The Story of the Mongolian Khulan
HKMA David Li Kwok Po College, Sharon Rai, Fiction: Group 3
T
hey call my family Mongolian Khulan or Mongolian wild ass. Sometimes they also
call my family cheap meat. Sometimes they steal my family members (although they
take, they never return) and many times they’ve stolen my home. Those two-legged
monsters... Now, here they are. They promise to help us, to love us, and to provide for us.
Liars, all of them…
I remember Mother used to tell me to keep my eyes open, my brain alert and when the
monsters came around, my legs quick. I obligated without complaints. She was my mother. One
day, while running away from a couple of monsters, I saw an ass unlike myself (with a less
handsome face---ears too far apart and lips too thick for my liking) with a two-legged monster
atop him; on either side of him were what looked like the monster’s belongings. Beside the ass was
a camel, also with a monster on top of him! I was confused. Why would an ass and a camel let
monsters anywhere near them, let alone on top of them? When I returned home that day, full of
questions ready to attack Mother with, Mother was gone.
Everybody kept quiet about the matter, as if Mother never existed. Whenever I asked where
my mother was, they pointed me to a random ass and said there was my mother. ‘How can she
be my mother?’ I asked my aunt one day. ‘He’s a male,’ I reasoned. Aunt, with an anguished
expression, walked away, far, far from my vicinity. Only she didn’t come back that night. She
didn’t ever come back.
Once more, as they had done with Mother, everybody denied knowing Aunt, denied she ever
existed. How long could they pretend however? More disappearances continued. I heard hushed
voices at day while just returning from a good run, heard frantic whispers of the elders at night
while pretending to be asleep and saw the fear in my family members’ eyes.
A few days later, feeling parched, I strayed away from my family to find water. I had to search
a small area of the land before I could find water. Awfully thirsty, especially after a long walk
under the baking Sun, I lapped up the water. To this day, I wonder how I was caught. Alert as I
was, I didn’t hear them coming. My eyes were open and my legs ready, yet I was caught. I had put
up a fight. Nonetheless, I as caught.
When I woke up (darkness had consumed me somewhere in the middle of the struggle), I
was not at home anymore but in a damp, cold place. Somebody was nearby; his or her body was
touching mine. No, not just somebody, some people. In front of me was one. On my left, another.
If I was correct, this whole…whatever it was, was filled with people. A distant memory replayed
in my mind. ‘Those monsters steal our family and other people: asses, horses and sheep, et cetera.
Sometimes they steal whoever they can find. But they won’t steal you if you stay with the family.
Got it?’ I tried looking around. How many were asses? And how many were horses? Were there
sheep as well? ‘What do they do with them, the people they steal?’ my own voice had sounded
full of childish curiosity. Mother had hesitated, but deciding it was better for me to know, she had
answered, ‘The monsters kill people.’ I had then asked why. She had replied, ‘Several reasons. For
the people’s hide, meat or simply to use them as labour. The monsters are terribly weak.’
I was sold to a monster a few days later, starved and parched. He gave me food to eat and
water to drink. I neither touched the food nor went closer than a metre to the water. He turned
