by Sam Tranum
“You’d rather stand here talking to each other for the rest of the day than make some money?” I asked.
“Yes,” one of the men said.
“Come on, we’ve got food and vodka,” Alei tried. “It won’t be like work – you’ll just be partying with Americans.”
They laughed, but still refused to take us.
They did, however, point out the road that led toward Mashad-i Misirian. We walked over to it and flagged down a car headed our way. It took us to a grimy little town called Gumdag. At the taxi stand there, we found a wiry man with a bushy mustache named Rahat who agreed to take us to the ancient city in his Toyota sedan for the right price, dirt road or no dirt road, end of the day or not. As we were about to leave, Rahat’s friend Navod jumped into the car, explaining that he was going the same direction as us. He needed to pick up a sheep for the big Kurban Bayram holiday meal he was hosting the next day at his house.
We drove south through the desert along a nice paved road. This wasn’t graceful sand dune desert like I’d seen near Darvaza. It wasn’t rolling scrub desert like I’d seen between Mary and Turkmenabat. It was wasteland. Flat, yellow-orange sand as far as I could see, with almost nothing growing. Now and then, we passed a herd of bobbing oil wells, spread out across the barren plain. We overtook several tanker trucks with Iranian plates that appeared to be carrying oil. After about an hour of driving, we cleared a checkpoint and stopped at a roadside stand to pick up a half-dozen somsas filled with onions and chopped mutton fat. I ate a couple in the back seat, staring out the window, content to be on the road.
A little while later, the highway ended and we turned off onto a dirt road that led out across the desert. We passed herds of camels dressed in winter sweaters with holes cut out to accommodate their humps, tended by shepherds on ancient motorcycles. Though there were no villages in sight, the dirt tracks were busy with cars, trucks, and motorcycles. When the road ended, Rahat drove into the open desert, heading for two minarets on the horizon. The landscape had changed. The sand was now dotted with bushes, which made it seem less forbidding.
We roared along at 40 miles an hour across the open desert, dodging holes and bushes and ditches. When we got to within a quarter-mile of the minarets, Rahat stopped the car. Piles of bricks the remains of houses – blocked our way. We got out and walked, passing a desiccated camel carcass, ribs bleached by the sun, fur clinging to its face. The ground was littered with pottery shards, beautifully glazed bits of turquoise, cobalt blue, black, white, and green. Some were decorated with patterns or Arabic script. Beyond the ruined houses was a moat and then a dirt-covered city wall with brickwork showing through in places – like the ones I’d seen at Merv but much smaller. Towering over it all were three structures: two minarets and a partially ruined pishtaq (mosque entrance). We combed through the pottery shards and circled the walls.
Rahat and Navod couldn’t tell us much about the city. It wasn’t their fault, though. Mashad-i Misirian’s history was lost for centuries. When the British spy Arthur Conolly passed its ruins during the Great Game, he complained that, “Of Meshed-e Misraeun [sic] we could obtain no satisfactory accounts. From what the Toorkmuns [sic] said, it was evident that they knew nothing about [it].”78 Since Conolly’s time, though, archaeologists have uncovered bits and pieces of the city’s past.
Dekhistan area was inhabited for thousands of years. It was once a flourishing agricultural district, watered by the Atrek River. The 10th Century Arab geographer Mohammed Abul-Kassem ibn Hawqal wrote that Dekhistan was located near the Caspian Sea. It was on a bay was filled with boats and many of its residents made their livings by fishing.79 Caravans passed through on the way across the Karakum from Persia to the Khoresmian oasis.
Over time, the Atrek River wandered south, away from Dekhistan. Residents built canals 30-40 miles long to bring water from the Atrek to their city. It’s unclear why the city was eventually abandoned – perhaps because of continuing environmental change, perhaps because of Chinggis Khan’s invasion – but by the time the Soviets arrived, it was nothing but a pile of ruins. Red Army gunners used the minarets for target practice and hit one, leaving a gaping hole.80
Alei and I climbed the minaret and I peered through the hole, out over the barren landscape. The sun was setting and a light rain had begun to fall. Rahat and Navod, who were waiting with the car, yelled that it was time for us to go. Alei and I made our way back across the ruins to the car and we all set off through the darkening desert. A few minutes after Rahat had miraculously managed to get us back to the paved road alive, we came to the village where Navod’s brother-in-law lived. We stopped and Navod went inside to buy his sheep.
It was supposed to be a quick stop. Turkmen hospitality being what it is, though, Navod’s brother-in-law insisted on treating us to dinner. Before we knew it, the klionka on the floor was loaded with meat and bread, vodka and soda. Alei produced the picnic he’d tried to tempt the taxi drivers in Balkanabat with – Korean salads he’d bought in Turkmenbashy – and added it to the feast. By 11 p.m., none of us could eat or drink any more. Our host invited us to stay the night, but, Alei, Rahat, Navod, and I decided we should leave.
Outside, the wind was whipping across the desert. It was pitch black and the sky was sprinkled with glitter. Navod and I went out behind the house to a pen where a single sheep was pacing. Navod grabbed it and threw it on its side. I held it down while he bound three of its legs and tossed it in the trunk of the car.
“If I tie all four of its legs, it’ll die before we get there,” he explained.
And then we were off. We didn’t get far, though. The soldiers at the checkpoint wouldn’t let us through. Rahat and Navod negotiated with them for a while but got nowhere. The guards wanted a big bribe and Rahat didn’t want to pay it. We sat in the car waiting for them to give in; they sat in their guardhouse, waiting for us to pay up. After a half-hour, Alei went over to the guardhouse and banged on the window.
“Are you kidding?” he yelled through the window. “You’ve got to be kidding. You’re kidding, right? This is a joke?”
“Get back in the car,” the soldier said.
Eventually, Rahat worked it out. I don’t know how. I was dozing in the back seat, full of too much vodka and dinner, worn out from camp and from the day’s travels. We got back to Alei’s apartment about 3 a.m. and went to sleep. The next day, I dragged myself off the couch, cleared my head with some coffee and aspirin, and said goodbye. I caught a taxi to the airport, where I went to the nearest café for more coffee. On the plane, I fell asleep under the benevolent gaze of Niyazov’s portrait and slept all the way back to Ashgabat.
Part III: I Find an Oasis
25.
Nurana
Ana and Sesili helped me load my bags into a taxi, hugged me goodbye, and told me to be careful. They were worried about me. From their perspective, I was going to live at the end of the world, among a bunch of hicks. It was as if I was leaving a Manhattan family to go live in a small town in eastern Kentucky.
I promised to visit when I could and to call them now and then on their new cell phone. Ana gave me a package of food: jars of spicy eggplant chutney, sweet pickled red peppers, and caramelized garlic spread. I sat in the taxi’s front seat and watched Abadan roll by my window. I was more hopeful and relieved than sad. I knew I would miss Ana and Sesili and Tanya and my students, but I was glad to be leaving Abadan. I knew I would miss Geldy, but I was also aware that he was trouble and I was better off far away from him.
The plane from Ashgabat landed at the Mary airport about 7 a.m. and I took a taxi to Murgab, a 30-minute drive. It was about half the size of Abadan and had a completely different character. While Abadan had been an industrial satellite of the capital, Murgab was the county seat in a farming county. There were no factories and few of the concrete apartment buildings I was so used to seeing. Most people lived in one-story family compounds, with a house or two, a kitchen building, a banya, an outhouse, and a courtyard garden �
� all surrounded by high walls.
Shops, restaurants, a post office, a pool hall, a hardware store, and a photo developing shop lined Murgab’s main street. There was also a small bazaar with a mud floor, which was sheltered by a patchwork of canvas tarps. Since there wasn’t enough room in the bazaar, merchants spilled out onto the street, piling their tomatoes or cucumbers on cloths laid on the pavement. In contrast to Abadan’s cosmopolitan mix of Russians, Caucasians, and Turkmen, Murgab was almost entirely Turkmen. There were no Russian bottle-blonds in miniskirts and high heels browsing the shops. The women shopping at Murgab’s bazaar wore long clothes and covered their hair. The men wore dark slacks, button down shirts, and sometimes suit coats.
I met my new host family at the hospital in Murgab. Jeren, my host mother, was in her early 30s. She worked at the hospital and wore a white coat and a tall white hat. Her personality was so big that it took me a while to notice how physically small she was. She had thick black eyebrows and long black hair, which she kept covered with a colorful kerchief. She wore modest clothes: ankle-length dresses or skirts, and wrist-length blouses. Her husband, Döwlet was about the same age. He worked in an electronics store in Murgab, selling televisions and satellite dishes. He was tall and gangly with an overgrown crew cut and the manner of a football player trying really hard in calculus class. Thankfully, both Döwlet and Jeren spoke Russian.
“We’re going to have to teach you to speak Turkmen,” Dowlet said, smiling.
In his rattly old Soviet car, he drove us to Nurana: his home, my new home. We rode along paved country roads, through a handful of villages and endless farm fields. The sky was low and drizzly. The mountains that had loomed over my life in Abadan were gone. The landscape reminded me of Ohio in the winter: flat brown farm fields separated by rows of leafless trees. After 20 minutes, the fields ended and we entered the village: a few dirt roads flanked by low houses surrounded by gardens and vineyards. We passed three convenience stores, crossed a bridge over the Murgab River, turned onto a dusty road, and stopped in the driveway of a whitewashed house.
The house had four rooms and few furnishings other than the carpets that covered its floors. Its entrance faced the backyard, which was as big as a football field and contained a garden, a vineyard, a kitchen building, a banya, an outhouse, a tamdur, a small orchard, and a giant satellite dish. Döwlet helped me unload my bags and carry them to my room. It was big and bright, with a window that opened onto the back yard. The walls were painted sky blue, the floor was covered in carpets. This was going to be a different life, I thought, looking around. There was room to breathe, room to move, room to live.
Jeren had laid out a klionka on the living room floor and set out a pot of tea and some sweets, a loaf of chorek and some butter. The room was cozy, heated by an iron box the size of a sleeping puppy, which burned government-provided natural gas. There was a television in the corner and no other furniture. Döwlet and Jeren’s two daughters, who had been playing at a neighbors’ house, joined us. Kümüsh was three, a little imp with short hair and a frilly white dress. Altyn was prissy, perfect and seven. The girls sat near Jeren and stared at me, ignoring their tea. Döwlet and I shared family photos and talked.
Jeren, it turned out, was from Murgab. She considered herself a city girl. Döwlet, on the other hand, had lived in the same house in Nurana his whole life. He was raised in the country and had spent much of his life working as a farmhand. Until Döwlet reached his late teens, Nurana had been a Soviet kolkhoz, a collective farm where all the residents worked together to tend all the fields and harvest all the crops. It had been created in the 1930s when the new Soviet government was remaking the USSR’s countryside, replacing small, privately owned farms with kolhozes and other types of large-scale communist farms – a process called collectivization.
Soviet officials descended on the Turkmen countryside, forcing Turkmen peasant farmers and nomadic stockbreeders to give up their land and livestock to the state, join kolkhozes, stop producing food, and grow cotton. In response, thousands of Turkmen families packed their belongings and fled to Iran and Afghanistan.81 Thousands more, in cities all over Turkmenistan, took to the streets to protest. In the spring of 1930, things began to turn violent. When 500 people (mostly women) marched on the city of Dashagouz, they destroyed the school and beat up several Soviet officials.82 As the months passed and the Soviets refused to significantly change their policies, the protests gave way to armed rebellion. Insurgents on horseback began to appear out of the desert to attack Soviet officials, and loot and burn collective farms.83
This uprising was not new. It was a revival of a resistance movement that had been active more or less since 1917. The Soviets, upon taking control in Moscow, had outlawed Muslim religious schools, closed Islamic courts, and nationalized lands held by the Islamic religious establishment. Muslims across Central Asia saw this as an assault on their way of life and took up arms. Loosely organized as the Basmachi or Freemen’s Movement, by 1919 they had 20,000 fighters and controlled much of Central Asia.84 There was even talk of secession from the USSR. But by 1924 or so, the Soviets managed to put down the Basmachi revolt. They granted political concessions, re-legalized religious organizations, returned religious lands, and eased restrictions on religious courts. They also sent in more troops.
Things were relatively quiet until the collectivization drive reignited the Basmachi uprising in Turkmenistan. The Basmachi knew the land. Much of the populace supported them. They were very effective. In 1931, they seized Krasnavodsk, an important port on the Caspian, and the Soviets had to send 20,000 troops to retake it. In the end, Moscow had to grant some political concessions to restore order, returning livestock to their owners, and ending calls for the sedentarization and collectivization of all the area’s nomads.85 Once peace had been restored, the Soviets were able to impose their secularization and collectivization policies, gradually, over many years.
This was not ancient history. It was recent enough to still be part of family lore, in the same way that the Great Depression is still ingrained in the histories of many American families. Döwlet’s grandfather could have been among the nomads who were forced to settle on kolkhozes. Perhaps he fought with the Basmachi. Döwlet, however, was no rebel. He’d grown up on the kolkhoz and loved it. He told me Nurana had been a rich kolkhoz, with frequent good harvests, and once, an end-of-the-year bonus big enough for his family to buy a car – the car he was still driving. Those had been the good years.
Since independence, though, things had gotten harder. After the Soviet Union fell, the new government renamed the kolkhozes dayhan berleshigi (farmers’ associations). It divided the communal fields into 2.5-acre sections and put these sections under the care of individual farmers, telling them that – if they worked hard and met certain benchmarks – the land would eventually be theirs. As of 2001, the state still owned all Turkmenistan’s farmland. The government supplied the seed to the farmers, told them what to grow (cotton or wheat, in Nurana), and bought crops at prices well below those available on world markets.86
Döwlet couldn’t make a living off his plot. Even with his full-time job at the electronics store and Jeren’s part-time job at the hospital, money was tight. And things were even harder because the Soviet social safety net had been torn apart after independence. Döwlet didn’t talk much about politics. He was more interested in being a dad and a husband. But he was nostalgic for the Soviet days.
After tea, Döwlet and I drove to Mary to fill out paperwork. I had to register with the local government, let them know where I lived, who I lived with, what my job was, and how I could be reached. The bureaucrat in the suit behind the desk warned me that if I ever wanted to leave Nurana for any reason, I was to call him and let him know where I was going and why. I assured him I would, he wished me well, and Döwlet and I drove back to Nurana.
As we bumped along the country road in the dark, the radio glowed green on the dashboard. Outside my window, the stars winked and danced.
“I’m very glad to be here,” I said.
* * *
There was a bed in my room, but it was too short for me so I put the mattress on the floor and slept there. My room was warm and clean and comfortable and I slept well. I didn’t dream. When I woke the next morning, the sky was just getting light. I stumbled sleepy-eyed out of my room, slipped on some flip-flops, and walked out past the vineyard, across a plank bridge over an irrigation canal, past a grove of fruit trees, to the outhouse. It was just a wood-plank shack with a hole in the floor and some torn up newspapers in a box hanging on the wall. When I was done, I walked back across the bridge and across the yard to the banya.
At the Plotnikovs’ apartment, the banya had been tiny and crowded, the bathtub often filled with Misha’s fish. I had to risk blowing myself up every time I lit the hot water heater. At the Burjanadzes, the banya had been even smaller – I could stand in the middle and touch all the walls – and before I could wash, I had to clear the dirty salad-making dishes out of the tub. I heated my bath water in a metal bucket on the stove and rationed it carefully. This new banya was luxurious.
There were two rooms. The first had pegs on the walls to hang clothes and towels and a small, high window to let in the sunlight. In the inner room, a tank of hot water simmered day and night on a gas burner and a tank of cold water sat in a corner under another high window. The room was always as hot as a sauna. To take a bath, I stood on wooden slats laid over the concrete floor, mixed hot and cold water in a pitcher and poured it over myself. I stayed in the banya for 20 minutes, taking a long, hot bath while looking out the window at the sleet and mud. It was glorious.
