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.

Trouble at the Border

Before this trip, I renewed my passport to make sure I had enough pages for visas. Entry isn't automatic for US citizens everywhere in this part of the world. I had hoped to get the "sticker"-type visa for Uzbekistan, but time and chance didn't allow this to manifest, so I used an online service. I had had success with this in the past. The same company had helped me get my visa for Turkey.

The midnight bus to Tashkent was populated with elderly riders straight out of central casting. Crafty old babushkas with gold teeth and plastic bags full of salami, old drunks in tight hats, empty cigarette packets in their shirt pockets, worried-looking middle aged women with very young children. 

A bunchy of shady-looking dudes were at the platform selling currency. The famous "black market" I'd read so much about. I chose not to do business with them, but I was certainly tempted. I just love seedy underbellies, don't you? Hucked my bag in the bus-guts and boarded. It was late, I was a little sweaty from the panicked race to make the bus, so I started to drift off right away. 

But an old lady begged me with her eyebrows to please let her old friend have my seat. So I switched. As it turned out, I was now behind them, and they both reclined their seats as far as they could. Which, on this bus, was very far. I was completely trapped. 

One of the drunks screwed himself in next to me, and thus crated I was taken on the road to Tashkent.

The route involved several border crossings. The roads and, perhaps, the mountains, obligate traffic leaving Bishkek to head north into Kazakhstan, west a while, then eventually south into Uzbekistan. I had thought I might sleep for eight hours, cross the border and wake up in Tashkent (it looked like a straight shot West to my naive Western eyes). But, we stopped every ninety minutes or so for one reason or another, sometimes needing to take all of our baggage out of the bus-belly while inspectors searched the seat cushions for poppy seeds. It was a serious business. Military rifles and truncheons. The hubcaps were removed and the wheelwells inspected.

Since we had to carry all of our possessions at every checkpoint, I became very familiar with the wheelchairs and bicycle wheels the other riders had to lug through every customs building. They used them to force their way forward. Everyone did this, used whatever they had to gain any temporary advantage in line. None of your quaint notions of "after you" or "ladies first," It was a free-for-all of elbows, handlebars, and salamis. I stayed out of it, which meant I was always last in line, which meant the bus always had to wait for me. Since my passport is "exotic," it took a little longer to process.

For some reason, the Kazakhs were exceptionally brusque with the old ladies, snapping in their faces, and slapping their passports against counters. It was strange and aggressive. What did grandma do to you, customs agent?

Usually there was a tragic toilet at the other end of these gauntlets, and the driver waited for everyone to debase themselves. I have a pretty bad gag reflex, and over the years it's gotten worse. I've gotten incredibly sensitive to bathroom smells, often close (it feels), to throwing up. This... is not the part of the world to have this problem. The toilets are just holes in the ground with boards nailed on either side to keep you from falling in. No dividers either, so you just squat and shit next to another shitting squatter.  Hey, buddy.

I was frequently walking in on travelers mid-crap, men who looked like sections removed from a totem pole.

At one such stop, I shared my water bottle with one of the drunks and knew regret. He looked thirsty, and it felt like the right thing to do with and for a fellow traveler, but it absolutely ruined the water. It tasted and smelled like tobacco and Sterno afterward and may have made me sick.  Lack of sleep and drunkard's saliva had me hallucinating in my seat. Strange visions and a sometime inability to know wake from sleep.

Well, darling, it was just too too hypnopompic.

I took a dream sip of water and imagined it had tiny plastic capsules of nicotine floating in it. They burst on my teeth. The front window of the bus was like an enormous movie screen and I believed it showed us plow through a family of cocker spaniels. They had been standing in the road. Much brain activity was spent trying to determine if this had actually happened. There had been no sound, the bus hadn't slowed. And yet, I began to tear up in my sleep thinking we had had no choice but to move forward. Why had they been in the road? Why that breed?

I do not now think this is real. I think it was sleep deprivation mixed with frequent actual images of animals in the road on previous drives. But, the tears were real. I danced with old friends at the front of the bus to Queen's "A Kind of Magic." This was absolutely a dream. And yet... I heard the music.

In this condition, I arrived in Uzbekistan.

There was the usual inside-out flea market rush for the customs counter. Heavy bed frames and duct-taped skis thrusting and pushing. I was by this time near the very back of the line. Though around eighty people were waiting, only two dudes were processing, and they were holding high carnival, cracking one another up laughing at people's pictures and possessions.

A sign on the wall read "We figt corruption," which misspelling aside, I assumed meant I wouldn't be asked to pay a bribe. I was asked, however, to wait. All jokes stopped when I produced my visa and it was found wanting. The company I'd bought it from had either processed it incorrectly or it was fraudulent.

I was in my customary place in the back of the line, so there was already the anxiety of the bus wanting to leave without me. This just ratcheted that up a notch. I kept waiting for the guy to shrug and stamp my passport anyway, but that shrug never came. Instead, a series of phone calls and procession of bosses, each with a larger pancake on his hat than the last.

An English Speaker was fetched. He was a young soldier, happy to have an excuse to practice his language skills. "You are problem," he said, "this visa is not systeming."

"No to worry. I will not let your bus leave. We will hold it for you."

This was relieving, though I feared it would give time for the drunks to sober up and be angry. Every other passenger had passed through by now, and I was alone in the customs center. I pictured myself boarding in a few minutes and getting an ironic cheer.

But more than a few minutes passed. A dude just kept typing the visa number into a computer and scowling at it. "Did you get this on the internet?" asked Young English. "Yes," I said.

Since I am the age I am, I thought of the line from Return of the Jedi, "It was an older code sir, but it checks out."

But it wasn't checking out.

(I'm an alligator. I'm a mama papa coming for you)

I was eventually shown to a bench where I read the Zweig and tried to look harmless. I tried to keep a sort of sad-but-hopeful expression. I was as pitiful and harmless as a cocker spaniel on the highway. The energy in the room was low-key, and I wasn't afraid it would turn violent or I would be arrested or anything. I figured in the worst case I would be denied entry and have to spend the rest of the trip in Kyrgyzstan. 

Which would have been fine. 

My spirits were high. I just trusted it would work out. I wasn't sleepy, and I wasn't high on hobo spit any more. Just.. waiting. And... either I didn't show up on any Interpol lists, didn't look like I had poppy seeds in my wheelwell, or they stopped caring.  There came the anticipated shrug, and the stamp machine went snicker-snack, and I was allowed through. 

My bus was not there. 

Barely Legal was like, "Your bus leave. But not worry. I will make another take you. They will do it." 

And this happened. The next bus that came through, the driver was told to take this VIP to Tashkent for free with no questions asked. It was a nicer bus, and I had plenty of leg room. An hour later, we were there. 

And then my troubles began.  

For reasons unknown, the very large bus station in the very large city had no money-exchange and no internet. Taxi drivers were all over me, but even if I'd wanted to let them rob me, I had nothing to rob. I heard a guy yelling "Nyet! Nyet!" in an Australian accent, and that cracked me up all over the place. I had not heard that combination before. He was fighting off a taxi driver.

I gave him the Nod of Acknowledgement, and he was like, "Firstoim, inna 'kent?" The Kent! I said yes, He asked if I'd gotten money yet. I told him that he had precisely sensed my problem. "Shoulda got it when you boarded, mate. Only place to."

I assumed he meant the black market guys. He asked me if I needed any walking around change, and I told him I would be ok, I would find an exchange counter in or around the station. He winked and said, "You'd be the firs, mate." Then he left.

I was not the first. There was no place to get money. Some busted ATMs looked like homes for raccoons, and there was no exchange counter. None of the shady dudes either. I went ahead and used international roaming data to try and summon a cab, but the app failed.

So, I hauled my plastic nicotine capsules around the block for... a very long time. I thought a hotel might take my money, but they did not. Eventually I wandered into the Metro to see if maybe they had a machine that would let me use a credit card to buy a token.

I approached some Uzbek guards and explained my problem. They did not speak very much English and didn't seem to understand. But they were friendly. One of them asked me where I was from, and when I said California, he lit up. "California! California!" He looked at his buddy, and his buddy gave me a subway token. For free.

The absolute fortune of that. The absolute kindness. There were delays and hangups and hassles, and every time a local functionary helped me out in some overly kind way. I was overwhelmed with gratitude. Enhanced by the fact that the Tashkent Metro is the most beautiful in the world. Much has been written on this established fact. And there I was.. in it. And it was just as they said. More on this later.

My room was near Cosmonaut Station, so I figured out the map and got myself there. Met my host, dropped off my bags and crashed hard. Woke up before it got too dark to find a bank. When I did, I traded $40 for an enormous wad of bills. It was a cartoon. The current exchange rate is 9,400 som to the dollar, so I suddenly had four-hundred thousand bucks in small bills. They had to wrap them in a rubber band.

I got some tea for a dime and went back to bed.

The next day went by in a tired fog. I don't even really have a sense of the city other than the fact that the people, even the cops, were exceptionally kind. I photographed a memorial to the cosmonauts and felt pride in the accomplishments of our awful, awful species. We put a person in space. I'm a Cosmic Native, so I take that shit for granted most of the time, but these elegant bronzes made me feel the absolute wonder of it.

As well, I marveled at an enormous market. It was twice as large as the Osh Market, but three times as organized. I bought one of those giant bread circles and ate the whole thing. In a covered produce area, I paid a dollar for what felt like two gallons of pickles and cherry tomatoes. I had just wanted some walking-around pickles and asked for a dollar's worth. The ladle kept dipping in.

The economics of this place is very confusing to me. Everything is incredibly cheap. I thought with 400,000 bucks I'd be paying fifty grand for everything, but everything was thirty cents or less.

The whole second day here flew by in a confetti of thousand-dollar bills. Was I still on the bus? Was I still dreaming?

Picnic at Burana Tower

The birds here I most love and have not before seen are smallish robin-sized guys with yellow circles around their eyes and white-lined tail feathers. These sweet jaunty city-birds join the enormous-beaked crows of Almaty as my favorite fauna of the trip.

When prepping for the trip as a whole, the inspiration had been Samarkand, but I found the reading I did about Kyrgyzstan to be the most exciting. The itinerary I put together is flexible, but a must-see is Khiva in Western Uzbekistan. So distant is this city, there's not enough time to see it and the wilds of Kyrgyzstan, and thus... I was limited to what I could reasonably do around Bishkek. 

Delightfully, one of those things was a day trip to Burana Tower, the last remaining structure of a 9th century city. It also features a graveyard with "balbals," which are headstones shaped like people. I was very curious to see these thousand-year-old memorials. 

There were many tours to Burana Tower, but I was determined to try public transportation. I don't think I'm exceptionally brave or exceptionally confident, so it wasn't an act of heroism or anything. I tried it because I was curious and felt I would see more and experience more doing it this way. It also wasn't very far away. 

I also needed to figure out how I was going to get to Tashkent. I had another night in this apartment, but if there was an overnight bus or train to Uzbekistan, it was worth it to me to eat the night to make sure I arrived in Tashkent during the day. It would have been a serious hassle to have my room here expire and have to lug my bags around the city for six hours waiting for a bus. And then, what if I arrived at my destination at 4am? Lord Almaty! 

So, the plan for the day was: Walk to the bus station and figure out how to get to Tashkent, see if I could catch a marshrutka to Burana Tower while I was there, get back and take one last sweep of the city. Solid! I packed my camera and that Zweig memoir. I figured if I kept reading it, it had to end sometime. 

Nice, long walk in search of a breakfast between my starting point and the station. It was fairly early, but things were coming to life. I'm really taken by this comfortable, rough-around-the-edges, park-filled place. This was a direction I hadn't walked in yet, so there was the challenge to see thing and also not cripple myself on the Galloping Gertie sidewalk.

Pushed forward lazily, passing other early risers, until eventually making it to the bustling Osh Market. The city of Osh is far south of Bishkek and is supposed to have the best market in the region, and this place named after the place I wouldn't be able to get to was going to have to do.

Old bakers sat on overturned buckets and sold bread on tables made from cinderblocks and planks. Large, round loaves with intricate designs in the crust. Almost too pretty too eat, but folks were buying them two at a time and tearing off chunks. Little Hot Pocket-like treats called samsi (like sandwich!) were offered as well. I wanted one, but got seduced by a covered area selling coffee and omelets.

Every table had, like, infused vinegar on it along with the salt and pepper. It would be a little glass container with a slice of red pepper or.. something floating in it. I was charmed, so I sat. The meal was unexceptional, and an attempt to enliven it with a curlicue of ketchup made it even sadder somehow. I ate the while thing, though, sprinkled with vinegar.

The market was an astounding place. Lively and exciting with people bargaining for.. everything from apricots to iPhone covers. It was like the PG version of the markets I saw in Sicily. Those still stand out as a visceral horror, but this Osh Market felt like a community affair. This is the man who sells your father the meat we cook. This is the woman who makes the socks we wear. There was a general, thrilling sense that this was where you go to get what you need, and not a Target logo to be seen.

Men wore big, triangular felt hats unironically.

Fortified, I left it for the bus station. On the way, I passed a shawarma place who had taken the McDonalds M and inverted it to make a W for their sign. The W is pronounced "sh" in the Cyrillic alphabet, a sound I remember because the picture dictionary I learned from had meat grilling on the "skewers" of the W. So... Waypma was Shuh--oo--r-muh.

Anyway, I thought it was exceptionally clever to incorporate and subvert the golden arches that way. It's the kind of thing I look for and enjoy on these long walks. Eventually made my way to the "autobus voksal" and found the kassa counter. 

The lady didn't speak English but was very patient with my mimicry and was careful to make sure I was getting exactly what I wanted. She would write down numbers (the universal language! Sort of!) and make sure I acknowledged the date as accurate, etc. With mostly pointing and eyebrows we were able to work out: Tashkent. Tonight. No tomorrow, tonight. Yes. This day. Bus tonight Tashkent.

I've had people close the window in my face or tell me to find a translator or just to take the next bus, so this was a welcome counter encounter. I touched my heart and took the ticket. There were still numbers all over it. Like, one meant my seat number (I think) and one meant the platform (probably) and one meant... something else. The 23:30 meant the departure time (for sure). But I had hours to figure the rest out.

Popped out to find a marshrutka to Tokmok, the closest town to the tower.

You're supposed to get to Tokmok, then bargain with a taxi to take you to the tower, get him to WAIT for you while you do the place, then get him to take you back. I figured I'd get to Tokmok and work it out from there. I typed "You take me Burana and back?" into my phone just in case. The station had a single bar of wifi.

Out to the massive parking lot where the vans lived!

It was simple enough to find the right one. You cock your head like a bird with a yellow ring around its eye and listen out for "Tokmok, Tokmok!" There were over a hundred vans, but I used my sonar to locate the right combination of sounds and my radar to locate a seat. It was much cheaper than I'd been led to believe, by the magnitude of several hundred soms, which relieved some of the pressure of bargaining with the taxi once I was there. I figured I was already ahead of the game, so...

Easy ride there, really only about an hour. The roads were better than the sidewalks. About halfway there, a giant gang of ladies in headscarves bum-rushed the van, so it was kind of a crush and I had to stop reading, but it was exciting to hear them laughing and talking about... their stuff.

Got out at what I hoped was Tokmok, and my hopes were fully realized by a weird old Soviet structure with the town name on it and an old hammer-and-sickle billboard with a golden laurel painting. I'm going to guess the people didn't care enough to tear it down or paste a cell phone advertisement over it.

Some cabs were hanging out at the drop off, likely waiting for folks Burana-bound folks like me. I had my translator ready, but instead of using it, I found myself blurting out "Burana?" to the first guy I saw. He balanced his palms like Libra scales and asked for about eight bucks. Probably a high price, but I was in a good mood, under budget, and felt like making his day. I agreed.

I hoped the Libra-scale hands meant "I will wait." I don't know why I thought this. I just wanted it to mean that.

Easy drive over a distance that would have been a too-long walk. Quiet little back roads under canopies of broad-leafed trees. Fields spread out behind them, all the way (it seemed) to the white-topped mountains. It was like a car commercial. It was like a credit card commercial. Sun filtered through the branches and made dappled patterns on the flanks of the cows who blocked the road.

The tower was in a national park, and it was a Sunday. I've lost all track of days. But it was open. And many locals were there enjoying the peace of the place. The taxi stopped, and here was the moment of truth. Would he wait? The key would be if he asked for money or not. I slowly reached for the door handle. He turned around and pointed to a shady area where a few other cars were parked. I took this to mean that's where he would wait (!!). I was acting on a lot of faith here.

And he hadn't gotten his money yet, so.. surely. I got out and walked toward the tower, the tip of which I could see rising in the distance.

An enormous family sat by the roadside on an enormous carpet. It was so beautiful to see the old women in their traditional clothing, intricate blouses and red headscarves. They sat together on the long carpet keeping the flies off of what looked like carrot and mayonnaise salads while the men barbecued a whole lamb a short distance away. It was picnic in the park, a regular Sunday outing.

I felt sentimental. And privileged to see it. I mean, it's the most normal thing in the world, but so different from the way I live my own life (so many people! outside! making their own food!) it brought up emotions that were difficult to classify.   

The tower area was wide open, and a perfect breeze blew down from the hills. It was absolutely gorgeous. It felt like Iceland in a way or like I imagine those Northern Scottish islands must be like.  A windswept plain with ancient stone markers. My heart was already swollen from seeing the happy family at their picnic, and my spirits rose further at the simple beauty of the experience. It just FELT good. I transcended my cares and my body and just experienced the pure air and the silence.

If one of those birds had shown up, I would have just lain there and let it make a nest in my freshly camouflaged beard. 

The bulbuls (is that the plural?) were also beautiful, everything was to me in this place. Some of them looked a little like the Lewis chessmen. Helmets and mustaches. Weatherworn and enduring.

You can climb the tower, and I have climbed similar structures on similar trips, but one look at the stairs and I decided to leave it for younger, thinner people. No way I was going to cram my bulbul in that narrow space without crawling and sweating. And I was already full of love without needing to add a physical accomplishment on top of it.

The taximan was true. When I left, there he sat. I walked past the picnic and saw they had advanced to the meat course. It smelled like memory.

The ride back went smoothly. The driver handed me a piece of notebook paper on which someone had written for him in English: "I will take you church 1000."

I thanked him with a hand on his shoulder, but I declined. He was pleasant about the declination and took me right back to the marshrutka station where he shouted excitedly: "Bishkek! Bishkek!"

I paid him and went where he had pointed. Sure enough, a van was leaving that very moment. I boarded and we were off. Just like that. Bye, Burana. Toodle-oo, Tokmok.

This marshrutka was all business, and the driver had an angry Russian woman counting the money and shaking her money fist at folks. She kept counting what she had and glaring at the riders with an expression like "Pot's light, motherfuckers. One of you soggy loaves didn't pay." It was true. Someone in the back passed up a crumpled 100-som bill. It went through everyone's hands. A 50-som bill, the change, came back the same way.

No stops, we were back in Bishkek in about 45 minutes. After all of that, it was still just early afternoon. I had intended to walk back through the market, but... the dropoff was a totally different bus station in a totally different part of town.

Shrugged and headed the way I thought Ala-Too Square must be.

It's a compact city with contained sprawl. Big enough to get lost in, once you get out of the center, but not so large you find yourself wandering long stretches with no people or structures. I have often found myself in similar circumstances kicking rocks near rock factories, but everything here has been visibly connected to everything else.

That said, I wasn't anywhere I'd been yet, so I just walked along the road and went the way the cars were going. I passed a closed shop with a stone bee in front of it. The bee was cartoonized and held a bucket. Did he represent industriousness or was he selling a bucket of his honey? A bee can mean so many things!

A large, curved monument tickled the horizon, so I made a cartoon, stone beeline for it. Turned out to be some sort of memorial war park with an eternal flame and a cool statue of two young men carrying artillery. I quite liked that one, because it seemed to represent the slog of war rather than just the glory. They weren't flinging their arms out to bust a cap in a Kraut, they were lugging a heavy piece of machinery to where it was needed. I liked it because it didn't seem like "recruiting."

Some Koreans were getting married under the arch structure. In the distance, a weird UFO-shaped building had letters that looked like they said "park" on it. Probably an old circus!

The streets have names here, but there aren't really street signs. You kind of have to luck out with an address number on a storefront. I saw something that looked like Chuy Ave, and that was the main drag in town, so I turned down it, and damned if it didn't lead to Ala-Too Square. Ala too easy. I'm going to make that joke forever.   

Sunday afternoon, and the city was alive in a way I hadn't yet seen it. Food trucks and crowds. It struck me I had meant to contact my host about printing out my visa for Uzbekistan. Since I would be leaving a day early, I had less time to do that. I wondered if maybe... there would be a copy shop of some kind...open... maybe.

I walked among the locals as they enjoyed the sun and ate ice cream and lined up at the kebab houses. Plazas and shopping centers. Men selling lottery tickets. Women selling honey. In a little underground pedestrian mall, I found a kiosk with computers and printers. It was like I'd willed it into existence.

No English, but I pointed to my phone, pointed to a sign with an email address on it, pointed to a printer, and made a "zzt zzt" sound. It fucking worked. I felt like Marcel goddamn Marceau getting the Nobel Prize in the form of a cheesy-looking visa printed on glossy stock. I think this kiosk was for kids to print out their Instagram photos, and I was grateful for it. I don't usually need to have a physical visa, it's usually already in their system, or you can show the digital copy, but I was going to take a midnight bus, and if I was going to have to pass my docs to the front (as happens sometimes), I didn't want to hold everybody up.

Foreshadowing: This turned out to be a very good thing to have done.

I ate a gang of chicken samsi at a little place adjacent to the Square, coffeed up, tried to use up all my som, but there wasn't a water bottle big enough to spend it all on. Wrote, read, and at night I raced to the bus station. It took some doing, the cabs were all on a break or some shit, but I made it on time and bid a fulfilled farewell to Bishkek and, I suppose, Kyrgyzstan.

Fuck, I never bought a magnet.