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I am trembling all over, as if my skin were being pierced by hundreds of needles.
"Focus on the cold, until you stop trembling. Let the cold fill your every thought, until there is no space for anything else, until it becomes your companion and your friend. Do not try to control it. Do not think about the sun, that will only make it worse, because you will know then that something else--heat--exists and then the cold will feel that it is not loved or desired."
My muscles were furiously stretching and contracting in order to produce energy and keep my organism alive. However, I did as Dos ordered, because I trusted him, trusted in his calm, his tenderness, and his authority. I let the needles pierce my skin, allowed my muscles to struggle, my teeth to chatter, all the while repeating to myself: "Don't fight; the cold is your friend." My muscles refused to obey, and I remained like that for almost fifteen minutes, until my muscles eventually gave in and stopped shaking, and I entered a state of torpor. I tried to sit down, but Mikhail grabbed hold of me and held me up, while Dos spoke to me. His words seemed to come from a long way off, from a place where the steppes meet the sky.
"Welcome, nomad who crosses the steppes. Welcome to the place where we always say that the sky is blue even when it is gray, because we know that the color is still there above the clouds. Welcome to the land of the Tengri. Welcome to me, for I am here to receive you and to honor you for your search."
Mikhail sat down on the ground and asked me to drink something that immediately warmed my blood. Dos helped me to get dressed, and we made our way back down the dunes that continued to talk among themselves; we made our way back to our improvised campsite. Before Dos and Mikhail had even started cooking, I had fallen into a deep sleep.
What's happening? Isn't it light yet?"
"It's been light for ages. It's just a sandstorm, don't worry. Put your dark glasses on to protect your eyes."
"Where's Dos?"
"He's gone back to Almaty, but he was very moved by the ceremony yesterday evening. He didn't really need to do that. It was a bit of a waste of time for you really and a great opportunity to catch pneumonia. I hope you realize that it was just his way of showing you how welcome you are. Here, take the oil."
"I overslept."
"It's only a two-hour ride to the village. We'll be there before the sun is at its highest point."
"I need a bath. I need to change my clothes."
"That's impossible. You're in the middle of the steppes. Put the oil in the pan, but first offer it up to the Lady. Apart from salt, it's our most valuable commodity."
"What is Tengri?"
"The word means 'sky worship'; it's a kind of religion without religion. Everyone has passed through here--Buddhists, Hindus, Catholics, Muslims, different sects with their beliefs and superstitions. The nomads became converts to avoid being killed, but they continued and continue to profess the idea that the Divinity is everywhere all the time. You can't take the Divinity out of nature and put it in a book or between four walls. I've felt so much better since coming back to the steppes, as if I had been in real need of nourishment. Thank you for letting me come with you."
"Thank you for introducing me to Dos. Yesterday, during that dedication ceremony, I sensed that he was someone special."
"He learned from his grandfather, who learned from his father, who learned from his father, and so on. The nomadic way of life, and the absence of a written language until the end of the nineteenth century, meant that they had to develop the tradition of the akyn, the person who must remember everything and pass on the stories. Dos is an akyn. When I say 'learn,' though, I hope you don't take that to mean 'accumulate knowledge.' The stories have nothing to do with dates and names and facts. They are legends about heroes and heroines, animals and battles, about the symbols of man's essential self, not just his deeds. They're not stories about the vanquishers or the vanquished, but about people who travel the world, contemplate the steppes, and allow themselves to be filled by the energy of love. Pour the oil in more slowly, otherwise it will spit."
"I felt blessed."
"I'd like to feel that too. Yesterday, I went to visit my mother in Almaty. She asked if I was well and if I was earning money. I lied and said I was fine, that I was putting on a successful theater production in Paris. I'm going back to my own people today, and it's as if I had left yesterday, and as if during all the time I've spent abroad, I had done nothing of any importance. I talk to beggars, wander the streets with the tribe, organize the meetings at the restaurant, and what have I achieved? Nothing. I'm not like Dos, who learned from his grandfather. I only have the presence to guide me and sometimes I think that perhaps it is just a hallucination; perhaps my visions really are just epileptic fits, and nothing more."
"A minute ago you were thanking me for bringing you with me, and now it seems to have brought you nothing but sadness. Make up your mind what you're feeling."
"I feel both things at once, I don't have to choose. I can travel back and forth between the oppositions inside me, between my contradictions."
"I want to tell you something, Mikhail.
I too have traveled back and forth between many contradictions since I first met you. I began by hating you, then I accepted you, and as I've followed in your footsteps, that acceptance has become respect. You're still young, and the powerlessness you feel is perfectly normal. I don't know how many people your work has touched so far, but I can tell you one thing: you changed my life."
"You were only interested in finding your wife."
"I still am, but that didn't just make me travel across the Kazakhstan steppes: it made me travel through the whole of my past life. I saw where I went wrong, I saw where I stopped, I saw the moment when I lost Esther, the moment that the Mexican Indians call the acomodador--the giving-up point. I experienced things I never imagined I would experience at my age. And all because you were by my side, guiding me, even though you might not have been aware that you were. And do you know something else? I believe that you do hear voices and that you did have visions when you were a child. I have always believed in many things, and now I believe even more."
"You're not the same man I first met."
"No, I'm not. I hope Esther will be pleased."
"Are you?"
"Of course."
"Then that's all that matters. Let's have something to eat, wait until the storm eases, and then set off."
