New Tales of the Gobi Desert
St. Joseph’s College, Chris Tam, Fiction: Group 3
N
ight had fallen. The moon shone brightly in the night sky, casting off rays of moonlight
that soaked the Gobi Desert with liquid silver.
Five miles off the centre of Gobi laid a small town called Mandalgobi. Through
the dolent street of the town, a small, dark figure trudged along the path, casting a
long, slim silhouette on the cold cement walls. The silhouette belonged to a boy. The town was
completely dark now – except for a dim, flickering candle light from a muddy yellow house with a
red roof. The dim light shone like a beacon in the darkness. It was where the boy was heading. He
stopped at the doorway, hesitated, opened the door and slipped inside.
“Ganbaatar!” exclaimed a familiar voice behind him. He turned around, finding himself face
to face with his mother Bolormaa, her face smoldering in anger. “Where have you been?” she
demanded, the last words echoing through the house. He froze there, dumbfounded. Before he
could recover from the shock, his mother interrogated him again. “Have you been to the desert
alone again?” Ganbaatar nodded wearily. Blood drained from her face, as if someone had sucker
punched her. Stories were still told about how people who ventured into the desert could never
come back. Though the sun shone brightly and the breeze blew gently, few people could not stay
in the desert for long before misfortune fell on them. Quickly and voraciously, he gulped down his
supper and went to sleep.
At dawn, the sunray passed through the window, warming Ganbaatar’s face. Reluctantly, he
woke up. Rubbing his eyes, he sat up on the edge of his bed. It’s another school day. “School,” he
murmured, lips trembling. It was the thing that he dreaded most. He never liked school. He simply
hated school, but he had no choice. He sighed and fetched a basin of water, which he splashed his
face with. Shivering as the icy water rolled down his cheeks, he quickly got dressed and ran down
the stairs. Bolormaa and Naranbaatar, Ganbaatar’s brother, were already there, eating fried buns
with milk tea. Naranbaatar was three years older than Ganbaatar. He was tall, lean but muscular.
Ganbaatar was growing tired of Naranbaatar, Naranbaatar the bastard, the bastard that he
alternately hated and admired. For once, he’d used his muscular hands to throttle him, to strangle
him, to bully him, but it was also the very hand that would shoot up in class to show that he had
the answer to difficult questions. Together they went to school, but not a single word was spoken
between them.
The first lesson was Mongolian. The teacher told them to write an essay on “If only I were.”
It could have been an easy essay to almost all students in the class, but not for Ganbaatar. He
remembered when he first came to school, he could barely catch up with others. They could write
hundreds of words within an hour whereas he could only come up with a few lines after half
day long. It was not long before gossips about him started spreading like wildfire. His classmates
cast unkind and peculiar looks at him. It was as if he was immoral, a notorious outlaw who’d
perpetrated a serious crime that resulted in death sentence. Inexorably, mocking words reached
his ears. Feeling alone and hopeless, he sat at his desk, fidgeting and struggling on his chair,
waiting for school to end.
A month passed, and he was called to the principal’s room. Inside the room, the principal sat
cross-legged with Ganbaatar’s class teacher standing beside him, and his mother sitting on a chair
