Wracked in deep thoughts, Monkho made his way down the stairs and through a long hallway. Bright light streamed through the row of windows on his side. The upper floors of the building looked deserted. Most of the staff had driven out of the compound, riding in their respective cliques, in search of a hip new downtown restaurant they could be seen in.

He shambled back to his office, closed the door, and called Tsonkho, his younger brother. A groggy voice picked up on the fourth ring. Monkho explained in brief and breathless words how his scheme to support him had been compromised – and furthermore, he was being laid off from his job at the end of the month – but he would get the money from somewhere else to pay off the last year of tuition. By the way, what was Tsonkho doing answering his call with a groggy voice at 11 am in the morning? Had he partied all night? Monkho hadn’t hidden money from his wife and kid just so his brother could party it away.

“I just got back home from a lesson,” Tsonkho mumbled. His little brother’s college was on the other side of the city, and the bus commute often took one and a half to two hours.

There was silence for a moment, and Tsonkho eventually conceded that it was okay, and that he would ask for the rest of the money from his younger sister’s husband. They had already paid for a portion of Tsonkho’s tuition.

But this didn’t sit well with Monkho. He was the eldest. It behooved him to pay at least the agreed portion. He told his younger brother that he would find a way to pay for it somehow.

Monkho then probed about Tsonkho’s TOEFL preparation, and lectured him on how one of the scholarships announced by the Ministry of Education could take him abroad. “You have to work your butt off for a year, but trust me, a good score will change your life.”

“Umm…”

“What? What’s on your mind?”

“I’ve decided to go on a mission after graduation,” Tsonkho said, “To Myanmar.” He had converted to Christianity a few years ago, and it was becoming harder to talk to him without feeling like you were listening to a sermon.

“Isn’t there a civil war there?” Monkho asked, trying to sound curious instead of worried. He remembered reading somewhere that the country was going through the longest civil war in modern history.

“It’s fine,” Tsonkho said. “God will protect me.”

“What did Mom and Dad say?”

“I haven’t told them. But they’re obviously going to say no.”

“How are they anyway?” Monkho asked, suddenly remembering.

“Still fighting,” Tsonkho said.

Monkho wondered if all the accusations his wife made about his parents were true, that they expected him and his younger sibling to pay for Tsonkho’s tuition.

“I’m sorry you’re going through all of this. But if you open up to the Lord…”

“Okay, not again.” He jabbed at his phone and hung up, and then struck the desk.

His phone vibrated. Now that he had unmuted it, the multiple calls from his wife became real and menacing. He swiped up to send a pre-set text that rejected the call: “I’m in a meeting. Can I call you later?”

A flurry of texts started to buzz in. Monkho tried to ignore the litany of hurtful words and see what her main points were. “Coward, I know you’ve been sending money to your parents,” one text said. “Have you even bought a single diaper?!!!” another mocked him.

Monkho considered calling her, but decided against it. Didn’t an ancient proverb say, eat if you’re angry, sleep if you’re sad? He pocketed his phone and hurried out of the compound.

The compound, a three-story, brick-and-mortar affair with cream-colored siding, was tucked next to Gachuurt Road, a narrow, divided drag that funneled overweight semis and dented vans escaping or entering the capital.

Monkho hurried toward the nearest tsainy gazar, kicking up dust across the run-down sidewalk, passing a row of poplar saplings. Some of the implants had been propped up by a stick, no doubt stunted by the surrounding cacophony and dust.

The tsainy gazar was a drab, stuffy hall that mostly served workers from the factories in the vicinity. The greasy scent of soups and stir-fries mingled with the cleaning solution recently used on the plastic covers of the refectory tables. Stealing a glance through the serving hatch at the cooks bustling in the kitchen, Monkho asked for banshtai tsai, beef dumpling milk tea, from a girl behind the counter.

Scanning the dining area, he spotted, to his surprise, Ravjaa and Sanaa sitting together. Ravjaa spoke in between scoops from a large bowl of soup as if he were in a soup eating contest. Sanaa listened and nodded while raking gravy from beef strips into his small mound of rice.

Curious and slightly amused, he took his meal on a tray and trod towards them.

“Mind if I join you?” he asked, flashing a smile. Ravjaa looked up from his food and nodded, while Sanaa seemed surprised.

“Hope your food is tasty, Mr. Ravjaa,” Monkho said as a way of greeting. Sanaa nodded strenuously while chewing his beef strips.

Ravjaa smiled conspiratorially. “Sanaa followed me here to ask about my thoughts on the new product concept. At the end of the day, if we can sell dog chew, then dog chew is what we’ll sell. But it’s just a bit too disrespectful to tradition if you ask me.”

“I liked what both of you suggested,” Monkho said, trying to feign interest, and get on their good side. “The aaruul being chewed by the medieval warriors, and the 80 percent familiarity theory.” He felt like he had to offer something clever to tie up this point, so he added. “And I thought, why not combine it?”

He was just spitballing now, trying to avoid an awkward silence during lunch. “Why not create a product that makes the consumer feel like they’re the Mongol warrior?” he half-asked, in the spur of the moment. “Something they have to depend on as endurance food, shaped in a way that fits snugly into your mouth. We can call it Bat-Aaruul.”

“Bat-Aaruul?” asked Sanaa.

“Or not!” Monkh said, jovially. “Just thinking out loud here. I was imagining a play on words: baatar for warrior, aaruul for the hard curd, and there’s also Bataar, the oft-mispronounced-and-misspelled-by-Westerners version there. A riff on the popular phrase, you know?”

The men looked intrigued: Ravjaa raised an eyebrow, and Sanaa brought a finger up under his chin.

“Just imagine the product description,” Monkho said, adopting a podcaster’s voice. “Aaruul was a vital staple for the ancient Mongol warriors, who endured long journeys on horseback with no rest, no water, just a piece of hard, creamy curdle in their mouths, providing nutrition and hydration.’ Wouldn’t that be easier to promote?” He looked at them eagerly.

Sanaa’s face looked sour. “I mean, is that going to make an average European want to buy it?” he asked. “It brings up our colonial history. And that’s the worst kind of image you can invoke if you want to penetrate their market.” He looked down at his plate. “Plus, I’m still convinced that every European country’s cheese is far better than any Mongolian dairy.”

Monkho considered this with a poker face, and they all sat chewing their food.

Sanaa then broke the silence with, “Yeah, no, I like it. It’s wild. By the way, where did you get your degree?”

“Master’s in marketing from a university in Hungary,” Monkho said, feeling slightly self-conscious. “But I did my bachelor’s at NUM here.”

“I studied at Brown,” Sanaa said. “It’s in Rhode Island, in the U.S.”

“Wow, that must have been cool,” Monkho said.

“My son is going to Harvard,” Ravjaa chimed in. Then he added, “Actually, he wants to. He’s fifteen.”

“Yeah,” Sanaa said, ignoring Ravjaa’s comment. “Like a lot of dog owners in our town.”

They all chuckled.

“I’m glad I’m going to join your team and learn from you,” Monkho said, smiling. But Ravjaa and Sanaa’s faces blanched.

“Sure, sure.” Sanaa said, and Monkho couldn’t help but notice that it was Sanaa’s turn to make a poker face.

Monkho suspected they were already aware of his upcoming termination. He was the last to learn of his own firing. What an idiot? He told himself.

He was going to be jobless, scorned by his wife, taken for granted by his siblings, and unable to support his parents. What could he do now? What could he do? There was nothing, nothing he could do but step out, and just leave everything.

Except…

“I’m glad the company has you now,” Monkho said. “I hope to be part of a lot of exciting projects. I have my wife and son to take care of, so I’m planning on settling in for the long run.”

Ravjaa and Sanaa looked uncomfortable. Good, he thought. Because that would lay the groundwork for his next tactic.

He talked vaguely about his financial issues, exaggerating here and there, spinning a yarn so melodramatic and nuanced that any solution his listeners provided would be squashed by another problem that had already befallen him.

He concluded his speech with an indirect question posed to both of them. Would either of them be willing to lend him some money?

“How much do you need?” Ravjaa asked.

“Six hundred thousand.” It was about 200 US dollars.

“Oof,” Rajvaa said.

Sanaa grabbed his phone. “I can wire it to you,” he said. “What’s your bank account number?”

(…to be continued…)

Transadaptation Volume 6 – Meaning? – Uncertainty, Instability and Extremes Transadapted

January: A Regular Train Trip – Mateusz Tymoszewski (Poland)

February: Growing Up – Adriana Uribe (Columbia)

March: Mess – Veronika Groke (Austria)

April: The Roads We Take – Svetlana Molchanova (Russia)

May: Need – Nadia Silva Castro (Brazil)

June: “Next Sunshine” – Jonay Quintero Hernandez (Spain)

July: Intentions – Narantsogt Baatarkhuu (Mongolia)

August: Planet Kyiv – Anastasiia Leonova (Ukraine)

September: Feeling like a Fool – Ulrike Bergmeister (Germany)

October: Stories of Outcast Souls – Armine Asryan (Armenia)

November: Ronaldinha – Alejandra Baccino (Uruguay)

December: Aimlessly – Krisztina Janosi (Hungary)

Background – Context

Transadaptation Volume 5: Of Flowing Vicissitudes – Life Transadapted, (eds.) Angelika Friedrich, Yuri Smirnov and Henry Whittlesey (2024)

Transadaptation Volume 4: Material Dissent – Adulthood Transadapted, (eds.) Angelika Friedrich, Yuri Smirnov and Henry Whittlesey (2023)

Transadaptation Volume 3: Evanescent – Young Adulthood Transadapted, (eds.) Angelika Friedrich, Yuri Smirnov and Henry Whittlesey (2022)

Transadaptation Volume 2: Conceived – Childhood Transadapted, (eds.) Angelika Friedrich, Yuri Smirnov and Henry Whittlesey (2021)

Transadaptation Volume 1: In the Middle – Prelude to a Contemporary Transadaptation, (eds.) Angelika Friedrich, Yuri Smirnov and Henry Whittlesey (2020)

Peripatetic Alterity: A Philosophical Treatise on the Spectrum of Being – Romantics and Pragmatists by Angelika Friedrich, Yuri Smirnov and Henry Whittlesey (2019)

La Syncrétion of Polarization and Extremes Transposée, (eds.) Angelika Friedrich, Yuri Smirnov and Henry Whittlesey (2019)

The Codex of Uncertainty Transposed, (eds.) Angelika Friedrich, Yuri Smirnov and Henry Whittlesey (2018)

L’anthologie of Global Instability Transpuesta, (eds.) Angelika Friedrich, Yuri Smirnov and Henry Whittlesey (2017)

From Wahnsinnig to the Loony Bin: German and Russian Stories Transposed to Modern-day America, (eds.) Angelika Friedrich, Yuri Smirnov and Henry Whittlesey (2013)

Emblems and stories on the international community

Perception by country – Transposing emblems, articles, short stories and reports from around the world

Credits

Background photo: Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia – From above – Altansukh (Unsplash)

Left to right at top: 1. Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia – The high rises – Anonymous (Shutterstock); 2. Erdenet, Mongolia – A city street – Pecoid (Shutterstock); 3. Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia – An autumn day – Munkhtevshin (Unsplash)

Left to right in middle: 1. Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia – A winter weekday – Anonymous (Shutterstock); 2. Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia – From the car – Keleny (Shutterstock)

Left to right at bottom: 1. Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia – Residential highrises – Seewhybee (Shutterstock); 2. Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia – In the capital – Anonymous (Shutterstock)
Source: The Codex of Uncertainty Transposed