The Secret History of the Mongol Queens - Jack Weatherford [6]
Before the soup finished heating, young Tolui threw open the felt flap hanging over the door and dashed into the ger. With the impulsive energy of a four-year-old, he raced inside with no particular purpose and turned to run out again. At this moment, rage stirred inside the Tatar and then erupted. Without warning, and before Tolui could get through the flap a second time, the stranger lunged from his seat, grabbed up Tolui in his arms, and ran out the doorway with him. To rob a family of its youngest son was to deprive it of its heir. In addition to the emotional pain of losing the little Prince of the Fire, such a loss, akin to the departure of his ancestors’ support and the blessing of the sky, carried enough supernatural importance to jeopardize the career of Genghis Khan.
Before the grandmother could scream for help, Altani jumped up and tore out the door behind the kidnapper. She chased after him, and when she drew near, the Tatar pulled out his knife. Tolui struggled to free himself, but to no avail. The assailant sought to turn Tolui slightly in his arms in order to stab the knife into the boy’s jugular vein or heart.
Just as the Tatar had Tolui in position and was ready to thrust in the knife, Altani leapt on him. In the words of the Secret History, “With one hand she seized his plaits” (referring to the large braid over each ear), “and with the other she seized the hand that was drawing the knife.” She fought to keep the Tatar’s arm down and the weapon away from the boy, and “she pulled it so hard that he dropped the knife.”
Even after disarming the attacker, Altani clung to him as tightly as he clutched the child, and the Tatar fought to escape her hold. She could not overpower him alone, but because of her weight and tight grip, he could not throw her off to escape with the boy.
Behind the ger, the guards had just slaughtered the ox and commenced butchering it when they heard the screams. Dropping the meat, they ran around the ger toward the sound of the struggle between Altani and the Tatar. The two men reached her, clutching their butchering tools in “their fists red with the animal’s blood.” The guard with the ax raised it and struck the Tatar. Altani grabbed Tolui and pulled him aside while the two guards finished off his assailant “with ax and knife.”
Soon after the incident, the guards began to vie over which one of them deserved the credit for having saved the child: the one who knocked the kidnapper unconscious with the ax or the one who cut him open with the knife. With a strong tone of self-congratulation, they wondered aloud: “If we had not been there and if, by running fast and arriving in time, we had not killed him, what would Altani, a woman, have done?” The attacker “would have harmed the life of the child.”
Altani heard their boastful talk and objected to their claiming credit for saving Tolui. She demanded recognition for what she had done. “I ran up and caught up with him, seizing his plaits and pulling the hand that was drawing the knife,” she declared to the men. “If the knife had not dropped, wouldn’t he have done harm to the child’s life before Jetei and Jelme arrived?”
Although Jelme and Jetei both received awards and promotions, Genghis Khan made it clear who was the true hero of the episode, and “the chief merit went, by general consent, to Altani.” Genghis Khan held her up as a model for everyone. In the Mongol perspective, challenges choose us, but we choose how to respond. Destiny brings the opportunities and the misfortunes, and the merit of our lives derives from those unplanned moments.
The Mongols, and certainly Genghis Khan in particular, placed great importance on sudden individual acts of unexpected heroism. Those are the moments that reveal not just the character of the person, but the soul itself. Many people are paralyzed by fear or, equally as debilitating, by indecision. The hero acts, and often fails, but acts nonetheless. Such a person belongs to the spiritual elite of the divinely blessed and heavenly inspired baatar,