It was April, 1994 and I would be graduating from college in one month. I woke up one morning to the sound of the ringing phone.“Mr. Rubel?”
“Yes,” I answered.
“I’m calling from the United States Peace Corps. We would like to invite you to serve as a volunteer.”
“Oh my god. Really? Where?”
“Kyrgyzstan”
“Kurdistan? I didn’t think there was such a country.”
“No, Mr. Rubel. KyrGyzstan. It’s in the former Soviet Union, and it borders China. Look on a map.”
“When does it start?”
“You would leave on June 6th. That’s less than two months from now. You have ten days to decide.”
When I tell people that I lived in Kyrgyzstan for two years they usually get a sheepish look on their faces and admit that they are not sure where Kyrgyzstan is located. I tell them that it’s east of Berserkistan and west of Kabookistan. The conversation usually ends with people saying “yeah those ‘stans’. That is really the middle of nowhere, eh?”
To give you an idea of what the middle of nowhere is like, Kyrgyzstan’s capital, Bishkek, is named for the wooden spoon that the Kyrgyzs use to mix the fermented mare’s milk, yes, I said mare’s milk, that the Kyrgyzs love to drink in the summer. Unlike Uzbekistan, which has the distinction of being one of only two countries in the world that are doubly land-locked (you have to go through two other countries to reach a significant body of water-the other is Liechtenstein), Kyrgyzstan is easily in range of a beautiful coast-line – after going through 3,000 miles of China.
What attracted me to this bustling, cosmopolitan world capital? What was a nice Jewish boy doing in a place like Kyrgyzstan? While some people may not find it an appealing idea to spend two years in the middle of nowhere, I though it was a grand idea. This was Central Asia: the roof of the world, the Silk Road, and Genghis Khan. I didn’t feel crazy, just filled with wanderlust and a need for adventure. This was a place in the midst of a monumental transition from Soviet, communist rule to independence and free-market capitalism. The people are predominantly Muslim yet have been cut off from the larger Muslim world for a century. The lack of flush toilets notwithstanding, I couldn’t think of a more interesting place to spend two years.
I certainly don’t blame people for not being able to place Kyrgyzstan on a map. In fact, its obscurity is one of its greatest attributes. For me however, perhaps the most daunting thing about considering spending two years in Kyrgyzstan was that I wasn’t sure I could pronounce Kyrgyzstan correctly. Doesn’t it seem like there must be an extra letter in there by mistake? Is it even ethical to go to a country you can’t pronounce? I also had to take into account that my friends and family thought I was crazy for going to spend two years in a remote Central Asian former Soviet backwater. The more intrepid, like my 82 year old grandmother, thought it was a fine idea. Of course, I had to take her advice with a grain of salt because she also told me to try to come home with a nice Jewish girl.
Arrival
We landed in Alma-Ata, Kazakhstan on June 7, 1994. Kazakhstan is a country half the size of the continental United States yet has a population of only 10 million. From New York, we had flown approximately 9,000 miles to get there. The first thing I noticed when I disembarked from the airplane was the towering mountains. I stood at the top of the stairs leading down to the tarmac and stared at the mountain peaks in the distance. I had been to Colorado, but this was something entirely different. In every direction there were towering, mountains, with beautiful snow–capped peaks. They were so close and completely dominated the landscape.
The second thing I noticed were that the people who greeted us at the airport looked so Asian. They looked almost Chinese. They were holding a Peace Corps sign and smiling and waving at us. We immediately boarded a bus for the drive to Kyrgyzstan’s capital, Bishkek. On the bus, I had a chance to get acquainted with some of the other Peace Corps volunteers with whom I would be sharing this experience. We were a group of about 30, and I was definitely one of the youngest. The average age was probably 26 although there was a couple in their fifties and two older women in their sixties. Everyone seemed very friendly and excited to see this new world.
We pulled into Bishkek in the late afternoon and were greeted by the rest of the training staff. I was tired from the trip, and I don’t remember the first night so clearly. I do, however, remember wandering down the street with some other volunteers near the hotel we stayed at, looking for a place to get a beer. There were no streetlights and all we could see were groups of men wearing strange cone-shaped hats squatting in small groups in the street. This certainly was strange. They seemed to look at us suspiciously as we passed. After awhile, we gave up trying to find a restaurant or bar and went to sleep. As I dozed off, I thought about how exciting it was to be in such a foreign place. I realized that I had absolutely no idea what awaited me. I was leaving everything I knew and stepping off into the void.
The next day, after breakfast, we were brought to a balcony overlooking the lobby of the hotel. There were lots of people milling about in the lobby. Our training director explained to us that we were now going to be given host families where we would live for the next 3 months of training. We were to take our things with the family and spend the rest of the day with them. We were to meet back at the hotel the following morning.
I waited for my name to be called and looked down at the families waiting in the lobby. They were mostly Asians with some Russian looking families as well. They looked as nervous as I felt. I was going to live with them for 3 months? How was I supposed to do this?
When my name was called, I dragged my duffel bags down the stairs and met Anatoly. He was a tall, mustachioed, very Russian looking man. He shook my hand, and took one of my bags. As we walked outside I noticed he had a heavy limp. We loaded the bags into the back of a little Russian made car that could barely handle my stuff and drove what seemed like just around the corner to an apartment complex.
There were four massive gray concrete apartment houses. Each building looked exactly alike. To put it mildly, they were falling apart. It reminded me of pictures I had seen of Beirut in the 1980s. When Anatoly and I entered one of buildings dragging my bags, the first thing that hit me was the smell. It stank like something rotting. The next thing that struck me was how decrepit the building looked. The concrete was a grayish color and most of the walls were crumbling. The front hallway of the building was filled with graffiti. I immediately noticed a swastika. My stomach dropped. Oh my god.
Amazingly, there was a working elevator in the building. We rode it to the sixth floor and Anatoly ushered me into an apartment. A small woman with short, dyed-red hair, a warm smile, and mouth full of god teeth greeted me.
“I am Larissa,” she slowly said, enunciating each syllable.
“I am Avi,” I answered.
“This is my family. Family – yes?” she asked, gesticulating to the children around her.
“Yes, family,” I answered.
“This Yulia,” she said, pointing to a blushing teenager.
“This Nastia,” she said, pointing to a little girl who was hiding behind Anatoly.
“This Anatoly,” she said pointing to Anatoly.
“Yes,” I laughed. “I met Anatoly.”
“You America?” she asked.
“Yes, I am from America,” I replied.
Larissa began walking down the hallway. She motioned for me to follow. She opened a door to and pointed inside. “This you,” she said.
This was my room. Anatoly dragged my bags to the room. It was a child’s room with a bed, a desk, and a closet. I realized that this must be one of the kids’ rooms. Where would they be sleeping?
Larissa began showing me around the apartment. She had a high pitched laugh, and she seemed to think that either it was very funny that she couldn’t really speak to me or it was funny that I would be living with them. I thought it was funny too, but I wasn’t laughing. I was trying to be polite and thankful while trying to control the panic rising in my throat. I was going to live here for three months?
There were two other bedrooms which meant that the kids would be sleeping together in one room. There was also a kitchen and a living room. The worst part of the apartment was the animals. It turned out that Anatoly was actually a hunter and taxidermist. There were animals, mostly birds, at various stages of being stuffed, all over the place.
The table was set in the kitchen and Larissa invited me to sit. I didn’t know it yet, but this was the beginning of the “Make Avi fat” campaign the likes of which I had never seen before. We all sat around the table. Only Larissa could speak a little English. I spoke no Russian. Larissa and I began a conversation using words, gestures and a lot of additional body language. Slowly, by the time we reached the third course, Yulia had also tentatively joined in the conversation. Anatoly ate and then excused himself (I would never exchange more than 10 words with the man). Nastia just sat there staring at me.
The wonderful thing about speaking with someone with whom you do not share a common language is that so much is open to interpretation. I learned that Larissa is a cook or she might work in a factory. God knows what they understood from my wild pantomime when I tried to explain that I was from the East Coast. It was kind of fun.
The one thing I conclusively learned at our first meal together was that I was undoubtedly going to have diarrhea later. Three different forms of fried potatoes slathered in oil, a lot of meat, and other assorted unappetizing delicacies were all copiously forced on me by Larissa. Months later I learned a term that perfectly fits my situation at Larissa’s kitchen table: terrorist hospitality.
After the meal, Larissa showed me back to my room and motioned for me to unpack. I closed the door, sat down on the bed, and put my head in my hands. What had I gotten myself into? Where the hell was I? This was going to be really difficult. These people seemed to only speak Russian, yet the Peace Corps people said we were going to start learning Kyrgyzs the next day. I took several deep breaths. Three months was not such a long time. Then, I’d go to a permanent site for the rest of my service. I could do this. I knew that I would make it work, but I suddenly felt very alone. I missed everyone – my friends and family. This was not going to be easy.
Three Weeks Later
Training went well. My mornings were spent conjugating Russian verbs while trying to hold down Larissa’s breakfasts. Although Russian is supposed to be difficult, the breakfasts proved infinitely more challenging. I definitely consumed more oil at Larissa’s table than all the rest of my life up to that point. The scariest part of it is that the she poured the oil from a huge glass jug that she takes down to the street to get refilled. For all I know my breakfasts were fried in Quaker State.
In the first week of training everyone started learning Kyrgyzs. The funny thing is that nobody in Bishkek speaks Kyrgyzs. They all speak Russian. The government is slowly making Kyrgyzs the state language, and apparently, everyone speaks it in the villages. In the cosmopolitan centers, people may speak Kyrgyzs at home but almost everyone speaks Russian on the street. The Peace Corps was trying to be politically correct so they decided to teach everyone Kyrgyzs.
Larissa and Anatoly are Ukrainian and they do not speak Kyrgyzs. In fact, when I came home from training and told them the words I had learned in Kyrgyzs, they indicated to me how funny it was that I would learn Kyrgyzs when they considered it a barbaric language that only the provincial Kyrgyzs speak.
In the second week, the Peace Corps reconsidered and made a Russian class for those of us with Slavic host families. So, I’ve been learning Russian for 8 hours a day for the past two weeks. I can finally ask for some things at Larissa’s table and thank her for her hospitality. That feels good.
A funny thing happened the other day when I came home after training. They gave me a spare key so I can come and go as I pleased. It was around 6 pm when I unlocked the door and entered apartment. A noise in the kitchen got my attention, and when I looked inside I was confronted with Larissa, wearing a gray leotard, strapped to the kitchen table with some kind of wide belt around her waist. Her face was beet red, and she just pointed to the table and shrugged her shoulders. The only time I had ever seen a belt like that was in an old I Love Lucy episode where Lucy’s friend Ethel is exercising with a similar contraption.
I contemplated bolting out of the room, but I realized that Larissa was stuck. I moved closer to the table and understood her predicament. The belt, which was plugged into the wall behind her, was fastened to the table with a vice like device. She couldn’t loosen the vice. I suppose that when turned on, the belt shakes and somehow helps in weight loss. The next part would be very tricky. Dislodging Larissa from the table would require me getting under the table and very close to her. I knew she was my host “mother,” but I hadn’t anticipated us getting this close.
I crawled under the table and freed Larissa from the table. She quickly unplugged and folded up the belt contraption and scurried out of the room to change. I anticipated a new awkwardness between us but was pleasantly surprised by how this incident seemed to loosen up our relationship. Not that she began only wearing leotards around me, but for some reason we began communicating better. In fact, I think I became Larissa’s confidant.
Bishkek was originally called Pishkek and then the Soviets renamed it Frunze after Michael Frunze, the soldier who helped bring Central Asia under Soviet control (i.e. in the name of freedom he invaded a sovereign people and subjected them to 70 years of authoritarian rule). Anyway, after independence, in 1992, Pishpek was renamed Bishkek. Thank god they changed it; to me Pishkek could be nothing other than a brand of adult diapers.
Bishkek is, in many ways, a typical Soviet built city of approximately 1 million people. The city consists of impossibly large apartment blocks, all equally ugly and rundown, mixed with austere government buildings. There is a “white house” where the President, Askar Akaev’s headquarters are, located in the central square where a huge statue of Lenin still stands. Lenin has one arm outstretched, showing the masses the way toward the glorious future.
Although many Soviet icons were torn down following the collapse of the Union, the massive Lenin in Bishkek’s main square still stands. It is at once a reminder of Kyrgyzstan’s Soviet past and a testament to how pervasive the cult of Lenin was in this culture – more than 4,000 miles from Moscow. More than ten years after the fall of Communism and most people in Kyrgyzstan still cite Lenin as their number one role model.
I lived with Larissa and Anatoly for my three months of training. My Russian progressed and I was able to carry on simple conversations. Toward the end of the training I was informed that I was being placed in a village called Aravan in the south of the country. All I knew was that Aravan was in the Ferghana Valley, was mostly populated by Uzbeks, and was an agricultural region specializing in cotton and tobacco.
I thought that my first three months in Bishkek were an adventure, but I had yet to realize how intense and life-changing the next two years would be.
Aravan
It’s at least 100 degrees and I have severe diarrhea. When you drink something in Kyrgyzstan, you never know what it’s going to do to you. I’m sitting in a jeep with a man and two women. I just got off a plane that flew over the Tien Shan Mountains to the south of Kyrgyzstan. We landed close to the main city, Osh, and these people picked me up at the airport. They were taking me to my new home. All three of them are shorter than me, and I’m only 5’5”. They are dark skinned with high cheek bones, very Asian looking. He is wearing a grey suit and hat that look like 1950s fashion. The two women are wearing dresses that also look like they were popular in the 1950s. They greet me very warmly and seem eager to welcome me.
I speak enough Russian at this point to greet them, and I understand a drop of what they are saying. The older woman, Aizada, is the director of the school where I will teach. The younger woman, Jamila, is an English teacher at the school. She speaks passable English, but seems very embarrassed. The man, Kurmanbek, is very serious. I don’t know what his role is. I am dying to use a bathroom. I am also very excited and nervous to be going to the town where I will spend the next two years.
We are driving in very brown, hilly country. It is late August and the Fall crops are just being planted. Granite mountains frame the landscape in the distance. The people I see on the side of the road look very different from the people in northern Kyrgyzstan. They looked more Middle Eastern. These were Uzbeks.
Soon, the houses appear more frequently and we enter a town. Aizada, Jamila and Kurmanbek announce that we are in Aravan, my new home. The roads are mostly dirt. We cross over a small river, and pull into a dirt yard in front of a few two-story apartment buildings. There are dirty, shirtless kids playing in the yard. The buildings are crude concrete structures, but they are the only thing resembling apartments that I see in the town. I guess this will be home.
Everyone helps unload my bags and brings them to the second floor of one building. A crowd of people gathers in the yard to watch. We enter the apartment, and I am given a brief tour of my new home. It is a spacious place, but reminds me more of a KOA campground than an apartment. There is a kitchen, living room, bedroom, and balcony. They tell me that I have fifteen minutes to wash up, and then we would have lunch. They leave.
I find the bathroom and realize very quickly that although there is a sink, there is no running water. I go to the bedroom, sit down on the bed, and put my face in my hands. Where the hell am I? What have I gotten myself into? Kurmanbek appears at the front door a moment later and with a big smile presents me with a bucket of water.
When I exit the apartment a few minutes later, a crowd of children is waiting for me. As I walk past smiling, one brave boy screams “Hello” and the rest of the children imitate him screaming “Hello” and giggling. They are a mixture of Uzbek, Russian, and Kyrgyzs kids. I am the first American any of them have ever seen. I say “Hello” and shake each of their hands.
Kurmanbek, Jamila and Aizada walk me across the yard to Kurmanbek’s apartment. Inside, I meet Kurmanbek’s wife, Mairam, and their three children, Damir, Jildiz and Almaz. I am ushered into a room where cushions are laid out around the perimeter and a large multi-colored tablecloth covers the center. Slices of melons, grapes, nuts, and candies cover the tablecloth. I am motioned to sit in the center of one of the cushions.
A few moments later other men come into the room. I am introduced to the Hakim, or mayor of the town and several other men who all sit down on the cushions. None of the women except for Jamila joins us. She is to be my interpreter. Everyone begins sipping black tea from ceramic saucers that are continually refilled. I do not want to eat. I am already sick, but I do not want to be impolite.
Everyone beams at me, shakes my hand, and slaps me on the back. I am a celebrity here. They are all eager to talk to me, and I try my Russian. They all say it is very good, but I know they are just humoring me.
Mairam first brings in soup. It is an oily broth with potatoes, vegetables and meat. Everyone gets his own bowl. As I eat, I am aware of all of them carefully watching me eat. I try some of the soup and attempt to leave some in the bowl. No such luck. I am being judged here and the hand motions and facial expressions indicate that they all want me to finish my soup. Oh god – this isn’t going to be pretty. I am excited to meet these people, but I really need some time to myself.
Next she serves tomato salad with onions and pieces of sheep meat. Everyone eats from the same communal plates that are passed around. I am stuffed. I thought Larissa’s training had prepared me for anything, but I was about to experience a whole new level of terrorist hospitality.
When the bottle of vodka appears, I groan internally and smile for my hosts. There are several toasts made in honor of my arrival. I make a toast, and tell them I am happy to be here with my new friends in my new home. I am thinking of escape at this point. I am hoping that the drinking was the final stage, and I would be allowed to leave soon.
Just then, an enormous plate of Palow, the Uzbek national dish, is presented. Palow is a cousin to what we, in the West, know as Pilaf. It consists of rice, carrots, onions and generous portions of sheep, all cooked in viscous cottonseed oil. Palow is served in a mound on one plate placed in the center of the floor. Everyone begins eating with their cupped right hands, but they give me a spoon. I place it on the side and begin copying them and eating with my hand. They crack up laughing and my back is slapped again and again. Apparently, I am now one of the boys. They push more and more of the Palow in front of me.
They are all very friendly and have many questions for me. They ask about my family and where I am from. With toasts of vodka, they tell me that Aravan is a good place and that the people here will be friendly to me. I make a toast to them in English about Aravan and their hospitality. They smile, clap their hands, and seem happy with my performance.
The shots of vodka and all of this food are wrecking me, and I tell Jamila that I am very tired. At first they protest, but they let me off easy on my first day. I am excused. I tell Jamila I will rest, unpack and meet them again in the morning.
Jamila and Kurmanbek escort me back to my apartment. I say thank you over and over again until the door is closed. Then, I make a mad dash for the toilet. Unfortunately, I remain there for most of the evening. This place is going to take some getting used to. That evening, I emerge from my apartment with an empty bucket looking for water. Several children appear and lead me to the water pipe at the far end of the yard. They tell me their names and we begin a conversation in Russian. They seem both thrilled to be talking to me but are afraid to come too close. I am like ET to these kids.
A few hours later, I lie in the strange bed unable to sleep. Although I am feeling better, I am scared to be living in this strange place. Two years seems like such a long time. Could I actually live here for two years? Would I make it? I think about the girlfriend I had left to come here. What was I thinking? I feel alone. ET phone home?
The next morning, feeling refreshed, I spend some time unpacking. I wash my face from water out of the bucket, and then came out in the yard to look around Aravan. The kids from the night before are playing in the yard and they come over to talk to me. They all knew how to say “Hello, my name is ____,” but not much else. I meet all of the kids and sit in the yard teaching them English words. I feel better after a night’s sleep.
Jamolidin
I feel a tap on my shoulder and turn around coming face to face with a middle aged man in a grey pin striped suit wearing a black, square hat with paisley-like symbols on all four sides. This was an Uzbek Dopu worn by most Uzbek men. I immediately notice the Peace Corps pin on his lapel. He is dark skinned with high cheekbones, and a handsome but somewhat weathered face. He reaches out a hand and said, “Hello Mr. Avi Rubel. I am Jamolidin Hajimatov, the leader of the English teachers of Aravan for twenty years.”
“Hello,” I say. He had completely surprised me, and I was happy at his apparent facility with English. “It’s nice to meet you.”
“We have been waiting for you for a long time. How is Mr. Martin Shapiro?” Martin Shapiro was the Peace Corps Assistant Director who had visited Aravan to arrange for my arrival.
“He is fine,” I answer. “How do you know him?”
“Mr. Martin Shapiro is my friend. He has come here to visit with us. He is a very kind man. Now, let us go. My family is waiting for you. We will succeed.” He speaks in short, authoritative sentences as if he is used to giving orders.
I understood whence the Peace Corps pin. ‘Uh, ok,” I say, “I think Jamila and Kurmanbek will be looking for me.”
“No,” he said, cutting me off. “They know you will be with me. We will succeed.”
His English is very good, and he seems official, so I follow him out of the yard and to the dirt road. He walks stiffly upright with his hands clasped behind his back. As we walk down the road, people stare at me and greet Jamolidin with a hand across their belly, an Uzbek sign of respect, saying “Asalam Aleikum, Domla.” Domla is a word that is offered to elders or respected teachers. He seems to know everyone.
At the first intersection, we turn left onto a paved road and enter downtown Aravan. Perhaps downtown is not the best word since it consisted of a bus station and small bazaar, or market. The street is crowded with Uzbek men and women and almost everyone greets Jamolidin and stares at me.
Jamolidin leads me into the bazaar which consists of rows of countertops laden with fruits and vegetables. There are also stalls with candies and men with wheelbarrows piled with round, flat loaves of bread. I feel the eyes of everyone on me as Jamolidin leads me through the large rectangular-shaped building. In one corner, there is a butcher’s section flies swarming everywhere, and slabs of meat hanging on hooks. We walk out the back of the building and into an alley filled on both sides with row after row of yellow, rugby-ball shaped melons stacked five feet high. There are at least ten different men selling the melons and they are boisterously competing with one another. Jamolidin buys two from one man who points at me and asks Jamolidin about me. Jamolidin explains who I am, and introduces me to the man as Mr. Avi. The man seems to have heard of me before. I feel like a movie star.
We walk past the melons and crossed over a narrow river on a rickety wooden bridge. Jamolidin motions to the river and says, “This is Aravan’s river, the Aravan-Sai.” We continue up a dirt road.
“How many people live in Aravan?” I ask Jamolidin.
“It is a village,” he answers. “We live in the center, but there are many more people in the Aravan region.”
I later learned that there are approximately 10,000 people in the center of the region and a total of 40,000 in the region. “Where do you learn all of your English?” I ask him, “It is very good.”
“It is not very good, thank you,” he answered. “I studied in the university in Osh many years ago. I have always been an English teacher.”
“Have you ever been to America or England?” I ask him. His accent is very slight.
“No,” he answers. I have never left the Soviet Union. Mr. Martin Shapiro was the first American I ever met. You are the second.”
It seems amazing that his English could be so good and his accent so light yet he had never spoken with a native speaker. I was impressed.
The houses on the sides of the road are very close to each other. They are all one story homes and many have second floor storage barns with tobacco leaves drying in the sun. Jamolidin stops, opens one large wooden door, and motions me inside a courtyard. “This will be your home,” he says. I’m not sure what he means.
The courtyard is gorgeous. From the outside it is difficult to get a sense of an Uzbek home. The home is shaped like a horseshoe with the open end facing away from the street. Jamolidin’s courtyard contains a large tea-bed with a small table and cushions on it. The tea-bed sits underneath a beautiful grape arbor with large clusters of grapes hanging down for the taking. A cooking area is on one side of the yard and a pot is boiling on a wood stove. In the back of the courtyard, close to the open side, are Jamolidin’s livestock: a cow and a few sheep. Several rooms open off the sides of the courtyard.
As Jamolidin shows me around, with a look of pride, a woman and a young boy enter into the courtyard.
“This is my wife,” he says. “She will be your mother.” She is a homely woman, shoulders stooped, practically hidden underneath her headscarf.
“And this is my youngest son, Nuridin,” Jamolidin continues. The cute young boy of 9 or 10 shakes my hand vigorously and says, “Hello. My name is Nuridin.”
“He is lazy,” Jamolidin continues. “I want him to learn English.”
Not understanding, Nuridin continues to beam at me.“Good,” I say. “I will help him.”
Jamolidin motions me to the tea-bed. “Sit down,” he said, “Your mother has prepared some food.”
I sit on the tea-bed and complement Jamolidin on his home. When I point to the grapes, he jumps up on the tea-bed, unsheathes a knife that is fastened to his belt, and cuts off a cluster. He then sits down, takes off his dopu, and smoothes out his thinned, graying hair.
Jamolidin’s wife first presents us with freshly baked bread and hot tea. Jamolidin motions for her to wash the grapes. From their interaction, I understand that she will not be joining us at the table. Jamolidin appears to be very much the king of his house.
“How many children do you have? I ask.
“Four,” he replies.
“Do they all live in Aravan?”
“No. One son is in Turkmenistan. Another one is in Osh.”
“They are all boys?”
“I have four boys and two girls.”
I nod, understanding that boys and girls are counted very differently in this society. “Tell me about your work.”
I am the leader of the English teachers of Aravan,” he repeats proudly. “I teach at an Uzbek language school. You will be teaching at the Russian school. I hope you will come to my school as well.”
I assure him that I will.
“The English teachers in Aravan are very bad,” he continues. “They do not speak English. Most of them did not attend university. They received their degrees from a correspondence course. You will see.”
Jamolidin’s wife returns to the table with steaming bowls of soup, similar to what I was served the night before at Kurmanbek’s house. We eat the soup, and I tell Jamolidin about my family. He asks me how many rooms we have in our house. I am embarrassed to tell him that my parent’s house has four bedrooms. I tell him that everything in America is large and that we are not very rich. He nods in understanding, but I know that I could never explain my life in America to him.
By the time we finish the soup I am stuffed, but I should have realized that Palow would be served. I add to my mental checklist that I will have to learn how to either refuse food or find ways to eat less. Jamolidin invites Nuridin to the table and we sit and eat the steaming rice and meat. I insist on eating it with my hands, Uzbek style.
“Mr. Avi,” Jamolidin asks,” Do you think you will live here with my family?”
I thought he was being hospitable by calling his wife my mother and his home my home, but I realize he is serious.
“Well,” I stammer, “Kurmanbek and Aizada told me I would live in my apartment. I think I have to live here.”
“We will succeed.” He replies. “This will be your home.”
I don’t know what to say. He is very hospitable, but I would like to have my own apartment.
.
“Can I use your bathroom?” I ask.
Jamolidin points to an outhouse in one corner of the yard. I enter the outhouse and squat over the putrid hole. There is no toilet paper. Instead, there is an old book with pages already missing that I am supposed to use. This is going to take a lot of getting used to.
When I return, Jamolidin motions me into one of the room of his house. “Now, we will rest,” he says. He lies down on a few cushions and motions for me to do the same. “After we rest we will go to your apartment and bring your things here.”
I lie on the cushions unsure of how to handle this situation. I don’t want to be rude and I don’t understand if the apartment is really mine and if I am expected to live with Jamolidin. I look across the room and see that Jamolidin is sleeping. I close my eyes, hoping I will be able to keep my apartment.
“Mr. Avi,” Jamolidin says, “You must wake up.”
I shake my head realizing where I am. I must have dozed off. I sit up and see that Jamolidin has changed his clothes. I walk into the yard with Jamolidin and he tells me to say goodbye to Nuridin and my mother.
I thank both of them and we head out of Jamolidin’s house and begin walking toward my apartment. We walk on dirt roads and again, people greet Jamolidin and stare at me.
“Everyone is excited that you are here,” Jamolidin tells me. “They want to meet you and to have you as a guest. I will make sure you are safe.”
I begin to sense that Jamolidin likes being in the limelight. It seems like he wants to be my agent. As we approach my apartment I thank Jamolidin for his hospitality. I tell him I look forward to coming to his home again soon. I add that I will stay in my apartment because the Peace Corps told me I should be living alone.
Jamolidin looks at me and furrows his brow. “You will live here now and then you will come to me,” he says. With several onlookers staring at us, he hugs me.
“We will succeed,” he says and heads back down the dirt road toward his house.
Baba Masha
In my first few months living in Aravan, everyone wanted to have the American as a guest and so I was plied on a daily basis with obscene amounts of sheep, cotton seed oil, and rice. You don’t realize what a blessing it is to be regular until you’re running frantically through the streets of a Central Asian village looking for the closest outhouse.
I began to look for ways to supplement my diet and to find ingredients that I could use to cook more familiar food. One thing that was missing from my diet was eggs. I hadn’t seen one egg since I arrived. But there were plenty of scrawny chickens clucking in the streets and yards. Where were the eggs? I began asking my neighbors where I might be able to procure some eggs. I received widely different answers none of which brought me any closer to an omelet. One neighbor told me to try the bazaar. No luck. Another neighbor told me I would have to go into the closest city, Osh. I couldn’t believe that there were no eggs in Aravan. Were they keeping the eggs from me on purpose? Was this an anti-American conspiracy?
Of all resources lacking in the former Soviet Union, the most precious and most difficult to obtain is information. Information is power and the Soviet State hoarded it all and taught people to exist on a diet of carefully crafted bits and pieces. The failure of the Soviet Union is intimately tied to the inability of a centralized state to allow for a flow of information throughout society. This limits innovation. In the Soviet system every citizen was taught to do their little part and not to think on a larger scale. It could be dangerous to have new ideas. The eggs were no exception. Nobody would tell me where to find eggs.
As a Peace Corps volunteer with plenty of time on my hands, a desire to explore my new home, and a hankering for familiar tastes, I became determined to discover the hidden eggs of Aravan. I asked everyone in my neighborhood and school. Finally, one neighbor cracked. I don’t know if it was because I kept pestering her about eggs or if she let the information slip inadvertently. Anyway, weeks into my egg-quest, a neighbor named Zoya told me that an old Russian lady down the road sold eggs. Her name was Baba Masha. I asked Zoya which house she lived in but she just shrugged her shoulders and went back into her house.
The next afternoon I headed down the road in search of Baba Masha. I walked along the river and passed several of my students who stopped their playing to say hello to me. We had a typical conversation that I had with my students when I saw them outside of school:
“Hello Mr. Avi,” they sang out.
“Hello Dilfuza. Hello Dilnoza. Hello Alisher.”
“How are you?” they asked together in sing-song voices.
“I am fine thank you. How are you?”
“I am fine too,” they all answered in unison.
I waved, they giggled, and I moved on.
It was a sunny day and it felt nice to be walking along the river with the craggy, brown mountains in clear view. After fifteen minutes of walking, I came across an old Russian lady on the side of the road, wearing a white house coat, cleaning a dish with the river water that flows through the gutter. I asked her if she knew where Baba Masha lived. She stood up, and I was amazed that she was so stooped that even standing up she was almost bent in half. She looked up at me with friendly blue eyes. Her face was weathered with deep creases and wrinkles and her long gray hair was tied in a bun on the back of her head. Her eyes were a surprisingly sparkling blue and one corner of her mouth turned upward in an involuntary smile as she regarded me.
“I am Baba Masha,” she said.
“Zoya, my neighbor, told me that you might sell me some eggs.” I inquired.
Baba Masha narrowed her eyes and examined me a little closer.
“Zoya told you,” she said. “OK, follow me.”
Eureka. I followed Baba Masha across the road and through a blue gate into a yard. She looked back at me over her shoulder and asked me who I was.
“My name is Avi,” I answered. “I am from America. I live near Zoya.”
“America?” she asked in a sarcastic tone. “Really, where are you from?”
“I really am from America,” I answered.
“Humph. Why would an American be in this place,” she stated clearly. Wait here for a minute.”
Baba Masha walked into the house and I could hear the raspy breathing of another person inside. In the yard were three fruit trees, a table and chairs, and a shed in one corner. Baba Masha came out of the house and approached me.
“I heard there was an American in Aravan,” she said. “We have a hard life here. Everything is terrible since Perestroika. I don’t understand. . . “
I wasn’t sure how to reply so I nodded my head in understanding. Baba Masha put her hand on my shoulder and said, “Come sinichka (little son), I will give you some eggs.”
We walked to one of the sheds and Baba Masha opened the door. It was a mini-chicken house. She removed four eggs from a shelf and handed them to me.
“How much?” I asked.
“No money,” she replied. “You take them. Go home.”
“No, Baba Masha,” I answered. “I insist on paying.”
“No, sinichka, you are a guest.”
“Well,” I answered, “I will come back to help you in your house.”
Baba Masha laughed and her blue eyes twinkled.
“Come back whenever you want,” she said.
I took the eggs and headed home excited about the prospect of deviling, hard-boiling, or frying. It doesn’t take much to make the day of a deprived Peace Corps volunteer. Baba Masha seemed like such a nice woman. She also seemed to want to talk more with me. There were such few Russians left in Aravan. Most had left after the fall of the Soviet Union. When did she come to this place? What was her life like? I knew I would see her again.
One day after school the next week I walked to Baba Masha’s. I knocked on the blue gate and there was no reply. I waited for a minute until I pushed the door open.
“Baba Masha,” I called out.
No answer. I walked into the yard and up to the door of the house. I could see Baba Masha in the kitchen through the window.
“Baba Masha,” I called out again.
This time she heard me and shuffled to the door. I was struck again by how stooped she was.
“Hello?” she said, opening the door. She screwed up her eyes and looked at me for a few seconds before she recognized me.
“Ahhhh, the American. I spoke with Zoya. She says you really are an American.”
“Yes,” I said, chuckling. “I am.”
“You want eggs?” she asked.
“Well, I answered. I told you I would come back to help you in your house.”
She flicked her hand at me. “What help? What can you do?”
“Well,” I answered, “I was thinking I could clear away the grass and weeds under your trees and help you plant a garden.”
Baba Masha looked at me a little closer and then smiled. She was missing a few teeth, had a few gold teeth and the rest were yellowed. “Well,” she said, “if you want to help a little, my Sasha will be thankful. His asthma doesn’t let him work anymore.”
Baba Masha pulled my arm and led me into the house. Inside, was a small room with a stove, a refrigerator, a television and a cot. An old man lay on the cot watching tv. I remembered the raspy breath from my last visit and saw that his thin chest rose up and down with each breath and he seemed to be fighting to try to inhale enough oxygen.
“This is my Sasha,” Baba Masha said.
“Hello,” I said to Sasha, reaching out my hand.
Sasha reached out a thin, wrinkled, soft hand. “Hello,” he said putting his hand in mine without looking away from the tv.
“Sasha, this is the American,” Baba Masha said.
“American? What American?” Sasha said.
“I told you,” Baba Masha said, “the American who is living here, teaching at the Russian school.”
Sasha’s head did not move from his pillow, but he looked up at me from the cot and his grey eyes met mine. He inspected me for a moment, grunted, and returned his attention to his tv. I stood there for a second, unsure if I should try to speak to him, when Baba Masha pulled my arm again and led me back outside.
“My Sasha has terrible asthma,” she said. “His medicine is very expensive, and we can’t get enough of it. He almost never leaves the house anymore. He just lies there.”
Baba Masha’s yard needed work, but the house was tidy and she seemed able to take care of herself and Sasha. I asked her if she had children.
“We have two children,” she answered. “They are both with their families in Russia. They never come here anymore. It is better in Russia.”
“How do you pay for Sasha’s medicine,” I asked.
“We both get a pension,” she said with a chuckle, “But we only get 100 som a month. With our new capitalism, we get nothing. We used to get everything almost for free!” she exclaimed. “Milk was five kopeks and bread was five kopeks. Now, we can’t buy anything.”
I imagined my grandparents living on ten dollars a month and grimaced. I knew I would never take free eggs from Baba Masha again. Baba Masha led me to the chicken shed. She handed me four eggs and told me to come back again anytime I wanted.
I gave Baba Masha one som for each egg and assured her that I would return on Sunday to help in the yard. Baba Masha fixed me with her glinting eyes and smiled.
“Good sinichka,” she said. “I will wait for you.”
