Two days after Anarbek arrived, the DHRO sent Jeff on a trip to Syria. The guests were left alone in the apartment, and Anarbek worried how they would get on together. Language was their primary difficulty. With so much overlap between Kyrgyz and Turkish, Anarbek was doing well enough in the city, and though Adam knew only a few phrases, with a pocket dictionary he could make himself understood. Anarbek was suddenly curious about English, and Adam taught him a handful of words: beautiful woman, hot water, cold water, bread, meat, cold meat, money, blonde, brunette, redhead, vagina, breast, nice butt, and the numbers from one to twenty (not including eleven and twelve, which Anarbek insisted were irrational). Together they discovered the rich possibilities of communicating with hand gestures, pictures from magazines, and objects around the apartment.
Adam left for his tutoring job that afternoon, and Anarbek spent the day alone in the city. He wandered the Üsküdar streets for what seemed like hours. Startled when vendors cried out from their fruit stalls, he bumped into covered women. Disoriented, he paced down the same alley three different times. Shoe polishers followed him and insulted his scuffed leather loafers. Bearded men chatting on benches outside the mosques quieted down to watch him pass in one direction, back in the other—amused, he thought, by the sight of a lost foreigner. Suddenly self-doubting, he stopped to rest at the water’s edge. Maybe he had come for nothing. Should he have listened to Nazira? He ordered a fish sandwich, grilled by a man in a sequined velvet vest, who balanced himself on a rocking boat tied to the concrete pier. Anarbek ate, licking his greasy fingers, then ordered another.
Back in Kyzyl Adyr-Kirovka he had said a hurried goodbye to his wife and daughters. He had explained all about Bolot Ismailov, the years of blackmail, the current threats, how for the good of the village he needed to find Jeff. He had sworn them to secrecy. Lola had hardly been upset by the news of his leaving: after his recent indiscretions, she seemed to want him gone. The real difficulty had been Nazira.
“Think of it,” Anarbek had urged her, “as a business trip, for the benefit of us all. I can borrow some of the money Jeff’s offered in his letter.”
His daughter did not think he should go abroad without planning in advance. He had not written to tell Jeff he would be coming (“It would take too long,” he argued), and he had never been to a foreign country. She reminded him that the time Jeff had spent in their village was a distant five years ago. The American had come, he had taught, he had left. “One should not go chasing after the past,” she warned. They debated for a week. Anarbek had listened patiently to her concerns, but in his mind he was already gone.
Besides him, there had been only two other passengers on the old Aeroflot plane, but the four Russian stewardesses could not be bothered with them. Halfway through the turbulent flight one of these women tramped through the aisle and spun a Soviet army ration tray of gristly meat in front of him. Anarbek had not eaten it. He was too busy suffering in his seat, which refused to stay upright. He had changed places three times, but behind him the faulty seats all crashed back in the same way, leaving him staring at the ceiling, listening to the high hum of the engine. The only other time he had flown, the summer he had studied in Moscow, the airplane had been full, the flight attendants pleasant. But on this flight, his back aching, his throat dry, he had asked a stewardess for water, and she had told him there was some in the bathroom if he wanted it.
So landing in Istanbul—the city’s skyscrapers and beaches gilded in the late morning sun—had seemed like a miracle. He climbed down the steps off the plane, and a yellow shuttle glided across the taxiway to pick up the passengers. It was like a special welcome for only the three of them. The hydraulic doors opened with a rush so quiet, so smooth, he thought he might cry. In the terminal he exchanged money (400,000 lira for every dollar!) and paid for a bus—the strange new bills worked, and he received a handful of heavy change. On the ride along the shore highway he saw, for the first time, the sea. He watched it lapping the coastline: the oil tankers glimmering over the field of blue, the football matches in fenced-in fields along the shore, the blinking neon signs of fish restaurants, and suddenly the staunch turrets of the fortified city walls rising ahead. He remembered his history lessons well enough: centuries ago his Central Asian ancestors had overtaken this city and, fighting their way to the edge of the continents, had carved out an empire. These masses of people around him, jostling for seats, pushing to get off the bus, were his brothers.
That evening, when Adam returned, their friendship was cemented by a love of kebaps. The dark American led him across the street from the apartment, and they climbed the shaded hill of chestnut trees to a lokanta called Kebapistan. Anarbek could smell the grilling lamb before they entered. In the tiny restaurant they chose one of the four bare tables and sat down amid the rushing and smacking of a small crowd of workers. The waiters and cooks wore white aprons and green-trimmed T-shirts. They danced around, preparing Arabic pizzas and Turkish pides flatbread, keeping the wood oven blazing, charring tomatoes and chicken over the coals, chopping onion salads, steaming trays of rice, stirring bowls of yogurt, and trimming thin slices of doner from the rotating spit. The choice of kebaps was boggling. There was chicken shish or lamb shish, eggplant shish, grilled meatballs, and roasted doner meat served in deep sandwiches stuffed with salads, or over rice with sides of spicy bulgur and lemon. There were half-combination kebaps, full-combination kebaps, and the king of kebaps (Anarbek’s choice)—the mighty iskender: sliced doner over cubed bread drizzled with tomato sauce, a dollop of pureed eggplant on one side, a cool spoonful of yogurt on the other, all topped with a ladleful of melted butter.
The owner had recognized Adam as a regular and greeted them with a partial bow. They stuffed themselves for only a few million lira and washed the kebaps down with glasses of chai, served complimentary by a red-faced boy who rushed in and out of the stores along the street, balancing a copper tray of clanking glasses.
After the meal, the two men wiped their mouths and settled back in their seats, toothpicks between their teeth. With his store of thirty English words, Anarbek tried to explain to Adam his reasons for coming to Istanbul, but immediately was at a loss. “Twelve thousand dollar,” he finally said. He pointed to his own chest.
Adam laughed. “We all need twelve thousand dollars.”
“You help.”
He shook his head. “Sorry, man, I don’t got that.”
“How many dollar yours?”
“Me? I’ve got nothing. I’m poor. I’m from the rez. You’re asking the wrong guy.” Adam attempted to explain what a reservation was, and Anarbek understood it was a place, but as hard as he tried to make out its significance, the words sounded like the background noise on a poorly dubbed film.
Anarbek’s thoughts were consumed by biznes. From morning through late afternoon for the rest of the week he wandered Istanbul, looking for a way to make a quick twelve thousand dollars. With each day that passed he felt a growing dread. But on Friday he sought out Laleli, a district mentioned by his Bishkek airline agent, and was instantly encouraged. The ghetto of hotels and shops catered to businessmen from the former Soviet Union. Signs were written in Turkish and Russian. The restaurants served pieroshki, shashlyk stands smoked on the streets, and Anarbek felt almost at home. In the morning mustached men stood chatting outside their businesses, one hand thrust in a pocket, the other hand holding a saucer and teacup. After a few hours of exploring, Anarbek grew familiar with the streets. He oriented himself by the colorful signs above the stores: CANABIS JEANS, TUNA TEKSTIL, and FOR YOU COLLECTION FABRIC. He bought aspirin and soap in the aptekas; for a snack he bought roasted chestnuts from a vendor outside the Liberty Hotel. The area had an overwhelming hustle and seediness about it, an atmosphere enhanced by rows of naked female mannequins lining the sidewalks, perched in doorways, posing in the window displays. Some wore short black leather skirts, a few wore trim brown leather jackets, but the great majority wore nothing. He was constantly taken aback b
y the tan, thin, voluptuous plastic bodies. Out of the corner of his eye he kept mistaking them for real people.
He introduced himself to every shopkeeper he saw and forged friendships in Laleli. Most of the businessmen ran import-export shops. They traded in leather, underwear, toiletries, pasta, and tea. In the afternoon he watched them wrapping enormous parcels in hay, duct-taping every square centimeter of the boxes, and rolling them end over end onto the streets, where they would be picked up and shipped east. If they were doing it, he thought, why couldn’t he?
He needed to figure out the details of some new business venture like this, free from the critical eyes of his wife, his daughter, and the village. Bolot Ismailov weighed on his mind, the shameless insolence of the younger generation who believed they had ascended to power, and were intent on disgracing him. He scrutinized everything, amazed by the workings of a world he had never imagined. In the bustle of the marketplace, where scrambling merchants tried to outbid each other, he understood that Communism in his homeland was forever dead. He saw the busy bakeries, the restaurants on the clamorous streets full of tireless workers, and he understood, for the first time, that his cheese collective was beyond repair. He eyed the abundant shanks of beef and goat heads hanging in the city butchers, and he knew his factory cows were truly dead. In hotel lobbies he watched the natashas with cigarettes—prostitutes in long leather jackets and black fur collars, blowing smoke like dragons from their nostrils—and he understood Baiooz was really gone. Hour after hour, consumed by a mixture of sadness and exhilaration, he found himself awash in a flood of revelations.
He imagined what kind of ticaret—import-export business—he could establish. What could he bring back to Kyrgyzstan? What could he sell in Istanbul? What did they need? What had they never seen? He could trade in leather jackets, real warm leather (not the plastic kind he found in Bishkek) that did more than keep the wind out. He could import flavored tobacco to Talas, introduce a new taste for a people accustomed to growing and drying their own meager crops. In the riotous street markets he marveled at heads of lettuce, a food one could crunch on for an entire day and never grow fat. Would the Kyrgyz people buy apple-flavored tea?
He lay awake at night, his eyes wide open, and stared up at the thin cracks in the concrete ceiling. Yes, he was growing old, but he did not feel it yet. As this journey had proven, he had determination and energy enough to give this new life, this world that had sneaked up on him, another go.
And the following evening at Kebapistan, as Anarbek was finishing his monstrous dinner of iskender with Jeff, Melodi, and Adam, inspiration finally struck him. He threw down his fork, clapped his hands over his plate, and yelled, “Koi!”
Startled, Adam turned to Melodi and asked, “What’d he say?”
She shrugged. “He says something about sheep.”
“This guy’s nuts,” Adam said to Jeff.
But Anarbek was calculating, and did not even hear them.
On Sunday he followed Jeff and Adam through the gypsy neighborhood north of the apartment to Fetih Pasha Korsu, a sloping forest overlooking the straits. The hilltop offered views of the intercontinental bridges. They hiked down the winding brick path to a tea garden of low stools and wooden tables. Anarbek stopped to catch his breath. The grassy slopes and cypress trees provided the perfect place for a picnic; and droves of scarved women, their husbands and children in tow, had descended on the park. He was rapt. The forest lay shrouded in a haze of smoke from the grilling meat, and the constant chirping of birds was punctuated by the sounds of children shouting for their mothers, the laughter of men sharing beers, and the arguments of teenagers searching for usable remnants of cigarettes. Jeff led them down to an old exercise trail, a kilometer long, whose metal equipment had rusted and fallen into disrepair. He told them that he came here three times a week to jog the dirt path, up and down the steep curves. His friend Oren was training for the Istanbul Eurasian marathon and occasionally met him here to warm up for his longer runs. Jeff explained to Anarbek how, after school, these woods became a hideout for young Turkish couples, who wandered the jogging trail searching for a secluded place to throw down a newspaper and make out. When he and Oren ran the trails, they never failed to surprise three or four such couples. At first Jeff had been embarrassed and suggested they find a better place to exercise; but Oren enjoyed scaring the young lovers out of the bushes, and argued that this was a jogging trail, after all.
Anarbek kept his eyes out for Turkish couples. At the bottom of the trail concrete steps led to a basketball court with two rusted green metal backboards. Adam had arranged to join the bartender of the Yeats there for a basketball game. Mehmet was waiting for them, and he, Adam, and Anarbek challenged a group of teenagers to a game of three-on-three. Anarbek had seen the sport on television but had never fully understood it. Before taking off for his jog, Jeff explained some basic rules, which seemed unnecessarily complicated.
The game began. Adam dribbled effortlessly, without looking at the big orange ball, and passed as often as possible to Mehmet, who threw the ball at the basket and usually missed. Finally Adam passed to Anarbek. He covered the ball in his chest, ran ten steps, forced his way through the defense with his elbows, missed a series of close shots off the backboard, then finally clattered one in and raised his hands in triumph, looking at his teammates. Adam was smiling and clapping, but for some reason shaking his head.
They dominated the young Turks; then they mixed up the teams and the next game was a little closer. Once Adam dribbled in circles around Anarbek, probably just to frustrate him, and the American nearly died laughing when Anarbek shoved him to the ground with both hands and stole the ball.
The teenagers invited them back for a five-on-five next weekend.
12
ANARBEK HAD BEEN GONE too long, and Kyzyl Adyr-Kirovka was barely managing in his absence. The bazaar stalls and village kiosks were taking in little money, there was bickering at the factory over how to evenly distribute the next month’s wages, and Anarbek’s recent string of girlfriends desperately missed the fruits of his generosity. The people of the village wondered how their lives could get worse.
Pessimism and despair grew so rampant that few cared about the strange rowdy men who were hanging around the bazaar entrance. This group of thugs frightened the Kurdish milkmaids, pursued the young bread sellers into the park, insulted the Koreans and spit in their piles of cabbage salad, and bought bottles of vodka, which they drank squatting in a circle next to Yuri Samonov’s table.
The geologist, still in mourning over the death of his son, observed the gang. They would lunch at the manti stand, pile dumplings on sheets of newspaper, douse them in vinegar, and stuff them with greasy hands into their greasy faces. By the end of the week, just what they wanted became clear. After lunch, having finished a second bottle of vodka in as many hours, the men were swaying on their haunches when the young girls from the eleventh form appeared. In their starched white blouses and long navy skirts, textbooks pressed close to their chests, the students were prancing through the bazaar on their daily walk home from the Lenin School. The prettiest of the bunch stopped at a table to buy eggs, but before she could pay the gang had surrounded her. The one with the broad shoulders and thin mustache barked an order at his friends and shoved them out of his way. The group erupted in laughter and dispersed—a few hurried off to taunt the students walking ahead—and their leader had the girl with the eggs all to himself. Even in the dense fog of his drunken mourning, Yuri knew she was Anarbek Tashtanaliev’s daughter Baktigul.
He noticed the rough-looking stranger pull Baktigul behind the watch repair kiosk and he thought, if nothing else, he could at least repay his old friend with a warning.
All the next day Yuri worked himself into an alarming drunken stupor, and at four-thirty, drawing down the makeshift wire gate with a crash, he closed his stand. Late dusk was falling. Crows circled overhead and landed on the budding arms of the cherry trees. Yuri stumbled off in the directi
on of Karl Marx Street. It was approaching dinnertime on this cool summer evening, and even the village children were inside, having their tea. Three ragged pariah dogs followed him as he trudged across the potato field. They arrived on the muddy end of Karl Marx Street, where a pile of burnt trash was still smoking. The animals sensed foreign territory, whined, lowered their tails, turned back, and Yuri found himself alone. On Nazira’s porch it took him a full minute to figure out that the bell was missing. He pounded the door with his fist, then realized he had pounded too hard. He should not have come.
Opening her door, Nazira might have expected anyone, but never the geologist, standing as pale and as rigid as a tombstone. He worked his brown fur shapka in his hands, and before she could say a word, he apologized for disturbing her. The apology cast such pity in her heart that she invited the Russian into her home. She knew better: Karl Marx Street had eyes. It was not herself she cared about—she had no reputation left to protect—but she did not want Yuri or his wife suffering more than they had in recent months. His coming alone to her house was a sign of great urgency or great drunkenness, and she sensed both.
She seated him upstairs on her softest red felt mat, beside the concrete hot plate she was using to warm the room and bake bread. She could no longer afford to buy bread at the bazaar. Four months ago the government had paid her salary in sacks of flour and a kilogram of butter, and that provided her and Manas with the flat, simple leposhka they ate each evening. When her father was home, he would occasionally drop by and slip some kielbasa or mutton into her refrigerator. But, infuriatingly, he had disappeared; and it shamed her now to have a guest—she did not even have a bite of meat to offer him.
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