Khalka […] Mongolian possesses seven vowels and twenty consonants.

Its modern conception as a boundary separating the cultivated from the wild is a palimpsest; below this persists the remaindered reality of a porous zone that challenges colonial or autocolonial demarcation.

“A stranger knight,” sayd he, “unknowne by name, / But knowne by fame, and by an Hebene speare […].”

It works well enough, but the shabby exterior offends his aesthetic sensibilities.