The woman eyed Anarbek and Nazira and swept her curly bangs out of her face. In the histrionic manner of a Russian actress she smiled and pronounced, “Very good today! Och-yen!”
“This woman sells jackets for me. There’s a large trade here on the street. People look for deals. They know they’ll find prices they can’t get in the shops, and I give Sashenka a quarter of the profit. If she sells two, three jackets a day, she can make some good money, no? What, fifty or one hundred dollars?”
Nazira pictured that kind of money: fifty dollars a day, three hundred a week, a thousand a month. It was unthinkable. She imagined the new clothes she could buy for Manas and Oolan, a rug for the cold wooden floor in her house, an electric oven now that there was no gas in the village. She could stop brewing samogan. But no, they didn’t have the time for this.
Faruk stretched his plastic smile. “I give Sashenka a quarter of the profit. I shall give you”—he paused a dramatic second before whispering—“half.”
Half? The offer was tempting. What would it hurt to try, two or three days at the most, until her father was ready to leave? She searched Anarbek’s face for approval, but he was staring at the tall blond woman’s bare knees and nodding, only half listening.
In this way, on just her second afternoon in the city, Nazira found herself employed. The following morning she rolled up the sleeping bag Jeff had given her and ate breakfast with her father and Adam in uncomfortable silence. They had yogurt and last night’s bread, and her father made her try, for the first time, a banana. It was soft and sweet, and she had never tasted anything so delicious, but when she told this to Adam, he looked at her as if she were a child. The dark American had little patience. She asked him politely about his family and his work, but he responded only with scornful, curt, one-word answers, and she wondered what she had done to insult him.
Anarbek walked her to the ferry. Alone on the European side, unsure of herself, the traffic swirling around her, she made her way uphill, past the university arch, into the Grand Bazaar and to the leather store, where Faruk greeted her with a kiss on both cheeks, his lips hanging a second too long. He then unfolded a short black leather jacket on a table before her.
“Start at one hundred fifty dollars. Don’t take less than eighty,” he said in Russian.
She returned to the street where they had met Sashenka. After nine, as the bustle began, Nazira attempted to attract customers: the tourists exiting the hotels, the restaurant owners opening shop, the drivers of boxy Tempra SX’s, the Russian shapka traders. It made her nervous, standing alone on such a busy street, holding up an expensive leather jacket. She worried someone might just steal it from her and that she would be held responsible. But watching the other saleswomen on the sidewalk eventually calmed her, and she tried to imitate their subtle movements. If eye contact was established with a pedestrian or driver, she took two gentle steps forward, slightly raising the leather coat to signal the potential customer, welcoming him to approach.
Three hours passed without a sale. Nazira daydreamed of Manas sitting on Lola’s lap, or petting the neighbor’s dog, or chasing sheep in the garden. She missed him with a pain that was almost physical, and as the morning wore on, her daydreams turned into fears. She saw Traktorbek chasing Manas, lifting him roughly, shaking him, tossing him into the air higher and higher and threatening not to catch him.
By late morning Nazira had given up hope of making a sale and was considering dropping this mad game and demanding her father’s absolute immediate return home, when a stocky man with a strange Turkish accent surprised her by asking the price of the jacket. She forgot the troubles of home, and with an instinct absorbed from the village bazaar, named a price higher than she had been instructed to: two hundred dollars. The give and take commenced. She bargained carefully, remembering that $80 was the lower limit, and sold the jacket for $120—a huge sum. All the way back to the Grand Bazaar she fingered the bills in her sweater pocket. It was that simple.
Faruk seemed both pleased and surprised when she handed over the money. “Terrific. You are a natural businesswoman,” he said. “That jacket was worth only fifty.”
He was as good as his word and gave Nazira half the profit on the spot: thirty-five dollars.
She sold two more pieces early that afternoon, an addictive sense of triumph building with each sale. She counted what she had earned again and again. Last year, when teacher salaries had been delayed, the Kyrgyz government had paid her in UNICEF emergency food rations—crumbled bars of inedible dry oats. Now here she was, thick wads of clean U.S. bills rolled in her pocket, almost one hundred dollars in a single day.
Throughout the afternoon she continued to see the mysterious Sashenka, who appeared off and on among the street hawkers of leather coats, fur jackets, and pillbox hats. The woman had a stately air about her, an attitude of experience. She spoke Russian and English and greeted Nazira in both languages, but she bargained with customers in Turkish and in German. While Nazira stood her ground, turning all afternoon on the same sidewalk corner, Sashenka changed sides of the street impatiently, strutting up and down its length, keeping a distance between herself and the other sellers. Strangely, Nazira never saw her make a sale, and she wondered about her own good luck. Was she actually a better dealer? She tried to assuage the unstated rivalry between them with frequent waves and smiles. Late in the afternoon, she had just sold a miniskirt and was passing Sashenka on her way to the shop when the woman stopped her.
“You are getting good at this game,” Sashenka said with a forced laugh. “And you are making a lot of money. I have not sold a jacket all week. Why not take me to lunch?”
Nazira said she would love to. In the bright sunlight they ate at a sidewalk café under a red awning that bubbled in the breeze. They chatted for nearly an hour, picking through pieces of chicken shish and roasted eggplant in olive oil. Sashenka’s good humor and harsh accents amused Nazira. It turned out she was not Russian, but Romanian. They discussed the underground leather-peddling industry. Sashenka gave her advice: the busiest streets at the best times, the kind of person who will stop to flirt but is not interested in buying, the tricks of knowing if someone is walking away as a bargaining ploy or because you have played too hard. Over chai, Nazira explained how she had come to the city, her attempt to get her father to return to Kyrgyzstan, and his misguided obsession with figuring out a business arrangement between companies in the two nations.
“It seems you may be stuck here for a while,” Sashenka said. “I know what that feels like.”
“No, I will give my father—and this biznes,” Nazira gestured to the busy street, “a week at the most.”
“Yes,” the Romanian said, smiling. “I know what that is like.”
A truck crashed by, spewing exhaust behind it.
Emboldened by her success on the streets, Nazira had built up the courage to tell Jeff about Manas. But in the apartment that evening Jeff refused to remain alone in the same room with her. He refused to acknowledge anything had ever happened between them. He never mentioned receiving the letters she had sent, never elaborated on the concern he had expressed in his own letter to her, and when she approached, as quickly as possible he sought the company of Adam or her father, so she could talk no more.
Near midnight, though, she cornered him accidentally. Her father had asked her to fetch him a glass of water before he went to sleep. Passing the living room, she saw Adam sprawled on the couch, reading. He glanced up from his book and quickly looked away. Self-conscious, distracted, she turned into the kitchen and found herself face to face with Jeff. He nearly jumped at her sudden entrance, then laughed uncomfortably. “Nazira, we haven’t been alone in many years,” he said, and sat down at the round wooden table. He offered her a chair.
She swallowed. “Jeff, I have not forgotten,” she said, seating herself.
“I didn’t mean you had.” His clear voice grew foggy. “I haven’t forgotten you either.”
She had been caught
off guard and tried to figure out how to broach the vital subject at this inopportune time. She bounced back up. “I promised my father to bring water. May I use a glass?”
“You have been here three days. You are no longer my guest, you are family.”
“Ah, yes. You are a good host.” She managed a smile, opened a cabinet with a shaking hand, and pulled from it two tall glasses. She was about to fill them at the sink, but Jeff came up behind her.
“Don’t use the tap. You should drink bottled water. It’s safer. Here.”
He opened the refrigerator and offered her a plastic liter labeled Hayat. Fancy, expensive water, she thought, like something out of a soap opera. Jeff took another glass from the cabinet for himself. She watched him fill them and asked quietly, “I have wondered, Jeff. Why have you not married yet?”
He spilled some of the water on the counter. “Try some of this,” he said, offering her a glass. “See how much better it tastes.”
She took the glass and pressed the back of one hand against it. “It is too cold. You should not drink such cold water! Your throat will become ill.” She met his glance. Jeff returned to the table and sat down slowly. “I’m not sure marriage is in the cards for me, Nazira. I have a girlfriend now, here in Turkey. Her name’s Melodi. I’d like to be married one day, but—”
Nazira felt her cheeks coloring. “Yes?”
“I’m not sure she does.” He sipped his water, smacked his lips, and said in Kyrgyz, “Eshteke emes.” It’s not important.
“Does she know of us?” Nazira approached the table, slid the chair a bit away from Jeff, and sat down. “Is that why?”
“No, not that.” He swallowed. “I think she likes her freedom, her independence. She’s not like other women here. She’s adventurous. She doesn’t want to be married young, with children and everything—a normal, quiet life, you know?”
“Yes, a normal life. Children. And you do not want such things?”
Jeff fidgeted in his seat. “What I’m saying is, if it’s not going to work out with me and Melodi, it’s time for me to move on again, see more of the world.”
“I do not understand you, Jeff. The world is everywhere! You have seen too much of it, I think.”
“Listen, someone like me gets bored if I stay in one place too long. I’m not really settled.”
“How can you be bored in such a big city? Here you do everything you want. You have money. You take the holidays. Go to films. Eat in restaurants.”
“No, it’s a different kind of boredom.”
“I think you have forgotten Kyzyl Adyr-Kirovka. There it is very boring.”
Jeff tapped the table nervously with his thumb. “I think I was happy there.”
Nazira considered this a moment, then said, “You were happy because you could come and go. We cannot do that.”
“What do you mean? You’ve done that now. Look where you are!” He waved his arm at the window. Across the straits the mosques shone white through the veil of the misty evening.
“But Jeff, do you know what this is costing me?” She wanted to explain how this trip was tearing at her, how it was keeping her from her son, from their son. She sought the words she had prepared countless times in her head but found herself for the first time questioning them. Why did he never ask about her life back in Kyrgyzstan? Could he have used her and then left her to suffer the results, like that Eden in Santa Barbara? Had he simply played with her? Was he capable of that? Clearly he had never felt anything serious for her. Her body grew stiff, and she thought she was losing all feeling in her chest and her legs. Before she could say anything, Jeff surprised her, reaching across the table and touching her arm.
“I have something to ask you, Nazira. Your father—he mentioned a child once. A son.”
She wrenched her arm away, surprised at the strength of her own revulsion. What right did he have, did any man have, to touch her like this?
“Yes,” she said fiercely. “I have a son.”
“Is he . . . ?” He looked at her in earnest. Five years ago in Kyrgyzstan, Jeff had seemed fresh, innocent, hopeful—there had been a glow of health to this face. Here, in this city, he seemed the very opposite: selfish, dangerously childish. She thought of Traktorbek. He at least had wanted her for his wife.
“His name is Manas,” she said. She watched Jeff’s face drop, and suddenly she lost her courage. “He was an accident. A Russian man I knew from university. He came that year to teach in Talas . . .” She felt the words slip easily off her tongue, the words she had used many times in the past, explaining away Manas’s father. She could see relief softening Jeff’s eyes. He nearly smiled. She said, “I thought he loved me. But he just came and went. He was—how do you say?—coming and going always.”
“A transient.”
“Transient? Is this the word?” She shifted in her chair to face away from him.
“Can you handle it? Your son, I mean. Without the father?” His tone had changed; suddenly he was concerned.
Nazira smiled in defiance. “I?” she said, patting her chest. “I can handle it. We Kyrgyz women are used to such things. You have seen our men. They are so lazy. What is the difference, if they stay or not?” She tasted a tiny sip of her father’s bottled water—the iciness stung her throat. Jeff Hartig, she thought. It had not been him—it had been his confidence, his foreignness, the possibilities he offered of some other life. “Durak!” she said softly in Russian. Fool.
“I know,” he said, misunderstanding.
“Durak. Durak.”
“I know.” He grinned, as if the stilted conversation had cleared the air.
Nazira stood, turned unsteadily, and leaned against the counter. She glanced through the windows at the play of light, the faint hints of stars across the sky. “My father is thirsty,” she said, lifting one cold glass from the table.
“Yes, he is,” Jeff said, smiling once more. Again that look of confidence, as if they had shared some intimate joke. A pang of hatred pushed at her stomach. Jeff did not know her father. He knew nothing about either one of them.
At the sink, with a splash, she dumped the freezing bottled water from the glass and refilled it with tepid water from the tap—the only kind her father should drink. Jeff remained silent as she strode out of the kitchen. Passing the living room, she saw Adam again, his legs raised rudely on the couch. She had completely forgotten he was there, just the next room over. He did not look up from his book; he refused to acknowledge her creaking footsteps. Americans!
Nazira had never lived in such a strange place with such unfamiliar people, and she did not know how to accomplish the simplest things. Jeff’s huge apartment was only superficially clean; she was bothered by the dust on the bookshelves, the strange red sauces that had leaked all over the refrigerator, and the smudged glasses the men had proudly washed. At night she never knew where to sit and spent much of the time alone in the small, stifling hot study, reading Jeff’s Lonely Planet travel guides. Each morning she changed her clothes in a mad sprint, afraid her father would come in and swing open the door. Jeff had a laundry machine—a luxury Anarbek showed her how to use—but she felt uneasy about hanging her clothes on the single line on the balcony, among the men’s undergarments.
This morning, passing Adam’s open room, she saw him doing pushups with his legs raised up on his bed, and she hurried by, afraid he’d catch her looking. The bathroom routine had become a source of torment: she didn’t know when was the proper time to use it, and her presence had upset a schedule in which Jeff, then Adam, then Anarbek took turns washing. So for the third morning in a row she waited for her father’s healthful clearing of the throat, and when Anarbek finally returned from his toilet, the bathroom was hers. She found that the hot water had run out, that a soaked towel lay in a puddle on the floor. All week now a plastic razor blade had remained on the sink, and though she wanted to throw it out, she imagined it might be Adam’s.
At breakfast, Jeff was in a rush to get to work, and he avoide
d Nazira’s eyes. Her father scowled and dismissed any talk of leaving. And Adam made her the most uncomfortable of all, with his long silences.
She found herself more at ease outside the apartment. Her good luck with the leather jackets continued through the week, and her lunches with Sashenka became a daily ritual. It was her only female companionship, and Nazira relished the company. They spoke in Russian about wild subjects, things she never would have discussed with friends in the village—past loves, strange dreams, the habits of men. They chattered as if they had known each other for years, and Nazira felt no danger relaying her secrets: whom would the Romanian tell?
Each day Sashenka drilled her about her progress with her father. Had Nazira convinced him to leave? Had he secured his business connections yet? Nazira would chronicle their previous afternoon’s journey around the markets of the Laleli district, into the dark shops of socks, underwear, sweaters, leather, and tobacco. She described her father’s intrepid search for someone willing to give him business capital, someone enterprising and kind, interested in helping Turkey’s Central Asian ancestors, now that their little country was independent and struggling. From the shopkeepers flowed continuous promises, evasions, and equivocations, but nothing concrete. Only the sheepskin deal with Faruk’s uncle, Hakan, looked promising.
Her father, she explained, was tireless; but she could not understand his drive. Capitalism seemed exhausting. She told Sashenka, “If I could just get him home, I’m sure things will work themselves out. We have friends and family back in Kyrgyzstan. How does he expect to get anything done here, so far away, on his own?”
Sashenka assured her that it takes striking out on your own to accomplish something big. There were opportunities in wealthier countries that could not be found in the places they had come from. Hadn’t Nazira realized this yet? Turkey was developing quickly. One day Kyrgyzstan and Romania would develop too, but the time frame was different. Every country had its own pace, but a human being had only so many years—you had to make your fortune where you could. A person had to survive. Sashenka spoke down to her as if she were a child, yet Nazira argued that she was not as simpleminded and provincial as her new friend thought.
This Is Not Civilization Page 23