Who Would Draw the Water?

  Soon I spot a few tents and a ger set up beside a series of hills. There’s no water out here, says Billy. That’s why base camp is so far away. Each night we leave the place looking pretty bare-bones, he says, adding that in the past the expedition loses equipment to scavengers and profiteers, so they learn the hard way that it’s better to take everything with them at day’s end.

  We spend the first hour unpacking what each team needs. Already the teams are at work for more than a month, racing against time to get whatever specimens they discover free of the rock. Stevie and Jess move between teams offering advice and encouragement as well as scouting future digs. Tömör trails along. The two scientists often stop to shoot infrared images of the bare ground. If things look promising, they perform a preliminary dig to hit whatever might be there. Then they try to identify what the stone might hold to see if it is worth the hundreds of hours it can take to bring it up into the light.

  When I think of western scientists, I picture men in spotless white lab coats the color of snow. Stevie and Jess look nothing like what I imagine. Earlier Billy explains to me that they’re a married couple. So when I see two women cresting a hill where Billy is pointing, I keep scanning the landscape. No, them, says Billy. Right there. I look again. How can they be the world-renowned dinosaur hunters?

  Mun senses my confusion. They’re lesbians, dummy, he thinks. In Mongolia, the idea of two women or two men making a life together is a concept I cannot imagine. In such a household, who would draw the water? Who would slaughter the animals? I am surprised my brother seems so comfortable with it, but then again, he has many more interactions with westerners than I have. Get with the times, Mun thinks.

  The women are deeply tanned, wrinkles like rays shooting from the corners of their eyes, noses slathered with zinc. Both wear their hair in long braids. In some ways, they look more like mother and daughter. Stevie’s hair is blond where Jess’s is a pale silvery color. Billy whispers that Stevie is Jess’s former student, but that’s more than twenty years ago. This early in the morning, the women roll the sleeves and legs of their khaki shirts and pants all the way up, but later when the sun is broiling the earth, they unroll them for protection. There is something of the intrepid adventurer about each of them. I can easily imagine these women rolling across the landscape a hundred years ago as part of Roy Chapman Andrews’s expedition.

  Tömör seems nonplussed by two married women who Billy says spoil him rotten. I watch as the little boy swaddled in clothes takes Uncle’s hand and begins to scramble up an embankment. I cannot help but think they look like playmates.

  Billy asks why we’re here. I give a nebulous answer. There’s much to see in our country, I say.

  I get it, Billy says. You’re here for the kid.

  Why do you say that, I ask.

  He’s something else, Billy says. An old soul. Nothing can stop him. He shakes his head. I mean, the way he finds dinosaurs out here—it’s totally crazy. Billy gestures at the landscape. You dig what I’m saying, he says. It’s like he’s one of them. Like he’s been here before.

  Our Progress Hardly Discernible

  Tömör and Uncle spend the morning scampering among the deep-red rocks. The two like partners in crime, the one egging the other on to new heights. I find myself shadowing Billy and a redheaded woman out to their dig site, a nondescript patch of earth covered by a blue tarp. Cindy, a fellow graduate student, rolls back the tarp to reveal a pit about one meter by three meters across. Ain’t she a beauty, says Billy. He shines a flashlight in the hole.

  I peer in but can’t see anything. Billy seems to sense my difficulty. Yeah, at this point she’s basically the same color as the rock, he says, running the light back and forth.

  I get down on my hands and knees. I see something glint, a hint of bone. We call her Sally, says Cindy. She’s a female adolescent. We’re hoping she’s the most intact protoceratops ever unearthed.

  In the pit the great smile gleams. Teeth that can rip flesh to shreds with a single bite, each tooth a blade. She’s probably seventy million years old, says Billy. Not that she looks a day over sixty million.

  Because of the fossil’s position, they choose to excavate her in this pit manner. Our biggest enemy out here, besides the sun, says Cindy, is the sand. A good sandstorm can erase days, weeks, of work. It can also wear down the fossil. It’s like sandblasting, she says. What took millions and millions of years to form gets eroded in a couple of hours.

  Plus it can kill you, adds Billy.

  Yeah, there’s that, Cindy concedes.

  I spend the morning helping in any way I can. Billy and Cindy work in close quarters down in the hole while I stay aboveground, carrying away the excess dirt. Because they already excavate the earth that doesn’t directly touch the specimen, the only thing left to do is the tough work of freeing the creature.

  It’s slow going, our progress hardly discernible. From where we are situated on the hillside I cannot see the other teams. It’s like we’re the only three beings in existence. Within minutes of their crawling into the hole, I sense that there is something between Billy and Cindy, an energy that has yet to express itself. The way they bicker without looking at each other. Cindy telling Billy to watch the tenth rib, Billy reminding Cindy not to hog all the light. I scan the landscape for Saran and Mun, but the earth is deserted. I imagine the pleasure and the agony of spending so many hours so close to the one you secretly love, their shadow on you at all times.

  By nine o’clock it’s hot. By ten it’s unbearable. Billy crawls out of the hole and erects a canopy on a set of aluminum poles. It helps, though the air is superheated and unmoving, like wet wool that clings to the skin.

  At eleven we stop work. We plan to return to our dig later this afternoon when the sun is not so angry. For now, we head back to the base camp where many of the others are already gathered. There’s a buzz in the air, the camp blazing with excitement. What is it, asks Billy.

  Uncle finds something of great interest. A mother dinosaur sitting on an intact nest of eggs. An image on a digital screen is passed around. The mother’s eye socket visible in the dirt.

  Impressive, says Stevie.

  Uncle places a hand on Tömör’s shoulder. It’s all thanks to my teacher, he says. Even under his numerous protective layers, the child’s happiness is evident.

  Moving the Earth and Uncovering What Is

  The break lasts until two. I spread my robe on the tent floor, a carpet of bright green artificial grass someone unrolls over the sand. I am not sure where our belongings are, where the Machine is. It feels good to be unencumbered. I feel like I can go anywhere, like the earth is made for my exploration.

  Our journey is at its end, and from the look of things, we are successful. From the serenity of Uncle’s demeanor, Tömör is indeed the One for Whom the Sky Never Darkens. What more is there to say?

  Tömör rises from a nap. He is busy showing Uncle a small fossilized seashell that he discovers the previous summer. The shell is beautiful, the way it spirals like an ear. Just think, Tömör says, millions of years ago this spot is covered with water, and then millions of years later the dinosaurs roam. And now we’re here.

  Last night Uncle talks in depth to Stevie and Jess about the candidate. Tömör’s family doesn’t take refuge in the Triple Gem. They don’t maintain an altar in their home. Tömör knows nothing about Buddhism. He knows more about dinosaurs and paleontology than he does about the Eternal Blue Sky.

  The camp begins to scatter. People head back out to their digs. Moving the earth and uncovering what is. Bringing the geologic past to light. I watch as Mun and Saran go off with the scientist they befriend, a young assistant professor who chain-smokes and wears a ten-gallon hat despite the hat’s inefficiency.

  Back at our site, the sun sits in the sky like an open flame. I am thankful for the powerful SPF Cindy lends me. We work until five, talking a break to eat granola bars. Then it’s back up on the camels and back to base camp. I wish I could say that I can see the difference a day’s work makes, but I can barely see the specimen nestled in the darkness that holds her for eons.

  In base camp it takes an hour to unpack everything. Uncle’s discovery kindles a fire in the expedition. People move about, smiles on their faces, their eyes soft yet sparkling. Then the world changes.

  The Sky a Dark Red

  Tömör gives a sharp whistle. I look up from the crate I’m organizing filled with brushes of various sizes. With a gloved finger he points to the blue sky. In a small voice he says in English: sandstorm. There is a moment like when a flock of birds seems to hang in the air before radically shifting direction. A moment of complete stillness. Outside a camel is moaning. A pen rolls off a table.

  I glance up the sky. Nothing, not so much as a cloud, the whole canopy a brilliant blue like something you can swim in. I am raised on the steppes hundreds of kilometers from here. I know nothing of the tides of the desert. Mun and Saran are also standing around confused. Then the world lurches into motion.

  Little Bat hustles past, carrying a large footlocker and making for a truck. Everywhere researchers trying to batten down what needs battening, storing what can be stored. I hurry over to where Uncle is helping Tömör zipper on a series of heavy canvas panels that effectively close off the main tent. I grab a panel and get to work.

  After five minutes the sky is a pale shade of lilac. To my eyes it doesn’t look like anything out of the ordinary. Billy is busy wrapping up computer cables and putting them in a black hard-sided case. He works quickly though I sense a growing panic within him that he tries to keep in check.

  Then I feel it. Sand gently brushing my skin. The sky still a soft pastel color, but growing darker by the minute. The panels are all zipped on, the trucks parked together, shovels at the ready for the first moments afterward.

  Though I am not from here, I know that sandstorms in the Gobi can last days. Whole camps buried under mountains of sand. The sky a dark red as if filled with blood. This time of year, most storms last less than ten minutes, but for the expedition, ten minutes of sand whipping about at 150 kilometers per hour is enough to set them back for days. They can find themselves back at square one digging out a specimen—sometimes there is even more sand on the specimen than is originally the case. The red sands from the Gobi can blow all the way to Beijing, Tiananmen Square as if coated with rust.

  The wind is howling like an animal. People are sitting evenly spaced around the edges of the tent with their backs to the canvas to help keep the wind from racing under the tent and lifting it into the air. The storm is not yet fully on us. One flap remains open as Stevie and Jess head out to one of the trucks to bring in the satellite phone just in case. The wind is screaming, sand whirling into the tent despite Billy and Little Bat trying to hold the flap closed with their hands. I hold my breath. Time passes. Stevie and Jess do not appear in the entrance. More time passes.

  Soundless as a cloud Tömör slips out under Billy’s arm. The love he feels for the two women is obvious. They are a family. He is their child.

  When Tömör slips out, Uncle goes after him.

  I am not really thinking of anything at the present moment. Just of the many different types of light in the world. How each one is precious. How each needs a hand to shelter it to keep it from blowing out.

  And so in the ensuing chaos I am also out the door as if pulled by an invisible force. In a way, I suppose I am. Two weeks ago I vow myself to the cause of finding the One for Whom the Sky Never Darkens.

  If you have attachment to this life,

  You are not a religious person.

  If you have attachment to existence,

  You do not have transcendent renunciation.

  If you have attachment to self-interest,

  You do not have the spirit of enlightenment.

  If grasping arises,

  You do not have the authentic view.

  I walk out to whatever may happen.

  It Is Only an Illusion That I Am Trapped

  The wind is a demon. I am within its roiling belly. I pull my robe over my head and stumble onward. It is like walking on an alien planet, a place that resists your existence. With only a few steps I have no sense of direction. The way ahead is a tunnel without walls, the noise deafening. I can’t breathe. There is only heat and the burn of sand on skin, the stinging almost chemical, burning all the way through me.

  I don’t bother to yell. Maybe I ought to stop where I am. Perhaps by staying still, I can prevent myself from wandering out into the open desert where I would wander lost among the dunes. But I don’t. The beating of my heart mirrors something in the wind, the thrum and urge. To stop would be to be smothered, to be buried like the dinosaurs, to succumb. I go on.

  Quickly the sand is up to my knees. In a flash I am wading through it, the way a trapper plows a path through waist-high snow in order to find his traps. Soon it is as if I am swimming, my arms scooping desperately at the sand that is up to my chest. When I can no longer move my arms, I stop.

  No. I don’t stop. More accurately, the mental construct that I call my self, that I spend all these years projecting into the world, stops. Yes. I stop generating me. I stop being the story of someone named Chuluun, the Servant to the Redeemer Who Sounds the Conch in the Darkness. What use does life have for such illusions? No more Chuluun, no more journey. Nothing could be simpler. There is only ever this one moment. We are only ever this stillness, this silence.

  And so it comes to me. The gateless gate. The deathless door. Complete effortlessness. No dreams. No masks. From out of the annihilating sand a calmness descends, one I am only knowing for the first time. The beating of my heart fills my ears. As it is written in the Eight Verses on the Birth of the Mind:

  To think “I will experience that”

  Is a mistaken notion;

  For the one who dies here

  Is almost totally different from the one reborn.

  Almost two weeks ago out on the grasslands a child aims his gun at me, and I want to live forever. Now it is as if I am shot with a diamond-tipped bullet. Clarity beyond clarity. All will be well because all is well, even now, in this moment at the end of all things. And suddenly the veracity of the Four Noble Truths courses through my blood: there is suffering. The cause of suffering is craving. There is an end to suffering. The end of suffering is the Eightfold Path. To finally know the Deathless now at the moment of death, to know it in the way the stars know their paths through the heavens—without thought. I become aware of a burning at the back of my throat, my lungs taking in sand, but in the same instant all I feel is gratitude. I take refuge in the Buddha, I take refuge in the Dharma, I take refuge in the sangha. May it never be otherwise. My being starting to fill with the foundational light of clear mind. The indestructible drop composed of the red drop from my father and the white drop from my mother, the drop quivering, on the brink of splitting.

  And then he is there beside me, digging me out, his hands tearing at the sand like a machine. I feel my twin open his mind to me, clear as a mountain lake. The way we lie in each other’s arms in our mother’s belly, sharing this one existence between us. I am and am not the Servant to the Redeemer Who Sounds the Conch in the Darkness, and the Redeemer Who Sounds the Conch in the Darkness is and is not my brother, and there is no fire or ice between us, we are one, everything is one—one of us buried up to our neck in the sand and the other trying desperately to dig us out.

  What I want to tell him in that forever moment: it’s all right, leave me. It is only an illusion that I am trapped in the sand. I know now why the Buddha mandates that his monks walk the path of celibacy. I know it is not a path all can walk, but in doing so, I understand what I gain by living a dispassionate life. Renunciation is an act of liberation. It sets loose the light shining deeply within each of us, a light we can count on in the darkest dark. When you drop the world’s bait, you see the world as it is. When you desire absolutely nothing, you become free.

  Then my twin is pulling me up, and together through the blistering sands we are picking our way through the hills of Ulak Tolog where the dinosaurs walk tens of millions of years ago.

  I take his hand in mine. There is no wall between us. There never is. The short winter days huddling together in the ger with Övöö and our father. The endless summer nights under the eternal blue sky. The early mornings at Yatuu Gol, first ablutions, the hours of chants performed for the enlightenment of every sentient being. And I feel his struggles of the past year. Making a life for himself in Ulaanbaatar, a place where he knows no one and no one knows him. The pain of his loneliness, of not wanting to come back, the pride, the determination. I see these past two weeks with my brother, and I know that the image I envision of him and Saran naked in each other’s arms is a mental projection conjured from the darkness of my unbalanced heart, my jealousy as I stand on the edge of dedicating myself to a way of life that exists for millennia and demands that I never know the touch of a woman.

  I feel my brother tighten his grip on my hand as together we stand in judgment under the merciless sands. I reach inside my robe and pull out the half-written letter.

  Lust for existence chains all bodied beings.

  Addiction is only cured by transcendent renunciation.

  I am not sure which of us thinks these words. Perhaps my twin and I think them concurrently. I realize he knows all along of the letter girded at my heart, that even before I step foot in his small apartment in Ulaanbaatar, he knows of my struggle, and that he is consciously aiding me on my journey by not judging me for it.