Daily Life in Turkmenbashy's Golden Age (9 page)

“I’d never met an American before I met Allen and his friends,” she said. “I didn’t know much about your country. But now I know that you’re good people and I will never forget you.”

We all emptied our glasses.

Within a few days, the other Volunteers were gone. Autumn had arrived. The leaves on the box elder and Osage-orange trees were turning yellow and falling onto the streets and sidewalks. An army of women with homemade brooms swept them up almost as soon as they touched the pavement. The air smelled like fall and burning leaves. A cold wind blew down from the Kopetdag Mountains, which were already sprinkled with snow. It was sweater weather.

The Plotnikovs’ apartment didn’t have heat. Instead, we left the oven on, with its door open. On cold nights, we also left the hot water heater on in the
banya
(the room with the bath, which was separate from the room with the toilet). The heater was a five-foot- tall iron tube full of water, welded on top of an iron box into which a gas line had been routed. To light it, I had to turn on the gas, let it run for a moment, throw a match into the box, and jump back. If I waited a few seconds too long, a flame shot out the front and tried to lick my hand.

With the training period over, my job at Red Crescent formally began. No more stopping by the office a few afternoons a week to drink coffee with Geldy. It was time to get serious. On my first official day at work, I arrived at 8 a.m. and went into Aman’s office. He lounged behind his desk, which was shaped like a “T,” with his chair positioned at the center of the crossbar, facing down the stem. He was fat, greasy, and grinning as usual. I sat nervously in a chair on one side of the stem of the “T.” He told me the first thing I should do was to write a day-by-day, hour-by-hour work plan for my first three months at work – in Russian. I told him that was impossible. I had no job description and no specific idea of how I should spend my days at work. (Peace Corps had told me I was supposed to “assess the needs of the community” and then plan projects to address those needs). Furthermore, my Russian wasn’t good enough to write a report. Geldy, who had been hovering in the background, stepped in.

“No problem, no problem, he’ll write the plan,” he told Aman, pulling me out of the office by my elbow.

In the kitchen, Geldy lit the stove and put the scorched old teapot on to boil. The power was out, so the kitchen was dim, lit only by the gray light from the window. He pulled out the instant coffee and two mismatched, chipped old teacups.

“Are you crazy?” I asked Geldy. “How could you say I would write that plan? I can’t write it. I don’t even know what my job is.”

He carefully removed a pane of glass from the window, lit one of his slim cigarettes, took a quick drag, and blew the smoke through the empty frame.

“Calm down,” he said. “It makes no difference what you write. You don’t have to do any of it. He just wants a plan to show to his boss in Ashgabat.”

So, over coffee, we composed a plan. I would teach health seminars at the local schools several days a week. I would hold a weekly meeting with local English teachers to help them practice their language skills. I would draw informational, health-related posters to hang at the local clinic. I would paint a health-related mural at the bus stop. I would write a grant for funds to buy toothbrushes and toothpaste to donate to the local orphanage. I would create and publish a health-related coloring and activity book to use during my lessons in schools. The list went on and on. Geldy’s response to each of my proposals was the same: “Great idea, but you’ll never get permission.”

At the time, I didn’t understand what he was talking about – but I learned. The process was different for every situation, but it was always long and tortuous. If I wanted to paint a health mural at a bus stop, for example, I would start by writing a proposal in Russian and submitting it to Aman. After a few rewrites, he might sign it and stamp it with his personal seal. Then, if he was nervous he might get in trouble for approving it – and he surely would be – he would submit it to his boss at the Red Crescent office in Ashgabat, who would put it through the same process. Once everyone at Red Crescent had approved it, I would rewrite the proposal as a grant, in English, which I would submit to an organization that had money to give away – an embassy, an NGO, Peace Corps, etc. If, several months later, one of those organizations approved the grant and gave me the money I needed, I could it with the Ministry of Justice, and, then start trying to get permission to paint the mural. That would mean getting permission from the city government, which (as far as I could tell) owned all the buildings in town, to paint a mural on the side of a building. So I would write a new proposal, in Russian, reflecting all the changes required by Red Crescent and the granting organization, and submit that to the mayor. If the mayor was nervous that he might get in trouble for approving the project – and he surely would be – he would kick it up to a government ministry in Ashgabat for more stamps, and more signatures. If, several months later, the government approved the project, I could start painting.

Even though Geldy knew all this, even though he warned me I would never get permission for my big ideas, he wrote them all down and turned my daydreams into an official-looking report. He typed it up on the computer in Aman’s office and gave it to me to give to Aman the next day. Aman, pleased that I’d done as he’d asked, stamped it and went back to reading his newspaper. (This is what he did for most of every day, which was quite impressive, since Turkmen newspapers, which were all government-produced, were rarely longer than eight pages). With my plan approved, Geldy and I put together proposals for the projects on my list and submitted them for permission – to Aman, to the school superintendent, to city hall. Then, when nothing happened, I settled in to wait. I had no job description and no permission to do anything but sit in the office at Red Crescent.

Each morning, I would arrive at the office at 8 a.m. and wait on the front steps for Aman to show up with the keys. My co-workers would come to work one by one and wait with me. There was Vera, the gruff, middle-aged Russian bookkeeper; Aynabat, the young Turkmen nurse who taught health classes in local schools; and, of course, Geldy, who was in charge of the youth volunteers. Aman would arrive around 8:10 a.m. and unlock the door. The rest of us would follow him inside. Vera would hide in her office with the door closed. Aynabat would leave to teach a lesson somewhere. Geldy would make up some errand and skip out, too. I would spend my morning alone with Aman.

I would sit at one end of Aman’s desk and he would sit at the other. There was no other place for me to work, except the kitchen counter. Aman would read his newspaper or stare at the wall or talk on the phone. I would, supposedly, work. This was not an ideal arrangement for me, since I didn’t really have a job. I would write new project proposals, study Russian, write letters home – anything I could do to look busy. I was right in Aman’s line of sight, so when he got bored, he’d grill me about what I was doing, usually concluding that it wasn’t enough and that I was lazy. If I asked him what I should do, he would say I should follow my work plan. I would point out that I didn’t have permission yet to do any of the things I had proposed in my work plan. We had that same conversation several times every week.

One day, I was trying to look busy by studying Russian when the phone rang. Aman, pleased to have something to do, scooped it up and talked for a few moments. Then he stood, put on his jacket, and hurried out the front door. He returned five minutes later with a balding man in a black leather jacket. They talked and joked for a few minutes in Turkmen, which I didn’t understand. Then our guest began asking me questions in Russian: why I had come to Turkmenistan, where I lived, who my local friends were, what I did at work, when I planned to go on vacation, etc. This was not unusual. I was an oddity. People occasionally stopped by just to meet “the American” and pepper me with questions. I didn’t mind. I was used to it. After about a half-hour, the man in the leather jacket excused himself and left.

I walked across the hallway to the kitchen to make a cup of tea, feeling proud that I had managed to carry on an entire, 30-minute conversation in Russian. Vera, the bookkeeper, was hovering in the kitchen. A stout, blond woman, she was never friendly, but usually decent. She spent her days sitting in her office with the door closed, behind a desk piled with documents. Given the amount of paperwork involved in running an office in Turkmenistan, she was probably the only one of us who was truly busy. She made me some tea, we sat down at the little table, and she asked if I knew who I’d been talking to. I told her I had assumed the man in the leather jacket was Aman’s friend. After all, Aman had been so nice to him.

“He was KNB,” she said.

“He seemed nice enough.”

“They always do.”

8.

Without Permission

The mountains were sprinkled with muddy snow, the trees as bare as skeletons. Everything in the world was either gray or brown: gray concrete buildings, gray streets, gray sky; brown cotton fields, brown mountains, brown trees. The clouds hung low over the city, hiding the sun from view and leaking half-frozen raindrops. I sat in Aman’s cold office at Red Crescent, wearing my coat, trying to look busy. The electricity was out again so all the curtains were open to let as much gray light into the room as possible. Aman, in his black leather jacket, alternately read his newspaper and stared at the wall.

I still did not have permission to teach health classes in the schools or to make health posters for the clinic. Aman had not approved the grant proposals I had left on his desk. I was frustrated. There was so much to do; there were so many things to fix. I had the time and ability to make some (small) contributions. I just didn’t have permission. So, instead of doing useful things, I was stuck at Aman’s desk, studying Russian and writing letters.

When lunchtime mercifully arrived, Aman folded up his newspaper and left the office. I heard his boxy, Soviet-era Lada rattle to life and rumble away down the street. I gathered my papers, put on my hat and scarf, and walked out of the dark office and into the gloom outside. I turned right and walked along a row of anonymous gray apartment buildings, peeking in first-floor windows. In one, a family was sitting around a wood fire they’d built on their apartment’s bare concrete floor. Smoke poured from their half-open windows. The heat must have been broken in their building for so long that they just got fed up.

At the end of the row of apartment buildings, I turned right again and walked through the back of the bazaar. In the front of the bazaar, the sellers offered neatly stacked fruits and vegetables at high prices. Clementines were in season – imported from Pakistan, I’d been told. In the back, there were several giant dumpsters and a crew of men who sat on the tailgates of trucks selling cabbages, carrots, and potatoes. There were also the junk shops with piles of everything from bicycles to buckets, bolts to batteries. I stopped for a few moments to browse some books I found stacked between a pile of electrical outlets and an old air conditioner.

At the far side of the bazaar’s back lot, I turned left onto a sidewalk and walked past the photo shop, the pharmacy, and the barber’s shop. Dodging old Ladas and Volgas, I crossed the street to the bakery. Under a corrugated tin roof, three
tamdur
ovens stood like giant clay eggs half-buried in the ground, smoke rising from holes in their tops. The women who tended the
tamdur
s covered their hair and faces – except for their eyes – with white cloth, to keep from burning their hair or scorching their cheeks as they leaned into the ovens to tend the
chorek
.

A baker reached inside a
tamdur
with her gloved hand, pulled out a golden brown oval of flatbread, and flopped it on the table. I left her 2,500 manat (about 10 cents), picked up the
chorek
, broke off a piece to eat right away, and tucked the rest inside my jacket to keep me warm on the walk home. It was two inches thick, crusty on the outside, and soft in the middle – delicious and hot on a winter day.

At home, there was chicken-and-spaghetti soup on the stove. Olya had made it that morning from the previous night’s leftovers. The apartment was empty. Misha and Denis were at work for a change. I lit the stove to warm the soup and went into the
banya
to light the pitch. I almost blew myself up by waiting too long with the gas running before throwing a match into the metal box. A flame shot out and there was a loud “whump.” I warmed my hands for a few minutes and started removing layers of clothing: hat, scarf, jacket, and sweater.

When the soup was ready, I carried my bowl to the table, and turned on the BBC news. I tore off pieces of fresh
chorek
and dipped them in my soup. When I was full, I made myself a cup of tea. On TV, the anchor was talking in his prim British accent about the latest developments in Ukraine’s Orange Revolution. Thousands of Ukrainians in Kiev were protesting the results of an election, which – they believed – pro-Russian Prime Minister Victor Yanukovich had stolen from pro-Western opposition leader Viktor Yushchenko.

After lunch, I went to Dom Pionerov to work on my carpet. I had finally managed to get my own loom, though it hadn’t been easy. After weeks of promises and procrastination, Misha had built me a wooden one. When Mahym saw it, though, she said it was too flimsy. If I tried to string it, she said, the tension of the warps would bend it out of shape. She said I needed a metal loom but she had no idea where I could buy one. Husbands made looms, she said. I didn’t have a husband, so I took a
marshrutka
to Ashgabat to look for a loom store. With no Internet to consult and no yellow pages to thumb through, I started at a carpet shop. When I asked the man behind the counter where I could buy a loom, he looked surprised.