Storms & Mongolian Boyfriends

***Storms & Mongolian Boyfriends*** (#StorytellingSalemStory #999,996 out of 1mil:)

🎶So I’ve been travelling across the country—
town to town/city to city/State to State;
sitting down in random locations—
across this Nation— with a whiteboard in my haaand;
I’ve been asking pplllll:
“What’s Yor Story?”🎶

But this time, I wasn’t Stateside;
I was in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, where the clouds drift low and slow over the mountains, and the air smells like firewood and iron. Outside a corner tea shop with steamed windows, I sat on a short wooden stool, bundled in borrowed layers, the cold trying to sneak-in-past- my collar.

A woman in her late thirties, broad-shouldered with wind-chapped cheeks, wearing a thick deel robe cinched with braided rope, stopped in front of the board. She didn’t smile. Just read it once. Twice. Then looked at me with eyes that had seen wild horses bolt across snow-covered steppe.

When she spoke, her English came in deep, measured syllables—each one touched by the wide-open sky of her homeland.

⸻

“My story… it is not small. But I give you piece.

My name—ehh, not important. But where I come from? South of here. Faaar south. Our winter is teeth. Our summer is bone.

When I was girl, we move camp twelve times in one year. Always follow herd. Always chase grass.

One summer, my brother—he was ten—he disappear in storm. Sandstorm. Fast one. You hear it before you see it. Like a drum getting closer.

drdrdrdrdrdRRRRDRDRDRDRRRRRDHHHHHDRHDRDHRHDRHH

We all ride out, call name, nothing. Just dust and horse tracks.

RDRDRDRDRRRRRDHHHHHDRHDRDHRHDRHHDRHRDRHDRH

That night, father make fire. Tell us, ‘If wind take him; then sky will bring him back.’ We wait three days. Horses stand silent. No song. No laughter.

On fourth day, brother walk back into camp.

Clothes torn. Face black with dust. In hand? Tiny goat. Alive. Bleating: ‘baaaaaaa.’

He say he got lost.
Found goat. Named goat Zula. Said Zula gave him path back.
We say: ‘Why you follow goat?’
He say: ‘Goat knew where herd was going. Kept following me and yelling at me until I followed it. Was only quiet when I followed it.’

That goat? She live twelve more years. Always at his side.
Never paid attention to me, except when I bring home boyfriend from big city. Then Zula no longer care for brother; only my new boyfriend. Wanted to talk to him all the time; have him follow her around all the time. As she show him the herd, the home, the land…
……Boyfriend no longer ask me how I’mmmm doingg… Ask—every—day, how Zuuula doing…
…Zula fine.., she goat, she baa; she run with horses- eat with cattle- fly with eagle- n drink with camels. She sleep in blankets- n yell at humans. She fine……..But me? I got new boyfriend. This one from country and likes to ask about me. Like to stand on mountaintops and sing to me. When Zula walk into room? Without me asking- he tell her to leave us be. He was so dreamy…..but dumb…. left me for a city girl….who then left him a week later for an American Man telling her he’d bring her to California… He never brought her to California… people are dumb. I want to be goat. Not Zula. But goat, like, Zula………………..I want to baa at ppl and mean it…………………

Sometimes, storms, take…..,
But sometimes, they also bring back, more- afterwards.”

⸻

She adjusted the rope on her deel, gave a nod that felt less like goodbye and more like continue, then disappeared through the tea shop door where steam met mountain air.

🎶And I?
I stayed there on the stool, cheeks stinging from wind, whiteboard propped up infront of me, still asking passerbyers:
“What’s Yor Story?”
waiting for the next person to walk my waaaaay~🎶

(#StorytellingSalemSaturdays #Story #999,996)