Footprints in the Sand Desert

by Manakhatan Boldsukh

  Adrian was looking at his iPhone, which couldn’t have internet access prohibited by the casino securities and turned to Alice, „Excuse me for interrupting you, Alice, I assure you that I had not been so often dreaming myself as a football hero shooting eleven meters during the geography classes at school, but I don’t remember where is the Mongolia?“

  John burst out into tears, and Billy gave a pat on Adrian’s shoulder who was sitting next to him on the couch, saying,

  „I hope you recognize us right, Adrian! By the way, what are you drinking?“

  Adrian: „I think, I am drinking the pretty same thing as yours.“

  Alice: „What kind of geometric zodiac do you imagine, Adrian?“

  Adrian: „All right, I am sound enough to remember that Mongolia is the big country between Russia and China, but what I really wanted to know is the whereabouts of Ulan-Bator, if it has to do with deserts.“

  John: „No, Adrian, Ulan-Bator is exactly in the middle of the Mongolia, like the black dot on the dart board, surrounded by green forests. Well, the dart board had been drawn by Russian army with the Mongolian heroes.“

  Adrian: „Oh really, the Mongolian supported by the Russian army to draw their border line?“

  Billy: „That is why the dart board had lost its radius.“

  John: „Have you ever tasted vodka?“

  Adrian: „I have been living for more than four decades on the earth, long enough to have tasted the vodka.“

  John: „Mongolian vodka is not bad either, even the famous one named by ‚Chingis Khan‘ I tasted, well, vodka is in Mongolia the national drink, which you should reckon with in every festival.“

  Alice: „Yes, the men can stand vodka so well, that they don’t get drunk so easily.“

  Adrian: „Really? How did you know?“

  Billy: „She is a Mongolian pearl, Suvd.“

  John: „The Alice is the painted Mongolian pearl.“

  Telly: „A good painting!“

  Alice: „In my memory, in the early nineties, Ulan-Bator was a nice clean city, its streets filled with carefully cut green bushes and trees and elegant city people. The capital looked like a bowl filled with white candies, the low mountains, I mean the nature reserve forests rich in wild fruits and animals, especially berries and bears, squirrels, roe deers, together forming a half circle wrapping the city. Later, in the early twenty-first century, I visited Mongolia as Alice, a tourist, to visit my heartless family in the desert Gobi to donate to the school, which I had left without a graduation and the small village where I met Maria first time. My planned short travel to the desert Gobi went smoothly, but my parents were already passed away and as the old neighbor, who thought that I was a curious tourist speaking fluent Mongolian, informed me that my brothers had been moved to the capital city, and I didn’t see them and besides that was not really necessary. Well, I didn’t feel a touch on my soul, I was simply happy to see the development and a strange city which was no more my home, but my childhood memory was revived growing a pride in my chest to be a Mongolian, I enjoyed the breathtaking sight of the desert dunes from the end of a gorge.“

  John: „Do you mean the gorge ‚Vulture‘? The gorge, where you can find along the way up to five meters of frozen ice leaning the gorge wall inside, while outside the heat was measured forty degree in the summer. Did you walk till the end fifteen or so kilometers long?“

  Alice: „Yes, I had already been to the ‚Vulture’ gorge many times, as I was working at the tourist camp. The long walk through the chilling gorge is worth to endure regarding the ending, which opens you a wonderful view over the Gobi desert, in far horizon blue mirages are to be seen adding nuances to the golden yellow sand dunes.“

  Telly was sitting close to Billy, leaning against the back of the coach, her arms were crossed under the chest, her yellow gloves touching her naked elbows, the closed-eyes were not revealing, if she was asleep or listening to the nostalgia.

  Billy: „Wonderful, that you had already found out your place in the world where you feel right.“

  Adrian: „Yes, you are right, guided by the right feeling we all find our places in the world. That is not the matter of the place of birth, but the human development which let us make our life choice according to the gambling map.“

  John: „How can a gambling be compared to a place, where we feel home?“

  Billy: „The place, where we feel right!“

  Adrian: „I find that feeling right is the proper expression, you know, you can feel right somewhere else or by the side of someone independent of what the geography says.“

  Telly: „You are right by saying that, Adrian.“ Well, Telly was not asleep.

  Alice: „That would be fine, but a forced feeling is always doomed to fail.“

  There was a while of silence on the couch, the casino hall was almost empty, but there were remained enough devils at the gambling praying for angels, smoke and music to vapor down the noise of glasses and deep breath. Billy broke the pause, saying,

  „Alice, you were about to tell us the story. Well, then what did Maria tell you as you visited her in Zurich?“

  Alice: „Well, she liked me from the first time on, since she had observed me in the Gobi when I was fourteen, and she was fond of me in a certain way. She had never shown her real emotion, an absolute icy cruel witch who had learnt to play with soft souls like juggling with feather balls, but I was far away to be one of her juggle balls. Even though I got used to talking to her with a certain respect, a kind of soldier to take her orders and execute everything like an Alsatian dog. But, that time during my visit, the feeling was different, caused by the love and passion burning inside me giving all the courage to save the love. For the cancelled duties I found some excuses like, caused by a pain under stomach. Regarding her client Sky, I had to tell her that Queen was my good friend, who was in fact going to be destroyed by me, and I succeeded to make Maria believe that the ways were crossed just by an accident. To my astonishment, she accepted the keeping private contact with Sky, just because I had to do with the girlfriend, the moral of the fact had made the possible contact with Sky unimaginable. But she became curious regarding the lies about the pain under stomach. She ordered me to come along with her to the research clinic of Zurich, where she had a lot of old friends, who were famous researchers and doctors keeping up with the Einstein, but in medicine field. There they examined my womb and stomach, in the clinic labor I found out another cloud in the Maria’s world, besides the rape in the night under anesthesia, that the teenage girls became also an experiment, their womb as an oven to mold a molecule which should have developed to a cancer cell after twenty years time.“

  Billy: „What a hell of a witch, Maria!“

  Adrian: „That must be true, then I read some articles that certain chemists and biologists experiment on a very healthy human being as their labor animal to be poisoned and afterwards killed, in order to invent a substance to heal the ill.“

  Telly: „That must be a kind of human trafficking assured by any renowned name like international humanitarian organization, which keeps any possible suspicion from the outside away from the reality of the monkey business they actually run.“

  John: „So to say, they had to find out what causes the cancer cell or how long does it take to be developed to a negative cell under given circumstances which should support the research, in order to invent or improve a medicine that would heal the sick. A billion sum business in the pharmacy would be guaranteed shooting the share prices up to the Jupiter.“

  Alice: „Exactly the same thing they had run. I had to cry, but my poker face remained keeping the dull. But, the result had to disappoint the researchers, Maria as well. Their examination on my health took hours to make them believe the proof that their theory had failed. Despite the highly scientific experiment, the labor person remained healthy, thank to the energy of Mongolian nature, healthy food and unpolluted air that the body had absorbed in the childhood, forming a robust physiological immune,
but also the psychological capacity of endurance.“

  John: „The nomads don’t care the hygiene and the dry climate gives no chance to grow any bacteria, anyway the children become from the nursery section on very immune to viruses, while in the city people take care of too much hygiene which make the child always infected cold or other illness.“

  Telly: „But the city people had the possibility to go out of the city to relax, right?“

  Alice: „Yes, of course, as I have heard once Queen talking to a friend of her, she spent all her summer vacation, which lasted for three months, in the middle of the wild nature, about thirty kilometers from northern Ulan-Bator, in a summer house of her grandparents surrounded by mountains and river. As she described, the place was a magic of nature with full moon reflecting on the river from the far distance and sparkling zodiacs in the mirror of the night sky. The same way, the city people normally own any summer house close to the capital, dated back to the communist era. But, during my last visit in Mongolia, I saw that people had built a lot of villas around the capital city where they can spend not only summer months, but also the other seasons of the year. The remains of the communist era had already begun to disappear.“

  John: „My Mongolian friend told me that every September after their summer vacation, his little boys return to the school with nice suntan and charged energy absorbed from the nature.“

  Adrian: „Like solar energy!“

  Billy: „The human bodies used to deal with the nature by themselves. But modern civilization destroys some balance, faking the nature.“

  John: „Do you mean the snow source and ski resort in Dubai, when you mention faking the nature?“

  Billy: „That would be an example, but the resort doesn’t weigh much on the nature balance, the heat outside let it forget easily, not to mention the engine of the big refrigerator. By the way, I have never been inside the ski aquarium.“

  John: „I remember having read about the snow produced by the big refrigerator. The performance of its engine was great, but had still effect on the environment, making the atmosphere warmer.“

  Billy: „There you find an example of the treasure hidden in the desert, you know, in the seventies Emirates was a poor land, till they discovered the treasure in the dunes, the oil resource. The Arabian people began to make the most out of it, now you see the result, what they had built and still on the way up to the sky.“

  Telly: „But oil resources are limited like other nature reserves, do you think that would end some year in the future hindering the development?“

  Billy: „Surely in many years later, the natural resource would be fully consumed, but nobody really knows about the extent of the hidden treasure that shouldn't be to be betrayed. Anyhow, the Arabs would find another solution, with the return of the oil resource they would be able to invest in a whole solar system, transforming the disadvantage of the desert heat into an advantage.“

  John: „Not only the Emirates, but also other countries in the desert have already began to invest in the transformation of the disadvantage into the advantage of the desert, the shares are whirling building tornados, only upwards.“

  Billy: „Faking the nature, would not be the solution, because there is always some mechanic behind which cause other pollution. Like the refrigerator of the ski resort in the desert, it produces the cold temperature, made the skiing possible, as well the return on investment, but on the other hand it consumes energy and the engine generates pollution. Transforming a disadvantage into an advantage is the most philosophy of the desert regarding the solar systems, which we can adapt also in life regarding any difficult situation to be faced with.“

  Adrian: „Any destroyed balance which we try to reproduce nature again by faking it, that would cause the same result destroying the balance in a different way by making the carousel turning and turning, causing the same result.“

  Billy: „Sorry for the interrupting you again, Alice, we are still eager to listen to your narration.“

  Alice: „Obviously Maria was blessed with good intuition guessing my plan. She had booked me for her clients to keep me occupied, but I abused my engagement to destroy the relationship of the couple, Sky and Queen. Their feelings were so real and every time when I saw Queen, my jealousy of her tortured me causing fear of losing Sky. Despite the orders of Maria I could always find time to spend with Sky and to fool Queen, sending her friendship gifts and poisoned sweets and teas, especially before her exam, I was also envious of her academic talent, besides, in the poison, which made her feel ill and unable to concentrate, I mixed also a kind of hormone to make her put on weight, to destroy her beauty in the eyes of Sky. I began to write both to Sky and Queen letters under a false name abusing Maria’s client’s addresses to slander Queen making Sky believe that she was going out with one them, and told Queen lies about Sky, especially in order to sadden the soul of Queen who was an easy game to play with all her trust and naiveness. I kept making love with Sky wondering his weak feeling toward Queen, and let develop a trust between us, that made him time by time to rely on me more than Queen, whose best friend I played. You know, for the love you are ready to go through the hell to get the someone you love, losing yourself and forgetting the pain of burned skin under the tunnel, in Queen’s case, she must have been not only in the fire of hell which was lighted by me, but also she was poisoned by devils like me.“

  Adrian: „The smoke of the fire must have hindered your sight.“

  John: „The smoke made you oversee that the other one didn’t love you!“

  Telly: „Your pain was for nothing, senseless choice of the hell anyway.“

  Billy: „But worth to try! That is the same as Adrian said, he plays cards to enjoy discovering cards and rolling the brain nerves in motion, not for the hell in the end to win the game.“

  Telly: „Yes, I understand.“

  Adrian: „Actually, these are the moments of life giving sense, worth to try.“

  John: „And then Alice, what had you done to go through the hell veiled by the smoke?“

  Alice: „Well, as I have told you, I slandered Queen to Sky, and backward, which made them misunderstood each other suffering from the pain and disappointment, for which none of them was guilty.“

  Telly: „The bond between them was made of glass, fragile enough to get broken.“

  Alice: „Well, they had met each other only a year ago, besides Queen was a student living in her small, modest apartment studying for her exams, working part-time to make the ends meet, besides, she had to read a lot to become a chance to have own psychological praxis, so she had not enough time for Sky despite the true feeling for him which I saw in her luminous eyes reflecting her soul every time when she talked about Sky, she adored him and understood his paintings, and she had respect for him. She told me that they saw each other first time at a birthday party of an acquaintance of them, and according to Queen as their eyes had met, there had happened rows of lightning in the sky of Munich beating the Guinness record of Caracas, the capital of Venezuela where a hundred twenty-million lightning a year was to be wondered in the sky.“

  John: „Well, one of them must have been a witch!“

  Telly: „Love of the first sight, full of passion!“

  Adrian: „Well, the second sight must be exciting!“

  Billy: „Yes, the second sight might be clearer than the first.“

  John: „Not necessarily.“

  Alice: „How much I hated Queen, I had always wondered her the same way as I saw her first time in the desert Gobi, she remained the same despite the wrinkles and bit change of her body. Her love to Sky was more than mine.“

  Telly: „That cannot have been. Why do you think so?“

  Alice: „Her love was much more than mine, because she loved Sky as he was, without trying to change him and to shackle him by her side. The real love is always accompanied by trust.“

  Billy: „Your love wanted him to be adhered to you like a sandwich, right?“

 
Alice: „Yes, I would become jealous with every woman who would be able to conquer him taking away from me the same way as I robbed him of Queen.“

  Adrian: „Force in every form has always been the negative impact, not only on love which is like a present, you cannot demand people to give you a present.“

  Alice: „On the contrary, Sky was a successful painter, whose paintings never satisfied the perfection in his own eyes, which made him paint again and again to get a Mona Lisa.“

  John: „In the past, the lack of camera made people paint pictures, in order to introduce the grand-grand-child its older generation, but nowadays you can just take a picture with your camera.“

  Alice: „John, then what caused people to paint nature or objects?“

  John: „The nature would be destroyed in the future replaced with village or town, the objects could become victim of an emotion shattered into pieces.“

  Adrian: „Oh John, good to know the purpose of the paintings, the documentation.“

  Billy: „I have never seen a painting of desert to keep up with paintings by Monet or Degas showing the flowered green nature.“