Jagga the Scut

Mr . Byambatogoh’s home sits atop a small hill, separated from the higher green peaks to the south and west,  and grassless outcrop range to the east, by shallow stub grass valleys. We arrived there via a local bus from Ulaanbatar to the small town of Sanser, where we were eventually picked up by a family friend who drove us cross-country in a 15 year old Toyota, to the two-ger homestead.

Sanser is an odd little frontier town comprised of a scatter of ramshackle wooden buildings, each seeming to represent a bar, or shop, or restaurant, or combination of all three. You can’t help but feel like you are in Tombstone as you drive through it.  Horseback is the preferred mode of transport, though occasionally a motorbike with a family of passengers would pass by kicking up the dust and tumbleweeds.

Horse hitches adorn the front of most establishments,  and the look that the occasional 2 gallon-capioed drunk would give you, as he stumbled out of a distillery with a half-burned cigarette hanging from his mouth, only amplified the sound of the theme tune to the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly that was running through my head.

After navigating our way across the almost invisible track way running beneath the tall grass that coated the undulating expanse which lay between Sansar and the homestead, we were welcomed by Mama offering a bowl of salty milk tea and a basket of ‘treats’. We sat on one side of the ger, while the family sat on the other curiously watching our every move. Nibbling away at the goat-hair infused, hard, homemade cheese, we precariously balanced the bowls of hot milk tea in our right hands, occasionally bringing them to our lips, over-emphasizing slurps for effect.

After perhaps a half hour of awkward nods, repeated incomprehensible phrases combined with huge sweeping hand gestures, occasional moments when we were clearly being pointed at and gossiped about, failed attempts at quoting from our phrase books, and at least two refills of the salt milk tea, our hosts eventually up and left us to our own devices.

Our accommodation over the next three days was the ‘guest ger’ of the family homestead. It was an 8 wall example, furnished with three beds, and a mirrored dresser decorated with family photos and a pair of ceramic camels. The family alter, complete with a photograph of the Dali Lama, rested against the northern curve of the round structure.

Our hosts, Mama & Papa Byambatogoh had their outdoor lives written all over their faces in uncountable wrinkles that doubled each time they lit up in a smile, which they did a lot. They were blessed with three sons, and one ‘sort of’ daughter-in-law.

 We didn’t see too much of  Papa over the three days, but Mama was a constant. She always seemed to be on the go, making cheese, cooking meals, monitoring the milk cauldron, regularly stirring it by scooping up some of the mixture in a small plastic pot, raising it high above the rest, and then emptying it back into the mix from aloft. The scooping and dropping was done numerous times in quick succession, kicking up the smell of the salty brew and mixing it with the not unpleasant smoky aroma of burning dried sheep dung that the daughter-in-law had dutifully collected from their back yard pile.

How hard these ladies work is unquantifiable, but watching  Mama herd, coral and then continue to milk some thirty or so goats in the middle of a rain, thunder and lightening storm was certainly a good indicator.

The family’s youngest son, Pathgrl, whose name was so unpronounceable at first that we nicknamed him Patrick, was a little diamond, burning with an almost unquenchable energy, and a total shark at the game of Anklebone. Patrick was easily the best at communicating, and had even managed to pick up a small smattering of English from other travellers that had passed by through the years. His playground was the dung-splattered wilds of the west, and his playmates a scraggly cat and its kitten (both called Mishka), and anything else that could be prodded, poked or ridden, be it goat, dog, horse, camel or beetle.

Their eldest son, a handsome boy, was studying the traditional arts in Ulaanbatar, but dropped by long enough to lull us with a Long Song or two.

Then, there was Jagga, the one in the middle, who, forgive me for saying, I frequently suspected had been dropped on his head as a bairn. He was our main guide during the three day stay. He was twenty-four years old, had just about made it through high school, and had spent a little time in the Mongolian army. I called him ‘the idiot son’. My co-travelers were both amused and a little appalled when they heard me call him that, replying in his defence, ‘… but he’s a good farmer.'  Indeed he was, and in this neck of the steppes, I guess that’s all that matters.

Talent for farming aside, our host’s middle son was what my mother would call, 'a scut of a young fella.' He was the main reference point for my initial comparing of Mongolian goat herders with the Irish itinerant. Jagga has the squashed-nose look of any Ward or Hackett that you might see dragging his heels around an Irish horse fair, and forgive me for saying so, the manner of one to boot, God bless him!

He likes his drop, and the tobacco, and is totally lacking in social graces with neither Western niceties (not that you’d expect them), nor Mongolian laws of hospitality representing any part of his repertoire.  Maybe I’m being too harsh on the boy, perhaps it was our fault because we interrupted his Nadaam plans. Clearly, the older brother had originally been lined up for the duty of ‘minding us’ during the festival, but got called away last minute, and Jagga got lumped with the job instead.

My initial move to dislike him came out of what seemed, at first, to be a playful game at dressing up. He pulled a beautiful silk deel from out of the guest ger dresser and insisted that I try it on. Not thinking it more than a bit of fun, I obliged and we photographed our little Mongolian family. We danced around a little while his girlfriend looked on, and then he carelessly announced that I should wear the robe to the festival on the next day.  His poor maligned girlfriend’s face dropped on the other side of the ger when she realized that any thoughts that she may have had of wearing her Sunday best to the opening ceremony next day had just been blown out of the water by Jagga’s thoughtlessness. I promptly took it off and declined the offer.

On our first morning, as we prepared to leave the homestead for the Nadaam horse race, he scammed 30,000 togs out of us for a magic taxi.  It had the ability to shape shift between a Prado, a tractor and numerous other vehicles in between. The original plan was to go on horseback, but Jagga decided that the ‘maasheen’ would be better.

At the village Nadaam, we enjoyed the festivities, accompanied here and there by the pregnant girlfriend and random machine drivers. We would run between the wrestling competition and horse race, occasionally popping into a fast food ger to indulge in Kosher (deep fried meat patties) and airag (fermented mares milk).  Jagga snaked off at every opportunity. Most evenings were spent going from distillery to distillery looking for our vagabond guide. He would eventually be found rosy cheeked and dishevelled, helped into the car by whoever happened to be our taxi driver on the day.

We were under no illusions that the extra bills we’d handed over, outside of the eyeshot of his parents, were funding his vodka habit, and our multi-formed taxi was really the good will of locals that his long suffering girlfriend had managed to persuade.

One of the blessed joys of the extreme language barrier that we found ourselves up against, was the licence it gave me to call him a ‘dirty, thieving little bollix!’ to his face. All I had to do was fake a smile mid abuse, and he’d nod his head and give the thumbs up.  One of the few moments we were in agreement I think.

Our last evening at the homestead was spent playing frisbee.  The whole family and a visiting neighbour joined in the fun, and we enjoyed a good hour around dusk playing and laughing.   At one point, I rugby tackled one of my travel companions over a playful insult he had sent my way.  Our hosts were very impressed thinking I had picked up a trick or two watching the wrestling matches at Nadaam.  Instead of trying to explain the whole ‘rugby playing’ thing, I simply mimicked the Eagle dance of a victorious wrestler while they pointed and laughed.

Our departure from the Byambatogohs next morning was filled with hugs, kisses and badly pronounced Mongolian Thank You’s. Both Mama and Papa were there to wave us off, while Patrick chased after the machine. As we drove away from the two gers in the middle of nowhere, I was amused by the sight of our friend Jagga pulling himself out from under some blankets beside the fuel pile at the back of the family ger . The Mongolian version of ‘being in the dog house’ clearly translated to ‘sleeping by the dung heap.’ My last and abiding image of Jagga, is of his pregnant girlfriend chucking a wicker basket at him. When it fell to the ground, he dutifully picked up and began to fill it with the contents of what had been his bed.

A Short History of Smoking

Waking up this morning with that metal and mucky ashtray taste in my mouth, and death rattle in my chest, I find myself feeling the need to quit.  It’s that same ‘never again’ feeling that I get after a night on the beer, which, as it happens, is also keeping the no more tabac feeling company today. Thank you Mr. Arthur Guinness for inviting me to your birthday party last night, but really, it was cruel of you to force that last pint down my throat … and as for the bullfrogs? I’m sure there is a convention somewhere in the world that’s supposed to protect people from such unmitigated abuse.

I picked the box of lights up off the beside table as a reflex action on my way to my laptop. I’m sitting here now, flicking the lid open and closed on the damn thing. I find myself tuning in to these little habitual tendencies every so often, and wondering where they came from.  I have a whole lifetime of them wrapped around cigarettes, from how I open a new pack, the pre-mouth fiddling, the hand action when I do decide to light up, to just simply playing with the box, twisting it round and round between my thumb and forefinger.

I grew up in a smoking household, my father having partaken in some form or another most of my life. Usually Benson & Hedges, though sometimes he would take up the pipe, just for a change.  I remember he collected pipes for a while and used to display them fondly in a stand on the mantelpiece. For a short time, they took the place of socks as his regular present type on birthdays and at Christmas. I think it may have been somewhat of a fashion statement in the early 70’s, judging from the super cool, faded colour photographs of his pitch black moustachioed self with sideburns, blue-sleeveless jumper and pipe hanging from the corner of his mouth, that seem to litter the early pages of our family albums.

Of course, he had grown up with it also. Both of his parents were diligent smokers. My grandfather eventually died from them, and my grandmother may well have, though they called it an aneurism.  She died young, so my memories of her are quite vague.  However, I have a picture of her in my head, a somewhat romantic one built from a combination of family images and stories that my father tells of her. She was a classy lady by all accounts, stylistically a bit of an Audrey Hepburn type who never stepped outside the door without being perfectly manicured, attitude-wise more like Katherine, she’d give you hell if you crossed her.  She loved her fur coats.  In my head I see her standing with one arm folded to provide a rest for her gloved smoking arm, wrist slightly bent, palm face up, two fingers gently holding the cigarette that was almost an extension of her hand, smoke curling in a pure, white, single pillar beside her pale face, occasionally getting itself wrapped in one of her short set curls.

I remember my first cigarette. It was on the back of the school bus when I was about 16.  I physically recall that I had craved it for weeks.  Finally, I asked for a ‘drag’ of Martina Keane’s Major and inhaled it like I’d been smoking for years. I used to reckon that I was already addicted before I’d ever properly inhaled, a combination of regular exposure, and genetic predisposition.

That said, my career began pretty much the same for me as it had done for my father, as a fashion statement. Quite simply, it was cool!  When I was 17, I had a leather bikers jacket and loved having my box of Marlboro reds slightly sticking up out of the top pocket. Of course, it had to be a secret. Not simply because that’s what 17 year olds feel they have to do but, because I was also a chronic asthmatic.  It was a late onset illness, diagnosed when I was 15 or 16. My father, life long and committed smoker though he was, would have ‘killed’ me if he knew.

My brother, who is three years younger than me, became aware of the stash. He’d been robbing me blind for months, but it took me a while to twig. I’ve always suffered from a certain lack of awareness of what’s going on around me. I used to question my memory even then. When I finally did wake up to his shenanigans, it riled me massively, but it also put me in a bit of a quandry. What was I to do about it? I couldn’t exactly go to my parents without getting myself in trouble as well. I decided to try and outwit him using the fear factor. I left the box of Marlies in my jacket with a note wrapped around the 8 or 9 fags that were left. “I know what you’re at. Buy your own, or there’ll be hell!”  A day later when I was putting on my jacket, I pulled out the box to find it empty of cigarettes, and the scrap of paper I’d inserted had a scrawled reply on the back, “For who exactly?”  Scut!

I was in the car a few years later with dad collecting my brother from a day out with the lads in town. We pulled up before he saw us, or had time to quench the hard-ass fag that was hanging from his mouth in true James Dean fashion.  My dad lost his temper and started spewing about how, “that boy is in the shit.” I got defensive and argued that he was old enough to make his own decisions. At that point dad turned on me. I was ‘out’ by then. “100% of people who smoke die young”, I think his words were. “Dad, we all die, and anyway, you smoke!” The argument continued, “You’re asthmatic! 100% of asthmatics who smoke die younger and more painfully.” At that point I lost it, and in a very uncharacteristic manner when conversing with my lovely Daddy, got accusatory! “Dad, you’ve been smoking around us all our lives.  It’s probably your fucking fault I have asthma in the first place!”  At that, the conversation ended, he rolled down the window and chucked the nub of a cigarette he’d been puffing on out of it, honked the horn at my brother, and wouldn’t say a word to either of us the rest of the way home.  He didn’t pick up another cigarette for some 7 years after that.

I remember asking him a few years down the line if he missed them. His response, “Daughter, to this day I would still sell you into slavery for one drag of a Benson!"


One Christmas however, Dad’s fasting all came crashing down about his ears when his elder children descended on the house for the festivities. I still smoked, and both my brother, and his lovely Swiss wife were unapologetic puffers. Mum, in her ever hospitable way, allocated an inside space for us to enjoy our wicked habits, for we“couldn’t be trapesing outside into the depth of winter everytime we wanted to indulge, and sure anyway, wasn’t it Christmas.”

That room happened to be the living room.  It had a beautiful open fireplace that would take the smoke up and out of the house without too much trouble. Poor Daddy! Christmas day is his day for the kitchen, and he loves it.  The day begins the same every year. Up with the lark to see what Santa had delivered, (a little less early obviously in that interim after we had all grown, and before the grandkids came along), a nice cooked breakfast, then we’d decamp to the living room while he donned his chef’s hat and opened his first bottle of red.  Like most smokers, myself included, the habit is inextricably linked to alcohol consumption, and for any smoker trying to quit, that is the hardest time.

By the time he’d moved on to bottle number two the poor man was tormenting himself over our open boxes of tobacco, holding them up to his nose and snorting in the mere scent of them like it was cocaine.

I began looking around for the slaver at that point.

Then, like a fool, I opened the door for him. “For goodness sake Daddy, it’s Christmas. Stop tormenting yourself and have one.  You’ve given them up before, it’s not like you can’t ‘just stop’ again if you want.”  Easily knowing then that his struggle was one I’d never imposed upon myself. In the following months and years, he went through numerous failed attempts at quitting.

Unlike us, my youngest brother, a late baby, grew up in a smoke free household. The very sight of a cigarette disgusted him. His vocal hatred of the habit led to Daddy becoming a ‘secret smoker’. For some reason he felt safe smoking around me, but anytime I sat in the car with him when he’d pick me up from the airport, or when I'd meet him in the garden shed, the cigarette entering his mouth was always prefaced with a, “Don’t tell your brother.”

Another one of those, 'don’t tell your brother scenarios’  happened after I left university and used to pop home for a visit in between excavations. I have always enjoyed smoking the occasional joint, something Daddy was quite liberal about. Apart from the ‘joy of the stone’, it had the capacity to ease the discomforts of my skin disorder, which would flare up under stress. I was given free reign to smoke in my parents house, as long as I kept it to my bedroom and my youngest brother, still only 14 at the time, didn’t find out.

One evening I was in my room, having a smoke and reading a book, when Daddy popped up for a visit. I can’t remember what it was that we chatted about, but can remember that he watched intently as I packed a three skinner.  It took me such a long time to learn how to roll that when I finally mastered it, I used to take great pride in the end product. Sitting there admiring my piece of artwork, Daddy asked if I’d make one for him.  I have to admit, it stopped me in my tracks, and my shock was both vocal and visual. Unsurprisingly, his response was something along the lines of, “You forget that there was a time before I was a husband and father! I’d just like to remember what it was like.”  “Fair point,” I said as I watched him leave the room.  I duly obliged his request, leaving my labour of love on the windowsill beside his bedroom door, as I left to take up my next job posting. I rang home a few days later to check in.

Me:     “So, how was it?”
Dad:    “Never again!”
Me:     “How d'you mean?”
Dad:    “Well, perhaps I shouldn’t have had half a bottle of whiskey 
             beforehand, but it didn’t take me long to remember why I
             never kept up the habit."
Me:     “Eh???”
Dad:   “Massive crisis! Just two pulls into that yoke, 
             and I was in the toilet desperately trying make the correct 
             choice. Squat or kneel" 

My mouth tastes like pants.  I’ve brushed twice already, and I can still taste the tar.  I don’t know what it is about me that makes me smoke like a chimney when I go out for a few drinks.  I guess, living in one of the few countries where one can still smoke in a bar doesn’t help.  Or maybe it’s just a weak personality.


Dad in his wisdom occasionally tries to give me a pep talk, sometimes in a cruel but kind way, using a bit of emotional blackmail. I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve attempted to quit. I’ve fallen off that blasted wagon so many times I’m black and blue. My latest move has been to take up a new brand of extra light, extra slim, menthol cigarettes.  After only a few days, its clear that I’m smoking these cigarettes with the same mentality that a career dieter approaches fat-free cheese.  

“Oooo, no bad stuff, that means I can have double.”

My dad on the other hand is now three years clean. It took a heart attack to get him there, but then sometimes it takes an extreme kick in the backside to find the willpower. Keep it up Daddy!

Personally, I hate having my bottom kicked, so here’s hoping I can find some willpower before boot and flesh meet.