How Quickly Things Change
I am lying on a mattress in a western-style bed, the thing so soft I am afraid to move lest it break. This is what it must feel like to float along in a soap bubble or to be the wind itself, the air like hands holding you up. I wonder what it is about this way of sleeping that westerners prefer. To me, despite the ethereal softness, I feel like one of the dead, a body whose ties to the earth are severed so that I feel nothing, am nothing.
Though he tries to hide it, I can tell Mun is embarrassed. He lies on the floor in a patch of dawn that comes angling through the window. When I enter his apartment an hour ago, I see my brother’s mind in the chaos of books and DVDs, posters of foreign films. I lie directly under one of four men in dark suits and sunglasses walking down a street, each with a gun in hand. Upon my arrival, the bed is unmade and piled with clothes and dishes, the thing no more than a glorified shelf. On the floor at the foot of the bed is a nest of blankets and pillows, the traditional leitur stuffed with straw.
From a young age, I imagine my brother sleeping in a western-style bed, the mattress soft as a cloud of newly shorn wool. Winter nights when we are children it is all he talks about, the two of us lying on opposite ends of the leitur in the dark. Someday I’m getting away from all this, the child Mun says in my memory. This morning I try not to laugh as Mun’s sheepishness seeps into my waking mind. He may no longer be a herder, but he still sleeps like one.
How quickly things change. Yesterday waking at Yatuu Gol in the shadow of the volcano, and today I am waking a world away in the capital. What never changes: emptiness, no-self, impermanence. It is only a little more than an hour ago that Noyon the friendly police officer and I drive through the heart of Ulaanbaatar, turning a corner in the dawn light to find my brother standing on the street out in front of his building and wearing what he calls a hoodie, my twin rubbing his arms to keep warm. When I get out of the car, there is no hug between us. I know Mun would be there waiting for me and he knows it too.
It’s early, he grumbles.
At Yatuu Gol, morning puja begins at 5:00 a.m., I say brightly, a fact my twin knows as well as anyone. Mun scowls and our reunion is complete. Mostly we prefer to communicate verbally, especially in front of others. People can sense when we are wordlessly sharing thoughts though they do not know what is happening—our father says he can feel a tingling rippling between us. Since childhood, we practice various ways to keep each other out of our mind, to hold and maintain secrets.
Before heading out on the long drive back to the grasslands, Noyon gets out of the car and does one full-body prostration at my brother’s feet. Mun looks exasperated. Nevertheless, he clasps Noyon’s outstretched hands in his own, raising them to his forehead and giving them a squeeze. Then my brother turns and leads me into the building.