Daily Life in Turkmenbashy's Golden Age

by Sam Tranum

  “I didn’t know we had any tents left,” Geldy said. “He sold 100 of them last year. I thought that was all of them.”

  “We have to tell someone,” I said. “This is really bad.”

  “Who are we going to tell? The bosses at Red Crescent in Ashgabat already know. They probably get a percentage. They’ll just get rid of you and me.”

  * * *

  Since Aman wasn’t around most of the time, Geldy, Aynabat, Vera, and I spent our days in the kitchen drinking tea and chatting. The situation seemed to be the same in every office in Turkmenistan. In the midst of all this leisure, I was trying to organize a “mini-camp” to keep the English students from School No. 8 busy during their winter break. For three days, 50 students would spend their days at the school doing crafts, playing games, singing songs, and taking classes – all in English. I had organized similar events earlier in the year with help from School No. 8’s wise quartet of English teachers. They’d been guiding Peace Corps Volunteers through the process of organizing mini-camps for nearly a decade.

  Each time I had asked for permission to run an event at School No. 8, I had met more resistance from the superintendent of Abadan’s schools, a dapper, barrel-chested man named Ovez. He was wary of private meetings and particularly of meetings organized by foreigners. So when I started planning the winter mini-camp, I expected trouble; I decided to go see Ovez in person instead of just sending him the papers. To enter his office I had to pass through an antechamber crowded with supplicants and then through an airlock-style double set of doors. His office was cavernous. I had time to greet him, introduce myself, and ask about his family and his health before I had managed to cross the room to shake his hand and sit down in front of his desk. Ovez was in a hurry.

  “What can I do for you?” he asked.

  I told him about my plan for a three-day English immersion camp at School No. 8, asked for his permission, and handed him a proposal that included a daily schedule and rough lesson plans for each class. He read through the documents slowly.

  “I can’t give you permission to run an English camp,” he said still looking at the papers. “But I might be able to give you permission to run an English seminar.”

  I was confused for a moment, but then I understood his implication: the term “camp” raised eyebrows; I should call it a “seminar.”

  Then Ovez launched into a quick speech about how School No. 8’s heating system hadn’t worked for 12 years, and each winter, the teachers had to shorten their lessons because, even bundled up in their coats, hats, mittens and scarves, the children got too cold to sit through full-length classes. None of this was news to me, I started to tell him. He raised his hand to silence me. Maybe there was something I could do to improve the situation, he suggested.

  I was thrilled. Finally, I had a substantial project to work on, something that would tangibly improve the lives of the people in my town. And there wouldn’t be a problem getting permission – after all, the superintendent had asked me to do it. I told him I could write grants to try to raise money to fix the heating system, but I couldn’t guarantee that the grants would be approved. He seemed satisfied. He signed the proposal for my English “seminar,” pulled his official seal out of a locked drawer in his desk, inked it, and pressed it over his signature. While he was at it, he also granted me permission (which I had requested months earlier) to teach in the Abadan schools and to meet weekly with Abadan’s English teachers to help them improve their language skills.

  I told Ovez that, if I was going to fix the heating system, the first thing I needed to do was find out what was wrong with it. He picked up his phone, talked in Turkmen for a minute, and hung up. Then he stood, shook my hand, and walked me to the door, which he closed behind me. An engineer named Bayram was waiting for us outside. Ovez had assigned him to help me figure out exactly what was wrong with the heating system and how to fix it. Standing in the dim hallway, school district employees squeezing by as they carried documents from office to office, I told him what I needed and he agreed to help me.

  * * *

  A few days later, Geldy and I gathered a half-dozen youth volunteers, 100 bags of candy, and a live sheep, and took a taxi across town to Abadan’s orphanage. It was New Year’s Eve and Geldy had organized a holiday show for the orphans. I was going to play Ded Moroz (Father Frost), the Russian version of Santa Claus, a jolly man with a big white beard who brings children gifts on New Year’s. Geldy was going to play Snegurichka (Snow Maiden), Ded Moroz’s granddaughter. The Red Crescent youth volunteers were our helpers. The sheep was for dinner, after the show.

  We’d been rehearsing for weeks. Geldy had written the script himself. Before taking the job at Red Crescent, he had worked at a theater in Ashgabat. When we arrived at the orphanage, we put the sheep out back so it could graze until someone got around to slitting its throat. Inside, we decorated the yolka (New Year’s tree) and put on our costumes. I wore a red velvet robe trimmed in white and hid my face behind a beard made from cotton balls. Geldy slipped into a lacy white dress he’d borrowed from someone and sat while two teenaged, female volunteers did his makeup.

  We entered the great hall to thunderous applause and cheering from a gaggle of children in raggedy, mismatched clothes, ranging in age from kindergarteners to high schoolers. I walked into their midst and delivered my lines, which I’d memorized but didn’t understand. The play lasted only five minutes. I was terribly nervous; I hate speaking to groups. It was all a blur. Before I knew it I was sitting on a throne next to the yolka, Geldy in a dress at my side, handing out candy to timid children.

  * * *

  At home, Olya, Sasha and Denis set up a two-foot tall, plastic yolka and decorated it with tinsel and scratched CDs. Sasha flipped a switch at its base to make it rotate and play tinny music. Misha watched the TV news, smoking, clicking his dentures, and grumbling. Faced with allegations of fraud and street protests, the Supreme Court in the Ukraine had nullified the election results. There was going to be a new election, under close international scrutiny. It was a huge victory for Yushchenko and the opposition. Misha was annoyed.

  "Bush did this,” he said. “He paid the court, he made them do this. And as for this fascist Yushchenko – he is no better than Hitler.”

  New Year’s Eve in Turkmenistan was a family holiday. People didn’t go out to parties, get drunk, and look for someone to kiss. Instead, they stayed with their families, either receiving neighbors and friends at their houses or going out visiting together. We stayed in for most of the night. We had a New Year’s Eve feast that lasted about five hours. Guests would come in twos and threes. We would sit and eat with them, make some toasts, and drink some vodka. Then they would leave, new guests would come, and we would repeat the process. We drank vodka, cognac, wine, and champagne. We ate the plov, piroshkis, and pelmini we’d prepared.

  We also ate whatever our guests brought. No one came empty-handed. At one point, a friend of Olya’s offered me what looked, in my drunken state, like a bowl of custard drizzled with raspberry sauce. Tempted, I found a spoon and took a big bite. The chef was watching to see how I liked it. I had to turn away so she wouldn’t see me gag. Instead of sweet custard, I’d gotten a mouthful of a pickled fish, mashed potatoes, and beets, topped with a layer of mayonnaise, and drizzled with beet juice.

  A Russian TV channel played in the background all night, showing a variety show. When the new year arrived in Moscow, we turned up the volume to listen to Russian President Vladimir Putin – who Misha called “our president” – say a few words. An hour later, the new year arrived in Turkmenistan. We raised our glasses, drank to 2005, and cheered. Sasha and Denis leaned out the windows and shot Roman candles into the streets. Children were shooting fireworks from windows all over the neighborhood. Colored sparks rained down the sides of the concrete dominoes. When we ran out of fireworks, we put on our jackets and went out visiting, leaving plates and glasses strewn around the apartment.

  I’d promised Ana and Sesi
li I would stop by their apartment, so I split off from my host family and walked across town to their place. Inside, their home looked like mine, with dishes strewn everywhere and the remains of a feast spread across their table. They were leaning back in their chairs, looking a little stunned. I sat down with them and picked at leftover salads, plov, shashlyk, fruit, nuts, candies, and cakes. We shared stories about the parties we’d had and made toasts to the new year.

  About 3 a.m., I told them it was time for me to leave. Sesili walked me part of the way home to show me the route I should take to avoid the police. The streets were filled with drunken families, calling out holiday wishes to each other, swaying as they hurried home in the cold. At home, I put on my long underwear and my hat, crawled into bed, and fell asleep.

  * * *

  The first day of 2005 was cold and gray and gloomy. My back hurt from squeezing my body into my miniature bed the wrong way. My head hurt from drinking too much vodka. In the kitchen, we ate leftovers for breakfast and Olya poured us each a shot of vodka for breakfast – to help with the hangover. At first I thought she was kidding, but when she drank hers and chased it with a spoonful of cold plov, I followed her example. Then we both went off to work. It was not an auspicious start to the year.

  At Red Crescent, no one was working. Aman had come and gone and the others were sitting in the kitchen drinking tea and talking about the big news of the day: Geldy had been fired. None of us knew why, but we didn’t puzzle over it for long. There were plenty of good reasons. It didn’t matter which one Aman had picked. Luckily for Geldy, he’d immediately found a job at the Red Crescent office in Ashgabat, as an AIDS educator. He was a smooth talker who cultivated friends and connections everywhere, so it was no surprise he’d landed on his feet.

  That didn’t help me, though. Geldy was the one who had asked Peace Corps for a Volunteer. No one else at Red Crescent Abadan was really interested in working with me. I was on my own. That was bad news, since I hadn’t managed to do much of anything without Geldy’s help. He’d brainstormed projects with me, told me who to ask for permissions, and helped me translate lesson plans and grant proposals. He wasn’t a very ethical person, but he was good at getting things done and he was usually on my side. I felt abandoned.

  I met Geldy in Ashgabat that night, and we went out to his regular bar, a place downtown called Ak Gamysh, to celebrate the end of his career at Red Crescent Abadan. He went there because his ex-girlfriend Nastya and her friends, Mehri and Aka, hung out there. They liked it because it had private booths with curtains where they could smoke cigarettes without word getting back to their parents. It was considered unseemly for women to smoke. That night Geldy and I drank coffee and cognac while the girls drank soda. They were aloof and stylish, in high heels and short dresses. They sipped their drinks, drew delicately on their cigarettes, and talked quietly, urgently, into their cell phones.

  Geldy didn’t seem upset about his recent employment crisis. I knew he hated Aman and had been miserable working for him, but still, I expected him to be a little sad about leaving Abadan. I began to think maybe he hadn’t been fired at all. It just seemed too neat: Geldy had escaped a job he hated for a much better job, with higher pay and more prestige, closer to home. He probably just didn’t want to tell me he was taking a job in Ashgabat because he thought I’d be angry that he invited me to come work in Abadan and then abandoned me there a few months later. I didn’t say anything to Geldy about my suspicions – I just sat and sipped my coffee and listened to him and his friends talk – but that was the day I stopped trusting him.

  Around midnight, we paid our tab and left. Outside, the girls got into one cab and Geldy and I got into another. We went to Geldy’s older brother’s apartment. He had a key and we slipped in, found a couple dusheks and pillows, and laid them out in the living room. He turned on the TV and flipped around until he found a channel showing naked women posing under waterfalls, next to pools, and in showers. He stared at the screen for a few minutes, remote poised. “This is boring,” he said and then clicked off the TV and went to sleep.

  ***

  The next day, I went to Dom Pionerov to work on my carpet. I’d been hunched over it tying knots for a couple of hours when Mahym showed up. She walked into the room, came straight to where I was kneeling, and abruptly told me I was no longer welcome. “We don’t have room for you to work here anymore,” she said sadly. “I need you to move your loom out of here by the end of the day.”

  It was 4 p.m. and Dom Pionerov closed at 5 p.m. The loom was too big and heavy for me to carry on my own, so I walked home to find Denis. I found him lying in front of the TV, as usual. When I told him what had happened, he didn’t seem surprised. He never seemed surprised, no matter how absurd things got. Maybe it was teenaged cynicism; maybe it was the result of living in Turkmenistan all his life. He rummaged through a closet and pulled out a flimsy metal dolly meant for hauling luggage through airports. At Dom Pionerov, we packed up my yarn, my pattern, my tools, and my loom and dragged it all down the street and up the stairs into my little room. I was confused and disappointed. I’d loved working on my carpet. It was something I didn’t need permission for, something tangible and I could sit down and just do.

  A few days later, Tanya told me what had happened. In typically indirect Turkmen fashion, Mahym had sent me an explanation and apology through Tanya. The local government, it seemed, had decided that I should no longer be allowed to learn to weave Turkmen carpets – that, by doing so, I was stealing a national secret – and told Mahym to throw me out. It was too absurd. I couldn’t stay angry. I started laughing.

  At the dinner table that night, I told my host family what had happened. Olya was sympathetic. Misha thought it was hilarious.

  What can you expect? The Turkmen have taken over the country. If the Russians were still running things, this never would have happened,” he said.

  My bedroom was small, but there was space for the loom at the foot of my bed. So I went back to work, adding a millimeter or two per day. When anyone in Abadan asked me how my carpet was coming, I told them I’d given up. I was starting to learn that in Turkmenistan, it’s best not to attract attention.

  11.

  In the Golden Age, There Are No Cold Schools

  The school-heating project went well at first. Since Aman wouldn’t let me use the phone at Red Crescent, I would make up excuses to leave the office and sneak home to call embassies and non-governmental organizations in Ashgabat, looking for one that was interested in funding the project. I needed $10,000 for materials. Ovez had promised that the school district would provide the labor. While I was calling around, I learned about every available grant program in Ashgabat. The British Embassy, it turned out, was interested in paying me to paint a health-related mural. The American Embassy had a whole bunch of money for Internet centers and nobody to give it to. The Japanese Embassy had just started a grant program and didn’t know what it wanted. Neither the Saudi Embassy nor the Iranian Embassy offered grants at all. After a few days on the telephone I found what I was looking for: a non-governmental organization called Counterpart Consortium was interested in my project.

  I submitted a preliminary proposal, which Counterpart accepted. At first, local officials were supportive. After all, pretty much everyone in town had a connection to one of School No. 8’s 1,000 students or 200 teachers. The mayor promised me that city engineers would help Bayram diagnose the problem with the heating system and draw up a plan to fix it. The principal of the school invited me to her office and thanked me profusely for agreeing to help. I was a local celebrity. Everyone was cheering me on. It felt great.

  Then things started to go wrong. I formed a small parent-teacher association to oversee the grant writing and, later, the work on the school. This was a complicated and somewhat risky venture in a country with no freedom of assembly. Aman refused to let the group meet in the dining hall at Red Crescent so the members met in private apartments, moving each week to avoid attracting att
ention. When the KNB caught on and forbid them from meeting anymore, they talked on the phone, instead.

  Then one day, the mayor summoned me to his office. He was a meaty, gray-haired man in a dark suit. Like many government officials, he wore a gold pin of Niyazov’s face on his lapel. First he asked me to read the manual for his new cell phone, which was in English, and teach him how to use it. We spent a few minutes taking photos of each other with the phone. Then he put it in his drawer, thanked me, and leaned back in his chair.

  “We no longer need your help,” he said. “School No. 8 is warm.”

  “Excuse me, but it’s not. I was there yesterday and it was freezing cold.”

  “Well, today it’s warm.”

  When I pressed him a little bit, he explained that he had simply ordered someone to turn on the heating system. Apparently, for 12 years, no one had bothered to flip the switch. I rushed over to School No. 8, to see if it had, in fact, been that easy – just pressure the local government a little bit and, voila, the school had heat. Inside the school, the steam heating pipes were rattling and hissing. The whole building smelled like hot paint. I found Catherine in the principal’s office and she was grinning.

  “You did it,” she said, and gave me a high five.

  Our excitement lasted only a few hours. We waited and waited but the school never warmed up. Over the years, almost all the radiators had been stolen and the pipes that carried hot steam through the building were full of holes. The heating system made a lot of noise but couldn’t warm the building by more than a degree or two. Also, the city had diverted the steam to heat the school from a nearby apartment building, which left dozens of families freezing in their apartments. The next day, everything went back to normal: the apartment building got its heat back, and the heating system in the school stopped making such a racket.