Daily Life in Turkmenbashy's Golden Age (27 page)

On our first afternoon out in the garden, Jeren and I each picked a skinny strip of vineyard and began working from one end to the other. An irrigation ditch divided us. A white
alabay
puppy wandered over from the neighbor’s yard, tumbling into an irrigation ditch and struggling to climb up onto the planting bed where I was standing. Its ears and tail had been pruned, according to custom, and were still raw. At first it was terrified when I tried to pat it. But once it got used to me, it wouldn’t leave me alone. It started attacking my ankles as I worked, biting my pants cuffs, pulling and growling.

“No fair, you’ve got a helper,” Jeren said.

“He’s helping you a lot more than he’s helping me,” I said.

A neighbor stopped by with a plate of curly strips of fried dough, sprinkled with sugar. I stopped to squat on my heels, eat a little, and drink from a bucket of cool water I’d pulled from our cistern. (There’s a trick to getting water from a cistern: drop a tin bucket on a rope in and it’ll just float; it takes a special flick of the wrist to make it fill with water). Altyn came over, a skinny little thing in a long dress, hair pulled back in a lacy, white scrunchy. She squatted next to me and watched her mother work. When she said something in Turkmen, Jeren started laughing.

“What did she say?” I asked.

“She said: ‘Mom if you win, I’ll buy you a really nice birthday present,’” Jeren told me.

When I was done with my snack, I went back to work. My soft, city boy hands were starting to blister and my back ached, but as the sun began to sink, I was a few feet ahead. I wasn’t about to give up.

“Aren’t you thirsty?” Jeren asked. “Take another break and have some more water.”

“I think I smell dinner burning,“ I said. “Maybe you better take a break and check on it.”

When the sun set fat and orange behind the house and the muezzin called the evening prayer over the loudspeaker attached to the mosque, we both quit. We lay our spades behind the cookhouse and squatted on our heels next to the vineyard, sharing a dipper of water from the bucket. I’d won by several yards. I gloated.

“Of course you won,” Jeren said. “You’re a man. It would have been embarrassing for you if you hadn’t won.”

“If you knew I was going to win, why’d you race me?”

“Because you’re an American. I didn’t think Americans knew how to do this kind of thing.”

From that day on, we worked in the yard most afternoons until sunset. Jeren would take breaks to get dinner simmering and steaming on the stove in the cookhouse. When it got dark, I’d lay out the
klionka
on the living room floor in the main house and help her fetch the meal from the cookhouse across the yard. That’s about when Döwlet’s car would clatter into the driveway. The girls would run outside to meet their daddy and a few seconds later, he would appear in the doorway, grinning. Some nights, he’d come alone. We’d have a quiet family dinner sitting cross-legged at the
klionka
, gas stove burning to keep the room cozy and warm. After eating, I’d often give Döwlet an English lesson.

“In school, I wanted to learn English so badly, but my teacher was terrible and I didn’t learn much,” he’d told me. “I think a person who knows a lot of languages and has seen a lot of beautiful places is the richest kind of person.”

On the nights when the power was out, we’d sit in the pitch-black living room (candles were expensive), backs against the walls, talking. When we ran out of things to say, I’d fetch my guitar and play a little bit. I’d had the thing for a year and a half, but I still wasn’t any good. Jeren would always tease me for not being able to sing and play at the same time – “half a bird,” she’d call me.

On the nights when Döwlet brought guests home, we’d sit for hours with them, talking and eating. It was often a surprise. We didn’t have a phone, so he couldn’t call ahead to warn us. Jeren was a great cook. She’d make
plov
(lamb pilaf with carrots and onions), or
manty
(steamed ravioli-like dumplings filled with lamb, squash, and onions), or salty lamb stew, or fresh-baked spinach
somsa
s. And there was always
chorek
, which she baked twice a week in the
tamdur
in the yard. The guests often brought vodka or beer. Döwlet didn’t touch alcohol because liver problems ran in his family and Jeren didn’t drink because it was an unseemly thing for a good Turkmen woman to do. They didn’t mind if their guests drank, though.

Döwlet’s best friend Azat visited often. They were the same age but, while Döwlet looked 40, with a creased face and deep-set eyes, Azat was boyish and could have passed for 20 except for the sprinkling of gray in the black hair at his temples. They had always been neighbors, had gone to school together, and now worked together. While Döwlet was a simple, good man, Azat was a hustler. He always had some shady business deal going and a couple mistresses in Murgab.

Azat barely spoke any Russian, so he and Döwlet would talk in Turkmen and I’d do my best to keep up with the gist of the conversation. But when Jeren left the room, Azat would often mock Döwlet for being too much of a wimp too get a woman on the side – and he’d switch to broken Russian to make sure I understood. Döwlet would laugh bashfully and insist that he wasn’t scared, he just didn’t want to do it. I’d tell Azat he was a jerk and that he should leave Döwlet alone.

Gaigasyz, a retired English teacher from Murgab, also visited now and then. He was in his mid-60s and had a big belly and bristly gray hair, which he covered with a fedora. He spoke excellent English with an archaic touch (using “shall” instead of “will,” for example). He’d been an English teacher for a few years before climbing his way into the ranks of the local branch of the Communist Party. He’d spent most of his working life overseeing Party admissions and expulsions, he told me, and had always loved his job. He was still loyal to the Party.

“Gorbachev was a traitor,” he said one night. “He sold out the Party.”

Gaigasyz struck an imperious, worldly attitude with Döwlet, Azat, and the other country boys from Nurana. They deferred to him, calling him Gaigasyz Aga as a sign of respect, and listening attentively to whatever he said. While he was holding court in Russian or Turkmen, he’d try to make me feel included with English-language asides that only he and I understood.

“These fools think Turkmenistan is paradise because they’ve never been anywhere else,” he said once. “If they only knew.”

One night while both Gaigasyz and Azat were over for dinner, after several rounds of vodka, Azat started going on about his new mistress. She’d given him a watch and he passed it around the
klionka
, showing it off.

“Azat you better be using condoms with these girls,” I said. “I don’t even know how to use a condom,” Azat said. “I’ve never tried.”

“I used to use them, but now that I’ve gotten older, I can’t anymore – it doesn’t work,” Gaigasyz said. “But you should be using them, Azat. You’re still young.”

Döwlet just listened and looked embarrassed.

“Azat, I need a favor,” Gaigasyz said. “Can you find me a nice woman in Murgab to keep? She should be about 45 years old and very respectable – I have a family, you know.”

Azat thought about it.

“My wife can’t even walk anymore. The only time she stands up is to go out to the bathroom,” Gaigasyz said to me.

“That’s very sad,” I said.

“Yes it is. She doesn’t have sex with me. I may be old, but I still want sex. Not a lot. Maybe once a week,” he said. “They have that Viagra from India at the bazaar now. It works pretty well.”

“I think I know a woman for you,” Azat said. “I’ll introduce you to her.”

27.

Conversations With a KGB Agent

My life in Nurana had a rhythm. Each day was nearly the same as the next. The events that defined my weeks were finishing a health poster at work, getting a letter from home, or Jeren cooking
plov
, my favorite. I thought I would hate the monotony of such a quiet life. Jeren did. She suffered from a nagging dissatisfaction. She was always saying things like, “I want something, but I just don’t know what it is.” Maybe it was because I’d had enough excitement in Abadan to last me for a while, but for some reason, I found the routine comforting. As the weeks passed, my anger, bitterness, and frustration faded away.

My journal entries from my time in Abadan were filled with cryptic references. I’d feared the KNB would send someone to read my journal. (After all, they read my mail and clumsily re-sealed it before forwarding it to me). The entries were filled with screaming capital letters, furious exclamation points, and sarcastic asides. They focused on my frustrations at work, the wrongs done to me, the country’s flaws. In Nurana, I wrote my entries in neat, even letters. I didn’t use any cryptic entries because I wasn’t doing anything worth hiding. I recorded my little adventures, small discoveries, and tiny triumphs:

Kümüsh, my little imp, my sweet little demon sister, stopped being shy around me. It took a while because I was an alien; I spoke only a few words of her language. One evening, while we were all lounging around the living room in front of the television, she walked over me in her frilly white dress, all lace and taffeta and bows in her hair, sat down and started talking to me. When she realized that I still didn’t understand Turkmen, she stopped trying to explain and just took my wrist and tied a white string around it, a makeshift
alaja
, a charm against the evil eye. Then she kissed me on the cheek. I was charmed – hers forever. From then on, when Jeren went to a neighbor’s house after dinner, Kümüsh would curl up next to me on the living room floor. I’d sing her nonsense lullabies until she fell asleep and then lie there reading my book with her snuggled up in my armpit until Jeren came home and put her to bed.

While I was watching a Russian satellite TV station with Jeren one evening, waiting for Döwlet to get home from work, a furniture commercial came on. “Buy this furniture set now and we’ll give you 20 percent off,” and that sort of thing. It showed dining room sets and couches, four-poster beds and bookshelves. Jeren was nearly drooling with desire.

“Look at the bed,” she said. “And the table…”

I’d been told during my Peace Corps training that Turkmen ate and slept on their carpeted floors for cultural reasons, because for generations they’d been nomads and so that’s the way they’d always lived. I told Jeren that and she laughed at me.

“It’s not cultural. It’s just because we’re too poor to buy furniture,” she said.

Döwlet and Azat decided I needed to “try” a Turkmen girl. They were offended that I’d spent a year and a half in the country and hadn’t already done so. Azat said he knew a girl in Murgab whom he thought I could afford. I thanked him but demurred, telling him that, as a rule, I didn’t pay for sex. He was shocked – it was an idea that apparently had not occurred to him. One night Döwlet asked me to help him install a satellite dish in Murgab, something he often did for extra cash. When we arrived, Azat was there, with a mischievous grin and a gorgeous Turkmen girl, with long black hair, dark eyes, and a delicate homemade dress, which, although it covered her from wrist to ankle, left little to the imagination. I chatted with her while I helped Döwlet install the dish, but I declined to go inside with her. Azat, frustrated, got in his car and roared off.

* * *

As winter turned to spring, my routine changed in two ways. One was completely unexpected. I was sitting at my desk in the clinic one morning, working on a poster about anemia, drawing foods that were high in iron. Through the window, I could see three boys standing outside. They’d been whispering to each other and pointing at each other and looking nervously at me for about 15 minutes. Finally, two of them pushed the third toward the door. He was maybe 12 years old, and looked like a miniature Döwlet, with deep-set eyes, dark skin, and bristly black hair. He shuffled in, hands in his pockets, looking at the floor. I put down my colored pencil.

“Hello,” I said.

“Will you teach us English because we really want to learn but there’s no teacher at school so we don’t know what to do and we were thinking you might teach us because we heard you can speak English,” he blurted out.

“I’m sorry, but I can’t. I’m not allowed in the school and I’m not allowed to teach you here,” I said.

“Oh,” he said, looking disappointed.

He walked back outside and conferred with his friends for a few moments. They sent him back in to talk to me again.

“Hi,” I said.

“You could teach us at your house,” he said and stood there looking at me.

I thought about it. I was bored sitting in my office and coloring pictures of spinach, liver, and beans all the time, but I’d resolved to avoid trouble, and government officials had already made it clear to me that they didn’t want me teaching English in Nurana. So I put the boys off, thinking they’d lose interest.

“Come back tomorrow,” I said. “I’ll think about it.”

The boys came back the next day – and the day after that and the day after that. They were telling me two important things: first, how they wanted me to help them; and second, how to get around the obstacles to doing it. It took about a week, but I finally heard them. It turned into one of my most pleasant, most satisfying, most productive projects in Turkmenistan and it never caused any trouble with the local authorities.