Things that mattered

We finished class at 10.00pm so Egiimaa and I would walk home together.  She was so delighted on the first day of term that we both lived so close to the wrestling palace that she said to me“teacher  Ruth, we will walk home together now and talk about our days”.  So she linked arms with me and we wandered like penguins through the snow covered un-lit streets of Ulaanbaatar.  Talking about our favourite students, our days, our lives.

Egiimaa told me about her days when she was a child.  She told me that she thought the films were far more beautiful when she was a girl when they didn’t show sex or horror but just love and dancing.  She told me that she missed the films where characters burst into song and the extras joined in with the dance steps.  She missed the ballet too.  The Soviets had such nice ballet, she told me.  One night after class she said “teacher Ruth, the University director would like you to teach the American Literature course”.  Intrigued I asked her “what part of it” and she laughed as she replied “well all of it.  Our students need all of it ”.

So the next day I went to the university library to find American Literature.  The library was in the basement of the building with steep stone steps and the smell of yesterday.  The librarian put both hands to her mouth to physically prevent herself from laughing when she saw me and then she handed me a three-page form to complete before I would be allowed entrance.  Later I would discover that her name was Altanod which means Golden Star and even later still I would go horse-back riding with her and drink fermented mare’s milk with her grand-father as the sun set on the Gobi.  I would also go to the funeral of her brother who died of TB, but on this day Altanod let me wander through the aisles and let me touch the book jackets as you might the glass over precious museum pieces.  Book after book on the former glory of the former Soviet occupier slept on the shelves.  Biographies of Stalin and Lenin, 5 year plans, agricultural farming techniques, Soviet collective systems and a whole aisle devoted to the space race.  But no American Literature.  As with so many days in Mongolia, time took on another meaning for me there and perhaps an hour or perhaps three went by as I looked at these books from the past.  Eventually, Altanod brought me back to the present as she gestured I should follow her into the shadows of the back office of the library.  I followed her obediently as she pulled down an un-opened box from the top cupboard with a USAID label on the outside.  We un-packed the box like children  and found inside 50 copies of Death of a Salesman  and an annual report from USAID.  Delighted I thanked Altanod and helped her number the books and place them on aisle 14.  We set them up in their new homes in between Rasputin’s discovery of self and Stalin’s concept of totalitarism and we were delighted with our days work.

When Altanod asked me what Death of a Salesman was all about I tried to explain that it was a critique of capitalism with a notion that even the struggles of small people mattered.  People who others might describe as a dime a dozen were important and had voices and had stories to tell and that our collective power would always be much stronger than our individual goals or the charms of consumerism.   I thought she would be interested but her response to me was “is sounds very sad.  I don’t like sad stories” and she never read a word of it.

That night was particularly cold.  It was minus 42 and even Egiimaa was walking home quickly.  She kept her questions very brief that night as her mouth was covered by the camel wool scarf I’d bought her for New Year.    

All she asked was “how was your day teacher Ruth” and all I could say was “it mattered”.