nondescript in that pleasant way missionaries usually are, he managed to possess not a single memorable characteristic, other than his short shirtsleeves. But I accepted his invitation and sat down, curious to learn what he had in mind.

  “We are Mormons in this house,” he said, even though his sleeves and nametag had already given this away. Explaining that he was a missionary from Utah and that he’d converted Batma and Badaa’s family years ago to Mormonism, the man offered me the book he was holding.

  Mormons have been sending missionaries to Mongolia since 1992, when they sent six couples to Ulaanbaatar to educate and proselytize. Their timing couldn’t have been better. The Russians had only recently left, the economy was in the toilet, and religious freedom was making a comeback. Within just a few years, those six couples had helped found the first Mormon mission in the country, and just a few years after that, they had enough members to dedicate a meetinghouse. As of 2011, there were twenty-three congregations in the country, and nearly ten thousand members. Of course, Mormons don’t drink, and it suddenly occurred to me that that was the reason Batma had tried to prevent me from going out to a bar with Evan just a few nights earlier.

  “Please, young lady, join us in prayer,” the old American missionary said.

  Batma looked at me expectantly, as did Badaa, and with such an agreeable grin that I almost did as I was told; it was the first time I’d seen him smile at anyone at all. But I couldn’t do it, not even to be polite. It’s not that I have anything against religious people or prayer—quite the contrary. But I do have a bit of a bias toward religious people committing hostile acts in the name of religion, such as fighting the Crusades, declaring jihad, or firing my father all those years ago, leaving my family destitute. Or showing up in a foreign country to inform the locals that their storied, ancient concept of God has been dead wrong for so many centuries.

  Besides, I felt as if I were on pretty good terms with the Man Upstairs. After all, it was he who had spent years urging me to believe in myself enough to embark on this adventure here in Mongolia. Silently asking his pardon for rejecting the missionary’s efforts to win me over, I stood to leave.

  “I’m sorry,” I said lamely, retreating to my bedroom as I did so and clicking the door shut softly behind me.

  A long time later, there was a tap at my door, and I winced. “Soup?” Batma asked through the door, offering me an olive branch the way an English grandmother would offer a cup of tea during a crisis. I opened the door and, as usual, Batma was beaming at me with a relentlessly cheerful disposition. Obviously, her adopted religion was working well for her, and I had to acknowledge respect for that. Thankfully though, the guests had left, and Batma led me back into the kitchen.

  “Mar-gash?” she said. “Tomorrow? Tomorrow you work new job?”

  “Yes, nervous!” I said, painstakingly translating each word one by one. “Tomorrow I begin work at Mongol Televit.”

  “Good, good,” she said, clucking maternally and putting a bowl of mutton shul in front of me. It was the same soup she’d served earlier that week. Batma and her family never wasted anything and always made the most of leftovers, even after the leftovers had entered into a state of cellular degeneration.

  “Good?” she asked in English.

  “Amtai!” I responded in Mongolian. “Delicious!” And it was, sort of, although it had turned into a colorful mash.

  “Bish, bish,” she scolded. “No, no.” “Em-teh,” she repeated back to me, slowly, correcting my pronunciation. />
  “Am-teh?”

  “Bish. Em-TEH.”

  “Am-TEH?”

  “Bish. Em-TEH.”

  “Em. Teh,” I said one last time, remembering the last time I’d spent this long trying to properly pronounce a simple foreign word. Back then I was in Madrid at a Spanish appliance store, trying to ask the clerk where I could buy a “washing vagina” instead of the washing machine I’d come for. The salesclerks were doubled over, howling with laughter, and I left with neither item.

  Bidding Batma good night, I retreated once again to my bedroom cocoon. Sleep was close at hand after a day of walking, followed by a heavy meal of four bowls of soup. Outside, a soft rain fell as I snuggled deeper into my blankets.

  CHAPTER 8

  The First Day of the Rest of My Life

  A new bridge has been built at a cost of twenty-three million tugrug, or twenty thousand dollars, to replace the crumbling road in the third and fourth micro-regions of Nailakh. The bridge project had special significance, as it included not just construction workers, but local engineering specialists assisting with the design of the bridge.

  —Lead story voiceover, MM Today broadcast

  At dawn I woke with a start, exhausted from a night of restless, grind-your-teeth sleep. It was Monday morning, my first day on my new job, and I’d soon meet Urna, who would be the one to take me there.

  Shutting my eyes tightly, I tried just for a moment to go back to sleep. But it was no use; I was full of anticipation. Today was the first day of the rest of my life. All these years I’d spent wondering what would happen if … was about to happen …now.

  Tiptoeing out of my bedroom past Batma and Badaa, who were fast asleep on the living room floor, I crept into the kitchen. A few hours later and many hours late, Urna came to collect me to drive me to the station. Back in banking, we’d been told to be ready each morning to “bite the ass off a bear,” and after three cups of coffee, I was ready for just that.