Peace and Calm 2

At night the Enkh Nomun comes alive with crowds in the corridors that don’t seem to do much. One night I came back and a young man, eyes dead, face unclean, was lounging right next to my door. I looked at him, he might have looked at my shoulder. I opened the door and thought for a moment he might follow me into my suite but he did not move, just stayed there. There was only one light switch in the two rooms, screwed in at a bizarre, 30 degree angle, by the main door. It even turned on the bathroom light, two rooms away. I don’t know. When it was time to sleep I made my way back to the door, turned out the lights and then began a wavering, hands-out stagger back to the bed. Then I noticed that the internal wall of the suite was making a strange noise, a kind of sucking cardboard sound as it shifted back and forth with the drafts coming through the room. I got up again and tried to open it. It stuck for a moment and I felt the whole partition shift at my touch. Then it came loose. In bed, I listened to a guitar and Mongolian singing rising through the many holes in the hotel. I fell asleep. When I woke up again a man was chanting, unstopping. I thought it might have been an epic poem. There was the drawl of jeeps on stones in the background. The barking of dogs.