Live From Mongolia

by Patricia Sexton

  —Lead story, MM Today broadcast

  “Have you tasted Mongolian cheese?” Chinzo asked a few days later.

  Chinzo and Tobie and I were sitting in the English news office, working on translations for that evening’s script. It was the first time any of the anchors had spoken to us, other than to inform me that I should find another place to sit. Without waiting for a response, Chinzo produced from his pants pocket a chip of pale yellow, almost white, hard cheese. Snapping it in two, like a piece of candy, he offered us both halves.

  “Go ahead,” Chinzo encouraged. “Try it.”

  Popping the chip into my mouth, I bit into it. It didn’t budge, not even a crack.

  “Suck on it, like candy,” Chinzo suggested, grinning broadly.

  Nomads in the countryside make cheese from their twenty-seven million livestock: cows, yaks, goats, sheep, and even camels. After milking the animal, they boil the liquid and stir in yogurt. Once the mixture has curdled, the solids are strained out and pressed between wooden boards. The pressed cheese is placed on the roof in the sun where it will eventually dry and harden into brittle chips. Depending on the type of cheese being made, and there are many, leftover liquids are used to produce everything from dipping oils to infant bathwater. Unlike aged European cheeses, Mongolian cheeses are relatively young. Usually left to develop over just a period of days, the taste is far milder than their counterparts around the world. Soft, fresh cheese is eaten on its own, while dried, hard cheese is dipped in tea or sucked on like candy.

  “Do you like it?” Chinzo asked earnestly. Mongolians are famous for their dairy products. In fact, a common misperception about the country is that people living there are devoted to eating endless quantities of meat. This is only true in the capital, where a lot of mutton dishes are consumed. But in the countryside, the focus is on fresh, organic dairy products. And many of these products, like the cheese I was sampling now, were made fresh daily by the matron of the house.

  “I do like it,” I said, and I really did. Once the chip had begun to melt in my mouth, it revealed an almost nutty flavor, like Manchego crossed with Gruyère.

  “I am very happy to hear this,” Chinzo said with enthusiasm. “I will bring you more!”

  With that, he dashed out of our office to retrieve the rest of his stash.

  “I brought you a soft cheese this time,” Chinzo shouted from somewhere down the hallway. He sounded breathless with excitement, and I tried to imagine myself feeling so strongly about American cheese that I’d inflict its nearly dozen ingredients and preservatives and food colorings on a foreign guest. Chinzo bounded back into the office. In his outstretched palm was a cube of what looked like a firmer version of Brie.

  “Try this!” he said, plucking a black, wiry hair from its center.

  “Oh, sorry! Animal coat,” he apologized, laughing, before handing it over.

  It tasted just as it appeared it would taste, like Brie, only far milder. And it was definitely firmer, almost chewy.

  “This is really good,” I said to Chinzo, passing to Tobie the remainder of what I hadn’t finished.

  “I’m glad you like it,” Chinzo said proudly, just as Gandima suddenly appeared in our doorway.

  “Patricia, Chinzo?” she said. “Come with me.”

  “Patricia, you will help Chinzo read the voice overs for tonight’s news,” Gandima announced as she led us down the corridor to the recording studio.

  Voiceovers! This was quite a promotion. Not only did it mean more responsibility for me; it meant I was becoming an integral part of the English news team. As we headed toward the studio, I tried to take this all in stride—Gandima had a way of granting promotions without any fanfare whatsoever. If she needed someone to report, read voice overs, or even teach English, well, that’s just what she’d tell you to do.

  Like most television stations, MNB produced a story, a “package,” with just one reporter. The reporter would go out into the field with a producer, shoot the story, and return to the station to edit it with the help of the editing team. Of course, that same reporter’s voice would be used for the voiceover. But when it came to MNB’s English news, things were completely different.

  Only one of the Mongolian reporters spoke fluent English, fluent enough to perform voice over reads, anyway. That reporter was Gandima, and she was too senior and too busy to spend her time reading copy into a microphone. So the task was left to the English news anchors, like Chinzo, who were not necessarily reporters at all, but well-educated and well-spoken Mongolians with fluency in English.

  Gandima opened the door and led us inside the glass-walled studio. A tiny, wizened old man, no more than five feet tall, waited for us, holding out a microphone. Several of the editors and technicians were also there, arms folded across their chests, waiting to begin. I got the feeling that this wasn’t really a promotion for me but an audition.

  Silently, I practiced in my head just what I’d need to do. As I’d learned from Magee Hickey, performing a voice over wasn’t as simple as reading deadpan from a piece of paper into a microphone. Rather, it’s more like getting into character for a part in a film. In fact, because you must exaggerate your voice so much, it’s like getting into character for a part in a cartoon film.

  “Patricia,” Gandima said, “you go first,” and she handed me a sheet of copy. The old man nodded and put the mike in my hands.

  “Speak into the mike and start,” Gandima instructed. The story was a familiar one; Chinzo and I had just written it. This helped a lot. But reading translated copy from Mongolian scripts is like eating a consonant omelet without a glass of water, and I was nervous. Dipping my voice into a theatrical, cartoonish baritone, I began.

  “‘Locals in the Nailakh district bleakly joke that the hardest thing to find here is a job,’” I said, shifting awkwardly from one foot to the other, trying to exaggerate the silky and resonant lilt that I’d watched Magee decant effortlessly from her vocal chords. To me, Magee had sounded more like she was confiding in someone, rather than reading from a sheet of paper, so I tried to do just the same.

  “Patricia, stop,” Gandima said, and I trailed off midsentence. “Now start again, and read much more slowly.” Arms folded across her chest, she was standing on the other side of the studio with the rest of the crew.

  “Okay.” I gulped and began again, reading from the report on faltering economic prospects for a nearby province. “‘Locals in the Nailakh district … ’”

  “Slower,” Gandima said sharply.

  Taking a deep breath, I cleared my throat and licked my teeth, which were so dry they felt like postage stamps sticking backward to my gums.

  “‘Locals in the Nailakh district bleakly joke that the hardest thing to find here is a job. An area housewife tells us she prays every day for her husband and grown children, who are illegally working in the now-closed mine … ’”

  Quickly, I swallowed and continued.

  “‘ … With neither prior experience in mining nor knowledge of safety regulations, she worries about the dangers her family will face while illegally working. In order to address the situation, the local government is working on a project that they hope will increase the employment numbers. Nailakh is the beneficiary of New Village Movement, a Korean Aid Project.’”

  “Very good,” Gandima said after I’d finished. She still had her arms folded across her chest, and so did the rest of the crew.

  “Chinzo, begin,” she ordered, and turned to me.

  “So, does that mean …,” I began, wondering if my audition had resulted in a promotion.

  “Yes,” Gandima said. “From now on, you and Chinzo will read voice overs for the news.”

  “And,” she went on, as Chinzo read from the scripts. “You can help Chinzo with his English pronunciation.”

  “Okay,” I said, vowing right then and there to do just the opposite. Not only was Chinzo a proud man, the sort of guy who didn’t want the American female intern telling him how to correct his
pronunciation, but things between us had just gotten off, albeit belatedly, to a good start.

  “Listen,” Gandima said, pointing in his direction. “He says ‘Parliament’ without the ‘r,’ like ‘poll lament,’ right?”

  “True,” I conceded.

  “Work on this with him, yes?” she said.

  “Yes, of course,” I said, hoping I wouldn’t need to follow through.

  “Now about your Quiza pitch,” Gandima began ominously, and I waited nervously for her to continue.

  “The answer is no,” she said, after she’d collected Tobie. With us in tow, she filed into her office.

  After Tobie and I had met Quiza and Bold, we’d offered to produce a story on them for MNB. In fact, we hadn’t so much offered as we’d promised. In our excitement, it had never occurred to us that Gandima wouldn’t agree to our pitch. So, without even waiting for her approval, we’d filmed the brothers, interviewed them, and written most of their story. This was a problem. In Mongolia, loyalty is earned, not granted, and we were going to have to let the brothers down.

  “ … not newsworthy … ” Gandima went on.

  “ … responsibility to the three-quarters of the Mongolian population that watches this station … ”

  “ … commitment to journalism … ”

  “This television station is not an advertisement for a rock band,” she concluded finally.

  “Hip-hop,” Tobie pointed out under his breath, just loud enough that I could hear the bristle in his retort. Without another word, she rose from her desk and ended our meeting.

  Back in the English news office, Tobie was unusually quiet, and I could tell he was fuming. He’d become close to the brothers, Bold in particular. For Tobie especially, it wasn’t just a case of striking out with Gandima on another pitch; it was a case of breaking a promise to the brothers.

  Fed up, Tobie quit. But he was too angry to even bother to tell Gandima that.

  Through Urna, Tobie had made contact with network management at TV5, and she’d brokered a deal for him to meet the station’s director. The director took one look at Tobie’s hardware and editing software and hired him on the spot to create animation graphics. Incredibly, he’d landed a production role with an office and a high-speed Internet connection.

  This put me in a bind. Without Tobie as my cameraman and producer, I had no one to shoot video with. I didn’t have a broadcast-quality video camera of my own, so I would no longer be able to report. And although I’d just been promoted by Gandima to work with Chinzo on reading voice overs, what I really wanted to do was report on camera. I decided to make the same phone call to Urna that Tobie had made. But instead of quitting my job working at MNB, I planned to work a second job with Tobie at TV5.

  “I have a job for you,” Urna said after I called her and explained the situation. I could hear crackling and crunching in the background; it sounded as if she were interrupting a noisy lunch of fried food.

  “Hello?” I said into the receiver.

  “Yes, Patricia,” she said only after she’d finished chewing.

  “About the job you mentioned? What is it?” Urna was unpredictable, not the sort of staunch ally you need when seeking a favor, and although I wanted to remain on her good side, my patience was wearing thin again.

  “I can get work for you in a textile factory.”

  “A … what?”

  “When do you want to start?”

  “I don’t,” I said. The muffled sound of Urna chomping away at her lunch filtered again through the receiver. I let her return to it and hung up the phone, vowing to take matters into my own hands. It never occurred to me, at least not right then, that Gandima would mind if I worked a second job. After all, I would fulfill my responsibilities to her in the afternoons, as I’d always done. In the mornings, I would go meet Tobie, as I’d always done, but this time for a different television station.

  CHAPTER 18

  Time Travel

  The special working group has been tasked with finding the most effective manner by which to reduce expenses, not limited to simply reducing the workforce. Government officials as senior as vice-premiers, as well as ministerial secretaries, have begun the research required to make the proper changes.

  —Voiceover, MM Today broadcast

  Evan had an idea, and even I was listening. After our trip to Khustain, the one where I’d been informed I wasn’t the marrying kind, he and I had still seen each other socially. It was impossible not to. We ran in the same circles, and expat circles in Ulaanbaatar are predictably small. And actually, I did enjoy his erudite and witty company; everyone did. You simply can’t ignore the life of the party. Besides, Evan’s idea was that good.

  Through the grapevine, he’d heard about a unique tour company called Ger-to-Ger. Unusual in its concept, Ger-to-Ger promised “epic” adventures into the vast Mongolian grassland steppe, complete with cultural home stays, where guests camp just outside the family’s ger.

  This really interested me. Mongolia’s relationship with the steppe is its ongoing relationship with the past. Tradition is handed down to the next generation as a matter of necessity. Things are done just the way they were done hundreds of years ago, and we’d soon see this for ourselves. For me, this excursion to the nomadic countryside could serve as none other than a trip back in time.

  And taking a trip back in time in Mongolia meant understanding the country’s founder and hero, Genghis Khan. Before I’d even left New York, I’d made a commitment to myself to learn everything I could about this man, this legend, whose success story is perhaps history’s most spectacular and also most improbable. How on earth someone could rise from poverty so desperate that he was eating vermin for breakfast to ruling no less than a third of the world, absolutely captivated me. And there was no better way to get to know the legend of Genghis Khan than to visit his stomping grounds, which was just what Evan had suggested we do. Thus, a few days later, we departed on our second adventure into the steppe.

  “Where is the autobus?” each of us took turns begging in Mongolian. At dawn, Evan, along with his young American colleague Jason, and I met in an empty parking lot on the southern edge of the capital. We thought we were near the bus stop, but our sleepy taxi driver seemed to have misunderstood “bus stop” for “desolate parking lot.”

  “Autobus?” Frantic, we were just about to miss the bus to Terelj, a village about fifty miles northeast of the capital. All of us had taken a few days off work and, through Ger-to-Ger, arranged to spend a long weekend riding horseback through the Mongol steppe, stopping and staying at a series of nomads’ gers. Rather than the nomads catering to us, we’d cater to them: milking sheep, making clothing, and helping to prepare meals.

  “Autobus? Autobus?” we asked again and again, of anyone who might listen. The bus to Terelj was due to leave in less than ten minutes, and we were no closer to finding the station or someone who could point us in the right direction.

  Suddenly, a middle-aged man leaned out of his car window as he slowly drove past us. “Autobus?” he asked as he motioned for us to get in his car. Quickly piling our bags into his trunk, we didn’t have any time to spare. The bus was scheduled to depart any moment.

  “Autobus Terelj?” Evan asked an agent smoking outside the station, after the driver had dropped us off at a new location.

  “Bish,” the man said simply, after taking a bored drag of his cigarette. “No.”

  “But can you tell us where to find the bus?” Evan tried again, this time in Russian.

  “Bish,” the man responded, flicking his cigarette to the ground to stamp it out. Shrugging his shoulders, he walked off. Obviously, this was maddening, and without a bit of luck, we were going to miss the bus. And this was just when luck intervened. Somehow, that’s what always happens when you’re taking a road trip in a foreign country. Without any other ideas but to leave the bus station where the bus didn’t seem to be, we did just that. And once we walked out of the station, we found the bus. There, at th
e main road, a crush of people stood waiting beneath a sign that read TERELJ in Cyrillic. Without a moment to spare, we’d made it. Relieved and breathless, we boarded.

  “Well, let’s see the goods,” I demanded of Evan and Jason. The day before we’d left, we’d each shopped at our local supermarket for essential provisions: chocolate, sausages, and a bottle of whiskey. After Evan and Jason had demonstrated their prizes, I triumphantly displayed mine: a bottle of bootlegged Chinese whiskey. At the counter as I’d waited for the cashier to tabulate my bill, I noticed the Johnny Walker whiskey that I was paying full retail price for was not exactly Johnny Walker. Nor was it Red Label. Upon closer inspection, I saw that the label read, “Johnny Worker,” and beneath it, instead of “Red Label,” it actually read, “Red Labial.”

  “Want to buy an egg?” a young boy asked me as he made room for himself on the seat next to me. Black hair bleached blond, he looked like an Asian version of Eminem. Balancing the cardboard racks of eggs on his lap, he slowly and carefully tipped himself forward and began slapping a pretty girl sitting in the seat in front of us. She turned around to shout at him, and he resumed his egg sales pitch to me.

  “You speak English?” a heavily made-up woman asked me as she squeezed past the egg seller. Slowly and laboriously, she lowered her generous backside into the small space between me and the boy, making room for three of us on the bench.

  I nodded.

  Ignoring the chaos the boy was creating, she peered at me from behind tinted glasses. “Do you want to buy a horse?” she asked.

  “Do I want to buy a horse?” I repeated back to her.

  “Yes, a horse,” she said, as if this were an obvious question to ask. Patiently, the woman waited for me to respond.

  “Thank you,” I said to the woman. “But I don’t have anywhere to put a horse.”

  “I see,” she said, and turned her attention to the man seated in front of her.