The End of the Route

“Theis baits drawe many hither, some for Curiositie, others for Luxurie, there being wayes to gett, but many more to spend.”

And thus, I had my tablecloth to be brought home and stained with life. Some future nephew, grandchild, or yard-sale picker will unfold it from the bottom of whatever trunk I end up stuffing it in and wonder what they can get for it.

But before that, it will be a beautiful part of the homes Sara, and Milo, and I make together. A bright beacon to our guests, and a layer between Ruggles and the cold surface of the table. He will greatly enjoy picking the seeds from the sewn-silk pomegranates. It's more than a souvenir, it's a symbol of a life domestic and of the trip that made me desire such life.

Made the meandering way back, passing a small public banya (bath) and considered taking one. Deciding against it, I made myself laugh with the phrase "banya mañana," just the kind of dumb multilingual rhyme my brain needed. I'll take a bath tomorrow, banya mañana, banya mañana. He is never clean, it's always banya mañana with him. I began to get annoyed with myself for repeating it so much, and I was grateful no one else was there for me to bother. On the other hand, they might have stopped me and thereby saved me.

Back at the guesthouse, I was force-fed more hot gourd chunks, golden raisins, and tea before I could get to the room. You can't get past that giant table. I was only able to escape when grandma turned her back to check the kettle. This place sure fills you up. Spent a pleasant hour in my room listening to music and repacking my suitcase to accommodate the new purchases.

At this point, there was still a week left in the trip. I was scheduled to leave Khiva in the morning, but there was still some question about the next destination. It was a repetition of the feelings I'd had earlier, a free fall of unknowing. What I would choose to do. All outcomes seemed possible. Schrodinger's tourist. 

In the sealed box of my room I was both pushing on to Nukus to see the Aral Sea disaster and heading back to Tashkent for four days of comfortable reading and writing. Both outcomes were appealing to me. My mother has a thing where she says if you're trying to decide, flip a coin, but don't look at it when it lands. Your heart will tell you which side you hoped the coin landed on, and you should do the thing that side indicates.

For me, it often feels like the coin never lands. 

I went back out to see the sun set over the minarets. To do so, I had to dodge grandma's offer of what looked like Jurassic pistachios.

Quiet and cool inside the walls of the darkling fortress. I felt peaceful and alive. My headache was gone. If it meant anything other than dehydration, the pattern indicates I will know some time over coffee in a few weeks. I'll be reading or working and.. something will happen. I have a brain scan scheduled for the day after I return, which is timely. For all my freewheeling, I do have a small streak of responsibility.

I was enjoying the glow of a lighted advertisement for coffee, when I heard "salaam alaikum" in an Australian accent. I responded with "alaikum salaam." It was Eric taking in the same air under the same sky. If Maxu had been there, I could have pointed and shouted "My friend!"

We shook hands and compared notes. He had been a pleasant constant this last week, but with the Silk Route complete, he was headed to Malaysia! I was headed away, but... not there. We pledged eternal friendship, the brotherhood of the road.

I went to try the plov at a place next to the place he recommended. He's not the boss of me! I eat where I want!

A very beautiful cat lay on the pillows and carpets and observed a night-bird with great concern. The plov was the best I'd had on the trip. Finally, some good plov! In the streets outside, old men in fur hats crossed their arms and rubbed their shoulders to warm themselves. Vendors and artists were packing away their unsold wares. Credits rolling at the end of a film. 

A feast was waiting for me at the guesthouse. I was full of plov and touched my belly to indicate this, but Granny Uzbek would have none of it. She turned up the volume on a Turkish soap opera and gently pushed me to the table where piles of bread and fruit surrounded a bowl of dumpling soup. Fine. Fine! The broth was good, but I chose not to eat what was either a giant bell pepper or a dog's ear. I had not seen any bell peppers on this trip in any of the markets, so... it may have been pumpkin shell. In fact, I'm sure of it. Yes. That has to be what it was. It is so.

In my room, I planned for the morning. The train to Tashkent looked sold out online. You can only buy tickets online if you are a local or have a Russian passport, and even then they are twice the price. But it's useful to use to check the schedule and availability. There is a place that will sell tickets to Americans online, but the service takes four days (and is three times the price). In person, the ticket office only takes cash, and there is no ATM. So... in the morning I would go to the station, hold out my remaining cash and and buy a ticket for as close to Tashkent as I could get. Ideally, Tashkent itself.

This meant I had decided against Nukus. But... if the train was sold out... or too expensive... maybe I would have enough for the bus to Nukus. Anything could happen! I had purposefully built in five "open" days to make my way back, since I had known this ambiguity was a possibility.

In the morning, my options were reduced still further. When the taxi arrived, I was making my farewells, putting on my boots, when I was presented with an enormous bill for all the food.

Granny Uzbek was making a silk purse out of a dog's ear.

I was fairly outraged, and of course they only took cash. But that was my train-ticket money. I didn't want to pay. What was I going to do, yell at an old woman? And the taxi driver was her son. If I didn't pay, would he still take me to the train station? I felt taken advantage of almost as badly as with the cabbie in Almaty. I gave her the pumpkin blood-money in tight-lipped silence.

I didn't touch my heart when I left. Burn!

Of course, it was fun to ride in the Damas again, and I had some hope the trains wouldn't all be sold out, so my spirits were aroused. I could have asked the driver to take me to the same bank on the outskirts of town as Maxu had, but.. what if we took the time to do that and during that time the trains sold out? Lord Almaty. So... I stuck to the plan and got to the ticket window. There WAS a seat to Tashkent, but I no longer had enough money. They outta call it Cashkent.

I had enough to make it to Bukhara, though! (Or Nukus). I chose Bukhara, because I knew it, it would be easy to find a room there... and I already knew the best ATMs and coffee shops. And thus, back through the desert.

Nukus and Mo'ynaq, though still very appealing, were deeper in the desert, and near an ecological disaster (nuke us indeed!), and I wasn't sure it was wise, ultimately.

I had made the safe choice, and I was also at peace with Grandma Uzbek. The food had been good, and the shorter train trip would be better for me than the endless overnighter to Tashkent, and thus her theft was for the greater good. She was like Robin Hood and the Green Goblin mixed together. Because of the pumpkins. He's a Spider-Man villain who throws exploding pumpkins.

Very short on cash, I had enough for a bottle of water. There were also a few walnuts left from.. somewhere. A long ride ahead of me, but I'd eaten enough over the last few days... I would be ok..probably.

An hour in, a stranger offered me bread and tea. I was rationing my walnuts, when the stranger handed me the cup from his Thermos and bade me drink. I did, and I was warmed by it. He tore a crust from his large, round loaf and bade me eat. I did, and I was filled by it.

Chai and non. Tea and bread. I spoke the words like a child. It was an act of great kindness, and I felt like a pilgrim on the Silk Route from centuries past. I rested and read.

I had finished A Ride to Khiva, and I started a long book in which a journalist goes through Molotov's library and visits different cities in Russia. It was a giant pile of facts with very little art to their presentation. And the theme didn't really coalesce. I'd read so many great books on this trip, I felt like pushing through this one for balance, and so by the time we reached Bukhara, I had finished it.

On the platform, a British couple took selfies with a gang of locals, all of them roaring drunk and having the best time. A marvelous scene under the moon with night trains creaking and snuffling past us like arthritic mastiffs.

No ATM at the station (no surprise), so the few, wrinkled bills I had left were going to have to get me a cab. It was midnight, and I wasn't sure if the bus I had taken before was still running. During the day, the price is $2. I had $3. The first guy who offered to take me asked for $15. I cackled in his face like a witch.

It was out of surprise, frustration, and residual anger. It probably wasn't a good idea to shriek in a dude's face. What if he'd felt disrespected or humiliated and gotten angry? I mean, the price he quoted was some real Uzbek chutzpah (and don't think I didn't banya mañana the hell out of that phrase), but a simple "no thank you," would have been more appropriate than the mocking rusty-chain sounds that came out of me.

His friends were there, and they pushed him and made fun of him. He took it with a sly smile. It was an, 'ow you say, sweeng and the meese. Ultimately, it may have humbled him, because he agreed to take me for $3.

My host, Sukhrob, had expected my late arrival and was very kind to me, taking my bags up the stairs and sparing me too long of a tour of the property. I slept and slept.

Ate the last of the walnut dust for breakfast, drank tea and wrote for a few hours, then took a very long walk into the old city. This apartment was pretty far from the action, but I was already familiar with the action, and I wanted to see the "real" city.

And boy, did I. Watermelons on wagons, a funeral procession with singing pall bearers, and everywhere the smell of hot, fresh bread. With the last of my coins, I bought some water from an old woman. She owed me change, but (as had happened once before) gave it to me in the form of chewing gum. Hilarious, but now I was truly penniless.

I invented an old Uzbek saying on the way to the ATM. "Money is cold in your pocket, but gum is sweet in your mouth." If someone told me it was real, I would have believed them.

Got my money (the sound of it coming out of the machine!!) and had the biggest cup of coffee and the largest somsa (hot pocket) I could find. I felt very confident and free, having been here and having learned its ways.

I had packed a novel by a Hungarian writer about a woman's relationship with her elderly servant, and though dense and full of complicated emotions, I was passing sick of Russian history and travelogues, and I was very grateful for it. I spent the next four hours on a series of buses back to the train station, so I could buy my ticket to Tashkent. It was exactly how I wanted to spend my day here. Crammed into public transport with a book and a mission.

That's not a joke. It was wonderful to feel invisible and to disappear into the story and to be surrounded with the ambiance of a place so very far from home. No tours, no famous landmarks. Just people on a bus headed to the train station. And back again.

Along with the metro in Tashkent, it was one of my favorite experiences.

Ticket acquired, I headed back. Took the long way again. Packed up. Finished the Hungarian book and got a lot of out it. There were situations and relationships I want to draw on when I am writing Shores of Kentucky. Which, is one of the things I came here to do. It's so hard to produce things and so easy to consume them. I want to be a producer.

I was writing, when Sukhrob messaged to ask if he could take me out to dinner to practice his English in conversation. I was feeling like a homebody, and it had been a long day, but... when was I going to have this sort of opportunity again?

He mostly wanted to try out jokes, so I was very glad I accepted. Over pizza he asked me "Why is America the most powerful country?"

Why?

"Because the people are all Emirs and Khans. Emir-n-kahns."  (!!!!!)

He asked me if I liked the joke. I told him I loved it.

To set the next one up, he told me that in Central Asia, it is the custom to pour your own tea first before pouring your guest's. This is because the tea tastes better the longer it is in the pot. So, by delaying the guest's pour, you are honoring them with a superior cup of tea.

He asked the server for tea. It was brought to the table, and he acted this next part out. "As well, he said, "the process is to pour yourself a cup, then pour it back into the pot. You repeat this three times"

It was fun to watch him do it. It's ritual behavior, but the time it takes to do this lines up with when the tea is "ready." He asked me if I understood, and when I said I did, he launched into the joke.

"Ok, got it? Ok, so the gracious host is entertaining a foreign guest. He pours the tea into his own cup and back into the pot three times. Then he pours his cup to drink, then the guest's cup.

The guest said, 'thank you for the tea, but why did you wash your own cup and not mine?"

That was the punchline. He should have led with that and ended with the Emir. When he asked me if I liked the joke, instead of saying yes, I told him his English was very good. This sort of positive deflection is a gift my mother gave me.

He was pleased and ordered desert. Then he said, "Oh! Oh! The word for 'brother' in Uzbek is 'aka.'" I said ok, and he said, so America could be the Emir-aka. I laughed like hell. America is powerful, because it is the emir's brother!

We toasted one another with a hearty "God bless Emir-aka," and he took me back home.

On the way, he pointed out the library where he used to work. "It was once the only building Bukhara have internet," he said. I showed him where the old woman had given me gum instead of change, and he said, "That one!? You are lucky you got candy! Me, she gives matches!"

How I laughed. I felt very close to him. It was a privilege to help him work out his jokes and to see his history.

And thus, I have reached the end of the Silk Route and "done the 'stans." Just a train to Tashkent and a golden horde of airliners 'til I am home.

I met interesting people, read inspiring books, missed my home, got cheated by a whole gang of old ladies, and will leave forever changed. I feel inspired, enriched, and ready to move forward to the next play. These were beautiful, challenging places, and that balance (beauty and struggle) is the key to tossing you up like a tablecloth. Before you land, mostly in place. Needing just a little straightening.

Thank you for reading, fools. Maybe Greece and Albania next year. Or maybe home. Happily and for a very long time.

The Mayor of Ichan Qala

"I was faced with the disconcerting experience of walking into my own home, bearing news of life and death, and no one to share it with. Our Neanderthal ancestor learned to weep the first time he stood in triumph over the bison he had dragged in and found no one to tell of his adventures or show his spoils to."

For the ride to Khiva, I had packed a 19th-century travel journal called "A Ride to Khiva." A classic of "the Great Game," it proved the perfect choice. Written by one of those hilariously imperialist Brits from that age, I found it quite marvelous to hear his opinions on the region and smiled to recognize how much was the same. One of his biggest hassles is dishonest cab drivers. How it resonated across the centuries!

The Great Game is what they called the political maneuverings between Russia and Great Britain during the period of Russian expansion East. The British desired to maintain and grow its Indian holdings or move into Central Asia themselves. There was concern on both sides one would control the 'stans before the other and launch an attack.

Historically, Afghanistan has been propped up by the larger powers, kept "free," as it provides a buffer between India and the "Silk Route." The Khanates who ran what is now Uzbekistan and Kyrgystan might have gotten in on this prop-up action, but they fought among themselves and proved too tempting (and easy) a target for colonization.

The Russians took advantage of this first, "won" the Great Game, and were in "completion mode" as late as the 1980s trying to take Afghanistan.

So... history and archaic language, and I was in a heaven of research and travelogues as the train made its way through the desert to Khiva.

The train was hot as hell, though I am here in autumn. I am told it absolutely roasts in summer, frequently reaching 120 degrees. In the book the Brit crosses in winter, which is the exact opposite extreme. He is frequently pausing to clear the icicles from his horse's noses, so they can breathe. I had water and walnuts, but I was uncomfortable. Stripped down to my t-shirt, though I noticed many of the locals suffering in their robes or the "casual business attire" many of the men wear.

Six hours, all told, with a mostly unvaried view of golden sands and dust. It wasn't quite the romantic dunes and colors of The Sahara, feeling and looking more like...desolation.  A slight dehydration headache was brewing. When we pulled into the station I found it a great relief, with more than the usual buoyancy that comes with "arrival." Left the oven and found the late Khiva afternoon cool and inviting.

Eric and Bjarke had taken the same train. We're all on that Silk Road conveyor belt, and it was nice to see them again. As in Bukhara, we were going to share a taxi, but... my host was waiting for me with my name printed out on a placard! So long, suckers, no room for you in the car. I'll What's App you later. They were good-natured about it.

I followed my host to... a Damas!! The van I've been dreaming of since Samarkand.. here with its side door open, beckoning me inside! A reward (it seemed). I jumped in, and we were off to Ichan Qala, the old city inside the walls of the fort of Khiva.

Just outside the station there were the signs of "development." A large shopping center going up, many hotels and apartments, but they faded as we approached then entered the old city. Crazy twisting through dusty narrow pathways, the Damas almost scraping the old stone walls. At last we were "home," and I would not have found it by myself.

A nice little guesthouse dominated by a dining table. There was no "living room" to speak of. It was a kitchen, the huge table with its surrounding bench, and two private rooms. A cup of tea was placed in my hand, and I was shown which room was mine. I was then asked what time I would like to be fed. How civilized!

My headache hadn't quite gone away. It was the first physical discomfort of the trip. I had been warned the Silk Route would be slick with diarrhea, but I've either been lucky or careful. No issues, digestive or otherwise, but the dry ride west after three weeks on the road was enough to finally get me.

I was going to nap, but a knock on the door asked me to please come out and eat. A sweet old granny held a plate of dumplings. Maybe some food and tea would bring me back to life. I ate potato dumplings and homemade bread (decorated with the flower-pattern bread stamp!) and grapes and tomatoes. It was all served in a Goblin Market of abundance. There are never fewer than eight dishes at any meal.

I was fortified, and there was light, so I went out for a quick stroll. It's a marvelously corkscrewy, dusty place in which you can easily imagine people from ages past moving along and trading, and loving, and worrying and sweeping.

The most famous landmark is The Blue Minaret (which I have seen used a symbol for all of Uzbekistan much as the Opera House is for Sydney). Compared to the magnificent tower in Bukhara, it looked a bit like a factory smokestack, but I appreciated the effort they put into it. Making my way toward it (unmissable with all the old one-story buildings in Ichan Qala) I heard music and singing and walked right into a puppet show.

A real delight with celebrating people waving puppets, some wearing masks (puppets themselves) and telling old stories in chanted code. It felt like it was for locals or just for fun. There was no organized hat for donations and no one looking around for tips. They were just... having a nice time.

Cheered (though the headache had not left), I enjoyed the minaret and the surrounding environs. The view down the main street here really is like something out of an old story, ancient towers and crenelated stone walls surrounding. I've had the opportunity to be in European castles and the surrounding environs, but this seemed so much more... like something people would live in. More relatable somehow.  I bought a small painting of traders on camelback arriving at the gates, because I would not have been surprised to look outside the gates and see them arriving.

Puppetry is a thing here, as I had just experienced, and I saw many artisans working with paper mache, molding faces. I found it all very beautiful. The evening cooled (though not my enthusiasm) and I made my way through the small maze back to the guesthouse.

Where ANOTHER meal was waiting for me. I was satisfied (and there was still the matter of that headache), but there was a great clamor for me to "sit, sit. Please to eat." and a disoriented-seeming European guest sat there alone, so I joined him for a cup of tea and some fruit. 

His name was Kristian, a German from that country's southern regions, and we found one another very good company. There was a marvelous exchange over a persimmon.

Do you know this fruit? 

"I do not know English word. It has many name. I have heard it called pear-simon."

I would like to try.

"Yes, but to be careful. It has the seeds. Do you call them seeds. As in a grape?" 

Yes, seeds.

"Even when they are so large as in the pear-simon?"

Let me see. Um...

"You must quarter it."

Ok. Ok...so, these are seeds. I would say seeds.

"What is the word for large seeds?" 

So maybe in a peach or avocado, we would call a large seed a pit.

"Ape-it?"

Sorry. Pit. A pit.

"You base this on size?"

I think so. It is a seed, of course, but at some point we call it a pit. Maybe when there is only one.

"Is this because of the hole it makes when you remove?"

Um...

"When you dig out is like a pit you dig."

Haha. I don't think the words are related, but I've never.. thought about it. Maybe!

At this point, our host asked if we had seen the show now playing on the television. It was called Central Asia's Got Talent, and a man was allowed to make a miniature plov without being eliminated by the judges.

I eliminated myself from the table after this and went to my room to nurse my head.

A serious note on this is that the "brain tear" I experienced mid-year was preceded by a terrible headache ten days prior to the event (which badly damaged my vision). Though it may have been a simple headache... my situation is such I have to take everything seriously. Would I wake up deaf? Blinder? Slurring my words? Thinking a persimmon was a puppy?

I took a hot shower and went to bed. In the morning it was not quite gone, cause for some concern. I washed my face, dressed, and prepared to explore as usual. I figured the goal of the day would be to buy a large tablecloth for home. If my brain was going to explode, there would be something nice to bury me in.

I was, as had now become the pattern, delayed by Grandma Uzbek, who pushed hot pumpkin-filled rolls into my hands and bade me sit, drink tea, and eat some cold eggs which had been waiting for me all morning. It was all very nourishing. I treated myself to another persimmon, and hit the road.

Having now seen most of what there was to offer and having some idea on what things should cost, I was at last a serious buyer for one of the larger pieces. Our home needs a tablecloth, domestic yearning has been awakened in me, and it was time to buy one. I was exactly what this town was hoping for. A sucker with desires and the means to act on them.

Spoiled for choice, the biggest problem was, "which one?" I wanted them all, the colors, patterns, and materials being SO PLEASING.

Of course, I settled on a pomegranate design, and after a few false starts I discovered the one, the cloth I would bring home to its "forever table." In a moment of pure covetousness, I also selected a large, weirdly shaped textile with a garden scene. Who knows where it will go? The back of the couch? Once I went from disinterested observer to curious onlooker to serious buyer, the taps were flowing.

The purchase required cash, and there were no machines in the old city, but not to worry, the weaver's husband was called. Which is how I met Maxu, an hilarious old man, fully embracing the character of the ebullient, avuncular local. Bear hugs and loud cries of "Salaam alaikum!!" to any and all who crossed our path. His role was to lead me to the ATM. He played it very well.

In appearance, he looked like the "Uzbek" character on all the magnets and salt shakers for sale in the market. It really was perfect.

We walked for a long time to a hotel. Every construction worker we passed got his greeting, they would raise a hand in response. Then he would turn to me, indicate the person he had just spoken to, and say, "My friend."

We passed a painter, (my friend!), a cobbler, (my friend!) and many more. The whole town was his friend. They all seemed to know him, anyway. It was charming as all hell.  When we got to the hotel, they treated him a bit more coldly, but it did not deter his cheerfulness. Alas, the ATM did not accept VISA, and so.... we had to walk all the way back past old friends and new.

A bank on the other end of town had the only machine in Khiva that took VISA cards, and so... into Maxu's car we jumped. He drove like a fucking maniac, waving to people out the window. Honking. My friiiiend! Men in trucks waved back to him, men on bicycles took their hands off the handlebars to greet him. I was laughing and excited, yelling "Your friend!" as we passed them. In the thrill of it, I noticed my headache was gone.

At one point, he gunned it, and we crossed lanes to pass three other, slower cars. Fearlessly playing chicken with oncoming traffic. He shouted his own name at this point, "Maxuuuuu!" I don't know what will happen with my brain or with anything else, but it felt like exploding in the motorcade of Maxu, Mayor of Ichan Qala would be an absolutely top-rate way to go out.

The ATM worked, and when I handed him the money he called me his friend. Tears welled up in my eyes.

Eurasian Interludes

“Ask my for my biography, and I will tell you the books I have read.”

A journey like this is made of small moments within the larger, and if I were a Romantic sort, I would suggest it has a lot in common with one of the Timurid mosaics that have decorated the cities I have seen. As an interlude, here are a few small stories, things that happened, sometimes just impressions, that didn’t make it into the longer journal posts. Colored stones or tiles that fell from the mosaic.

***
In Samarkand, I took a detour to the Old Jewish Quarter where I hoped to buy some fresh bread and where there was supposed to be an old synagogue. It was too late in the day for the bread, and the back streets were slightly depressing. This area had been spared the restoration efforts the rest of the city seems to be enjoying. In fact, access was only through a single door in a large gate, and it left the impression the residents of this area could be sealed in case of plague or pogroms. I even wondered if it was sealed at night. Would I be shut in? Would a bell sound to warn me?

I found the synagogue around a dusty corner of one of the dirt lanes. It was marked with a sad little pebble mosaic of a menorah and a Star of David. These weren't any more cheerful than one of those mass-produced cardboard decorations teachers buy to liven up the calendar displays in their classrooms. A shop on what was the main drag of this district but hopelessly far away from the “main” shops, sold Soviet kitsch, old reel-to-reel tape recorders, and handmade cotton robes. Amber beads were draped across a cracked bust of Lenin. I peeked inside and was spared the hard sell on account of two Russian women already there and trying on hats. They seemed like “buyers,” and the proprietor focused his energy on them. He did shout “Israel? Israel?” after me as I left, the nationality I assume he “read” me as.

There were very many very-young children playing with ragged soccer balls, kicking them against the walls and laughing and dodging. As I hurried back to the entrance, a tiny child lost his ball in a deep gutter running across the road. His tiny arms could touch the top of the ball, but he couldn’t grasp it. I knelt in the dust and scooped it out for him. He chirped “spasiba,” Russian for “thank you,” in such a cheerful, joyful pitch it broke my heart. There were many layers to my emotions (these were my “people,” I miss my own child, the strong should always help the weak, the child knew to speak to me in the “other person’s language” and not his native Uzbek, andcetera).

                                            

*In a marshrutka to.. somewhere, the van radio played “Mamy Blue,” and I felt simultaneously far from home and amused. It made me remember an idea Meg had long ago to have her friends come over for a group-singing party. Just, everyone singing the same song in a no-frills chorus. I want a cast to sing it. I want to sing it with my friends. It’s so cheesy and moving. Or so it felt in the fondue of my marshrutka emotions. *

*In the market in Bishkek, a table sold only shopping bags, but not resuable bags, large ones from “fancy” stores. From Tiffany’s and Prada. An hilarious accessory. The fashionable shoppers of Bishkek bringing home a handful of dried black raisins and a pig’s hoof in an official Sak’s Fifth Avenue bag.*

*I am no expert in reading Cyrillic, certain symbols and letters fade in and out. I get by very well now, but sometimes I forget the X is an H and give it a mushy sound, etc. The one that looks like an asterisk blinks from known to unknown in my head with a fifty-fifty chance of my remembering at any given moment. The knowledge flips like a coin in my head. I’m decent at sharing what I know with others, though, and I was surprised that the table of travelers in Bukhara hadn’t taken the time to learn any, figuring they would just muddle through. It’s possible, of course, and it’s not like I have much more fluency than a child, but it helps with city names and menus.

I was using words they knew to help show how certain letters were pronounced. The Y is an “oo” sound, so the Cyrillic spelling of “toilet” comes out sounding like “too-all-it.” I cracked myself up thinking it was like “two wallets,” and I embarrassed myself laughing and repeating, “This bathroom is so expensive, you need two wallets to afford it!” This is something I usually do in my head or out loud to myself, but I was saying it to these Australians. I must have needed companionship very badly. In any case, they laughed along with me, but I saw them make eye contact with one another. I am not ashamed.

I am laughing now thinking about it, but it felt like a moment of self-awareness, of needing people.*

                                              

*Many of the religious old men look like they got their beards and eyebrows from a disguise kit. Fierce, thick hair on jutting beards and full brows.*

*Old women in a market sat on a bucket and raised and lowered rag dolls on sticks, trying to sell them. It felt like a symbol from ancient myth. They were the Fates playing with lives.

It was incredibly depressing thinking they would go all day without a sale, and they seemed so drained of essential energy, it was like artificial representations of life were selling artificial representations of life.*

*At night, the trees of Samarkand are a bazaar of birds, the sound of their chatter overwhelming the traffic and sidewalk sounds. LOUD and beautiful, impossible to shut out. In one instance, they all left a tree at once with such an echoing CLAP, I ducked as from the sound of a car bomb.* 

*A restaurant sign read “Try our food. It will not leave you indifferent”*

*The hand-on-heart gesture is ubiquitous. I make it dozens of time a day. I am greeted with it, respond with it, initiate it. It’s a perfect symbol of collegiality, and I find it very moving. I am, however, now a glasses-wearer, and I am frequently smudging my lenses when my greasy road-palm touches where I have them hung from my collar.* 

                                          

*Bjarke bought an ice cream sandwich from a mini-freezer. He chose the one he did because the wrapper was wildly Soviet-seeming. A red-cheeked child hollering out the name of the product in fat Cyrillic letters.

Under the shouting child was an image the product, a layer of vanilla ice cream between two cookies.

When he unwrapped it, the bottom cookie was missing. It was an open-faced ice cream sandwich. He took a messy bite, made a face, and threw it away. "I just bought it for the package," he said, "so it was worth it."*

*I bought a bottled water from a roadside cart, and instead of my change, the vendor handed me a peppermint Chiclet. I wasn't sure if he was giving me this in addition to the expected change, so I waited a few beats until, in English, he said, "That's it."*

*In Charyn Canyon, my guide identified a tree as one the Koreans call an “I kill you” tree. Alone, they are harmless, but in a grove they give off some sort of “poisoned air.” Wanderers who fall asleep in such a forest under such a tree do not reawaken. He told it as you would warn someone about a snake or in the way you point out a distant tower and say, “The Emir used to throw people off of this,” but I found it very beautiful.

If only it were so easy to die. If only all you had to do when you were ready was curl up in a quiet forest and sleep.*

A Vision of Pomegranates in Bukhara

"It was proposed I should inquire for some moullah who could write me a letter in the Tartar language. On asking the guide, he at once sent for a learned man who, he said, could write beautiful things so soft and sweet they were like the sounds of sheep bleating in the distance."

At the train station to Bukhara, I was met by an old friend. I had been trying to determine if the guard had held up five fingers to tell me to wait five minutes or to proceed to platform 5, when a voice said in English, "Looks like you found your dosh."

It was the kind Australian who I had briefly met in "the 'Kent." The one who had offered me money for my metro fare and whom I had turned down before I knew finding my own money (or "dosh" as he called it) would be impossible. It was very nice to hear my native tongue, even with those topsy-turvy vowels employed by the Antipodeans.

He was with Bjarke, a Dane with a skateboard strapped to his knapsack. As a trio, we made our way to the correct platform (which was not 5). There are no electronic signs on Uzbekistan Railways to tell you which train is going where. There are so few, and they go to such a limited number of cities, it's just sort of understood by the locals.

I had bought my ticket rather late in the game, and all that remained was "Business Class," which suited my legs and bags just fine. Bjarke was in the same boat (on the same train), and we sat in the same compartment. He slept, and I read The Towers of Trebizond, the novel I'd set aside for this journey. In Georgia, I had read a book about a man traveling in the Caucasus. One night in his tent, he amused himself by trying to decide which character from this book he was most like. Having not read it, I couldn't judge the accuracy of his choice. I pledged to read it one journey soon.

And so, on the train to Bukhara, I did.

The journey was smooth. These bullet trains are quite remarkable, easily taking you along The Silk Route. It is a common one, this route from Samarkand to Bukhara. Early in the journey, I discovered the itinerary I had created for myself, though seeming quite daring from my study in Seattle, is in fact a very common one. To the degree that everyone I met in Samarkand upon seeing I was tourist would say, "Bukhara next? You go Bukhara after Samarkand, yes?"

Eric, for so the Australian is named, and Bjarke were evidence of this as were several older people wearing t-shirts with a map of Uzbekistan over a camel, and the exact four cities I was visiting represented by stars. I didn't mind, of course. I found it amusing, and there was no shame. There's a reason people come here and another why they do it in the order.  

When we arrived (just two hours!), we negotiated together with taxi drivers. We could not find an honest one, and so we took the bus. It was marvelous. We roasted like rotisserie jackdaws, frequently abandoning our seats for gold-smiled women in headscarves. The station is far from the city, and we took advantage of the time to properly meet one another. Eric is a physical therapist, and Bjarke a school teacher. They were very amused by the stories of the jobs I've had. 

Being, it was soon discovered, over twenty years older than them, I've had many more opportunities to find different sorts of work. 

The driver kicked us out in the city center, and we made our way to where our hotels were. We were all struck by Bukhara in the same way, finding it immediately peaceful and welcoming. 

It is incredibly beautiful, the old city. Samarkand was like an open-air museum, but this... this was a place. The mosques were in use. Locals lounged happily around a pool in the park and drank tea and chattered happily. And there were dozens of merchants lining the old stone walls, selling beautiful things.

Of course, there are souvenir shops in every city, and it took me a moment to determine why I was having such a strong positive response to what was on offer here specifically. Yes, the city was beautiful, and yes, the setting was picturesque, and yes there was the dopamine rush of having arrived in a new place... but why were the scarves, and rugs, and ceramics, and wool hats so appealing to me?

It struck me it was because they were all things I had been seeing IN USE throughout Uzbekistan. The homes I'd stayed in used these cloths, the women on the bus wore these headscarves. I'd eaten from dishes like these under paintings like those. It felt, a very dangerous and foolish word, authentic. Unlike, say, Rome where they sell gladiator helmets and centurion's swords, here were objects of contemporary domesticity. And they were beautiful.

The thing that pricked at my heart the most were the bread stamps. Little needle things you use to decorate the loaf with a flower pattern before it bakes. The bread I'd bought in the markets on Tashkent had those patterns. Men in the park carried loaves such as these under their arms. This was a tool in everyone's kitchen, not some replica of an ancient practice. A living art.

I've never made my own bread. It made me want to.

We went our separate ways. The city is small, and our lodging wasn't so far from one another. Though I had been happy to have them as companions, it was also nice to stretch out and have some time to process my thoughts.

My room was in a part of the city under construction. Big things are in store for Buxoro (which is what the locals call Bukhara). It looks like they are trying to double to size of the place. I saw this too in Samarkand, many men building large plazas out of brick. A painstaking process with clever patterns employed in the laying. I certainly haven't "discovered" this place (as the t-shirts testify) but it does feel like I'm here at a time before it's huge.

The 'stans in general are becoming more open as their economies stabilize, and there is talk of a Schengen-type agreement that allows for easy freedom of movement between them all. It's not easy to get here, so people want to see them all at once. This is currently difficult, but the new trains and some political changes may soon fill these enormous plazas with Chinese and European tourists.

My room was in the corner of what looked very much like a Moroccan riad. Big courtyard in the center. High walls and rooms surrounding it. The accommodations were lacking. One outlet high on the wall and sort of falling out. Loud roar from the fan in the bathroom. Weird blankets. But... I wasn't there for the room. I showered (miserable!), figured out a way to plug in my phone without tearing the outlet from the plaster, and went out in search of food.

There was a soft plan to meet up with the guys, and it hardened like a breakfast cheese when I saw them in the park around the statue of a laughing man riding a donkey. It was a very European-style scene.

I had a dumpling soup and some manti. They ate shocking amounts of shish kabob. I remember being young and having an appetite like that. My god, the skewers they cleared. There was some amusement over the age difference. When they did the math and realized I was their age in the '90s, they wanted to know all about the drugs and the music and the Trainspotting.

I did my best not to make it sound too impressive. There is little more pathetic, to me, than an older person trying to dazzle a younger with all the "cool shit" they used to do. The runs they used to score and how they won the war. The tail the used to pull and how they sheared the wool.

But I made them laugh.

Hilariously, and for reasons unknown, the song Unchained Melody kept coming on the restaurant sound system, and equally funny, a server would run over to change it to another song. It never got as far as "are you still miiiiine?" Though I certainly heard it in my head.

This was very amusing to me, and while I was enjoying the Uzbek music and the conversation, a significant portion of my awareness was searching the atmosphere for the return of Unchained Melody. What did the staff have against it?

We paid and left. No small feat. It is very difficult to get the check in this part of the world. You have to ask several times, and it's never just brought to the table. I am unclear as to the cultural significance of this. I understand the idea they might not want you to feel "rushed," but you kind of have to build in thirty minutes of waiting after the dishes are cleared and the teapot is cold before you're allowed to settle the bill.

Bukhara was lively at night. In the shadow of a mosque (typical Timurid architecture, but a glorious heron or peacock depicted on this one. More animal-art heresy!), locals and tourists mingled on benches enjoying tea in the cool of the evening. The area's name literally translates to "around the pool." It was very beautiful and it was very easy to imagine courtiers from another time taking their relaxation after the palace gates were locked.

Eric wanted ice cream, and I always want coffee, so the three of us went to a little place with both. It was staffed with teenagers (as in Samarkand, they employ them here). An older American man came in and said, "Hey, I'm back for ice cream! It's me. I want the blueberry again."

There was something rich about his voice, and he reminded me of my grandparent's friends from when I was a little boy. He had the cultivated way of speaking and easy manner of the comfortably retired. He was roughly my parent's age but his loaf was stamped with the buoyancy of "the Greatest Generation." As opposed to the corrupt entitlement of the dreaded Boomers.

I was quite taken with him, and the others picked up on it. "One of your people," said Eric. He probably meant American, but I took it to mean a solo traveler quick to make friends.

When the Blueberry Boomer left, Eric (also quick to make friends) asked the coffee teens if he could plug his phone into the sound system. He had been collecting a playlist of Russian and Uzbek hip hop. They let him do it and were soon pumping their fists along with the music. It was wonderful. They knew the words, and there was just a shared sense of positive energy. Eric asked Bjarke if there was anything he wanted to hear, and he chose an artist named Scriptonite, a popular Russian artist.

When he asked me, I said "Unchained Melody." We all laughed. But he didn't play it. The party ended, and we went out separate ways. Sleep.

In the morning, the riad served a free breakfast of nushy, skinless fruit, hard cheese, and cold french fries. It was so nasty, it seemed like a prank. The only edible bit was a fresh pomegranate, and it was a revelation, greatly making up for the rest. It tasted like what I imagine licking a stained glass window would. A breakfast made from the remains of a collapsed cathedral. I was enchanted.

And soon, I was under the fruit's spell. Out in the city, in the soft morning light, I saw its pattern everywhere. I had, of course, seen them in every market in the 'stans, piles and pyramids of them. But now, like the hats and ceramics and bread stamps, they had been enhanced by experience. I was ensorcelled by the... domesticity of them. A pillowcase with a sewn pattern of a pomegranate tree nearly brought me to tears.

And so, in love with life and the ways life is lived, I wandered the city and saw its famous sites.

There is the Kalyan minaret, which stuns with its height and ornate...presence. It's very tall, but finds itself able to hide somehow until you are suddenly upon it. There was The Ark, an old palace with many rooms converted to museums (and only a few to gift shops).

I wandered through them suddenly in love with old coins and textiles. I could "feel" them through the glass. It was very easy to imagine my thumb on the raised face of the coin's khan. Everything was feeling real to me, alive. The juice of the pomegranate was an elixir of life! It's intense stain brought color to the universe, merging planes and dimensions.

It could not, however, enliven the melancholy of a sad little collection of taxidermied birds. Though, a label suggested the yellow-eyed dude I've been appreciating was a mynah! Holy crow!

A happy little ramble on the cobblestones, a big push through the Towers of Trebizond, a short nap, and I met the guys for dinner. The party had increased by two. Another Australian and a Scando. They were readers, these two, and we had a lively party at the shish kabob factory. I tried to match them skewer for skewer and knew great regret.

We were all, of course, headed for Khiva the next day. It's the law that you see it after Bukhara. They asked if I was going to head to Nukus after or home. Home is the standard move, Nukus the advanced.
From Nukus you can force your way to Mo'ynoq where once was The Aral Sea but now is a graveyard of ships. They're all lined up like rusty Von Trapp children in the desert. Supposed to be most picturesque.

It would certainly be memorable, but my heart is with the living now, not with ruins. I want to see life and families and fill a bowl with pomegranates. I told them my heart was already winging home, and that after Khiva, I would close the book. 

Later, we repeated ourselves, returned once more to the ice cream place and Eric DJ'ed with his phone. One of the barista's name tags read "Sadam Xusen," which delighted me. When it was my turn to enter a request, I suggested "Brandy, You're a Fine Girl," but none of them knew it, and the conditions weren't right for them to learn a new song.

I had been thinking about the Uzbek Brandy on the dry shores of Mo'ynoq. Surely the sailors would have returned for her, fought over her. Their life, their love, and their lady, The Aral Sea had run off.

As we would, to Khiva, in the morning.   

The Winking Hamburger-Boys of Samarkand

"What shall we tell you? Tales, marvellous tales/Of ships and stars and isles where good men rest/Where nevermore the rose of sunset pales/And winds and shadows fall towards the West

My host in Tashkent was named Delbar. I hadn't met her yet, her cousin had run up with the key when I arrived, but when I wrote to schedule the return of the key, she said she wanted to meet me, since it was her last chance. I had a very early train, so I had been hoping to drop the key in a mailbox, but she said that no matter how early, she would meet me to take it in person. And thus, at 7am, I shook the hand of Delbar.

An energetic woman in her 30s with a European style. She asked me if I'd photographed her building, and I said I'd taken some pictures of the room (it featured a hilarious carpet with a print of charging horses), but she meant the building in which she lived. "It is famous," she said, "for being seismic."

She told me many people from France come to photograph her building. I saw the one she meant in the distance, a tall cylindrical tower. I assumed by seismic, she meant it had been specially built to resist earthquakes. Though, of course, that would be an excellent expression to indicate excitement. "I saw Delbar and the Tracksuits at a small club in Shymkent; It was seismic!"

I assumed she told me French people photograph it because a French architect had designed it. Either that, or news of my ability as a mime had reached her. She showed me a shortcut to the Kosmonaut station, and I had one final ride on that tremendous metro. It really is the number one reason to see this city.

The trains, as I would soon discover, were also smooth and efficient. The security was pretty intense, almost airport-like, but once you're on, you're whisked away at great speed, and hills like wrinkled brains flash by the window.

I read a book about Shostakovich and was completely absorbed for the entirety of the trip. I entered the world of the book and was almost upset to have arrived at my destination. The one thing I'd "known" about him was he was the guy who had shrapnel in his head that acted like a radio station tuned to the God Channel, and he got all his ideas by copying what the shrapnel played, a kind of celestial Shazam app.

But, that story is totally made up, a famous myth about him, so... I knew nothing at all, and I was completely fascinated by his early collaborations with the Russian Futurists. I had previously only been familiar with the Italian branch of that school, The book reprinted an advertisement for baby pacifiers a guy named Rodchenko made. The text was: "No better pacifiers! Never have been! You'll suck 'em 'til yer old!"

It cracked me up so much, the century-old satire of it undiminished. Beyond the comedic bluntness of it, he was probably trying to convey a marketing meeting where they were like, "what's a way to show our product is durable and worth buying?" "That you'll use them your whole life, sir?" "Print it!" I was speaking those lines out loud to myself in my seat and rocking back and forth. All I needed was a pacifier.

Writing down the names of the Futurist artists, I was filled with that beautiful feeling of having a new field to explore, it was like brushing aside ivy on a garden wall and discovering a hidden door.

My room in Samarkand wasn't ready, which was a tremendous relief. More time to read! I sat in a little park near the train station and stayed in the world of the young composer and his friends. Uzbekistan is proving to be a great country for parks, and everything is so meticulously clean. It's one way to keep employment high, give everyone a broom and point them parkward. Very few stray animals as well.

I was often interrupted by cab drivers, but that's their job. Unlike, say, Morocco, they leave you alone after a few nyets and a smile. Eventually, at a chapter break, I let one take me to where I would be staying. Though I showed him an address, and where it was on the map, it was a complete mystery to him. I have often encountered this, most prominently in Georgia. I think their process is just different, they don't know street names, just... places, they get there by feel and muscle memory.

So, the driver asked all the other drivers where the street was, and they all chimed in with their ideas, but none really knew. You just have to name all the landmarks close to it, and have them take you to the one you don't mind walking from the most. The whole thing was compounded by the host having given me the wrong address. I just had the driver drop me off in a park, so I could read.

This one was clean, but the benches had all been removed for some reason. The arms were still there, but the seats had all been taken away. "I was a bench once, during the war." The place was otherwise immaculate. But... to what purpose? To look good from a satellite photo?

My bags and I took over a pile of bricks, and I was with Shostakovich and his friends until the apologetic host told me the correct address (not too far away!) and that he was sorry but the room wasn't ready, but I could dump my bags there. I was delighted! More time to read! Humped 'em and dumped 'em, and I was free on the streets of Samarkand with a book under my arm and a pocket stuffed with fifty-thousand dollar bills.

I was in a great mood, inspired in a new city on a cool, bright day, so I was open to everything, quick to rapture, nostrils a'quiver, willing to dive into the foamiest part of the surf! I fell deeply in love with a ubiquitous van called a Damas. They were everywhere, tiny cars with clash-colored lightning bolt patterns on the side. I desperately want one. The wheel is on the wrong side, and I never learned how to operate a manual transmission, but... we could make it work, the Damas and I. I just know we could overcome our differences and tell the rest of the world to go to hell.

Got a hamburger at a place staffed by teens, and it struck me how rarely I see that in Seattle. Growing up, fast food was a job for teenagers, but I mostly see adults behind the counter back home. A job at Wendy's is like a well-made pacifier, you'll suck it 'til yer old. What jobs do kids have now? Are they all Instagram influencers?

In any case, these cheerful hamburger-boys were all over me, taking legitimate delight in having a stranger in their midst. I was able to read the menu, but one made a point of coming over and speaking the name of each burger. The place had an "international" theme, so it was the Italian burger, the Spanish burger, etc. This was clearly indicated by national flags, but.. I think he just wanted to practice his English. I smiled, nodded and made appreciative sounds.

"Franch boorger," Ah! "Joorman boorger," Oh, my. "Bell-gum boorger," Very nice.

Whenever I looked up, the others winked at me. With my server's shoulder touching mine, and all the smiling and eye-meeting, I started to blush. It's been weeks since I've had human contact. I felt flirted with and distracted. I got the boorger with the Toorkish flag next to it.

Hilariously, there was a bottle of something called Uzbasco sauce on the table.

I read and ate. One of the boys came over to ask if I thought he could ever be a lawyer in America. I told him he had a very good chance. It wasn't a strange question, but not the one I expected. I paid and left to a baroque flourish of winks.

Back into the sunny, cool air, I made my way to the Tomb of Tamerlane! This guy! One of the biggest conquerors ever, the last major one before guns, anyway. He totally ruled and trashed this part of the world and most of the parts around it. He was also super into the arts, which most of them weren't. He was like Conan with season tickets to the opera.

Also, his name, like the name Samarkand, rhymes with a bunch of stuff, so English poets got all worked up about him. These words became symbols of "the Orient" in a billion hilarious odes and sonnets written by Shelley's fainting fans.

I wasn't quite getting the sense of silk and spice, but I was responding to the peace of the place, the birdsong and the Tourist Police. The tourist police! These stations were most places, little stands with a dude or two inside, there to help you out. The term seemed sarcastic to me, though. "Hey, give me back my passport!" Pfft, who's gonna help you, the tourist police?

I did not enter the resting place of Tamerlane, but I made myself laugh calling the road to his grave "Tomber Lane."

Further along was The Registan, a grouping of three mosques set in a large plaza and often referred to as the most majestic site in Central Asia. It was certainly very impressive with many very beautiful arches with delicate mosaics and towers that seemed at once both fragile and eternal.

A big deal is made of the image of a lion on one of the mosques as it was forbidden under Islamic law to depict living creatures. You can tell they were out of practice, because the lion has stripes like a tiger. It's one of the very few images, I am told, of an animal in classic Islamic art (there's also a goofy face floating above it). This law, they say, is why the patterns in carpets, pottery, textiles, etc, are so ornate and developed, it's because abstract art was what was allowed. It was just too too non-representational, darling.

This is what the guide book said and was repeated in the fragments of eavesdropped conversations from tour guides I overheard. I'm a great one for overhearing.

                                     

Long walk home where, surely, the room would be ready. It was, and my bags had been well cared for. I stretched out and read myself to sleep. The place was huge, with two large beds in two large rooms, and there was some concern another tenant would show up in the middle of the night, but in the morning I was alone.

I slept in, since I had hit most of the highlights the previous day. Made myself tea, wrote, read, caught up on the terrible political news from back home, and made my way slowly to a coffee shop where I read some more. I got to the part where Stalin feels like he can't kill Shostakovich because he's too famous to throw in the gulag.

There were also some interesting parallels between Stalin and the current US president. Like, those Big Bad Names from the 40s have been overused so much, they've lost a lot of their power. Saying someone is like Hitler now is like saying they're The Devil. Oh no, not The Devil. I've heard he's pretty bad.

And part of the dulling of them as symbols of evil is that their evil is almost incomprehensible. But they were men, and they have a profile. In Stalin's case, he was a charismatic narcissist who people were afraid to speak the truth to. He thought he was a genius and an expert at everything, even things he had absolutely no experience with. He shot the generals and scientists and scholars who told him things that didn't fit with his private reality, and when he was proven to be a complete fool (Hitler played him for a total sucker), he just collapsed.

Since all the competent people were dead or in jail, the government had to track him down in his vacation house where he was sitting in the dark in complete disbelief that he'd been wrong about something.

This is the parallel profile of the current US President. If something bad he can't ignore happens, he's going to completely shut down, unable to process the actual.

Anyway, those were my breakfast thoughts.

Long walk to Shah i Zinda past many billboards. The advertising here goes full Miss Becky. It's all pictures of road-weary white ladies taking selfies in front of The Registan. In English, they say "Make Samarkand Your Own!" and "See Central Asia." It was the most realistic type of this thing I've seen. Usually, it's a an impossibly beautiful nuclear family of open-mouthed yuppies pointing in wonder. These ads depicted the tourist reality.

It was the time of afternoon when the grass is cut with scissors, and I saw large groups of women maintaining the many park lawns in this way.

Passing through a large, sprawly market I bought walnuts and stepped over piles of pig's legs and buckets of liver. They have a very interesting and distinct way of displaying spices here. In other country's markets, you have the sections, drawers, or containers piled into a little pyramidal mound of saffron or paprika or whatever it is. Here, the spice pile is flat with a clear glass full of that spice on top of it. There was something functional and... geometric about it that I liked.

My boots are dusty as Miss Becky at the Registan, but I turned down a wandering man with a brush who offered to clean them. It reminded me of the time in Vietnam the guys chased me down the street yelling "Ugly shoe!! Ugly shoe!!"

I really did run from them.

The Shah-i-Zinda was breathtaking, my favorite "official" site of the trip so far. A long, narrow corridor of beauty with images of "the Orient." I felt like a fainting fan of Shelley. Curved archways with views that looked like the "gateway to the East." It was like the place mat from a Central Asian restaurant come to life. 

Cold wind curling around the tombs, cold sunlight splashing on the smooth stone, explosive constellations of tile. Just as I was feeling like all Timurid architecture was the same, they struck me with this doozy. The mausoleums winked like burger-boys.  

It was seismic. 

I floated home to see if Shostakovich was going to starve to death in Leningrad or not.  On the way, I prevented my own starvation with a greasy pile of plov. It wasn't good, but I'd had a very good day. I had seen Shah-i-Zinda and made Samarkand my own. 

Slept in the enormous two-bed palace and prepared for a morning in Bukhara. 

Lord Help the Mister

If we assume that every recognizable tune carries a valuable secret message, then what precisely does Shostakovich mean when, in his intense Second Cello Concerto, he quotes an Odessan jingle called "Pretzels, Buy My Pretzels?"

At the market yesterday, I saw a birdcage stuffed with parakeets, just jam-packed with them. Sparrows, free for the time-being, would land on the cage and eat the seed through the bars. The image struck me with the strength of metaphor.

Though I was taking it quite slowly, Tashkent was blurring by. It's a large, beautiful city. Not as compactly walkable as Bishkek but with an easy charm and the signs of "progress," everywhere. It kind of felt like Baku's country cousin.

It looked like they were giving it a shot, but it's hard for a rising tide to lift all ships in a landlocked country,

It doesn't have "destination" landmarks like some of the other cities, which I appreciated. There are some famous mosques, but the rest of this trip is going to be mosquepalooza, and I didn't want to get burned out. My time here was designed to recharge and to sketch an outline for the remaining time. Two weeks left, and the itinerary is open with really only a vague idea of seeing Khiva at some point and an absolute hard deadline of being back in Istanbul on a specific date to catch my flight back home.

Which I miss. Home. I have a beautiful life there and many people who I love and who love me. I took this trip because I was inspired to, and I had a window to, but there have been times when I've felt like it was too long and too far. And that's an important lesson to learn as well. What does your heart need? What's the "right" balance between comfort and adventure? What do I want? When will I write? Because that, ultimately, is what I want to do.

Why do I always have one foot in the stirrup?

I lay in bed thinking about the imprisoned birds and how the birds just slightly above them in the literal pecking order were exploiting their situation, and remembered with a sudden mental thud I had forgotten about Peace Park. How had I let it slip? I'm like one of those people who leave their infant strapped in the back of the car.

Tashkent and Seattle are "sister cities." There's a Tashkent park in Seattle and a tiny Uzbek community, and the cities have been in communication and collaboration since the 1970s. That was, of course, (one of the) dark ages of the Soviet years, so the idea that Seattle was even allowed to speak to someone from Uzbekistan was revolutionary in itself.

The Russians always have two things in mind: Will this be good propaganda, and will this make money. They figured having two super-remote places have a relationship they could oversee and smooth over and control would make them look "open" and, the clincher, they figured it would help them start a business relationship with Boeing.

Russia doesn't make anything. They used to, but the experts they didn't kill ran away, so for the last fifty years they've relied on other countries' tech to keep their machines running. Economic sanctions and a bad reputation keep them down, so they run a million schemes. One of which is currently badly disrupting the United States.

However... sometimes something good comes out of their bullshit, and from what I've read this sister-city program was run by people on both sides who really cared. It was the very first such program between an American and Soviet city. They established Peace Parks in both cities to commemorate it.

Seeing if the park was still here had been a major thing on my list of things to do in Tashkent, and it was my last day here, and I had completely forgotten about it. The sparrows of distraction had stolen the seed from the cage of my desires! Or something! I got dressed and headed in that general direction. It did not appear on any map. Old websites showed where it might be. But.. the current map wasn't even green in that area. Had the park been bulldozed for condos?

I kind of used the shape of the streets to figure out where it could possibly be. The last information I had was ten years old, a group of Seattle people had come here to check it out in 2008. A lot can happen in that period of time. Seattle itself is almost unrecognizable from that time. There was no metro station near where I thought I needed to be, so I was denied the pleasure of the ride.

Can't be overstated how amazing the metro is here. I'm probably repeating myself, but it's the most beautiful in the world. I had been led to expect it, and I was not led astray. The stations are museums.

But no stops near the park's ghost, so I ate pickles and cherry tomatoes from a cup while I walked.

I wasn't sure I was there until I was. Sounding out a Cyrillic sign gave me See-eht-luh. I had found it. I had dove into the surf where it foamed the wildest and was flooded with the sense of a quest fulfilled! My nostrils quivered in the wind! It felt so good to discover it this way.

Past that sign was a cafe called Seattle written in English (or the Latin alphabet, anyway) and I headed toward it, only to quickly turn around. It was open, but it was very dark and didn't smell right to my quivering nostrils. I read later it was housed in an old granary, but it may be older than they knew.

Backed out and saw how it bordered a park, surely the Peace Park itself. A large, locked gate and block-long fence kept me out, but I saw two women inside. So, though I had walked some way already, I pushed on looking for bent bars I could slide through or an opening somewhere. Made it to the end of the block with no luck. Why was it so closed off?

Tested the perimeter and poked around until, behind a Korean restaurant and next to a dumpster full of kimchi fly-mansions, I found an access road that appeared to lead in. I walked down it figuring if I were stopped I could show my driver's license and say, "Seattle. See? No beat on, Seattle me."

Nobody was around, and I entered without impediment.

It was quiet, a little cold, and a perfect postcard of "autumn." Brown leaves crunching under my boots, yellow leaves stuck to the front of my boots. Keats was on my side, my hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind! By a cyder-press with patient look, I watched the last oozings hour by hour! 

A group of tree planters were decorated with tiles. I had read about these as well. In the late 80's, as the Soviet Union was crumbling/opening, Seattle school children painted and decorated over a thousand tiles and sent them here to beautify the park. Some were even allowed to come here and help assemble the structures. Seeing them, I was completely overcome and burst into tears, an ugly, joyful cry with twisted face and snot-filled nose.

It seemed so pure and beautiful to me. It was. Their little naive messages of friendship and sisterhood and peace. Was it fully the sentiment, or was it homesickness that triggered the raw emotion? It was objectively a beautiful project, but... it was also subjective. There was the Space Needle, there was a seahawk, there was the word Seattle. My home. I thought about the children in my life (Milo, Amber's daughter, Jerrica's children) and how this would have been their project had then been now.  I thought about Meg and Mark, Seattle natives, and how this could have been their project at a different age. It felt very personal, and I wondered what it meant to the people who grew up with it here. Did it mean anything to them?

I sat on a small bench near a weird statue of, like, peasant children toasting with bottles of milk (?) and finished the Zwieg memoir. I was shocked by the afterward saying Zwieg and his wife killed themselves when he finished writing it. I hadn't known when or how he'd died. Surprise. The power of the diary. You get to know someone by their own words, and you feel close to them, and you are affected by their fate.

Sorry, I forgot the spoiler warning.

So... I was just Little Miss Emotional in the Peace Park. I didn't have a napkin, so I just blew my nose on an advertisement for Kyrgyzstani cell phones I had been using as a bookmark. I wouldn't need it anymore.

Sober, inspired walk home. Or, that was the intent, but I was feeling so good I decided to instead walk to the train station to get my ticket to Samarkand. That way I would see more of the city, and I wouldn't have to worry about it being sold out in the morning or some shit.

Long, choppy walk across wide, wide six-to-eight lane roads, sometimes using pedestrian underpasses, sometimes racing over the yellow-and-white crosswalks with my leaf-wet boots. This became a less suburban part of the city, and the businesses were all places to get wifi routers and washing machines.

Took a chance and tried an ATM. There had been so much trouble getting money upon arrival, I was starting to worry about having enough to make it to the end. I was running pretty low on physical US dollars, and while everything has been dirt cheap... there will doubtless be some bill or situation that requires more than I had.

I struck out at the first few machines, which is typical on these trips. The bank swears up and down they know I'm there and I expect to be able to use my card, but... their word is as good as the soldier at the border who told me the bus would wait for me.

In this case, however, I had been using some kind of Uzbek-only "union card" machine. I thiiink it's for people to access their unemployment checks. They're everywhere, these machines. Eventually, something that was very clearly an ATM made the sound of a sparrow's wings as it steals the seed from a caged parakeet, and I had a gazillion som.

The train station was a mad scene. You can't just get a ticket. You have to get a ticket to be allowed access to the ticket counter. It took over an hour in a not-very-interesting building. My god, is this what the children of Seattle labored over those tiles for? To preserve a sluggish railway bureaucracy? Is this what the children of Seattle fought and died for?

But... my turn came, and I got what I needed. It was touch-and-go for a moment... I was supposed to show my passport, but I didn't have it with me. But I DID have a photograph of it on my phone, and they accepted that without question. That's a little trick I picked up... somewhere.

There WAS a metro station here, so I got another ride in its flawless, heaving mass-transportation bosom.  Went home, packed, spent some time deciding which book I would read next. Ate more tomatoes and pickles, then went out for a fish sandwich.

I wrote for the rest of the evening. It had been a beautiful day full of emotion and meaning. I went to bed early to preserve it.