I watch through sweat stung eyes and fogged glasses as the last of Tims’ client’s step through the threshold of the ger. I walk behind the rounded hut and into the shade. The sun is unhindered from cloud and embedded in the brightest of blue skies- almost white with the summer heat. There is a bleat of sheep and goat, mixed in with a mumbling mew of yaks, rolling up behind me. I ignore them for now as I unclip my camera, shrug off my damp and sweat salted pack.
I stand up straight and arch backwards, hands relieving pressure on my waist. Mid-arch, I lock eyes with one of the nomads who are aiding in the expedition. His strong brown face breaks open with the clearest and whitest of smiles. He is dressed in a thick deel; a robe-like garment secured around his waist with a beautiful thick leather belt. How he has not passed out from heat exhaustion confounds me daily. I smile back, knowing he’s laughing politely at my struggle. I’m in his country, I know how flailing and desperate I must be looking in this dry altitude and unforgiving heat.
He nods his head to the ger door expectantly. I nod and wave back while awkwardly bending to take a drag from the hose of my water bladder. I straighten once more, and pull my shirt away from my body, peeling the sweaty fabric off my back and chest. I let my hand trail along the ger outer wall and walk around its circumference. Along the mountains’ ridgeline, that stands tall, fringing and protecting the valley, you could see a handful of these white circular dwellings. Usually, nooked by springs of water or perched next to glacial rivers.
I step into the ger, careful not to scuff my boots on the thatched threshold. It takes a moment for my eyes to adjust from the blinding brightness of the sun-bleached landscape to the dim, cool inside of a stranger’s home. I was told it was considered deeply offensive to block the doorway of a ger, or to sit on the threshold instead of the ground. Caught between appearing relaxed and desperate to find an inconspicuous place to sit, I half stumble, half walk into a space between two of my clients.
Legs folded underneath, and arms crossed over my chest I take a breath and look around the group. Automatically I start counting that all twenty of the clients were present. While counting I try to gauge the group’s wellbeing. It was a long hike here, almost twenty kilometres with another eight to go. In this windless, cloudless, treeless and shadeless landscape, I was very much expecting to see shattered and down-turned faces lining the single-roomed ger.
However, like sunflowers that always face the sun, all twenty faces were turned towards an elderly woman at the centre of the ger. She wore a deel of her own making, deep blue embroidered with silver patterns. Her seat was placed next to the fire place.
Is she cold? I think to myself, maybe she wants to keep an eye on the yak tea by the stove – a gentle tap to my back snapped this thread of thought.
Embarrassed that I may have sat in front of a client without realising, I quickly swivel to apologise- only to be met with not a hand, but a hoof. Embarrassment morphed to mortified. Suspended by rope and inches from my nose is the carcass of a skinned and flayed goat. I follow its sinewy remains, past its protruding legs and up to a gaping hole where, I assumed, its head should have been. Lazy flies blissfully float about the hole, bloated and bumbling in and out…take a breath, Sarah.
With my back to the clients, I assume no one had noticed the blood drain from my face or my posture seize. I try to dissolve my attention from this goat cadaver, by taking another breath. I wait for my eyebrows to return to an appropriate altitude before I turn back to the group.
Deggy, our acting translator from Ulaanbaatar, in broken English summarises what the nomadic woman had said.
“ …Since her husbands’ death, she would not choose to be here, if it were not for them.”
I feel the weight settle over the clients. My uncertainty of who “them” were, and why her life was dependent on their presence was short lived. A dust cloud appears outside, followed by muffled grunts and childish outrage. As the dust settles, I see a small fist, off brand Nikes’ and a pair of young, wild faces- one which was caught in a head lock. The two brothers pause their wrestling and look up, one perched on top of the other. They must have felt foreign eyes peering at them from inside their grandmothers’ home, but when they locked eyes with mine the three of us grinned simultaneously.
I watch as they picked themselves up, dust themselves off and stroll into the ger. Without giving a passing glance to any of the strangers in their grandmothers’ home, they tucked themselves into the sides of the elderly woman and stayed. She pulled in her grandsons and placed loving arms over each of her grandchildren.
In the space of seconds, I was struck by a stark and contrasting realisation. Life and death are symbiotic in Nomadic culture. The felted walls of a single roomed ger are lined with celebrations of life and the living. You can see it in the woven leather ropes coiled on the walls, or the colourful fabrics embellished with sewn patterns, the tiny saddle that belongs to their youngest daughter…the grin in the wrestling grandsons faces.
This expression of living, so embedded in this culture, goes hand in hand with their understanding of life’s impermanence. The goat swinging behind me is the purest example of this. All cattle are slain the same way in the Mongolian steppe; be it yak, sheep, lamb or even marmot, you will find an incision in the centre of their chest. The nomads’ hand would reach in, and find the creatures heart-while it still beats. A gentle, but quick, tear of an artery and the animal slips into death painlessly. Once the animal has left, the traditional preparation of its body is done with so much care and precision that not a single drop of blood will touch the Earth.
I had been welcomed into a home in which their walls have hosted corroborees amongst many new and old friends. I pause to imagine the amount of tea shared in this ger, the amount of laughter that seeped into the felted walls, the conversations held and curd consumed. These walls have witnessed corroborees of nomadic peoples, yes, but also the conception, birth and growth of their children. So much life has passed through here, but still, when looking into the face of the elderly woman, there is an understanding or deep knowing, that death is always holding the hand of life and often more times than not, in this isolating landscape and life style, it is just love for others that keep us here.