The Gobi Daughters
St. Joseph’s College, Cheng Chi Him Geoffrey, Fiction: Group 3
A
ll of a sudden, she felt a sharp pain on her ankle. Helaine tumbled down in pain and
sweat. The agony made her wonder if she could ever make her journey back to Rani,
her beloved sister.
The words of Helaine’s mother were still ringing in her ears. “Helaine, go fetch
water. I have to prepare some herbal medicine for Rani.” Shanxi yelled from the grassland among
the hills. Helaine, a Mongolian girl in her early teens, looked up from her sewing work with her
bright brown eyes and nodded with a smile. Her pronounced pinkish cheekbones, long plaited
black hair and red-brown skin were glowing in the sun. She made sure that her little sister was
sleeping peacefully near the fire, then put on her sheepskin coat, grabbed the empty wooden
bucket outside the tent and rushed to the bottom of the valley where the only water source was
found— the well.
Helaine was living in the Gobi Desert with her mother and her 7-year-old sister, Rani. They
followed a nomadic lifestyle, moving on when the grassland went bare, taking with them little
but their only shelter—the ger (the Mongolian tent made from a wooden frame and covered by
wool felt), a few large pots, and ten goats. It was a hard life but it was the life Helaine was given -
being the tough daughter of the Gobi Desert.
Helaine blundered down the slopes; her ankles were in extreme fatigue. While she was hauling
the bucket up, a gust of sand scratched her eyes. That was the sign of a sand storm. She hurried
up the slope again, unprepared to meet sand raging to her face. It was a large sand storm. Helaine
dragged her legs across the flying sand, longing to see the ger she was familiar with. But while
she was attempting to spot her home, a blast of sand covered her face and she was soon half-
buried in the sand. The only thing she possessed was the bucket of water wrapped in her arms. It
was safe. She hauled herself up and noticed that she wasn’t in the valley anymore—she was on a
large dome, left by the sand storm.
Helaine scrambled to her feet and hurried home. Finally, she found a dome-shaped sand hill
among the sandy grounds where the sight of her ger was found. Helaine quickly cleared the sand
away, went inside, finding Rani curled up in the corner, in great shock. The sudden sand storm left
Rani and her mother unprepared. Her mother was nowhere to be found.
Helaine’s heart sank. She depended on her mother so much, not just for food, but for her love
and care especially after the death of her father who was one of the warriors died in the 1911
Mongolian Revolution. Now, her weak and fragile sister was her only family. Helaine realized that
she and her sister had to move to a safe place quickly if they wanted to survive. Helaine had to
make this cruel decision- to stop searching for her mother in the sand. Helaine couldn’t hold her
tears anymore. She buried her face in her arms, feeling guilty and sorry but was forced to take this
only option. She kneeled down, gazing at the sand dune where her mother was possibly buried.
“I have to be strong. I have to do it for Rani,” she told herself. Helaine took a gentian nearby,
a purple flower commonly found in Mongolia, and threw it to the sand as the last tribute to her
mother. Helaine and her sister then set off to the land beyond.
They were located at the southeastern part of the Eastern Gobi Desert Steppe region, where there
was a lot of grassland. Helaine caught a glimpse of a shining river in the far West. She saw hope.
“We are going there, Rani, across the Alashan Plateau, to the Gobi Lakes Valley Desert Slope
