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."*
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.*
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