Behind the Door

KHARKHORIN, Mongolia – Traveling, to some extent, is about limits, journeying to the edges of the Earth and seeing if it is possible to cross thresholds hidden in our home communities. On this trip I have done many things that I previously thought too complicated, foreign or illegal to consider. But here I found the place where even I will not venture, my line in the sand: a fern green door covered with deep scratches in its thick hardwood.

The door lies in a part of Mongolia I am sure my hosts would rather I not see. I found it by wandering off, going on another "walk" that confuses the Mongolians so much. After my companions and I arrive at the ger camp in the mid-afternoon, we are not interested in sitting around the cast-iron stove and drinking salty milk tea. Instead, Caleb, Myriam and I excuse ourselves after just one cup (rather than the customary five or six) and set off for the town. Bobby, increasingly in-tune with our need to meander, looks at her watch and declares that we can go, as long as we are back in precisely two hours. It might be a strange request coming from someone who on this trip has shown a lax regard for puncuality, but we promise to return in time for more milk tea and steamed mutton dumplings.

Our accommodation is an enclosed ger in the middle of a string of fenced lots running on an east-west axis. The ger entrances face south, toward the town of Kharkhorin. For a front yard, the half-dozen or so families that live here have a kilometer-wide zone of boggy meadow between them and the town. There is no established road leading toward town, so the three of us walk the shortest course available: a straight line.

As we walk, looming to our east is a decaying flour factory, a reminant of the country's attempted industrialization. In the post-war period, when Stalin and Krushchev's Five Year Plans pushed the Soviet Union to recover through massive expansion of heavy industry, the regime's puppet rulers here in Mongolia tried to do the same thing on the steppe. They encouraged nomadic Mongolians to cluster in agricultural communes and newly constructed communities and export commodities to other Soviet republics and allies. For fairly obvious reasons, it didn't work. Fercriously independent people accustomed to packing up their house and moving every few weeks did not take kindly to sixteen hour shifts in an airless factory, grinding grain for the Ukrainian Youth League.

After the Communists lost power in 1991, the suddenly sponsorless factory shuttered its doors, leaving most of the people in the town unemployed. A grant from the Japanese government allowed it to reopen several years later, but there is no sign of activity among the rust covered pylons and smoke stacks caked tar black from decades of grime. I cannot believe that this complex produces a basic food staple. I imagine any flour that comes from this place to be inedible, laced with carcinogens and additives.

We press on. The late afternoon sun is intense, even in the middle of the winter, and I am forced to unzip my bulbous down jacket and remove my scarf. Today, for the first time in weeks, there is water mixed in with the thin crust of snow on the ground. Approximately halfway between the ger and town, we encounter a sheep train. Two herders, both young men in dirty deels, solemnly march back toward a fenced in era to our north after a day of grazing in the mostly barren fields. The sheep seemed well accustomed to humans, and do not baa or complain in any nonverbal way as we snake through the herd.

These few animals are the last sign of natural life we will see on this walk, for Kharkhorin appears to a Hollywood post-Apocalyptic set brought to life. The first building we pass in the town proper is a prison, decaying like every other structure here. Thankfully, no inmates are about, the only sign of life is a couple bare light bulbs glowing in the middle of a window. There is no fence around the building, as if there is nothing worthwhile about the place for people locked up inside to escape.

The prison is one of the more solidly constructed places in town. The streets, all unpaved and filled with slushy potholes, are lined with cheaply constructed buildings of concrete. Some are shops, others small homes. The residences are designed in the same style as in Tsesterleg: square lots, fenced in with mismatched hardwood pickets, with a ger or tiny house placed in the middle. Many lots have a latrine in the back, and I suspect no running water inside.

As soon as I arrive in the town, I realize that we have no reason for coming here. We have plenty of provisions back and dinner waiting in the ger, and there are no tourist attractions or museums on the town's few streets. Every business we pass is shuttered, presumably for the Mongolian New Year, but perhaps because the owners have fled someplace nicer.

Kharkhorin is a blot of the beautiful landscape of Mongolia. It is an argument against urbanization, for here there are not enough people for an interesting, vibrant gathering of people, but enough so that the combined waste and pollution of several hundred families can congeal into a bloody mess. This is perhaps the most depressing place I have ever visited, sadder than the Killing Fields of Cambodia or the KGB Prison in Lithuania, for here the despair does not seem to be improving.

With no other plan, the three of us walk a rectangle around town, with each small street more depressing than the next. We walk mostly in silence. I am amazed at how forlorn this place is; it is so down that it seems beyond a cheery joke or two. Just as we are about to make our third right turn, and begin the last segment of the rectangle, a small building catches my eye. It appears to be a small bagoda, but there are no windows to peer inside. But under the scratched door I see a light.

I want to go inside. I want there to be a point, some redeeming value in this ugly place. But as I make a move to go in, Myriam stops me.

"Wait," she says, and I reconsider. What is behind the door? And why do I need to go inside?

In all probability, there is just a gaunt, frail Mongolian man on the other side of the door with a small selection on canned goods. But I realize there is no reason for me to found out, nor do I want to take the risk of endangering my friends by going inside. The entrance is closed, and there is no sign I can tell that the store is open. This, it appears, is my limit.