This Is Not Civilization

by Robert Rosenberg

  “You read this, Jeff? He’s tearing the place up. I mean, he’s never been able to take care of family; how’s he gonna run the town? You forget what was happening? You forget the teen center?”

  Jeff was silent a moment. A car alarm sounded from the street below. Adam’s eyebrows knotted up, and his voice grew louder than Jeff had ever heard it. “Look, you don’t get it. You can take off wherever you want. You’re from some happy family down in Phoenix. You don’t have nothing weighing on you.”

  Jeff almost laughed. “Happy! You’re so caught up in yourself, Adam, you’ve never even listened to me. You don’t know the first of it. I haven’t talked to my dad in years. Happy! Who’s ever been happy?”

  Adam rolled over on his side and stared at the wall. “You tell me I should stop the self-pity. What about you?”

  A new note had crept into his voice—vindictiveness, and the words stung. Jeff shook his head, saying, “Look, don’t suck me into this. I don’t ever have to go back there, but you’ve got to live with this decision. Your family’s waiting. At some point you’ll want to return. And then what? You’re not going to find what you’re looking for in Kyrgyzstan. I know. I’m trying to watch out for you here.”

  “Well, stop it then.”

  A nasty silence filled the room. Jeff stood to leave, but Adam slammed the heel of his fist on the carpet. “Ah, fuck. I’m telling you Jeff, I don’t know what to do. I promised her.”

  Adam arrived at the shoreside table late the next afternoon and found Burak already waiting for him. It was cloudy, and the wind cut south across the straits under the bridge, churning up pointed green waves. A napkin on the table flapped under the weight of a teacup.

  “Well?” Adam asked, approaching.

  Burak stood and raised his arms in triumph. “Success! I passed!”

  “No shit?”

  “I am not shitting.” His student was grinning so hard it seemed his neck would burst. “I was very nervous because it was the last chance. I hate taking such exams on the computer. My hands were wet three hours, from the sweating.” He gestured wildly as he spoke. “After, at the end of the exam, you can accept or cancel, before they show the score. I am thinking, I did so badly, I must cancel.” He pounded his forehead with his palm. “But it is the last chance, so I accepted the result.”

  “What’d you get?”

  He made a thick fist. “Five hundred ninety. I spoke already with the coach of the Queens College of New York.”

  “Was he happy?”

  “He was very proud to me, as my parents are. Adam, because of you I will study in America.” Burak grabbed his hand and shook it violently until Adam tore the hand away and sat down.

  Burak said, “You don’t look glad for me.”

  “I am. No, I’m real psyched for you, Burak. You earned it. You worked hard.”

  Across the expanse of water a white fishing boat rocked toward them. He could smell the countless odors of debris lapping against the shoreside jetty. Cypress trees on the opposite shore swayed against the wind. A ferry was plying through the current from Üsküdar to Eminönü, and he wondered if Nazira was on it.

  Burak pulled his chair close to Adam, sat down, and reached into his shirt pocket. “Here.”

  “What’s this?”

  “My parents say to give you this, as thank you for helping me win the TOEFL.” The Turk shoved a roll of green bills into his hand.

  Adam said, “Forget it. I didn’t do anything. Your English is probably worse ’cause of me.” He refused to close his fingers around the money.

  With his opposite hand Burak grasped Adam’s fingers and in his water-polo grip forced them shut. “You do not refuse a present from the Turks. It is rude.”

  Adam laughed and nodded once. He gazed past Burak, as far as it was possible to see along the green currents of the straits, all the way to the horizon, where, if he kept his eyes fixed long enough, he thought he could just sense the world turning.

  They parted awkwardly, and Adam walked all the way up to Istiklal Caddesi, listening to the distant wail of the ferry boats, the high-pitched brakes of the street taxis. At the top of the hill he hustled through the sparse evening crowd. Two weeks ago he had come here with Nazira, and the outdoor cafés had been full, the beggars were playing accordions, AC/DC blasted from the open record shops, the trolley car rang its bell at couples on the tracks, and cooks stirred eggplant stews in restaurant windows. He had felt assured of a future with her, of a reality more vibrant than what he had yet known. Now the gray streets were nearly empty. He realized he had somehow deceived himself.

  In Taksim Square he smelled French fries coming from a Burger King. He ducked in, ordered a serving, and took them upstairs to the terrace. Red tables lined the roof of the building, but he was the only customer. He slid into a booth. The tabletop was wet with ketchup and soda spills, and he chewed the hot, salty fries, one by one. Across the street gleamed the windowpanes of the French consulate, and on the other side of the square the heights of the Marmara Hotel were lit in purple. The skyscraper blocked his view of the straits, but he knew they were there. The city, once so foreign, was suddenly familiar and cheerless.

  He drew Verdena’s e-mail out from his pocket and read it again, twice. He turned the facts over in his mind, examining them from every angle. He’d never considered the possibility of replacing his father as councilman: he’d never entertained the slightest interest in politics. Now he realized it was a simple matter of will. The possibility that his family might think he was afraid to run made him furious; then he thought of Nazira, and pushed away the remaining fries.

  It was getting late, and he had only tonight to make up his mind. He exited the restaurant, dodged traffic across Taksim Square, and hailed a taxi. He told the driver, an elderly man who managed to steer, smoke, and eat a doner sandwich all at once, to take him to Üskudar. The cab rushed downhill, sped through yellow lights past the Besiktas soccer stadium and up the highway to the entrance of the Bosphorus Bridge, where they slowed into a line of stalled traffic. They inched their way across. Adam had never taken a taxi between the continents—he had always used the ferry. From the top of the bridge the monuments of the desecrated city spread in all directions. He contemplated the open heights, the dark waters below, and tried to imagine a nomadic people journeying across straits like this—across the ice, from the farthest tip of Asia, into North America—and making their slow way along the coast and farther down into the deserts, until they had populated the lands, and all great migrations had come to an end.

  The traffic sped up; Adam rubbed his dry eyes, and when he uncovered them saw the sign approaching: WELCOME TO ASIA.

  Nazira waited by her packed sports bags—all of her father’s things, sorted and folded—but Adam did not return to the apartment until after ten that evening. With the door open she could hear him and Jeff speaking quietly down the hall. She made out the words “airport” and “tickets” and grew frightened. A minute later Adam’s door shut with a thud. He had not come to see her.

  She rose from the bed, left the study, and rapped the hollow wood of his door softly with her knuckles. The floorboards groaned behind the door, but Adam did not answer. After a minute she pounded harder with her palm. “Adam?” she called. “Adam? It is I. Nazira.”

  He opened the door only halfway. He was wearing a stained white T-shirt and the long pair of black shorts he wore for playing basketball. “I was just changing.”

  “May I come in?” she asked.

  He opened the door wider. “I just, you know, gotta pack up.”

  “Yes. I too have packed.” Nervousness played on his face; thick veins showed in his temples, in the backs of his hands. “What is wrong, Adam?”

  “Come in. Come sit.”

  He tried to lead her over to the bed, but she resisted. “No, please tell me.”

  He knelt at his duffle bag and pulled out a crumpled piece of white paper from the pocket of his jeans, unfolded it, and handed it to her.r />
  She sat on the bed, reading. With each word a pressure built up in her chest. “Adam!” she said, and leaned back against the bedpost. “I cannot understand it, Adam.”

  “I promised I’d come with you to Kyrgyzstan, to help with your father’s service.”

  “You will come, no?”

  “Nazira, I want to come. I want to be with you. But this letter—”

  “I do not understand this letter.”

  “It’s from my sister back home. There’s this election coming up soon. They want me to run for councilman, something like mayor of the town.”

  She hesitated, fingering the paper for a moment, then laid it gently on the bed. “It’s an honor?”

  “Not sure you’d call it an honor.” He searched the floor. “It’s pretty important.”

  “You want then to do this?”

  He nodded. “I think I gotta.” Slowly he reminded her about his father, how the town had no future if he continued to lead, how Adam owed it to his family to return.

  “Adam, but our plans? That you promised! You won’t come with me?”

  “I’ve got no choice.”

  She straightened up, ready to leave, to release him from his obligation. When she stood, though, he held her by the arm and directed her back to the edge of the bed, next to him. “I was thinking you could come over to Arizona. Live with me, over there. On the reservation.”

  “I also want to be with you. But I cannot go to America. I have the duties in my village. The services.”

  “I mean after. I mean after your father—after the services. In a couple months.”

  “And I also have Manas.”

  “You’ll bring him. You bring Manas along. He likes horses, you say? We’ve got tons of horses. I’ll teach him to ride fast.”

  “But—my sister.”

  “Your sister?”

  “And my stepmother, Lola.”

  “Yeah.”

  “She has the son, too. Oolan.”

  “Yeah.”

  Beside her he had grown stiff. Her head was swimming. Suddenly she saw herself as a ridiculous figure—a foolish romantic, idealizing these hard-hearted men; a pitiable, impoverished woman who, thinking she was capable of higher things, had forgotten her place in the world. “I don’t think I can live in America, Adam. I don’t like this being far from home. Kyrgyzstan is my—”

  “What?”

  “My motherland.”

  “Your motherland?”

  “Oren says not to use this word.”

  He touched her knee. “It’s okay, you’re right. A motherland. You’re right.”

  “Yes?”

  He was silent for too long. Only his thin chest rose and fell. When he spoke, the words were simple and promising, but she could hear in them the deflation of hope. “Maybe a different time, it would work out for us.” His deep voice wavered. “We both gotta go back, take care of business, and then we’ll see.”

  “Yes, maybe a different time,” she said. She bent her head and tugged down the side of her skirt. This was pain. This was what it felt like to be alone. “I wanted you very much to come,” she whispered.

  She followed his gaze to his duffle bag, open on the floor, the white, rubber tips of his basketball shoes jutting out. His eyes remained downcast, his voice low.

  “Me too.”

  19

  JEFF FOUND THEM a late-afternoon taxi to the airport, and Nazira sat in the front while he, Oren, and Adam crunched into the back. The vehicle lurched. Its brakes squealed. Past the bridge, into Europe, the driver raced onto an open highway, cutting in and out of lanes, and near Melodi’s neighborhood Jeff had to lean forward over the stick shift and ask him to slow down.

  The city had been in the final stages of modernizing the Atatürk Airport, but the chaos of the earthquake added to the chaos of construction, and now it was impossible to discern what had yet to be built and what, in these last weeks, might have come crashing down. It took the driver nearly thirty minutes to weave through the double-parked buses and stalled cement-mixing trucks. “You’re going to be late, Nazira.” Jeff worried aloud as they unloaded her bags from the trunk. In Terminal C Adam joined the crowd of people waiting for boarding passes. Jeff pulled Nazira away to a quiet spot near the Air Kazakhstan check-in gate.

  “Look, we have this extra ticket. Let me fly with you. It’s no problem.”

  “It is not necessary, Jeff.”

  “You can’t go back alone like this.”

  “I came here alone. Flying will be much easier. Thank you, Jeff; you are very kind.”

  He looked away at the earnest embraces of travelers around them: families reuniting, couples stalling before their final goodbye, the funereal hug of two women covered with chadors, who must have suffered a loss. A gray-suited businessman wheeled his father’s luggage to the gate. An old Tajik man in a purple skullcap stared at them from a seat a few feet away. Just behind him, a tearful brown child was screaming for her mother in Uzbek. Jeff turned to Nazira again and took her hands awkwardly in his.

  “Nazira—I wanted to say—about your son—I can help out.”

  She looked at him vacantly. “It is okay, Jeff,” she said. “We will be fine. It is not your problem.” She tugged her hands from his grasp and hurried back to where Oren was guarding her two overstuffed sports bags. She hates me, Jeff thought. He disgusted her, and she wanted no more of his help. What had he left to offer her, after all? He watched her steps, the lined definition of her calf muscles as she strode away. It seemed impossible, some foggy memory of a distant life, that he had once felt those legs around him. He stood in place, amazed by how little he felt. These weeks had drained him of all emotion.

  When he rejoined them, Nazira was complaining that she had never said goodbye to her friend Sashenka. She begged Oren to find her and pass along a message. “You might like her, Oren. She is very pretty. She sells leather jackets on the street in Laleli, near the Antik Hotel. Please tell her I said goodbye. Tell her this: I send an American Prince Charming. Use those words. Do not forget, for me. American Prince Charming.”

  “Prince Charming.” He smiled. “I’ll take care of it.”

  Adam had made no progress in line at the counter, and amid the tumult of the queue gave them an open-armed gesture of exasperation. Squatting by the bags, they waited fifteen minutes more before the loudspeaker announced her Kyrgyz Air flight was twice overbooked. In a panic, Nazira had to elbow her way from Adam to the front of the counter and scream to get her boarding pass. She returned to them, perspiring, crouched on her father’s bag, and covered her face in her hands. Adam knelt beside her. Jeff and Oren stood over them, shifting on their feet, watching the crowd. When the flight number was announced at last, they escorted her to the security gate.

  She shook Oren’s hand first and wished him good luck. “You will find her, Oren. I know it. She is waiting.”

  “When I do,” he joked, “we’ll come visit you sometime over there.”

  She wiped her face with her palm. “You are welcome. If you come, I promise, I shall make you sheep eyes for breakfast.”

  Out of the corner of her eye Nazira saw Adam, and he was deathly pale. She let go of Oren’s hand. “Take care of yourself,” he said, and stepped away.

  She turned to Jeff. With Central Asian propriety, he shook her hand one final time, fumbling for something to say. “You have enough money for the trip?”

  She did not move one finger in his grasp. She wanted to answer him harshly—she wanted to scream, “Jeff, I don’t need your money!” This might be her last chance to blame him. She could blame him for everything: her father’s death, her illegitimate son, all the false hope. She looked him over one last time, at his baggy blue jeans, his half-buttoned plaid shirt, his scraggly goatee. But he was generous, she reminded herself, and well-intentioned, and she had once dreamt of marrying an American. Her father wasn’t the only one who had wanted it. She had foolishly wanted it too, more than anything.

  In Kyrgyz s
he thanked Jeff for his offer. “Thank you also for your hospitality. And Jeff, thank you for the airplane ticket. And for your help—for trying so hard to find my father. I am grateful.”

  He blushed. “Eshteke ernes,” he said. It was nothing.

  She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand and hesitated. Full of dread, she turned to Adam. Neither of them could say what they wanted, she realized, with Oren and Jeff watching, the crowd rushing past them. He made no effort to hug her, or even to kiss her in the Turkish fashion, so they shook hands instead. His palm was wet, but she could not let go. She considered dragging him with her onto the plane. There was the extra ticket, and if she pushed a little harder, if she asked him just one more time, Adam very well might come with her. It took everything she had not to speak, and finally she released his hand. Adam took a step backward, and as she bent for her sports bags, he slipped an envelope into her open purse, next to her boarding pass.

  “A little gift,” he said. His voice was somber; it pierced her. “Open it on the plane.”

  Nazira smiled at Oren and Jeff one last time. Then, hunched to her left, dragging the two heavy sports bags, she headed through the gate.

  Adam’s own flight did not board for two hours. Oren and Jeff offered to keep him company, but they seemed to be talking to him across tremendous distances; he only half-heard their voices. He insisted they leave and let him wait by himself.

  Oren tried to comfort him. “Look, I’m sure you’ll see her again soon.”

  “No, it’s not going to work out with us.” He set his jaw; he didn’t want to talk now.

  “This will all pass,” Jeff said. “Give her some time.”

  Adam stared hard at his duffle bag. “I’m fine,” he snapped. “Just leave me here.” He shook Oren’s hand, turned to Jeff, and they embraced awkwardly.

  Jeff said, “I’m thinking of coming back to the States. Around Thanksgiving. Maybe I’ll visit you.”

  “On the rez?”

  Jeff smiled. “If they won’t boot me out of town.”