Following the course of a swirling river, they bounced through high, dry country along a primitive dirt path into the mountains. The road climbed to a cliff overlooking the water. Anarbek took the treacherous curves at a furious pace and kept turning around to ask questions.
How much money does your father make?
Do Americans believe in God?
How many floors are there in the Empire State Building?
When will you marry a Kyrgyz woman?
Jeff coughed a loud nervous laugh, pressed his head to the window, and stared out over the precipice, certain they would plummet over it at any moment. The rough-edged peaks rose high above. Little air circulated inside the crowded jeep. Anarbek leered left and right, swerving the vehicle with each turn of his head. Jeff wondered what his own father would do when he learned of the impending jeep wreck. And why did everyone else seem so calm?
After nearly an hour the Kyrgyz thrashed the transmission from fourth gear to first, jerking them all to a halt. The men hurried from the vehicle, loading their rifles, and shot off a thunderous volley at what appeared to be an empty side of the mountain. Jeff cringed, watching Anarbek dash up the slope across the steady line of fire, then dive behind a boulder.
He reappeared without bullet wounds, swinging four dead pheasants by the feet. The crowd in the jeep applauded the bloody birds, and his host-father laid them as a gift on Jeff’s lap. He forced a smile. Blood dripped out of a pheasant’s mouth onto his sneaker.
They drove higher; the slopes of the mountains swam upward in steep vertiginous angles and jutting overhangs of rock. Occasionally the landscape leveled into a valley or a long brown field of rustling grass. They stopped three times to slaughter more large fowl. After one assault their hosts encouraged Jeff to practice shooting. He missed rocks and closely placed bottles. “Amerikan-yets!” someone laughed from the back of the jeep.
Anarbek informed Jeff that he was not keeping the rifle steady. “The secret of hunting,” he said, “is keeping the hands still.” He provided an immediate solution: vodka toasts.
To friendship.
To peace.
To a full table.
To guests.
Two hours beyond any trace of civilization the jeep bumped over a haphazard wooden bridge and swerved before a mud-brick farmhouse surrounded by horses. A ceremonial nomadic yurt had been set up behind the house, and beyond it a wide field stretched in both directions, cut in half by the tumbling river. The noon sun leaning over the highest ridge cast the mountains half in shadow. Groups of strangers, apparently Anarbek’s relatives, rushed out of the yurt, greeted them with a round of salamatsizbih, and swept them into their fly-infested home.
The nomads crouched around a stained cloth spread on the floor, their chins upturned, eyes wide, examining him. They wore traditional Kyrgyz dress: kalpaks (tall white-felt national headgear, which Jeff could only associate with a dunce cap), high black boots, the men in weathered sports jackets, the women in headscarves and dresses that looked like floral tablecloths. Years of tending sheep in the alpine sun had burned their faces terra-cotta red.
It seemed that everyone had gathered to celebrate the first birthday of Anarbek’s nephew, a gurgling round-faced toddler with flushed cheeks. From a stained bowl Jeff drank ¿‹myss—fermented mare’s milk—and managed to keep it down with shots of chai. The hostess never filled a teacup completely, worried it would be cold before one finished it. Instead there commenced the endless ritual of sipping, slurping, then passing of the cups around the circle back to the samovar. A tablecloth covered the center of the floor, and breads, apples, grapes, raisins, apricots, sauces, candies, jams, nuts, and teacups were spread upon it. The indoor picnic was arranged with a delightful scattered precision, and Jeff reminded himself how little these families had, how generous they were being with their food.
Lola set before him a large mound of pilaf and a full cup of chai. To Jeff’s left knelt an old man, bent over, facing the southwest corner of the room, reciting loud Arabic prayers. Clothed in a long black overcoat, a worn suit jacket, black stockings, and a silver skullcap, he bobbed his bearded face back and forth at the floor. Anarbek told him the man, his first wife’s father, was approaching a hundred years of age. For half an hour the praying figure did not acknowledge the company. Finally, with a slide of his hands over his face—“Omen!”—he finished the ritual, raised his eyes to the center of the room, greeted Jeff with a toothless smile, and joined him at the mound of pilaf.
They ate with their hands, and Jeff tried not to drop any food in his lap. He watched the old man’s withered fingers clenching the moist rice. One hundred years old. What had this man seen? A rise and a fall of an empire. Two world wars. Stalin’s purges, the concentration camps, the gulag? Perhaps he knew nothing of these things. Perhaps he had led only a sheltered village life, ignorant of the trials of the larger world. He looked wise, but could he even read?
“Abdan tattoo,” Jeff said. Very delicious. He broke the silence of intense feasting and lost a handful of rice on his socks.
“Azamat!” Good boy! The old man licked the oil from his wrinkled palm and patted Jeff on the arm.
“Elma,” he said, holding up an apple.
“Bilem,” Jeff told the old man. I know.
“Elma!” he demanded.
“Elma.”
He lifted walnuts, hard candy, a spoonful of sugar, various breads, the dusty raisins. He said the name, Jeff repeated it; he said it a second time with greater force, Jeff repeated it louder. Finally the man reviewed the items, asking one by one, “Bool ne?” Everyone nodded vigorously when Jeff gave the correct answer.
The meat on the pilaf was unusually lean and tasty, not like the greasy mutton he had come to expect. When at last he was invited outside to rest his stomach, he discovered why. Anarbek pulled him into a shed behind the house, where a group of young men squatted in the shadows around a three-foot pile of charred meat. “At!” they pronounced proudly, gesturing like game-show hostesses. Horse.
They cut him more and handed him a raw onion as a side dish. He nibbled politely. Anarbek explained that eating horse was rare in the autumn—it was usually saved for the end of winter, when meat ran low. “Horse meat has many calories,” he said. “It will make you strong.” He pointed to Jeff’s groin, curled his finger, and straightened it rigidly up into the air. Jeff shifted away from him.
When Jeff could stomach no more, he was led outside and seated before another spread of food, laid out on a cloth in the sharp grass. Again the vodka flowed. If he refused to drink, his hosts clicked their tongues in disappointment, lifted the glass, and forced it into his hands. To refuse again would be an insult. “Davai!” the men shouted, glasses raised, vodka spilling. Come on!
Anarbek paced around the circle of family and friends, answering questions about his American. Jeff nibbled triangles of borsok, which, like frybread, he dipped in honey, shocking his hosts. This apparently was not done. He inhaled a long heavy breath, the pressure in his stomach unrelenting. His mind swam through a blurred vision of Central Asia, the mountain pasture, the singsong language, the generosity of these strangers, their laughter, their smiles, their friendly whacks on his back. More vodka was poured. He drained his glass and it was filled; he drained it and it was filled again.
When he could put no more into his body and did not know if he would be able to stand, the athletic events began. Male participation, Anarbek warned, was mandatory. First came the races. The men sprinted across the cow field, and even a crippled uncle, leaning on a walking stick, hobbled along. Slowed by a stomach full of horse organs, Jeff found himself in less than top form. He finished the race fourth, ahead of the crippled uncle, and vomited into a ditch next to a cow.
A ceremonial birthday race came next. To begin, the parents tied a ribbon around the nephew’s bowed legs, and he wobbled in front of the crowd. Then, from across the field the other children raced to him. Anarbek’s daughter Baktigul won the event, and the adults a
warded her a pair of scissors. She snipped the child’s ribbon between his legs, a symbolic cutting: the boy, now a year old, was ready to enter the race of life. The toddler took a few uncertain steps and everyone cheered.
“Azamat!” Good boy!
After this came feats of strength: pushup contests, a tug of war, and most exciting of all, the wrestling on horseback. Two men lined up their horses side by side, facing opposite directions, and with embroidered leather whips they urged the animals into a slow spin. Gathering momentum, whipping the stomping horses still faster, each rider grabbed the other’s shoulder, then tried to dismount the opponent by tearing at his shirt, hair, and flailing limbs. The relatives shouted while in a display of wild acrobatics the riders sweated and the horses grew dizzy, tossing their heads until one man fell.
As Jeff watched, applauding, Anarbek’s older daughter, Nazira, sat beside him. She slanted her feet below her skirt, offered him a piece of fresh bread, then gestured to the horse wrestling and proclaimed in hesitant English, “It is an excellent sport for watching. But more exciting, to my mind, to play.” She turned to him and asked, “Would you like to attempt?”
Jeff simply laughed. “How do you speak such wonderful English?”
Nazira had long, straight black hair. She giggled and her mouth opened slightly, like the budding of a rose. He caught a glimpse of two gold molars before she covered her mouth quickly with her hand. “I studied in university,” she said. “And now I am the teacher.”
The next match had begun and they watched it together. Anarbek sneaked up behind them; his shadow spread across the food. He leaned down and spoke in Jeff’s ear. “I see, Jeff, you are talking to my daughter.” With his dirty fingers he lined up three glasses and filled each from an open vodka bottle.
Nazira told him, “You must not drink if you do not want. But it is our way.”
Jeff smiled. “I thought you were Muslim. This drinking is not, well—very religious.”
Nazira laughed again. “We are very bad Muslims, Jeff Hartig. Very bad. But you must remember—the Russians brought this.” She tapped the empty bottle with her fingernail.
It was time for the traditional wrestling. The competitors tied pieces of cloth around their waists to use as a grip. Jeff mentioned he had wrestled in high school; after much arguing he consented to take on a young cousin of Anarbek’s. Nazira helped tie a belt around his waist. When he turned, though, he saw two men had locked arms over piles of fresh horse manure. The men flipped each other, the dung flew, the crowd cheered. It seemed the Kyrgyz drew little distinction between shit and dirt. Jeff untied his belt and sat down.
A few minutes later the relatives called for the women to wrestle.
“They are joking, aren’t they?” he asked Anarbek.
But to everyone’s laughter, the modest, soft-spoken Kyrgyz women paired up, grabbed each other around the neck, yanked each other’s scarves, and in elaborate knotted holds pummeled each other into the filth. The men wagered vodka shots on wives and sisters and groaned when they lost a bet.
In the final match, in a show of enormous strength, with a grunt and a twist, Nazira herself flipped a great-aunt onto the pungent ground. She raised her arms in victory, her stained skirt whipping in the breeze. In Jeff’s life, the event was memorable for more than its hilarity. Even covered in horseshit this woman was stunning. She was slight and strong, with gentle Asian eyes, dark freckles, and a grace and modesty in her playfulness. Jeff lay back on his elbows in the grass, staring at her.
Nazira watched the sun begin to set beyond the mountains. A row of haystacks gleamed orange across the field. Groups of her intrepid aunts stirred meat in woks over fires and rolled flour and water into long noodles. Large Russian samovars boiled chai for the guests. One of her uncles had set up a unique contraption: gasoline dripped out of a plugged vodka bottle, ran down a long ramp, and fueled a fire under a metal vat, boiling water for the dishes.
She crouched with Jeff near the fire and watched a circle of men playing durag. The card players waited for their opponents to throw their hands, grumbled, and smoked cigarettes rolled from homegrown tobacco and last year’s newspapers. She observed with fascination how patiently Jeff answered their questions, but she was embarrassed when one of the players asked if he would marry a Kyrgyz woman, and why it was taking him so long.
At dinner she guided him into the fly-infested farmhouse with fourteen other men and sat down to administer the samovar. Jeff was given the most important seat, farthest from the door. A young nephew, circling the room with a kettle and basin, poured steaming water on each person’s hands, then the women carried in the plates of beshbarmak. As the guest of honor Jeff was given a sheep’s head to carve. Nazira hid her smile when he could not negotiate slicing through a nostril with any degree of grace. She asked one of her cousins, a powerful man to Jeff’s left, to help him. He directed Jeff to the eyes of the sheep. The foreigner grabbed one with his slippery fingers and tried to dislodge it, but the thin red veins kept it well attached, stretching like bands of rubber with each pull. At last her cousin helped Jeff, jabbing the knife between his fingers until the eye was free.
Tradition dictated that Jeff give the eyeball to someone he wished to see again soon, but it was too much to hope he might offer it to her. He passed it instead to her grandfather, who had spent the evening in prayer in the corner of the room. Her cousin dislodged the second eye and with a bow of the head offered it to Jeff himself to swallow.
The American held the eyeball in his palm for an unusually long time, his Adam’s apple lurching up and down his throat. Slowly he placed the eyeball into his mouth, seeming to curl his tongue around it. On his first swallow his throat failed him. Nazira leaned forward. He tried again and again and finally squeezed it down, then chased it with a nearby apricot.
“Azamat!” she cried out, and everyone around her drew a collective breath.
She joined her father and the family in the packed vehicle for the twilight ride home. As the jeep jostled them through the mountains, she sat crunched between Jeff’s hip and the three squirming children. The men’s conversation centered on him.
How do you like our Kyrgyzstan?
How much does this knife cost in America?
And bread?
And a house?
Do you have apples in America?
What do you think of our privatization?
Perhaps you will stay longer than two years?
His Kyrgyz answers were growing mildly comprehensible, and he was relying less on Russian, which pleased Nazira. Through much evasive language, the American was able to explain something called carjacking and something else called money laundering. He informed them that in New York City an apartment the size of two of those jeeps cost one thousand dollars to rent.
“A year?” Anarbek asked.
“A month!”
In the front seat, the eyes of the men opened in wonder.
When there was at last a lull in the conversation, Nazira’s father bellowed, “Sing!”
Anarbek possessed a powerful voice and a deep Kyrgyz love of song. Inspired by the alpine air and the bottles of vodka, he and the school director pretended to woo Jeff with a resounding love serenade. In turn Nazira sang a solo ballad in her soft soprano voice. It was the first song her mother had ever taught her, about the beauty of the mountains—how the snow leaves in the summer and one might think it gone forever, but every winter it returns. Shy, she did not look at the American, but her voice quavered when she felt her shoulder press into his.
Finally it was Jeff’s turn. He claimed he had never performed for an audience before, but Anarbek would not accept such a flimsy excuse. In the end he appeased them with a song called “Ninety-nine Bottles of Beer on the Wall.” Everyone in the swerving jeep picked up on the words, and Nazira would never forget the American’s strong voice leading the chorus, the swaying men in the front seat, her scarved aunts and the children piled in back, in heavy Central Asian accents, all counting
bottles of beer on the wall. It was the first time since escaping Traktorbek that she could see the possibility of a new and better life before her.
Jeff awoke each day sick from the previous night’s food, but he appreciated the luxury of his own indoor toilet (which he flushed with a bucket of water). First thing in the morning he stared out at the mountains; the snow crept lower across them each day. Now in the November dawn frost appeared on the ground. Horses grazed on the remains of his garden, and crows called from the apple trees that blocked his view of the kindergarten across the street.
Each weekend Jeff left the village and took the three-hour bus ride to Talas to shop at the larger bazaar there. In good weather he hiked into the mountains or camped next to the glacial Talas River. On a routine visit the Peace Corps country director complimented him, saying he had proved himself a tough-minded volunteer dedicated to his job, able to suffer the most difficult privations with grace and resilience. The director appreciated how he had persevered in his village work at the Kyzyl Adyr-Kirovka cheese collective.
Jeff understood that this typical overblown Peace Corps flattery meant only that he didn’t complain about the failing water supply or the lack of heat in his home. The Peace Corps office knew absolutely nothing about his factory students, their constant need to review material, their expectation of attaining instant knowledge (without, apparently, any studying), their mumbled incoherencies, their reluctant classroom participation, their intense doubt and refusal to accept the fundamentals of English grammar. For weeks at a time Jeff struggled to help the factory electrician, engineer, accountant, and dairy maids memorize the conjugation of the verb to be.
In the evenings he graded homework and responded to his students’ weekly journals. On Friday afternoons he organized a volleyball club. After months of persistent wrangling with the state bureaucracy, he managed to open the English Resource Center in a room adjoining the pochta, where twice a week he taught classes to adults from neighboring villages and on Sunday afternoons offered karate workshops to eager crowds of village children.
This Is Not Civilization Page 6