This Is Not Civilization

by Robert Rosenberg

  Anarbek had nearly burned the last round of skewered shashlyk. His dog sniffed at his side and cried two plaintive notes. The smell of the grilling meat swirled around the courtyard, over the fence, and up above the village, where it mixed with the evening scent of burning dung and alpine poppies. Anarbek lifted the skewers, examined both sides, and held them close to his face, savoring the smell and color of the mutton. He realized Lola had not brought the bottle of vinegar and pepper, and he roared for her once again. Before she appeared, he turned, and there, on the tea bed, next to the plate of onions, the vinegar was already waiting for him. He laughed at himself.

  “What do you need?” Lola asked from the doorway.

  “Come, it’s time to eat. Get Baktigul.”

  “Shouldn’t we wait for Nazira?”

  “The shashlyk’s ready. Get Baktigul.”

  He tossed two burnt cubes of meat to the dog, who gulped them down in a single swallow and wagged his tail. Lola fetched his daughter from the street. Baktigul appeared with her ponytails swinging, a young friend in tow. The four of them sat cross-legged on the platform, tore off pieces of Lola’s fresh flatbread, and alternated bites with chunks of mutton, onions, and grilled tomatoes. Here, Anarbek assured himself, was the picture of a contented household. The man feeds his family, the wife prepares delicious bread, the daughter comes to eat with her little friend, honoring the house with a guest. Elusive happiness lay in such simplicity. Life would take care of him; it would take care of them all. He watched his young daughter tear with her teeth through a strand of sinew, and he lifted his chest with pride.

  But before they had finished dinner, the two girls at the table cried out and gave startled jumps. Nazira, his older daughter, burst through the gate and slammed it shut behind her. The metal clanged. Nazira’s chest was heaving, and her hair, usually straight and shining, was a tangled, dusty mess. On her face—the face of his first wife—dirt stains shadowed the bright red flush of exertion. Her skirt was torn. She stumbled two steps into the courtyard, the dog bounded to meet her, but then she collapsed to a crouch, her head bent. Anarbek dropped his skewer of meat, but Lola was already up and off the bed, running to her old friend.

  “Nazira,” she whispered. “Come in. Come, sit. Nazira, dear.”

  Lola kissed her forehead, but Nazira’s shoulders arched in spasms as she wept. In two steps Anarbek was standing over her and lifting her by the shoulder. With Lola’s help he walked her to the tea bed. Baktigul gasped again. “Don’t cry, Nazira,” she said.

  Anarbek handed each of the young girls another skewer of meat and ordered them to play in the street.

  “What’s wrong with Nazira?” Baktigul demanded.

  “Quiet now,” he said. “Leave us for a little. I’ll come and find you in a few minutes.”

  He started to tell Lola to bring some chai, but she had already returned with it, and was pouring. “Drink, Nazira,” he said. “Be still, kizim. You’re okay, aren’t you?”

  Lola rubbed Nazira’s neck, and they sat in silence for a few moments while Nazira composed herself. Her sobs abated, then rose and fell again. She pulled her hair behind her ears. Lola wet a cloth under the samovar and wiped the dirt from Nazira’s cheeks.

  “I was returning for lunch this morning, after classes,” Nazira began, and then broke into tears again. She taught English at the Lenin School. She was a steadfast teacher; it hardly bothered her that the students immediately forgot what she taught them, or that they were the sons and daughters of shepherds and would never have use for a foreign language. Nazira was famous around the village for her lovely voice, and her English classes eagerly followed her in daily song: “May There Always Be Sunshine” or “I Can Clap My Hands, Thank You!”

  She collected her breath. “I was walking just past the flour store. A car pulled up. There were three men inside. Big men. I have never seen them before, Ata. They ran out of the vehicle and grabbed my arms. There was nobody around to help. They got me into their car.”

  She fought back another round of tears and nearly gagged. Anarbek waited for her to compose herself. When he could no longer wait, he tried to soothe her with a soft question, but instead his words rushed out in uncontrollable anger. “Where! Where did they take you?”

  Over her sobs Nazira explained that they had driven all the way to Talas. In a concrete microregion, in a dark, cold apartment, they forced her into a bedroom. There the mother of one of the men brought her bread and strawberry jam, which she refused to eat, and tea, which she refused to drink. The woman even opened a bottle of vodka, poured two glasses, and raised a toast.

  “To my beautiful new daughter. My son could not have found a wife more worthy.” The mother had then reached over and tried to wrap a beige platok around her head.

  Nazira fought her off, ripped the scarf from the lady’s hands, crumpled it, and tossed it into the corner of the room. In a soft voice the mother tried to assuage her fears. “It’s an honor, my daughter. You were so pretty; you were the one he chose.” She showed her cracked photographs of the family that would be hers: her new brothers and sisters, an aging wrinkled grandmother, her mustached father.

  “They all had the eyes of a wolf, every one of them,” Nazira explained. “The entire family held one single expression: a sneer.”

  She told the woman she would never be her son’s bride, no matter what tradition dictated. After that she refused to speak. The mother grew angrier, drank the vodka alone. For a half-hour she raged at Nazira’s silence and rained abuses on her.

  “Finally she lifted herself from the floor. I wouldn’t look her in the eyes. I was staring at the bottom of her dress. She called me the worst kind of donkey. ‘Aren’t you ashamed?’ she said. ‘Aren’t you a real Kyrgyz woman?’ She slapped me here, across the face. When she left, I thought I was free. But it was only starting.”

  The dark room filled with women: relatives, friends, neighbors, and young girls all brought in to console her. They urged her not to revolt too much. “Don’t deny your destiny,” one old woman said. “You should accept it. You should try to find joy in it.” Another said, “It happened to me too. You may not love him now, but you will learn to love him.” One of the sisters urged her, “You are here already. You have crossed the threshold of this house. If you leave, you will never find another husband. Don’t shame yourself.”

  Nazira asked only one question: “Atam kaida?” Where is my father? She knew they had to bring him to negotiate.

  “Write him your letter. We will bring him here to name your price.”

  And she understood: writing the customary letter would be an admission of complicity. She was trapped. She tried to steady herself, but the tears rose. As the ladies stood to leave, the mother leaned toward her and in a voice as harsh as the breaking of glass, quoted the old saying, “A woman who comes crying into her future husband’s house will lead a happy life.”

  The room had emptied. Nazira took in a long breath, but then the man entered. He was the largest of the three who had pulled her into the car, and he was dressed in the formal clothes he had worn for the abduction: a gray wool sweater, pressed gray slacks. He had combed his brown hair so it reached across his forehead in waves and had doused himself in barbershop witch hazel. The smell choked Nazira each time he leaned close, and in that sealed space it made it hard for her to breathe. The man sat directly across from her on a purple and red tushuk and poured two overflowing glasses of vodka.

  He told her how he had seen her three weeks before, when she had brought a class into Talas for the middle-school English Olympiad. He spoke with a husky voice, full of confidence and menace, even more frightening when he lowered it to a whisper. He said, “You were walking across the street from School Four, and I had every intention of stealing you then. I would have, but I did not know what to do about your students. Instead I stopped one of your boys from the fourth form. I asked him your name, where you were from. The boy told me all about you, and he asked if I loved you. He must hav
e seen it in my eyes. Even a fourth-form boy! I told your student, ‘You see that mountain? The tallest one? I think she is more beautiful than that mountain.’”

  He rambled on like this for an hour, professing his love.

  “Nonsense,” Nazira explained. “He was talking complete nonsense.”

  “Okay now,” Lola whispered.

  “Go on,” Anarbek demanded.

  He said his name was Traktorbek, and that he had been named after his grandfather, who had been named after the tractor (a machine of wonder the Russians had brought to Kyrgyzstan in 1948). He told her how he had given up school to sell meat in the bazaar. He told her how many men he had beaten up in the past year. He told her how much cognac he could drink in one sitting, how women who came to buy his mutton fell in love with him and he gave them discounts. He had not planned to marry so young, he said. He had wanted to make his fortune first, then find an apartment in the capital—he had been there once—where he had dreams of opening a gas station. But he had seen Nazira, and his plans had changed.

  All the time he spoke, he was drinking. Nazira hardly listened. She asked herself how she was going to escape, and if it were possible, and if she did, what people would say about her.

  Traktorbek then squatted beside her and pulled over two thick mats. Before she knew what was happening, he grabbed her face with his callused palms. He was kissing her, pushing her down.

  Anarbek listened now with pain. He looked up through the rustling leaves of the courtyard at the darkening sky and then back down. He fingered a piece of meat, lifted it to his mouth, then threw it onto his plate. His wife looked away. Neither could face Nazira.

  “I kicked him so hard between his legs that he shouted,” she said. “I’ve never heard a man yell so loud.” She laughed at the memory, but the laugh brought on a fresh round of tears. “Then he hurt me,” she murmured. Her head sank. “After, I pushed my way out of the room, through the mother and the father. All the other people were there, as if it were some kind of holiday mayram. There was music, and they were clapping and dancing in the sitting room. They were calling my name and saying the worst kinds of things. But I grabbed a pair of shoes at the door, and I’ve never run so fast. I asked my legs to carry me like the wind. I was barefoot, and I ran out of the microregion and into the park by the Ferris wheel, across from the cinema. I hid behind the memorial statue and put on the shoes. They weren’t mine. They were the mother’s high heels! Too small for me. I stumbled to Prospect Chui—but look at me!—I must have looked sick. No cars would stop. I was afraid to stay on the main road. I went off to the stadium and hiked five kilometers along the river, through the Talas forest, all the way to the otovakzal. A truck was parked between the buses, and the driver was heading past the village. I begged him to take me home.”

  Anarbek sucked in a deep breath, astonished at her courage. “You were stolen. You were stolen and you ran away.” He was trying to assess the extent of the damage—what, in these times, her escape actually meant. He unfolded his legs and refolded them. In his chest a rough pride swelled at his daughter’s hardheadedness, but then a sharp dread pierced his stomach.

  Lola had misunderstood him. “How can you say such a thing?” she burst out. “Look at her. Think of what she has been through.”

  “Soon the village will know,” he said. “The bad tongue will begin. This man, he was not the kind you could have married?” Both women stared at him with open mouths. He was trying to think practically. If Baiooz had been here, she would have known what to say, what to do for their daughter. Now he imagined the excuses he would have to give in the sauna, the rumors that would consume the town, the impossibility of Nazira’s finding a husband.

  He knew by custom that he was not supposed to accept his stolen daughter back into his home—it was his duty not to. She had crossed the threshold, and now she was spoiled. Still, they lived in a modern world; these traditions hardly mattered anymore.

  He stared at the table. He could eat nothing else. For minutes they sat in silence and swirled their cups of chai. Above the courtyard the branches of the plum tree swayed. Shouts flew over the high fence, sounds of the children playing on the street.

  A sudden pounding on the metal gate—too rough to be Baktigul—startled them. Nazira half stood, then glanced at him, panic in her eyes.

  Anarbek raised himself off the tea bed. He strode to the gate and behind him heard Lola say they should go inside. The metal hinges creaked with a high-pitched screech, like the call of a buzzard. Framed in the light blue gateway was the very picture of shattered youth. The young man had thin piercing eyes, and his wavy hair was disheveled. But he was wide-backed and powerful, with a wrestler’s build so thick, his shoulders stretched the sleeves of his striped gray sweater. He did not bother with the customary formalities: no salamatsizbih, no asalaam aleikum, no ishter kondai.

  “Where is she?” he demanded, and staggered forward.

  Anarbek’s ingrained sense of hospitality told him a visitor must be invited into the home, seated comfortably, offered bread and tea, and fed a meal before he was questioned. Now, for the first time in his life, he stopped a stranger at the door. He stretched a tremulous arm to block the entrance.

  “You are not welcome in this home,” he said. The impropriety disturbed him. He was certain no good would come of breaking tradition. Yet Nazira must not see the man again.

  “I know she has come here,” Traktorbek said. “The children told me.” He pointed down the dirt lane where his Lada was parked. Next to it Baktigul and her friends were gathered in a circle, chattering around a boy on a fallen bicycle.

  “Nazira is here. This is her home. What would you like?”

  “I would see her, agai.”

  “It seems you have already seen her. She would not see you.”

  Traktorbek searched past him into the courtyard. Anarbek shifted to his left, and from pale desperation the youth’s face turned to red anger. The muscles in his neck flexed, and he stared up into Anarbek’s eyes, only then comprehending his entrance was blocked. For a long moment they stood face to face.

  “It is your obligation to return her to me. Your duty, and your family’s duty. You know the ways.”

  “These are old ways, Traktorbek.”

  The young man started at the sound of his own name. He collected himself with new energy and glared, his eyes calculating. Nazira had been right: the face—the eyes—held the menacing sneer of a wolf. “Do you know anything about honor?” he demanded. “Do you think of your family’s name? Do you think of your factory’s name?” His choppy voice grew louder, and Anarbek could smell the vodka on it. “I will see her. I have made my decision. She will come back with me. She has spoken with my mother. Arrangements have been made.”

  “Arrangements will be forgotten.” Anarbek fought to keep his voice calm. Like this young man he too was prone to passion. He knew how quickly, how often, he lost control of himself. But passion would not quiet passion. He was guarding his home from an invading presence, but the invasion felt larger and more pervasive than this simple lovesick youth standing before him.

  “I do not have to tell you again,” Anarbek said. “You must leave her alone now. She will not be your wife. She’s made it clear. She will not have it.”

  “She! She is a woman!”

  “I will not have it either. I have other plans for Nazira.” The word America flashed like lightning across Anarbek’s mind. He had no idea where it came from. Quickly he refocused.

  Traktorbek’s body had stiffened. “You are obligated, yet you won’t give me back your daughter.” He clenched and shook his fists. He reminded Anarbek of the costs of this decision, of the shame he was bringing on himself, and ended with a volley of grave threats, vowing revenge.

  To his own surprise Anarbek remained calm. “Leave now,” he said, stepping back from the gate and pulling the door. The young man clutched the swinging metal with his fingertips and cried out, “If you shut this gate on me, you can’t kn
ow what it means to be in love!”

  The outpouring drew an unexpected feeling from Anarbek. He nearly liked the boy for it. He respected the fervor of youth, its steely nerve, its determined siege before a closing gate. How men suffer in the name of women! Yet this Traktorbek was too young, too brash. He refused to face reality, and Anarbek could not approve of the animal violence he exuded. He would never have done for a husband; Anarbek could see that now.

  “Son,” he said, “you don’t know what it means to be a father.”

  He pulled the gate harder, and the final image of rejected youth was transfigured into complete despair. Traktorbek’s fingers slipped from the door. The gate clicked, and in a single massive blow the full force of the young man’s body crashed outside, rattling the metal. Anarbek stood still. He waited for the slow shuffling of feet, the quieting of the children, and the angry growl of the car engine.

  In the kitchen Lola and Nazira were seated on low stools. His wife was kneading dough for tomorrow’s leposhka on the flat wooden table. As he entered, both women straightened up and watched him, unblinking. From the sink, rinsing his hands, he glanced back at his daughter. Conjuring the image of his dead wife, he prayed inwardly, “Baiooz, tell me I have done what is right.”

  He turned and reached for a towel. Their faces were set, awaiting his decision.

  “You’ll come with us tomorrow,” he said into the sink, drying his hands. “Two days from now the Korpus Mira inspects the house I’ve found for the American. We must beat out the rugs and hang the curtains.”

  2

  JEFF HARTIG had unlocked the reservation’s Chief Alchesay Teen Center on Thursday afternoon and found the place destroyed. The computer monitors were bashed in. Fuck You Bitch had been written eleven times on the chalkboard of the meeting room. Someone had taken a knife to the pool table and had bent in the feet of the Ping-Pong tables. The library books, most of their pages torn out, lay strewn across the floor. The stereo, the VCR, the speakers, and the boom boxes had all been stolen. In Jeff’s office someone had defecated on his desk, burned his piles of grant applications and business correspondence in a fire on the floor, and put it out with what smelled like urine.