to be. All this time, I drank from your springs, I tended and played with the birds and the sheep
and the camels, I ate the fruit that grew from your trees, I ran on the sand which I no longer
find baking hot, but mildly warm, under the sun. The woman from long ago was right: You are
beautiful. I now understand what she meant so long ago: Instead of the desert I used to be terrified
of, I see, instead, the lush green plain that you used to be. I see it from your hospitality that you
gave me, I see it from the way you tried to persuade the freezing cold and the burning sun not to
harm me. I see it from how the animals adore you, I see it from how big you are, bigger to cover
my whole country, that now becomes a distant memory.”
I smiled. Yes, the boy had befriended me, at last. After all I did, this was worth it. This was the
first time that I was complimented by a friend. But somehow, I felt that there was a message that
he wanted to convey under his praise.
“But I have to leave. I’m sorry, Desert, but every night I can hear the calls of my family,
pleading me to come back, crying until their voices fade, trying to search for me all over
Mongolia. But you will always have a place in my heart, and I will give you something to
remember me by.” With that, he unclasped his amulet that he always wore, and laid it down on
the sand. The amulet was made of jade, I think, and the stone will forever remind me of the boy
who became my friend.
I dreaded this, but I knew this would happen eventually. He doesn’t belong here, he belongs
with his family in Mongolia, so wiping my tears away, I called for the wind to bring the boy back
to the place he belongs, and faraway, I could hear the cries of:
“Mother! Father!”
“Naranbaatar? Is it you...”
Their voices faded into the wind.
Naranbaatar. That was the boy’s name.
I smiled.
