Daily Life in Turkmenbashy's Golden Age (23 page)

Unfortunately, we’d gotten caught.

Geldy was facing two years in prison, Bahar said. She didn’t know what the consequences might be for me. Everything could be put right if we would just return the money to the US Embassy, start again, and – this time – obey the letter of the law, she said.

This was complicated, since we’d already spent a lot of the money to open the computer center in Abadan. But after several weeks of phone calls and meetings with people from Red Crescent, the Ministry of Justice, and the US Embassy, it was agreed that we could return the money that remained. After that, the embassy could decide whether or not to grant the same money to us again, properly, through the bank. This deal kept Geldy out of prison (which made us happy) and effectively killed the Internet center project (which presumably made the Ministry happy).

“No more grants, Sam. No more projects,” Geldy told me afterward. “Enough.”

It was clear to me that the audit had not been random. It had been meant to send me a message to me: shut up and sit still. When it was all over I was angry, but I was also relieved. I’d been ready to suffer the consequences of my actions, but it had scared me when it had looked like someone else might be punished for what I’d done. Whoever decided to threaten Geldy with two years behind bars had surely thought of this; the government had outmaneuvered me again.

I thought that once the Internet center was dead, the incident was over, but the fallout continued. Aman, that greasy vulture, saw his opportunity, took one of the computers from the Internet center, where I’d been using it to teach basic computer skills to Shemshat and the youth volunteers, and set it up on his desk. He didn’t bother to plug it in, since he didn’t know how to use it anyway.

“You don’t need both computers,” he told me, grinning. “You don’t even have Internet access.”

The next morning, I was typing up my students’ handwritten poems (I’d promised them I would publish them as a booklet) on the remaining computer in the youth center. With no windows, dim lighting and walls painted to look like they were made from rough-hewn stones, the place felt like a dungeon. Shemshat breezed in, took off her jacket, and laid her purse on a chair. Her eyebrows were plucked almost out of existence and she was wearing a
koynek
that was appropriately ankle-length, but way too tight to have been called modest.

“You can go now,” she told me.

“I’m a little busy here,” I said, without looking up.

“No, Aman says that I’ll be working here in the mornings now – not you.”

I turned away from the computer and looked at her for along moment. Then I understood. I was furious, but I was also not surprised. I shut down the computer, just to be mean. Shemshat wasn’t terribly bright and I hoped she’d forgotten how to turn it back on. I packed my things and left. I’d been kicked out of the youth center I’d built – by the boss’s mistress.

There was nothing I could do. Geldy was in Ashgabat so he couldn’t help me and, besides, he was trying to lay low. I could complain to Aman’s superiors in Ashgabat, but that probably wouldn’t do much good since they were still upset with me for bringing the Ministry of Justice down on them. Six months earlier, I would have stormed into Aman’s office and told him off in my broken Russian. I was tired, though – worn down. I just left the office and never went back.

I moped around the house, reading, writing bitter letters home, practicing my guitar, and driving Ana and Sesili crazy. I’d refused to follow the rules and the system had targeted me and shut me down. The worst part was, there was no one to fight back against. No police squad had burst through my door and dragged me off to sit in jail or be deported. The state bureaucracy had simply wrapped around me like a boa constrictor and squeezed until I was isolated, ineffective, and demoralized. Flailing around wouldn’t loosen the boa’s grip; it would just wear me out.

I couldn’t teach in the schools because Ovez wouldn’t grant me permission. I couldn’t run classes or projects outside the schools because the KNB discretely visited anyone who wanted to work with me and told them not to. I couldn’t visit my former colleagues from School No. 8 because they’d been forbidden to associate with me. My job at Red Crescent had imploded thanks to the Ministry’s “random” audit. My life in Abadan had been squeezed down into Ana’s four-room apartment and back yard. The only work I had left were the courses I taught in Ashgabat, which had somehow gone unnoticed by the authorities.

* * *

Without my job at Red Crescent Abadan, it was unclear what would happen to me. After all, I couldn’t just sit around Ana’s apartment until it was time for me to return to the US. Sachly, my supervisor at Peace Corps, offered to try to smooth things over with Red Crescent, to get me back to work there somehow. I refused. I’d had all I could take of Aman and the government in Abadan. I asked for a different job. Over time, I’d become increasingly ambivalent about staying in Turkmenistan – and now I was truly torn. On one hand, I felt I wasn’t wanted and was deeply frustrated and furious that while I’d been trying to help Turkmenistan, officials of the government that had supposedly invited me had been doing everything they could to make my life difficult and make sure I didn’t accomplish anything. Each time I was at a breaking point, though, ready to get on a plane home – thinking “To hell with Turkmenistan,” since it clearly didn’t want my help – I would have some small success that would encourage me to stay. And then everything would go wrong for months and I’d be ready to leave again. I thought maybe things would be better in a different place, at a different job. While Sachly and her boss considered what to do with me, I stayed home and sulked.

After a few days, Ana got fed up with me. After all, she’d lived her entire life in Turkmenistan. She wasn’t sympathetic: I’d showed up, ignored her advice that I should stop making waves and was now complaining about suffering what she’d told me all along would be the consequences. She was sitting at her kitchen table, sucking down a cigarette and a cup of coffee and listening to a sobbing, elegantly dressed Turkmen woman confess that she’d cheated on her husband and plead with Ana to ask the cards whether she was going to get caught.

“Sam, you’re never going to change anything,” Ana said, dealing the cards. “I hate to see you driving yourself crazy, banging your head against the wall. Why don’t you just go home?”

“Thanks Ana,” I said. “Thanks for your encouragement.”

“Just trying to help,” she said.

My apathy soon wore off – even if my bitterness didn’t – and I started looking around for something to do. There was nowhere left for me to work in Abadan and I only had classes to teach in Ashgabat a couple afternoons a week. I was bored and restless. When I asked Ana what I could do around the house, she told me to fix the light in the
banya
. We’d been washing in the dark for two weeks. Why not? I thought.

I traced the wires from the light bulb in the
banya
out into the hallway and the problem became obvious. They were charred and melted. I cut out the damaged sections, spliced the wires back together and,
voila
, there was light. I was so impressed with my electrical skills that I decided to fix the electrical socket next to my bed, too, so I could plug a space heater into it. The problem was, there was no way to turn off the current. So, as I was working with the live wires, I electrocuted myself.

I yelped.

“What happened? You just electrocuted yourself didn’t you?” Ana called from the kitchen. “Cut that out. You don’t know what you’re doing. You’re going to hurt yourself.”

“I’m fine. I just dropped the screwdriver,” I lied.

“I tried again and zapped myself again. With the current running through me, I couldn’t hear anything. But apparently I yelped again.

“Sam, I told you …!” Ana yelled.

“Ana, everything’s okay. Don’t worry,” I called through clenched teeth, my whole arm tingling.

The third time I shocked myself, sparks shot out of the socket, landed on the bed, and set the blanket on fire. As I discretely smothered it, hoping Ana wouldn’t smell anything from the kitchen, I looked up to find her standing in the doorway. She marched over, yanked the screwdriver and pliers from my hands, pushed all the wires back into the concrete wall where I’d found them, and went back to the kitchen. That was the end of my career as an electrician.

Still looking for ways to occupy my time, I was sitting on the porch one afternoon, playing my guitar, surrounded by giant sacks of carrots and piles of green cabbages that Ana had bought to make salads, when I got an idea. I leaned my guitar against some cabbages and walked the four blocks to the bazaar. I found a sturdy-looking, long-handled hoe, paid a few thousand manat for it, slung it over my shoulder, and carried it back to Ana’s apartment.

The back yard was overgrown with weeds and wildflowers, strewn with trash that passing kids had thrown over the fence. For the next two days, I gathered the debris and hauled it, little by little, to the eternally smoldering trash pile at the end of the street. The weather was cool, crisp, and sunny – perfect for working outside. I was stabbed by burs, stung by nettles, and bitten by bugs, but I didn’t mind.

When I finished, I had a bare dirt lot, about 20 feet wide by 30 feet long. Grape vines climbed the fences on the left and right. A hedge grew along the fence that separated the garden from the sidewalk. I used my hoe to turn the yard into a garden like the ones I’d seen in our neighbors’ back yards, with high planting beds rising from a shallow depression. I turned the hose on and filled the moat with water and the planting beds stayed dry, like long, skinny islands.

When I showed Ana what I’d done and asked her what she’d like me to plant in her new garden, I thought she’d be excited. She wasn’t.

“It’s December, Sam. Nothing’s going to grow,” she said.

“It might be winter, but it’s still warm and sunny,” I said.

“People don’t plant gardens in the winter.”

“I do.”

“You’re crazy.”

Even though she thought sowing seeds in December was a bad idea, she fished out an old tin can stuffed with seed packets made from scraps of newspaper, labeled in pencil. We spread them out on the table and picked parsley, cilantro, chick peas, peppers, and onions. From then on, I spent several hours each day in the garden. I picked up the leaves that had fallen from the grape vines. I filled the garden with water, weeded it, and used my hoe to re-shape the planting beds so they were straight and even. Sometimes I’d just sit out there and wait for the seeds to sprout. Anna came out to the back porch one afternoon and stood among the sacks of carrots, looking down on me in the garden.

You’re going to be waiting a long time,” she said, and went back inside.

* * *

When I heard back from Sachly, I learned that Peace Corps and Red Crescent had divorced; they wouldn’t be working together anymore. I needed to choose another place to work, she said. I told her I’d go anywhere she sent me – I just wanted a fresh start. If possible, though, I’d rather live in the country than in the city, I said. She chose a tiny little town named Nurana for me. It was about an hour south of Mary, which was about five hours east of Ashgabat, which was about a half-hour east of Abadan. Plenty far away.

I was supposed to move in January. I had only about six months left in Turkmenistan. I considered getting on a plane and going home to the US instead of moving to Nurana. I had nothing in particular to do in America, though, and I was hoping to salvage something from my time in Central Asia. I didn’t want to go home angry and bitter. Besides, I thought I might finally get to live my original Peace Corps dream. Maybe my host father in Nurana would be a shepherd. Maybe we’d live in a yurt. Maybe I would get to commute to work on a camel.

I started preparing for the move. I handed over my poetry class to Sasha. I told my Global Citizenship students I was leaving and would have to cut the course a couple weeks short. I asked Phoebe, a Peace Corps Volunteer posted in Ashgabat, to help Mehri with the debate tournament. I didn’t have many goodbyes to say in Abadan. I couldn’t talk to Catherine. I didn’t want to talk to the Plotnikovs. I had a farewell dinner with Tanya, told the youth volunteers at Red Crescent goodbye and good luck, and went out and got drunk in Ashgabat with Geldy.

By this time, it was almost New Year’s. Ana and Sesili had been looking forward to the holiday for weeks, buying groceries little by little and storing them away. I didn’t want to ruin the event with regretful goodbyes, so I tried to keep my mouth shut about my move. They kept talking about what we would all do together in the new year, though, and I kept vaguely saying that, hopefully, yes, we would all do that. Eventually, Ana figured out that something wasn’t right and I confessed.

“You’re just sick of living with me,” she said sadly. She seemed deflated. “I know, I know, I talk too much.”

“No, Peace Corps is sending me – it’s not my choice,” I lied.

“Oh,” she said, knowingly. “They’re sending you to
ssilka
[exile].”

She’d seen it before. That’s what used to happen to troublemakers in the Soviet Union. They’d been sent to Siberia or some other faraway place so they couldn’t make trouble anymore.

* * *

Ana was too busy to dwell on my exile for long because it was high season for her Korean salad business. (Or maybe she was glad to be rid of me. Given my troubles with the government, I’m sure having me around made even tough-as-nails Ana nervous). We stayed up late most evenings, grating carrots into four-inch- long strands, marinating baby eggplants, and seasoning cotton-seed oil. Sesili woke before dawn every morning, bundled herself up in so many layers she could barely move, called a taxi, and went to the bazaar. She stood there in the cold all day, selling the salads by the sandwich bag-full. Each night, she came home with fistfuls of cash.