Escape From Ulaanbaatar

Standing on the wide brick steps of the State Department Store, I
scanned the crowd for Khaidavyn Chilaajav, director of the Union of
Mongolian Writers, who I was to meet for dinner. Its plaza crowded with
taxis and pedestrians, the store is still the hub of downtown, though
no longer Ulaanbaatar’s only retail center as it was during Mongolia’s
seventy years of Communism. Small children spun in circles on a
miniature fair ride, while bigger ones bounced on a four-leaf clover of
trampolines. Men and women in tattered jeans or silk deels, the
traditional ankle-length robe, sat docilely near white phones, where a
call could be made for one hundred togrog (about ten cents). Along a
boulevard lined with teenagers whispering intimately on benches, the
cerulean dome of the State Circus shone brightly against the dry, brown
Southern mountains.  

Kaidavyn arrived, suited and brusque, and we joined the throngs of
cars headed into the city’s sprawling neighborhoods of crumbling
Soviet-era apartments. Inside his flat, he disappeared momentarily
while I removed my shoes and settled on the couch. He reemerged in
pajama pants and a polo shirt, his demeanor softened, and flipped on
the TV. He teased his young daughters and was eminently patient with my
imperfect Mongolian. Despite his prestigious post organizing and
promoting Mongolia’s writers, Kaidavyn is a relatively young man of
around forty, short and portly, who trained as a veterinarian in
Russia. Enthusiastic about poetry, he showed me his extensive library
and gave me two books of his poems, a rich gift in a country where
authors pay for their own publishing and fifteen years ago the stores
didn’t have food to sell.

Chilaajav’s wife, Oyunchimeg, brought in tea and a plate of cucumbers
and khyam (a cross between pâté and Spam). When I stopped her to
introduce myself, she smiled widely, her brown eyes bright and warm;
she spoke quickly and then hurried back to the kitchen. She was busy
during the whole meal, refilling teacups, handing out napkins, and
serving khushuur (fried meat dumplings) and then buuz (steamed meat
dumplings). We drank sweet wine made from a regional berry and shots of
Chinggis vodka. We looked at family photos and paged through a
coffee-table book of landscapes called Under the Everlasting Mongolian
Sky. I told them that it was Mongolia’s marvelously huge sky and open
grasslands that brought me to this country. And, after a brief
exchange, we found ourselves putting on our shoes and heading off to
search for just these marvels.

In five minutes the family was ready: Kaidavyn handed out sweaters, the
two girls grabbed toys, and Oyunchimeg packed a backpack with food and
filled a thermos with tea. Not long after piling into their small SUV,
there we were, surrounded by dry, treeless hills and a few ramshackle
houses and yurts. Loose pink clouds dissipated as the sun set behind a
line of dark, distant mountains. Kaidavyn said to me, laughing, “That’s
the sky.”

We followed a dirt track to a hilltop. The ground was faintly green
with young grass and dotted with rotting bones and piles of horse
manure. Oyunchimeg arranged the blankets and food. Kaidavyn and his
eldest daughter played badminton, their birdie barely a speck against
the great dusky sky and sweeping plains. We heard a quiet lowing and
Oyunchimeg said it was the sound of a cow before I pointed out it was
coming from her bag. A round of giggling ensued as she answered her
vibrating cell phone. To talk to his older daughter, who had walked
over the rise, Kaidavyn used his phone to call hers, which, it turned
out, had been left in the car. In place of a ring, a pop song played
into Kaidavyn’s ear, loud and tinny in the empty night. The younger
girl snatched her father’s phone and began dancing to the music,
spinning in circles and shaking her hips, her grinning face lit by the
screen’s blue glow. Her sister eventually returned, perhaps following
the sound of Kaidavyn’s boisterous singing. We drank more vodka and
tea, and ate fruit. We watched the first star rise as Oyunchimeg told
us about naming her daughters after stars. The air grew cold and so we
moved toward the car, talking of coming back later with tents and a
grill.

We drove through the clouds of smoke that blanketed the lightless road.
We swerved around pedestrians and a man conveying a boy on the
handlebars of a bicycle. Cars coming from the city flashed their
brights as they approached and dimmed them after they passed. The first
factories appeared, followed by churches and shopping centers, and then
the endless blocks of apartments. To me, weary and smiling and lulled
by Kaidavyn’s singing, the city seemed tentative and insignificant, an
itinerant camp in that vast landscape, enveloped by everlasting sky.