Daily Life in Turkmenbashy's Golden Age

by Sam Tranum

  After the presentations, we scattered. Some stayed at Hindukush to swim and lounge. Others walked up to the road to find a taxi. Soon only the four Peace Corps Volunteers, Begench, and Umida remained. We lazed around until the sun started to get low in the sky. Then we packed our things and walked up the sandy path to the road to find a taxi home. Begench disappeared for a minute and then reappeared, running up the path after us, carrying a plastic Coke bottle full of cloudy, yellow water. Six boys in their late teens who were wearing nothing but the white briefs they’d been swimming in were chasing him, yelling insults.

  Begench ran past us, putting us between him and the underwear posse. From the yelling and cursing and Begench’s breathless explanation, I gathered that Begench had gone to a nearby spring to fill his bottle with sulfur water that he thought might help his acne. The posse had been hanging out near the spring and had insisted Begench pay them for the water. Begench, charming guy that he was, told them to fuck themselves and then ran to hide behind Alei and I. If they hadn’t already been ready to beat him up for taking “their” water without paying, they were ready to whip him for what he’d said while he was running away.

  I stepped in to try to calm things down, apologizing to the posse on Begench’s behalf. But I was speaking Russian and they were country boys – they didn’t understand me very well, which annoyed them even more. So Alei tried to defuse things in Turkmen. That didn’t help either.

  Why don’t you talk to us in Russian? You think we’re too stupid, we don’t understand Russian?” one of them yelled.

  They closed in around us and started pushing and cursing. Alei and I told Ngai, Kelly, Umida, and Begench to go up to the road and find a taxi. They moved a little way up the path, and lingered there, not wanting to leave us behind. A short, wiry man in his 30s with a black beard appeared from somewhere and started urging the teenagers to attack us. One of the boys, thinking he was Jean-Claude Van Damme but forgetting I had four or five inches on him, tried to kick me in the head. I leaned back and his heel whizzed past my chest. Another leaned in and threw a sloppy punch at me, which I also managed to avoid.

  While I was distracted, the man with the beard, the ringleader, darted into the fray, ripped my backpack off my shoulder and ran away. I chased after him and tried to grab it back. I pulled on one shoulder strap and he pulled on the other, our feet braced in the sand.

  “You’re not going to get out of here alive,” he hissed at me.

  All of a sudden my head lit up and I lost track of things for a second. One of the boys had snuck up behind me and punched me in the side of the face while I was focused on getting my bag back. When the world cleared up, I had what felt like some pebbles in my mouth. I spit them on the ground and yanked my backpack out of the bearded man’s hands. He slunk away to a safe distance. I walked up the hill to where Alei was still trying to fend off the posse. They were going after his backpack, too, but he didn’t seem worried.

  “Look, you can have the backpack,” he said calmly. “Just let me grab my passport out of it first, okay?”

  Attracted by the posse’s yelling and cursing, a crowd of picnickers started to gather around us. I weighed my options. If Alei and I fought the boys, we’d almost certainly lose. We might even get our faces smashed in with the bricks and rocks the boys were starting to collect. On the other hand, there was nowhere to run. So I just kept retreating up the path, pushing the boys back when they got too close, arguing with them in Russian.

  “Aren’t you a man?” they jeered. “Won’t you fight us?” they taunted.

  Then, all of a sudden, Umida was next to me. She was in her late teens, strikingly beautiful, and furious.

  “What’s wrong with you!?” she yelled at the boys. “These are guests in our country! They’re teachers! Have some respect!”

  The boys paused.

  “I know you,” she continued, jabbing a finger at them. “I know where you live. I know your parents. You should be ashamed of yourselves.”

  Umida’s rant didn’t have much effect on the boys. When she was done, they went back to taunting and pushing and throwing looping punches and telling us they were going to kill us. Her speech had a big effect on the crowd that had gathered to watch the fight, though. On some silent cue, they formed a human shield around us. The underwear posse backed off.

  Our protectors, mostly teenaged boys and girls, led us up to the road, to a spot under an apricot tree. While we waited for a ride into town, they picked apricots for us and apologized for what had happened. My body humming with adrenaline, I munched on a handful of warm, juicy apricots and paced up and down the road. There was something sharp in my mouth that kept poking the inside of my lip. I ran my tongue over my teeth. One of them had a chunk busted out of it and another had a chip missing.

  Ten minutes later, we flagged down two cars and convinced them to take us to the ice cream shop in Yolotan where Umida’s younger sister Malika worked. Sitting at one of the tables on the sidewalk outside the shop, eating bowls of soft-serve vanilla ice cream drizzled with homemade strawberry sauce, we told Malika what had happened. I showed her my chipped teeth. After we finished our ice cream, we all found our own ways home.

  When I got back to Nurana, dinner was ready. Over plov, I told Jeren and Döwlet what had happened. I showed Kümüsh and Altyn my chipped teeth. Döwlet looked worried and told me he was glad I was all right. Jeren looked disappointed and told me that Alei and I should have fought the boys, should have taught them not to mess with Americans. I lay on my dushek for a long time that night, staring at the ceiling and thinking about whether I’d done the right thing. I decided I had. True, my pride was hurt and a couple of my teeth were chipped, but no one had gotten robbed or had their face bashed in with a brick. Things had worked out well.

  32.

  Going Home

  Spring was wedding season. Young brides paraded through the dirt streets of Nurana, draped in silver jewelry like chain mail, their heads and shoulders covered with embroidered ceremonial jackets. They moved like silently, their mouths hidden by the tails of the kerchiefs that covered their hair. Attended by sisters, female cousins, or girlfriends, they shuffled from house to house in their grooms’ neighborhoods, introducing themselves to their new communities. I was at Islam’s house, watching a World Cup soccer match when three brides appeared together at the door to pay their respects to his wife. They’d decided that, since their future neighbors were obliged to lay out klionkas covered with food for visiting brides, they would make things easier for their hosts and visit together.

  In May and June, I went to a couple of wedding parties (tois) every week with Döwlet and Jeren. We would iron our clothes, shine our shoes, and drive out to some kolkhoz or other. Döwlet still called them by their old names: Marxism, Leninism, Communism. The tois were usually outside. It wasn’t going to rain, after all – it was the desert. In the dusty yard outside the groom’s house, the cooks would be tending giant cauldrons of soup or plov that were simmering over wood fires. Rows of tables would be loaded with pastries and sweets, chorek and salads, vodka and soda. At first, there would be only a sprinkling of people. Women in their embroidered koyneks, their hair covered with their best kerchiefs, would gather inside the house or at the tables. Men in dark suits would stand in tight groups near the cauldrons, smoking, or spitting nas, a mysterious green powder that’s rumored to include ingredients ranging from tobacco to opium, chicken shit to saksaul ashes.109 The children would run in giggling packs around and through the house, skirting the men at their cauldrons, sneaking sweets from the tables.

  By the time the plov was ready, the tables would be packed with two or three hundred people. We would eat before the sun went down, since there usually wasn’t good outdoor lighting. Elbow-to-elbow at long banquet tables, we’d shovel food into our mouths and drink vodka toasts to the bride and groom. When it got dark, the music would start. Parked on one of the dirt roads near the house there would be a trailer – an ordinary looking metal box
from a tractor-trailer rig. One of the long sides would fold up to reveal a makeshift stage inside. There, in the belly of the trailer, the wedding singer would stand among microphone cables, power cords, speakers, amps, and flashing, colored Christmas lights.

  I only ever saw one wedding singer sing. Most of them just lip-synched to recordings of popular songs. Sometimes they even had fake bands – guys who pretended to play drums or tambourines. Niyazov had banned lip-synching, complaining that performers were forgetting how to sing.110 Like many of his decrees, though, it had no apparent effect outside the cities. When the singer started the music, the guests would flow from the tables to the street to dance under the stars and the flashing lights.

  Going to tois was fun, but it was also challenging. Turkmen take pride in their hospitality. Some become overly enthusiastic hosts when they get drunk, forcing their guests to eat, drink, and dance more and more – whether they like it or not – and berating them if they don’t cooperate. The biggest problem was vodka. To make it through toi season without dying of alcohol poisoning, I had to develop a strategy. I ate as much fatty meat as I could, as early as I could, and continued to eat slowly but steadily all night long. If the shots of vodka started to overwhelm the cushion of food in my stomach, I had other tricks: covertly pouring my vodka onto the ground instead of into my mouth; raising my glass to toast but only sipping the shot instead of throwing it all back; and, in true crisis situations, simply offending my hosts by refusing to drink more.

  Once I learned the tricks, I really enjoyed tois. So when Cennet, a Peace Corps Volunteer who lived in Murgab, said she wanted to have a toi before she returned to the US, I latched onto the idea. I had wanted to do something nice for my friends from Nurana before I left. I would throw them a giant party. I’d seen how much they liked tois. I talked it over with Jeren at dinner one evening and she thought it was a great idea: she was full of advice, which I wrote down; she even helped me plan and price out a menu. In fact, she got her whole extended family involved (and several Peace Corps Volunteers pitched in, too). Cennet also played an important role. She agreed to be the bride, fake-marrying her friend Cam. We set the date: June 14. A week before the event, the local government began to complain that we didn’t have permission to throw a party. We ignored them.

  I started shopping two days before the party. I’d take a taxi into Murgab and head to the bazaar, where merchants hawked everything from basil to books, from peanuts to matches. I’d wade through the cars and the crowds, browsing. I bought so many shopping bags full of onions, potatoes, green peppers, tomatoes, scallions, herbs, beets, cabbages, cotton seed oil, rice, and beans that I had to hire a boy with a cart to haul it all to Jeren’s parents’ house, near the bazaar. I left some of the groceries there. Others, I delivered to a woman in Murgab who I’d hired to make four different kinds of salads for the party.

  On the day of the toi, I woke early, had a cup of coffee at the klionka, and then climbed into the car with Döwlet. The sun was rising. We rattled along the road, Döwlet fighting with his old Lada to keep it moving. It was a quirky machine that required its radiator to be refilled after every 15 or 20 minutes of driving and stalled if its driver lifted his foot from the gas even for a moment, even when he was shifting or braking. We left Nurana and bumped past farm fields to a popular fishing spot on the Murgab River.

  There were two single-wide trailers there that served as stores. When men caught more fish with their cane poles than they needed for their dinners, they sold them to the owners of the stores, who stashed them in baskets floating in the river. We bought everything they had in their baskets, two squirming grocery bags full – about 20 pounds of fish. Back at the house, I squatted under a pomegranate tree and scaled and cleaned the fish. Altyn came over and offered to help. I gave her a small fish with thick, golden scales and she went to work. Kümüsh squatted nearby and giggled. When the fish were all naked and empty, we cut them into chunks, floured them, and left them with Jeren, who promised to fry them.

  Then Döwlet and I drove to Murgab. The temperature was already over 90 and, even with the windows down, I was sweating. Döwlet had to go to work. I had to go to the butcher. Jeren’s father went with me. He was a crusty, shambling old man who wore a furry, Russian-style shapka on his head. His face was a rough-hewn, dark walnut color, but his balding head, underneath his hat, was a light pine. As we walked from his house to the bazaar, he told me about life in Turkmenistan during World War II: “The lucky ones ate grass; the rest starved.”

  The butcher’s shop was under the bazaar’s patchwork canvas roof. A man with an axe stood behind a table groaning under sections of lamb and cow carcasses, covered in cheesecloth to keep the flies off. Jeren’s dad helped me choose 45 pounds of lamb and beef. He would point to a section and the butcher would sling it onto a stump and hack it to pieces with his axe. We hauled the meat back to the house in dripping plastic grocery bags.

  It took two hours for Jeren’s brother-in-law Maksat and I to de-bone, cube, and salt it all. Maksat worked happily, chatting with me through a mouthful of nas. “Eaten any mushrooms, lately?” he asked, using a Turkmen euphemism for sex that I always found strange since most Turkmen men claim they don’t give oral sex. We’d only finished 20 pounds or so when my right hand got so blistered I couldn’t use it anymore. I switched to my left. By the time we were done, both of my hands were red and swollen.

  By early afternoon, Jeren was at the wedding hall I’d rented, with a crew of its employees and her family members, chopping and peeling. I’d hired a cook, a man from Nurana who worked as a cut-rate doctor, delivering medicines and advice on his bicycle. He was the head chef, standing over a massive black cauldron behind the wedding hall, supervising everything. I did some chopping and peeling, but mostly I ran errands, fetching more cottonseed oil, more soda, more vodka, more bread. Meanwhile, Cennet was getting her hair done and trying on her wedding dresses. We’d planned a bi-cultural wedding, so she had rented both a colorful Turkmen-style dress and a white Western-style dress.

  People started to file into the hall about 6:30. We were expecting 150 – a small toi. Oraztach, Islam, and the rest of the doctors and nurses from the clinic came. A group of the boys from one of my English classes came. Umida and Malika came with Kelly. Altyn and Kümüsh were there, dressed like princesses in clouds of white taffeta and lace, their hair sprayed into place and sprinkled with glitter. Peace Corps Volunteers came from all over the country. My extended host family was there, and so was Cennet’s. They all took their seats and started snacking and drinking. I was still solving last minute problems.

  Kakajan, one of my future tourist guides, had agreed to be our wedding singer. He had promised to actually sing, unlike the lip-synchers at most weddings. But he hadn’t shown up. I ran across the street to the post office, placed a few phone calls, and managed to track him down. He claimed he was on his way. Even if he did arrive soon, though, we weren’t ready for him. Döwlet’s friend Shokhrat had agreed to lend us his sound system. But Shokhrat hadn’t shown up, either.

  Since Shokhrat had no phone, Döwlet and I climbed into the old Lada and rumbled off to his kolkhoz to find him. We banged on his door until he woke up. He apologized, explaining that the guy who had promised to give him a ride to the toi hadn’t shown up so he’d decided to take a nap, figuring we’d come get him eventually. We packed him into the car with all his speakers and amps and hurried back to Murgab, stopping only once to refill the radiator from a stream.

  Back at the wedding hall, we set up the sound system. Azat, our master of ceremonies, grabbed the microphone, welcomed everyone to the toi, and thanked them for coming. The cook, half-drunk, staggered in and announced that dinner was ready.

  “How bout a hand for the cook?” he slurred at the gathered guests, who obliged him.

  The wedding hall staff served plov and lamb stew and the vodka started flowing in earnest. Cennet and Cam sat quietly on a couch at the front of the room, at a table piled with fruit and co
okies and bottles of soda and champagne – the happy couple on display. I moved from table to table, drinking toasts with friends and picking at plates of plov. A videographer, a necessity at any toi, recorded everything.

  Guests took turns at the microphone. They made toasts to the lovely couple and their fake marriage. They made toasts to me, wishing me luck in America. There were wedding gifts, hugs, and tearful speeches. Jeren took the microphone and dragged Döwlet, Altyn, and Kümüsh up to the front of the room and presented me with a carpet they’d had woven for me that said: “In memory of our son Sam from Döwlet, Jeren, Altyn, Kümüsh. 14.06.2006.” Kakajan got up and sang a couple songs and he was great – the crowd loved him. Then the dancing and the toasts, the vodka and the food, all started to blur. I’d been too busy running errands and saying goodbyes to follow my toi drinking strategy.

  At some point, Cennet went downstairs and changed into her white dress. She re-entered the banquet hall to the sound of the Peace Corps Volunteers all humming “dum, dum, da dum.” Cam joined her and they took their fake vows in front of a Peace Corps Volunteer pretending to be a minister. Then it was time for more dancing, Cennet whirling across the dance floor in a blur of white. Almost everyone danced except the older Turkmen women, who thought it would be improper to join in. Around midnight, the power went out. It was getting late anyway, so the owner took the opportunity to usher the last of us out the door.

  I climbed into the front seat of Döwlet’s car, three more guests climbed into the back, and we headed back to Nurana. My window was open and the wind was cool and soft. The countryside was silver in the starlight. I was far too drunk. I leaned out and puked – probably all over the side of the car. At home, I slept outside on the tapjan, so I could vomit into the garden if necessary. Döwlet checked on me now and then, bringing me water, rubbing my back.