Footprints in the Sand Desert

by Manakhatan Boldsukh

  Since Adrian, John, Alice, Billy and Telly decided to be part of the same game and presence, the service man mixed the cards newly and they could begin the game again. Each of them was holding cards, besides Billy, whose eyes were fixed on the cards of the Telly and they began to play rolling the mind slowly and relaxed, spicing the game with their discussion about things which were not sharing their sense with the cards. None of them was eager to depend on any arithmetic, only the end destination of the cruise would put an end to the play.

  Distracted by the game Alice seemed to recover from her deep sadness. For her the money was no matter, which had made her not really happy, also the ending as a loser or winner was for her indifferent. Both Telly and Alice were the women with a rich past, which already had lost the meaning in their lives, but had made an inner evolution possible for both of them, in different ways. The three men were colorful pictures, as well, sharing a kind of irresistible attractiveness with each other, maybe the gravity of the attraction was evolved from their life experience or inner enrichment, or both.

  The game lasted long till John threw his cards and quitted, but he stayed at the table being part of the conversation. Adrian said,

  „John, the sunshine is after you, don’t worry.“ John replied,

  „You can say that again. Well, how a philosopher did come to an idea to take a cruise to play his life on the gambling map? There are so many invisible corners, which would make you get lost.“ Adrian smiled to him and said,

  „Exactly the invisible corners of the map seduced me to take the cruise. There is no need to fear, the end destination will end my being a possible loser anyway, so that makes me appreciate the each moment of the play. By the way, after having coasted, I will leave the bad luck on the ship behind.“

  Telly smiled first time, proving that she was not made from porcelain, alive and not deaf. The smile attracted other four, the first time they noticed her beautiful mouth. A smile had always performed a magic making the ugly beautiful and transforming sad into happy, smoothing troubled souls. Alice looked at her attentively, as an only woman to accompany Telly during the play. Her closed eyelids were without makeup, even her lips, she was not wearing a makeup at all.

  Billy, the antique dealer, broke the silence, saying,

  „Alice, you should concentrate on the cards you hold not the burial of your husband. All our sympathy is with you.“

  Alice nodded in silence. John, who was sitting without cards waiting for the next game, changed the atmosphere by asking,

  „Billy, what kind of antiques do you deal? Do you find clients easier to make the business blossom?“

  Billy: „The antiques consist mostly of the archeological discoveries from the desert, but also there is hand made copies of some original stuff dated back to the Cleopatra’s era. I work mainly with archeologists in cooperation, besides, I have some clients whom I trust and take their order. Oh, John, there are many people who tend to prefer the investment in antiques than in shares, you know, in order to avoid the consequences of inflation.“

  John: „You are right. But there are so many who swim with the flow, blind as a bat.“

  Billy: „Well, I would be a bat, my client’s investment in antiques I invest in shares gladly. You brokers are not really far different from the philosophers, right?“

  John shrugged and turned to Adrian, asking,

  „What makes the philosophers differ from others, Adrian? There are so many professions, but they are not really stressed out like you philosophers.“

  Adrian: „Well, you could be also a philosopher, when you consider about simple things searching for their reason, like your recent question. Other people are just not interested in simple things.“

  Alice: „I thought that the simple things don’t belong to the philosophical topic. What do you mean when you say simple things?“

  Adrian: „Just the simple things like love and understanding that build all together a harmony.“

  Alice: „That cannot be considered simple things which the common average mind to deal with.“

  Billy: „Do you mean that the common average mind don’t long for the harmony?“

  Alice: „Spitefulness and jealousy, that kind of human-defects which cause the other human-defects like anger and hate, destroying the good qualities of a human-being, that are things I can deal with, but they cannot build a harmony with each other.“

  Adrian: „Maybe philosophers are people, who used to see things in broader horizon as usual.“

  Alice: „How can you make your horizon broader and brighter than usual? Are you not afraid of being considered lunatic or schizophrenic? Do you think that everybody is blessed with that kind of potential?“

  John interfered the conversation, answered for Adrian,

  „As I remember, we people all have the same capacity as babies, but it is the condition and environment that make us develop into different people, also capacity.“

  Adrian: „Some people even don’t know that we use only ten percent of our brain capacity, about fifteen percent belong to the genies like Einstein.“

  Telly suddenly began to speak and asked them,

  „Do you think that some abilities are just born already mixed in our DNA?“

  Alice, Adrian and John were astonished by the sudden phenomena provided by the woman with everlasting closed eyes and it took a while till Adrian replied,

  „Oh Telly, nice to hear your voice, maybe you are right, some people just born as genies to be only developed or more precisely to be discovered and appreciated, otherwise we all could have been Mozart, Einstein or Marie Curie.“

  Billy: „I agree totally with that, regarding the born geniuses. But I am also for the fact that genies could be made by hard work. Like the legend of Buddha, for example, once upon a time there was a royal couple who couldn’t become a child, which caused great sadness in the whole empire, worrying about the heir. Once the king made a party and there were invited a lot of wealthy guests. Suddenly, a poor old man with a stick in his hand appeared among the guests and told the king that the queen will be soon pregnant and will give a birth to a boy, but the boy as a young man will leave his home avoiding the heir and the crown. Then he disappeared suddenly as he had appeared. The prediction became true and the royal couple became a boy, they were afraid of the prediction of the old man that their son would leave them one day, so the king ordered that the boy must be surrounded by only healthy, beautiful youths not older than thirty years old and not allowed to let him go out of the castle wall. As the prince grew up to a young man, he asked his father to let him see his empire outside of the castle wall. The king couldn’t ignore the wish of his beloved son, but he arranged a colorful shallowness along the streets, visited by the prince, which were covered with decoration and beautiful, healthy young population, and the visit repeated several times under the same arrangement of the king. Once, on the way, the prince discovered that there were old and sick, poor and sad and also people were suffering from pain and having sorrow. As he returned to the castle the prince was very sad and asking himself about the reason for illness, sorrow and getting old. He told the king that he wanted to know the reason for suffering and to see the world out of the castle wall. The king and queen were very sad by remembering what the predictor had told, but their love let the prince leave the castle forever to search the reason for the life. He traveled encountering on the way the sick, suffering, old and happy, also wise men who taught him their wisdom, till he got a cave where he began to meditate. That way he got the highest enlightenment which evolved the Buddha out of him, having found out that the suffering is true and the reason for suffering is true, in other words, that are natural. The only way to overwhelm them was the meditation, in other words the inner enrichment, which brighten the horizon, making it broader to see things as a tiny part of the whole cosmos. As John said, there is always the weather change.“

  The other four companies were listening to him attentively, all the attention drawn to the
narrator distracted from the cards. Regarding the gambling map, there was no weather change possible as long as Telly was holding the cards. But, the weather change logic made John, Adrian and Alice keep on playing with the hope to win in some turn.

  Alice: „Yes Billy, there are so many various legends about Buddha, but that one is the most popular story. You know, people say that the god is within us.“

  John: „The wider the angle which we see through, the smaller are the things within the angle, even the unnecessary stuff that make us angry and worry disappear out of sight. On the contrary, people who have to see within tiny narrow angle, are occupied with the unnecessary small things which look bigger within the tiny angle and waste their time and nerves.“

  Adrian: „That is a wonderful story, the Buddha had made enough experience and seen the world, ended up in a cave where he made a summary of his adventure. In my point of view, the purpose of every religion is just to make people able to be in harmony with each other following moral and humanity, having good behavior respecting each other. I read both the Holy Bible and Koran, which share almost the same figures in the story and their ultimate purpose is to make people behaving like God, virtuous.“

  Billy: „I agree, by the way, I am not religious at all, but I have great respect for each religion, the holiness. I believe in the existence of the universal God, keeping the moral and virtuous, all good things.“

  Telly: „Me too, it is amazing that the old city of Jerusalem is divided in three parts where live Jews, Christians and Muslims. The christian pray for the Jesus, who is just a small figure in the Koran, and the jews are still waiting for the birth of Jesus. In my point of view, there is a different interpretation of the same thing, regarding the figure of the story.“

  Alice: „Telly, you are really a free spirit, I like your opinion on the religion.“

  John: „Well, I was born in a catholic family, and visited the catholic boy school, which was very strict, and every little mistake had to count a severe punishment. I gained my liberal view only at the university.“

  That game ended with the same winners, Telly and Billy. They decided to have a break and went to dinner. Billy was holding Telly, who was in Alice’s height and Alice guided her to the bathroom, but Telly had got used to having her privacy under her own control, with the closed eyes.

  Next day they encountered on the gambling map again, and this time Alice was wearing gray sparkling short dress, but closed up to her chin, and also her gloves were changed into gray. Her blond hair combined with her black eyebrows was giving an exotic look. But none of the gamblers was really interested in the mourning woman. Telly was wearing the same yellow dress of the day before which she still couldn’t see, but feel its comfort soft inside. The men were all in the era of the twenties, big shirts and loose trousers, John had to wear straps to fix his velvet green trousers.

  Cards were mixed and the gamblers were drawn to the cards. The atmosphere around the gamblers, which wasn’t really attached to them, was in fact adorable, like in the movies about twenties. Some passengers adjusted even the hairstyle to the twenties. Cigars, cocktails, piano and singers, warmed up by the bordeaux velvet wall golden stripes on it, the windowless hall allowed the lights in candle shape burning all the day long using the modern electricity.

  The glass wall between the gamblers at the table of ‚lunatics‘, was broken and among them a frank loosened atmosphere had already come into existence, none of them was afraid of being misunderstood or betrayed, but Telly. Alice seemed to find a sense to live further, loving the life saying goodbye to her mourning. But appearances are deceiving.

  Billy broke the silence, as well the concentration on the cards of the gamblers said, smiling:

  „Well, the luck will be mine, my dear companies, are you really hoping to beat us, in the end, when you would have lost all your money I will be not sorry with your bad luck. Don’t blame me on your stubbornness.“

  John laughed and replied,

  „Oh Billy, don’t worry, we will face the consequences of our own choice bravely. Myself, as a broker, used to losing money and I know that I cannot buy happiness, but shares and insurances. My profession which deals with stocks and shares taught me a lot, regarding the broad horizon and patience.“

  Alice: „What kind of patience can a broker learn at the stock exchange?“

  John: „You know, like us people, the companies have also their bad time in life, which influence the share prices. But the boom happens always, even in irregular cycles also in a micro level, so in broader horizon, you should see the whole thing, instead of focusing the only weak point on the graphic measuring the destiny with the small part put under the loop and feel sad by thinking that the life goes down the drain. That is the way to deal with patience.“

  Alice: „For me, since I lost my love, for what I had been fighting crossing the deserts and committing crime, the life doesn't make sense any more. Billy, if the luck decides so, of course I have no regret having lost in the gambling to survive my suffering.“

  If Telly’s eyes were not closed, people should feel her soul reflected in her eyes. People say that the eyes are the mirror of the soul. The closed eyes of Telly seemed to have darkened the window to the outside, but from the inside she could feel everything what was going on in her surroundings.

  Adrian: „Oh, Alice you must be joking, when you mention desert and crime. By the way, Billy, I am beginning to believe your superstition, Telly’s hands must be the magic, holding cards and let you win. But now it is just the beginning of the new game, like the beginning of the life in the childhood, we don’t know what we would be facing in our lives ahead, there are so many other cards to be chosen.“

  Alice: „But, some got to know already in the late childhood, what they are going to face during her whole life, well most of the part.“

  Billy looked over the cards which were held by Telly, who was sitting straight like a marionette, he said,

  „Alice, did you know already in your late childhood what your life would be look like?“

  Alice: „Indeed, I had been supposed to be one of the soldiers who were trained from their late childhood on to become a professional soldier, which was in fact a kind of slave and remain as such for the rest of the life but fortunately that part I play here on the gambling map.“

  John, Adrian and Billy were really impressed by the frankness and looked at Alice in bewilderment, but Telly showed no single expression of feeling, she remained with her closed eyes and upped chin, her body in her shimmering yellow dress.

  Adrian: „Yes, I agree that we can change the part of life which is supposed to be a destiny.“

  Billy: „We call it destiny, what we cannot influence, in other words, things which are beyond our power.“

  Telly: „Given conditions like parents and environment, which are independent of our power.“

  Adrian: „People cannot change their bad parents unfortunately, that would be a simple example of destiny, that people had to deal with, either accept or ignore it fully. We all have human rights to guide a fair and safe life.“

  Alice: „Yes, If the destiny cannot be changed, then you don’t need to bark at the moon to come down, wasting your lifetime.“

  Adrian: „Some would say that a leopard doesn’t change its spots.“

  Telly: „But the spots can be painted over.“

  Adrian: „Yes, even the painting will be faded away someday revealing the spots.“

  Billy: „Nothing lasts forever.“

  They all nodded, agreeing. John scanned Alice’s body upwards and downwards and asked,

  „Alice, had you been a soldier? How come, where are you from, well we all use the same language at the gambling table, but we don’t share our origin with each other.“

  Alice put her cards down on the table and answered:

  „My origin is Mongolian. I was born in the desert Gobi as the eighth child of a nomad couple. That is why I love the desert because already in my childhood, I learn
t to appreciate oasis in the desert.“

  Telly put the cards down on the table, so did John and Adrian. Billy, who had travelled through the Sahara to interview the nomads in order to make his research on Arabian culture, which made him cross the whole desert of Sahara to get to know the environment that made the culture come into existence and grow. Billy turned to Alice,

  „That sounds fantastic, I had always a different imagination about the look of the Mongolian people, you know, just inspired by the historical picture of the Chingis Khan, who once invaded almost the half world. Even there are books about the world travel of Marco Polo, who visited the empire of the Chingis Khan, precisely said, his next generation Khubilai Khan, in whose palace Marco Polo stayed for months and wrote his diary, there were to read a lot of fascinating details stressing the world history. You are the first person from Mongolia who I encounter. With your blond hair and usual european name ‚Alice‘ you don’t give us any impression of someone, who comes from Asia.“

  Alice replied smiling:

  „My Mongolian name was Suvd, which means ‚pearl‘ in Mongolian language. But later the Russian woman from Siberia, who bought me to be one of her soldiers, changed my name for her sake.“

  Billy was really interested in her story and eager to hear about the desert Gobi. As well, John and Adrian, whose origin was American, but they were all over the world at home, like Alice and Telly.

  Billy: „What the desert Gobi looks like? Tell us about what had you done till you become your new name Alice?“

  John: „Well, I had a motorbike tour crossing the desert Gobi heading for China, I can imagine the desert and extraordinary friendly Mongolian people especially the nomads. I, too, couldn’t have guessed that you were from the desert Gobi.“

  Adrian nodded smiling and all eyes focused on blond haired Alice with big dark brown eyes under black eyebrows. Alice’s expression turned to serious and told,