I feel for Battulga. I can see the end in him.

A few nights later the hole is packed with bodies. It’s warm enough for the boys nearest the pipes to lounge without shirts. Summer is a couple of months away. Soon they will leave the holes for the roof of a nearby apartment building, where they will sleep beneath passing thunderstorms.

A candle burns on the wall like a flickering star. The air smells remarkably like citrus fruit, thanks to orange peels laid out on the hot pipes. Two puppies, Johnny and No Name, tussle playfully in Adyasuren’s lap. Battulga is a smiling drunk in the corner. Everyone is singing. The girls sing about a fairy princess. Battulga beat-boxes an improvised rap. Aizam sings “Song for My Mother,” a song he learned in prison:

When I was a baby

I used to crawl to you

Now I have to run away from you

God forgot my destiny

I just want to live like a normal person

But I have to follow the rule of the world

As he finishes, angry voices rise from the corner. Another boy, Naidan, has dropped into the chamber from an adjoining hole. He is also drunk, and begins wrestling with Battulga. The fight escalates. The candle goes out as it’s knocked to the ground, throwing the hole into darkness. The others stream out as Battulga and Naidan try to burn each other on the hot pipes. A puppy screams as someone steps on it.

The fighters climb to the surface. Men in thick Russian coats and women in high heels stop to watch as they exit the movie theater. Some of the younger children are crying. It’s far below freezing, but Battulga and Naidam stand shirtless in the street, circling each other like boxers in a ring, oblivious to the cold. Dozens of scars on their scrawny, half-starved bodies tell the tale of their lives. “I’ll kill you!” they scream back and forth. A few punches are exchanged before Naidam reaches into his pocket and pulls out a jagged piece of glass wrapped in a rag so he won’t cut himself when holding it. He lunges at Battulga and stabs him five times in the back. Then, just like that, it’s over as some of the older boys rush in to break it up. Battulga is crying hysterically, not from pain but from the humiliation of being beaten.

“I am not strong enough,” he says. “I cannot beat him.”

I feel for Battulga. It’s as if I can see the end in him. He lives dangerously, carelessly. He is a thief, a pickpocket and an occasional mugger. Beneath a mop of bleached-blond hair is the face of a gladiator, scarred by almost daily fighting. In his 11 years on the street he has been stabbed with knives, cut with broken glass and bludgeoned with pipes, rocks and bricks. Pipe burns the size of grapefruits mark his legs. He is tough as hell.

The police call him by a name they gave him during an arrest as a young boy. As an officer was filling out paperwork at the detention center, he asked Battulga for his name. Before he could speak, the officer answered for him.

“Cockroach.”

“That is not my name,” said Battulga.

“That is your name,” replied the officer. “You are a cockroach. You are not human.”

He has been in and out of the children’s prison ever since. In another year he will turn 18 and become a legal adult. After that, his next trip will be to the men’s prison, where the country’s worst criminals prey upon younger inmates. Battulga is a monster, but he is also a protector, a boyfriend to Soyolerdene and a bread winner for the others. He is the product of a childhood lost in a hole in the ground. I loved him.

Next chapter: ‘WE DRINK…’ HE SAYS, ‘THEN WE CUT OURSELVES’