That’s when Grandma remembered that there had been salt in the bowl. She grabbed the brine from the roaring and raging man’s hand and did as she was told. Fear was simply bigger than disgust. As a result, she became very sick, but in the end some good came of it, too: she had been suffering for some time from a stubborn case of diarrhea, which now finally seemed cured. She thought about it and decided to test the cure on an animal should she ever get the chance. Soon she got her chance, and the cure proved eff ctive. And ever since then Grandma had known how to cure diarrhea, whether it was she herself who suffered from it or a sheep.

One day I noticed that Grandma was eating less than she used to. Her bowl was tiny as it was. But now she asked that it be filled only halfway. Was she already on her way to becoming a baby? Could she perhaps become one without having to go home first?

I lived in fear as well as in hope.

The Ail

THE AIL

We walked back home unhurriedly. Grandma pointed to the birds clamoring and romping in the air, and the flowers piercing the ground and rising from the steppe around us in a multitude of colors like glittering splashes that had drizzled down from the sun, the sky, the glaciers, and from mountain ridges that seemed to smoke and blaze with all this light.

In front of us lay the ail like a well-ordered board game. The hürde wasn’t yet black with dung or checkered white with loose wool, but stood out brownish against the green of the grass because the ail had moved there only two days before. The four yurts looked as if somebody had thrown gashyk; one stood a little to the side and seemed round and upright like a well-built and tightly hobbled horse, while the others were herded together and resembled goats. Each seemed to lack something.