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Mongolia

Franco Zecchin

"If you want hung yourself, you must before walk for one hundred miles". Therefore Pantzrakch says resting to the saddle-back, while it withholds with decision the reins of the wet and nervous horse. There are not trees, there is only grass in this great windy space; the horizon expands on hills and far mountains, where the stone re-emerge between scents of wormwood and alpine stars; the climate changes in continuation, lastly; the temperature can vary of 20, 30° C in the course of the day. The icy whistling of the wind, the call of the eagle that circles in the immense sky is alternated to rarefied silences, broken only by the song of Pantzrakch that is already far away, has changed again the horse, already the third of the morning; he still chases the semi-wild herd, trying to capture one stallion with its uurga, one long flexible perch with a lace of leather in top. They are acrobatics that demand great skill and mastery, and he executes them with fluid elegance and lightness, singing. From far away, one ten of white ger appears on the green prairie. Light, resistant to the wind, these nomadic residences protects from the winter cold like from the summery sultriness and from the storms, are easy transportable and they can be mounted in less than two hours. In the vicinities of the camp, a ten small newborn colts are ties to a fixed rope on the land, they attends impatiens the mothers that return from the pasture. Several times a day, men go to look for the herd to bring it back to the encampment. Then the women untie every colt and they accompany it to breast-feeding; they profit of the occasion to milk the mare. Inside the ger, under the circular cupola of sticks covered by a large layer of felt, the pavement is constituted of the bare earth. Close to the iron stews that dominates the center of the circle, Tolghor mother fine cuts a piece of dry sheep's meat and she boils them; she pastes the flour and she prepares the noodles that she adds to the soup. All the family is reunited for the lunch, they have healthy and white teeth, red cheeks and bandy legs, since from infancy they pass great part of their time horsing; grandfather Ocrbatr does not succeed any more to walk straight, swinging like a penguin; he smokes strong tobacco with a iron pipette while grandson Choksom plays with its bare skull. In order to trick the spirits who would want to kidnap him (children's mortality is still much elevating between nomads), Choksom is dressed like a female, but his powerful and massive physique reveals his true nature of male. A deaf noise of hooves pre-announces the arrival of a visit. From the decorated door of red varnish some neighbors appears and they are invited to seat. After the traditional exchange of onyx snuffbox, one of the few valuables that can be found in a ger, Tolghor offers to the hosts dry cheese, tea with lightly salt milk and aïrak, the fermented mare milk. All speak about horses. Around this topic speeches are interlaced, are written poetries, are made up songs; horse is the basic element of their culture. Pantzrakch kills one sheep: the animal is laid on its back and a small slit is made under the rib cage. Pantzrakch then reaches through the slit and with his hand breaks the cardiac artery. Death is quick and very clean. No blood is spilled at all as it drains directly into the chest cavity. It begins the naadam, the great summer festival that includes races with horses, fight and archery contests. The adults drink arkhi, manufactured milk distillate, and sonorously sing in alcoholic chorus. Meanwhile a powder's cloud falls from a hill by the horizon; it is a horde of shouting child, male and female from 6 to 10, that approach riding without saddle-back, clinging themselves to the manes of the exhausted animals covered of foam. A lot of compliments, photo and medal for the winner, the steed and the jockey. The naadam continues with the fight, the more popular sport in Mongolia. Massive bodies seize each other in an immovable kind of dance in which every contender tries to make fall the other, who touches earth first has lost, the other then completes a small circle hopping and mimes with the arms the flight of the eagle under the pleased applause of the careful public. There is not more gasoline for truck and tractors to work, the only choice is to return to the most traditional horses and camels, to the nomadism as kind of society and economy that better resists in crisis time, because "the spirit of the mongols is in the breeding, their life is the one of their herds and their future is in the steppe".



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