During those storm-tossed days I taught Arsylang another trick. One evening yet another animal had died on the way home. I lugged it along until I ran out of strength and had to leave it behind. This was not supposed to happen. During the night it would freeze rock-solid, and that would destroy the valuable wool that Father’s life depended on. His head would roll, as he put it. Worried, I realized Arsylang might be able to carry the animal. I pointed at the dead sheep and said: “Arsylang, fetch!” He bit into the shaggy fleece. I lifted and heaved it on his neck, and Arsylang started to walk. He was strong. Every child was familiar with the saying: “Dogs get lucky during the dshut, and lamas during the plague.” Although it wasn’t my four-legged companion’s fault, it was true in our case.

In those days the emaciated ewes had little if any milk. Their udders sagged like empty bags, and their teats were cold and lifeless. The lambs bleated with hunger and licked and sucked whatever got in front of their little mouths—other lambs, their mothers’ shaggy strands of wool, people’s fingers or the seams of their clothes. Mother prepared a gruel of flour, butter, herb tea, and salt, to which she sometimes added a bit of milk. Flour was a rarity we only got to taste on holidays. And the milk was drawn one drip at a time from the odd ewe that was a little better off than the others—in the eyes of the mother and her baby, it must have felt like theft. With this gruel we fed the starving lambs. But the hollow sucking sound of the empty horn-bottle betrayed the lambs’ persistent hunger. This was not about what you might have called “stilling their hunger” or making them “feel full,” it was about getting them to survive the day and endure into the next which might, perhaps, be better. Sometimes I got a little bowl of gruel myself. Then I swore that in the future, when the good times would come, I’d eat nothing but gruel.

Some ewes even rejected their lambs. That happened in other years, too, but now it spread like a devastating infectious disease. When they were supposed to be nursing, we would squat behind these ewes, cling to their udders, and sing for dear life. Yes, we sang! It was not the lyrics that mattered, but the melody, the rich voice, and the repetition: toega—toega—toega … Sometimes, though, little rhymes would also slip off ur tongue:

If you don’t love your little one—

toega—toega—toega

You are such a wicked one—

toega—toega—toega

If you nurse it all you can—

toega—toega—toega

You’ll become an Ardshupan—

toega—toega—toega!