Daily Life in Turkmenbashy's Golden Age (35 page)

When I got back to Nurana, dinner was ready. Over
plov
, I told Jeren and Döwlet what had happened. I showed Kümüsh and Altyn my chipped teeth. Döwlet looked worried and told me he was glad I was all right. Jeren looked disappointed and told me that Alei and I should have fought the boys, should have taught them not to mess with Americans. I lay on my
dushek
for a long time that night, staring at the ceiling and thinking about whether I’d done the right thing. I decided I had. True, my pride was hurt and a couple of my teeth were chipped, but no one had gotten robbed or had their face bashed in with a brick. Things had worked out well.

32.

Going Home

Spring was wedding season. Young brides paraded through the dirt streets of Nurana, draped in silver jewelry like chain mail, their heads and shoulders covered with embroidered ceremonial jackets. They moved like silently, their mouths hidden by the tails of the kerchiefs that covered their hair. Attended by sisters, female cousins, or girlfriends, they shuffled from house to house in their grooms’ neighborhoods, introducing themselves to their new communities. I was at Islam’s house, watching a World Cup soccer match when three brides appeared together at the door to pay their respects to his wife. They’d decided that, since their future neighbors were obliged to lay out
klionka
s covered with food for visiting brides, they would make things easier for their hosts and visit together.

In May and June, I went to a couple of wedding parties (
toi
s) every week with Döwlet and Jeren. We would iron our clothes, shine our shoes, and drive out to some
kolkhoz
or other. Döwlet still called them by their old names: Marxism, Leninism, Communism. The
toi
s were usually outside. It wasn’t going to rain, after all – it was the desert. In the dusty yard outside the groom’s house, the cooks would be tending giant cauldrons of soup or
plov
that were simmering over wood fires. Rows of tables would be loaded with pastries and sweets,
chorek
and salads, vodka and soda. At first, there would be only a sprinkling of people. Women in their embroidered
koynek
s, their hair covered with their best kerchiefs, would gather inside the house or at the tables. Men in dark suits would stand in tight groups near the cauldrons, smoking, or spitting
nas
, a mysterious green powder that’s rumored to include ingredients ranging from tobacco to opium, chicken shit to saksaul ashes.
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The children would run in giggling packs around and through the house, skirting the men at their cauldrons, sneaking sweets from the tables.

By the time the
plov
was ready, the tables would be packed with two or three hundred people. We would eat before the sun went down, since there usually wasn’t good outdoor lighting. Elbow-to-elbow at long banquet tables, we’d shovel food into our mouths and drink vodka toasts to the bride and groom. When it got dark, the music would start. Parked on one of the dirt roads near the house there would be a trailer – an ordinary looking metal box from a tractor-trailer rig. One of the long sides would fold up to reveal a makeshift stage inside. There, in the belly of the trailer, the wedding singer would stand among microphone cables, power cords, speakers, amps, and flashing, colored Christmas lights.

I only ever saw one wedding singer sing. Most of them just lip-synched to recordings of popular songs. Sometimes they even had fake bands – guys who pretended to play drums or tambourines. Niyazov had banned lip-synching, complaining that performers were forgetting how to sing.
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Like many of his decrees, though, it had no apparent effect outside the cities. When the singer started the music, the guests would flow from the tables to the street to dance under the stars and the flashing lights.

Going to
toi
s was fun, but it was also challenging. Turkmen take pride in their hospitality. Some become overly enthusiastic hosts when they get drunk, forcing their guests to eat, drink, and dance more and more – whether they like it or not – and berating them if they don’t cooperate. The biggest problem was vodka. To make it through
toi
season without dying of alcohol poisoning, I had to develop a strategy. I ate as much fatty meat as I could, as early as I could, and continued to eat slowly but steadily all night long. If the shots of vodka started to overwhelm the cushion of food in my stomach, I had other tricks: covertly pouring my vodka onto the ground instead of into my mouth; raising my glass to toast but only sipping the shot instead of throwing it all back; and, in true crisis situations, simply offending my hosts by refusing to drink more.

Once I learned the tricks, I really enjoyed
toi
s. So when Cennet, a Peace Corps Volunteer who lived in Murgab, said she wanted to have a
toi
before she returned to the US, I latched onto the idea. I had wanted to do something nice for my friends from Nurana before I left. I would throw them a giant party. I’d seen how much they liked
toi
s. I talked it over with Jeren at dinner one evening and she thought it was a great idea: she was full of advice, which I wrote down; she even helped me plan and price out a menu. In fact, she got her whole extended family involved (and several Peace Corps Volunteers pitched in, too). Cennet also played an important role. She agreed to be the bride, fake-marrying her friend Cam. We set the date: June 14. A week before the event, the local government began to complain that we didn’t have permission to throw a party. We ignored them.

I started shopping two days before the party. I’d take a taxi into Murgab and head to the bazaar, where merchants hawked everything from basil to books, from peanuts to matches. I’d wade through the cars and the crowds, browsing. I bought so many shopping bags full of onions, potatoes, green peppers, tomatoes, scallions, herbs, beets, cabbages, cotton seed oil, rice, and beans that I had to hire a boy with a cart to haul it all to Jeren’s parents’ house, near the bazaar. I left some of the groceries there. Others, I delivered to a woman in Murgab who I’d hired to make four different kinds of salads for the party.

On the day of the
toi
, I woke early, had a cup of coffee at the
klionka
, and then climbed into the car with Döwlet. The sun was rising. We rattled along the road, Döwlet fighting with his old Lada to keep it moving. It was a quirky machine that required its radiator to be refilled after every 15 or 20 minutes of driving and stalled if its driver lifted his foot from the gas even for a moment, even when he was shifting or braking. We left Nurana and bumped past farm fields to a popular fishing spot on the Murgab River.

There were two single-wide trailers there that served as stores. When men caught more fish with their cane poles than they needed for their dinners, they sold them to the owners of the stores, who stashed them in baskets floating in the river. We bought everything they had in their baskets, two squirming grocery bags full – about 20 pounds of fish. Back at the house, I squatted under a pomegranate tree and scaled and cleaned the fish. Altyn came over and offered to help. I gave her a small fish with thick, golden scales and she went to work. Kümüsh squatted nearby and giggled. When the fish were all naked and empty, we cut them into chunks, floured them, and left them with Jeren, who promised to fry them.

Then Döwlet and I drove to Murgab. The temperature was already over 90 and, even with the windows down, I was sweating. Döwlet had to go to work. I had to go to the butcher. Jeren’s father went with me. He was a crusty, shambling old man who wore a furry, Russian-style
shapka
on his head. His face was a rough-hewn, dark walnut color, but his balding head, underneath his hat, was a light pine. As we walked from his house to the bazaar, he told me about life in Turkmenistan during World War II: “The lucky ones ate grass; the rest starved.”

The butcher’s shop was under the bazaar’s patchwork canvas roof. A man with an axe stood behind a table groaning under sections of lamb and cow carcasses, covered in cheesecloth to keep the flies off. Jeren’s dad helped me choose 45 pounds of lamb and beef. He would point to a section and the butcher would sling it onto a stump and hack it to pieces with his axe. We hauled the meat back to the house in dripping plastic grocery bags.

It took two hours for Jeren’s brother-in-law Maksat and I to de-bone, cube, and salt it all. Maksat worked happily, chatting with me through a mouthful of
nas
. “Eaten any mushrooms, lately?” he asked, using a Turkmen euphemism for sex that I always found strange since most Turkmen men claim they don’t give oral sex. We’d only finished 20 pounds or so when my right hand got so blistered I couldn’t use it anymore. I switched to my left. By the time we were done, both of my hands were red and swollen.

By early afternoon, Jeren was at the wedding hall I’d rented, with a crew of its employees and her family members, chopping and peeling. I’d hired a cook, a man from Nurana who worked as a cut-rate doctor, delivering medicines and advice on his bicycle. He was the head chef, standing over a massive black cauldron behind the wedding hall, supervising everything. I did some chopping and peeling, but mostly I ran errands, fetching more cottonseed oil, more soda, more vodka, more bread. Meanwhile, Cennet was getting her hair done and trying on her wedding dresses. We’d planned a bi-cultural wedding, so she had rented both a colorful Turkmen-style dress and a white Western-style dress.

People started to file into the hall about 6:30. We were expecting 150 – a small
toi
. Oraztach, Islam, and the rest of the doctors and nurses from the clinic came. A group of the boys from one of my English classes came. Umida and Malika came with Kelly. Altyn and Kümüsh were there, dressed like princesses in clouds of white taffeta and lace, their hair sprayed into place and sprinkled with glitter. Peace Corps Volunteers came from all over the country. My extended host family was there, and so was Cennet’s. They all took their seats and started snacking and drinking. I was still solving last minute problems.

Kakajan, one of my future tourist guides, had agreed to be our wedding singer. He had promised to actually sing, unlike the lip-synchers at most weddings. But he hadn’t shown up. I ran across the street to the post office, placed a few phone calls, and managed to track him down. He claimed he was on his way. Even if he did arrive soon, though, we weren’t ready for him. Döwlet’s friend Shokhrat had agreed to lend us his sound system. But Shokhrat hadn’t shown up, either.

Since Shokhrat had no phone, Döwlet and I climbed into the old Lada and rumbled off to his
kolkhoz
to find him. We banged on his door until he woke up. He apologized, explaining that the guy who had promised to give him a ride to the
toi
hadn’t shown up so he’d decided to take a nap, figuring we’d come get him eventually. We packed him into the car with all his speakers and amps and hurried back to Murgab, stopping only once to refill the radiator from a stream.

Back at the wedding hall, we set up the sound system. Azat, our master of ceremonies, grabbed the microphone, welcomed everyone to the
toi
, and thanked them for coming. The cook, half-drunk, staggered in and announced that dinner was ready.

“How bout a hand for the cook?” he slurred at the gathered guests, who obliged him.

The wedding hall staff served
plov
and lamb stew and the vodka started flowing in earnest. Cennet and Cam sat quietly on a couch at the front of the room, at a table piled with fruit and cookies and bottles of soda and champagne – the happy couple on display. I moved from table to table, drinking toasts with friends and picking at plates of
plov
. A videographer, a necessity at any
toi
, recorded everything.

Guests took turns at the microphone. They made toasts to the lovely couple and their fake marriage. They made toasts to me, wishing me luck in America. There were wedding gifts, hugs, and tearful speeches. Jeren took the microphone and dragged Döwlet, Altyn, and Kümüsh up to the front of the room and presented me with a carpet they’d had woven for me that said: “In memory of our son Sam from Döwlet, Jeren, Altyn, Kümüsh. 14.06.2006.” Kakajan got up and sang a couple songs and he was great – the crowd loved him. Then the dancing and the toasts, the vodka and the food, all started to blur. I’d been too busy running errands and saying goodbyes to follow my
toi
drinking strategy.

At some point, Cennet went downstairs and changed into her white dress. She re-entered the banquet hall to the sound of the Peace Corps Volunteers all humming “dum, dum, da dum.” Cam joined her and they took their fake vows in front of a Peace Corps Volunteer pretending to be a minister. Then it was time for more dancing, Cennet whirling across the dance floor in a blur of white. Almost everyone danced except the older Turkmen women, who thought it would be improper to join in. Around midnight, the power went out. It was getting late anyway, so the owner took the opportunity to usher the last of us out the door.