Over the next few days I hardly give that night any thought, though I know something is different. The warmth still echoing in my heart where the heat from the bowl of water touches it. I do all the things that are expected of me. I tease Pema, my baby sister, who is two years younger, chasing her around the yard as if I am a maddened yak. Only my mother notices a difference. She puts a hand on my forehead and asks if I feel all right. Yeah, I say. I walk outside and look up at the mountainside, scanning it for the faintest glow, but there is nothing. I know that if I walk to the cave that very instant it would be abandoned and empty as always. All the same I feel content. I touch my side where I am keeping the photo I find in the chest, tucked inside the waistband of my pants. It’s still there.

  One day there is a knock on the door. When I come home with my brothers and our animals from the high pastures, our father is gone, our mother inconsolable. A group of soldiers comes and searches our house before marching our father away. I am seven. I both understand and I don’t understand. I know it is the Chinese. I know they hate us, are destroying us, that they disappear people, and now my father is gone.

  Three days later he comes back. He looks the same on the surface, but there is something different underneath. That’s how it starts. They don’t tell us younger children anything so that we won’t accidently tell someone and ruin it. One night a few hours after we go to bed my mother rouses us from sleep. She tells us what to do. I put on every article of clothing I own. I help my little sister do the same. Pema is five years old. It’s hard to move. I feel hot and sweaty. Then a truck rolls up out front with its lights off. We take nothing with us. Absolutely nothing.

  The truck drives us the many hours to Lhasa. We are my parents and my three older brothers and my little sister and me. We huddle among a herd of goats. After driving through the night we wake up in the city. There are so many buildings in one place! We walk down an alley and into the back of a restaurant. There is a man wearing a bandana so that we cannot see his face. He looks at my little sister and shakes his head. Lord Buddha, he says. Grant us safe passage. We stay in that restaurant all day, never venturing outside. I never see the Potala, the thousand-room palace of the Dalai Lama built on the side of Red Mountain.

  The next day we take another truck up into the hills outside Lhasa. We walk for eleven days. Three days before we get to the pass, the landscape changes. We are at five thousand meters. The snow is up to my neck many times over. My sister and I are light. We can walk on top of it. My father and oldest brother and the guide kept falling in up to their waists. Then they have to struggle to get back out. The guide knows where we can stop to find food. There is food hidden along the way for travelers like us. We melt the snow for water. We also bring some tsampa with us, but it doesn’t last. Most days we walk twelve, thirteen hours.

  At first we walk only at night to avoid the Chinese patrols. Then we are high enough that there are no patrols. The pass we are headed to is located at sixty-seven hundred meters. Everest is eighty-eight hundred meters. My sister is carried by the guide. My father often carries me.

  Somehow Little Bat’s voice grows more scoured yet flat. It is like he is talking about something he hears, not something he lives through. Our party hits a crevasse, he says. All my brothers fall in it. The guide shines the light down into the endless hole. There is no sound. One minute they are there. The next they are gone. My mother sits down. She refuses to leave. I can hear her praying to the Green Tara, beseeching the Bodhisattva to intervene and keep us safe. The snow is rampaging around us. We have to press on, says the guide. The snow is coming down sideways. My mother won’t get up. The air is thin. Taking a single step is like walking forever. My mother never stands back up. We keep going without her.

  Little Bat stops talking. It is the most I ever hear him speak, his voice as if scorched. In the firelight it looks as if there is blood on his teeth. Uncle tells us the rest of the story, how Little Bat’s father dies, then the guide, and then when there is no one left to carry them, how Little Bat tries to lead his sister down out of the mountains. Her hands big as apples, her fingers blackened and swollen until the skin splits. She never cries. She is beyond crying.

  When Pema stops moving, Little Bat sits down in the snow and the darkness and digs out the photo tucked in his waistband, the one he finds on the mountainside in the secret drawer. He knows it is the reason the police come to his house and interrogate his father. He holds the image in his hands all through the night, and somehow he stays just warm enough. A Sherpa finds him in the morning, clutching a photo of the Dalai Lama. One month later when he reaches the Tibetan Children’s Village in Dharamshala, India, he receives the medical care he requires. All his toes are amputated. His voice permanently altered, his vocal cords frost-bitten. He is the only survivor of his family.

  I feel a wave of anger crest in my brother, the fires of anger and its corollary, helplessness. In Tibet, it is illegal to possess images of the Dalai Lama, says Uncle. One can be jailed for invoking His name.

  I try to imagine living under such conditions, but I cannot. This is the reason why too many of the faithful arrive at a place where they lose hope. Who can be expected to live in a world without the freedom to believe in that which sustains you? There are one hundred fifty-seven self-immolations by Tibetans since 1998, says Uncle. Does the world know this? Twenty-six of those who set themselves on fire are under the age of eighteen.

  In These Spaces, Spirits Are Always Appreciated

  When we arrive in Oyan Boyd, the landscape is different. Bayan-Olgii is the westernmost aimag in Mongolia, a region more than a thousand meters above sea level. Little Bat speaks of a vision of mountains sharp as knives, so we know we must continue out on beyond the town. We pass square utilitarian buildings constructed in the boxy Soviet style. We pass the town’s one disco. In front of the police station, there’s a pool table, the green felt faded in a familiar way. As it is the height of summer, much of Oyan Boyd’s population is up in the hills preparing for the endless winter to come.

  Saran mentions that we should get more vegetables, that we don’t know what we’ll find once we drive up into the mountains. Roger that, says Mun in English. My brother has a nose for money. He can sniff out a black market within minutes of arriving in any town. Plus he is low on cigarettes.

  The black market is on the edge of Oyan Boyd and housed in a series of rusty shipping containers. We park and walk around. There are vendors selling everything from western T-shirts to dried yak patties. What makes it a black market is simply the unregulated exchange of currencies. Otherwise, there is nothing untoward about it. I realize that most of the vendors must also call their containers home. I wonder what it would be like to sleep in one with the steel door closed, each box barely two by three meters.

  Saran heads off to find vegetables. Mun goes in search of what he calls the “essentials.” Though the population here in the Altai Mountains is predominantly Muslim, they are close relatives of the Russians just across the western border. What the people of both countries have in common: spirits are always appreciated wherever you go.

  After making some inquiries, Uncle finds a man who says he knows a family where the young are learning the art of their grandfathers. He agrees to take us. I wonder if this man is Muslim. If so, he is the first I ever see. Nothing about the man’s dress would make me think he is anything but Mongolian, his face lined in the same way as the Mongol herders of the grasslands, though his face has the ruddiness of one living at a higher elevation.

  We follow the man on his motorbike to the end of town, then head out into the countryside. At times we lose him in the cloud of black exhaust trailing from the motorbike, but we never lose the cloud itself. On the horizon the Altai Mountains loom, foreboding. These are not the green-forested mountains of Khentii, the lush steppe and gently rolling hills. These mountains are serrated, each as if someone squeezes together layers of shale and balances the results on their edges, the peaks vertical black slashes that look razor thin.

  Saran sits next to me. Somehow a strand of her hair once again blows into my mouth. I don’t turn my head or fish it out with a finger. I leave it there, feel it tickling my tongue as I gaze at the nearest ridge. A handful of tiny specks scurry along the top. At first, I assume they must be goats as the height and sheerness of the rock face looks unnavigable. Then I realize they aren’t. My stomach tightens.

  Within the hour we make our introductions to the second candidate, the child a member of a clan of eagle hunters. When the family patriarch asks if we would like a demonstration, we are more than happy to accept whatever the world brings.

  Stay and Witness What Is to Come

  And so, hours after arriving at the homestead of the second candidate, we are on a mountainside in the western Altai. I am wrapped in borrowed clothes, my backside long numb from sitting on rock, the summer sun finally setting. It is more than thirty minutes since the bird is released. The little huntress remains hopeful, her arm still raised, a perch. Chala’s younger brother Aibek is the candidate with whom we are here to speak. We are told the boy is only recently turned seven. Yet at the bird’s disappearance, he berates his sister as if he is a grown-up. He chastises her for not training the eagle properly, for bringing shame upon their family in the presence of guests. After yelling at his sister, Aibek turns to his father, Makhmud, as if for approval.

  Uncle clicks his teeth. Words are simply water bubbles, actions drops of gold, he says quietly to Little Bat in Tibetan. The patriarch Makhmud turns and begins to march back down the mountain with his two sons, one fully grown, the other a child, leaving Chala behind, her gloved arm still frozen in the air like a salute.

  And Mun is turning too. My brother on the verge of following our host back to his homestead. I glare at my twin. Mentally I remind him that out here, I’m the boss. Then I take a seat on the stony ground. Let the men of her family leave, I think. We are to stay and witness what is to come.

  Now the summer winds begin to pick up. Days, weeks, years, minutes pass. The moon peeks over a cliff. All around me the world is a dance of form and emptiness. And when the creature appears on the horizon against the setting sun an hour after it is released, I can see something dangling from its talons.

  Listen to the way the bird comes soaring over the ridge back to the tiny huntress. The girl with her gloved arm stretched to the heavens, waiting to take the eagle back. This bird that can snap the double bones of her forearm with a single squeeze of its talons.

  Chala buries her face in the eagle’s feathers. At her feet lies the body of a wolf cub, the cub no bigger than a puppy, the animal’s neck bent at a strange angle, a few bones visible at the top of the spine where the bird strikes it, veering down out of the sky at upward of a hundred and sixty kilometers an hour.

  Little Bat intones a mantra, then carefully picks up the body. Together our small band winds its way back down the mountain. Thankfully the moon is out. In a few more days, it should be full, yet another light to aid us in our seeing.

  Out!

  When we arrive back at the family homestead, all lights are on inside the cinder-block house despite the hour, the household still awake. The bottle of Chinggis Khaan that Mun gifts the family earlier in the day is opened.

  Little Bat places the dead cub in front of the father, Makhmud. Lubya is a wolf killer, Chala says. Indoors she wears the eagle on her arm, the bird a member of the largest species of eagle in existence.

  Her brother Aibek, the one we are here to see, runs over and slaps his older sister across the face. Liar, he screams. Their mother, Karim, rushes over and folds the little boy back into her arms.

  We do not hunt another animal’s babies, says Makhmud sternly. He approaches the eagle carrying a tiny leather hood. As he moves to place it, the bird lashes at him with its tearing feet. Chala grabs the rope that binds the bird to her gloved arm to keep her father from being slashed. The eagle opens its wings, the sound of its agitation filling the room. Chala holds tight to the rope, the animal beating the air as if it would take flight. She grabs the hood from her father and places it on the animal’s head. Once the hood is on, the eagle folds its wings and settles down.

  Out! commands Makhmud. Chala bows her head and exits through the door.

  In the corner on its wooden perch, her brother’s eagle begins to flap its wings, the animal burning with some unseen force. Suddenly the eagle shoots off its stand and over to the body of the wolf cub lying on the carpet. Instantly it begins ravaging the near-perfect pelt with its feet. The bird doesn’t even feed on the flesh. Nobody stops it.

  I bow my head and step outside. Some feet away I can still hear the eagle savaging the pelt. The sound like heavy cloth being ripped.

  After the Hunt, You Must Sing to Your Bird

  Here at the foot of the mountain the summer night is warm. At first I don’t see Chala, but I don’t have far to look. Someone is singing. I follow the sound.

  I find her nestled in a small nook behind a stone wall that separates the homestead from the mountain. From the look of things, she must come here routinely. The wall is old and crumbling; many of the stones jut straight out, like shelves. Chala uses these stones to store things like a hairbrush and a small wooden bowl. Out here there is also a perch for her bird to sit on, the perch simply a stick wedged in among the rocks so that it sticks out at a ninety-degree angle. Inside the house, the eagles rest on their upright perches, the top of each shaped like a Y. Here is no such formality. The eagle sits on its stick much the way it might out in the wild.

  Chala rests against the stone wall and holds a small square-shaped piece of wood. A few strings, most likely hairs from a horse’s tail, stretch the length of it. The notes it produces are dull and uniform, but Chala plucks away on the little makeshift contraption, her voice unadorned. Though I cannot make out a proper melody, her song describes a Kazakh girl who can never be with the Russian boy she loves. As she sings, I picture the river keeping the girl and boy apart, the long-standing enmity of their countries.

  When she’s finished, Chala takes a bowl from one of the ledges and fills it with water from a metal bucket. It should be vodka, she says. Skillfully she dips her ring finger in the water, then flicks her finger in each of the four cardinal directions before presenting the bowl to the eagle, who dips its beak in and throws its head back. After the hunt, you must sing to your bird, Chala explains. Then you should feed it some of the meat from the kill, she says.

  Despite her father’s anger, she is tranquil. She is also seven years old, eleven months older than her brother Aibek, the candidate. Next month she turns eight. Both she and her brother are unusually large for their age. Their father towers over two meters.

  There is such joy in this little being out here among the elements with just her eagle. After a long day in the Machine, I feel myself growing drowsy. The moon shines on us as if full.

  Sometimes We Must Let Our Brothers the Animals Be Animals

  Somehow the night passes. The eagle is still sitting on her perch when I open my eyes at the sound of feet walking by. After sleeping outside sitting up against a wall, I expect my bones to feel like iron in my body, but they don’t. I stand, loose through my limbs, as if rising from a hot bath.

  The older son, Kirill, comes around a bend carrying a small rug rolled up under his arm. There is at least a decade between him and his young siblings. Some years ago Kirill lives and studies in Kazakhstan. Now that he is back, he actively practices the faith.

  Since the dissolution of the Soviet Union, more than fifty thousand Mongolian Kazakhs emigrate west to Kazakhstan, the world’s largest landlocked country. Though Mongolia and Kazakhstan don’t share a border, it is only a sixty-kilometer journey across Russia from country to country. The government there is one of the few nations in the world that pays to repatriate the diaspora. Many emigrate, as the Kazakhstan government offers free education and better business opportunities. Because most of Mongolia’s Kazakhs are Muslim only in name, their traditions destroyed first by Stalin across the border and then by Mongolia’s Stalinist puppet Choibalsan, there are fewer than a handful of mosques scattered across our country. Few Mongolian Kazakhs practice the five tenets of Islam; the Mongolian Kazakh who observes Ramadan is a rarity.

  Inside the house, the mother Karim and the grandmother scurry about preparing our food for the day’s adventure. Chala enters carrying a bucket filled with milk. On the floor her brother is lying on his back playing with a small plastic toy.

  Uncle walks over and tries to engage him in conversation. Aibek barely looks at him. The child simply continues playing with his truck until it’s time to leave.

  Depending on who you ask, the eagle festival is either a new invention or as old as time itself. It is only an hour on horseback from the family’s summer camp to the festival grounds. Each of us is given an animal. Saran rides as if she and the animal are one and the same creature. Little Bat is offered the largest animal in the herd, but he says he prefers to walk.

  I accept an animal and do a quick intonation before climbing on its back.

  For the sake of all mother beings,

  I will become a Mentor Deity

  So that beings in the supreme exaltation

  May become Mentor Deities!

  Beside me Mun looks somewhat rusty on his horse, but then again, how long is it since he’s ridden? Uncle, on the other hand, trots lightly along, a great joy in his eyes. Sometimes we must let our brothers the animals be animals, he says, before racing off.