Turkmenistan was once the world's most feared territory. Since the time of the Mongols, the nomadic tribes of its vast desert wastes were deemed ungovernable. Russians and Persians were captured as slaves and carried off by the fierce Turkmen.
Even now, as an independent country located between the hot spots of Afghanistan and Iran, with one of the planet's largest natural gas reserves, Turkmenistan remains virtually unknown to the outside world. The memoir "Unknown Sands" penetrates this remote and harsh land. This is a personal story that blends two years of adventure with Turkmenistan’s tumultuous history to present an intriguing profile of the country and its people. This former Soviet territory offers a target-rich environment for the unusual including a surreal cult of Presidential personality, ancient ruins of the Silk Road, and a unique, mystical brand of Islam.
Firmly entrenched in the Washington bureaucracy, lawyer Kropf had probably lifted a glass to a few foreign dignitaries in his lifetime, but he'd never pictured himself in the middle of Turkmenistan drinking a vodka toast to Benazir Bhutto out of a large platinum bowl at a family dinner. When Kropf's wife accepted a post as political and economic officer for the American Embassy in Turkmenistan, his Bhutto-toasting fate was sealed.
A lawyer with the U.S. State Department, Kropf, his wife and their two-year-old daughter headed to the black hole of Central Asia (featuring the kind of terrain "medieval Europeans had in mind when they filled in the unknown areas of their maps with dragons"), which borders Afghanistan and Iran and has a long history of being a forbidden land of warriors, conquerors, spies and secrets. Kropf travels to the far corners of a country dismissed as uninhabitable by explorers and still governed by an oppressive regime, revealing through his efficient prose intriguing residents still reeling from Soviet occupation and tip-toeing into the 21st century.
Kropf stays in Turkmenistan after his wife and daughter return to the states in the wake of 9/11, serving humanitarian missions while neighbouring Afghanistan is gripped by chaos. Between the drama are tales of visiting the bazaar, Kropf's comical attempts at haggling (for carpets and traditional Turkmen headwear, among other items) and his discovery of the most delicious melon in the world.
"An unprejudiced look at central Asian culture through the eyes of a curious traveler," is probably the best way in which to describe “Unknown Sands”.
This book provides the only real view of a world that even in the 21st century hides behind an iron curtain. John brings to life real and tangible descriptions of a world really only known to most Westerners through hearsay and as a side note to the War on Terror.
John takes you with him on his journeys by foot, bus, airplane, and, usually, four-wheel vehicle throughout the country. The full colour panoply of sights, sounds, and, unhappily for John, smells translate literally to the reader enveloping you into the world surround him at the time, from the woman jabbing his ankles with a luggage cart in the Frankfurt airport on his trip out to the pride of his driver in learning to pronounce the name of their American vehicle.
The country John transports you to has the intensity of its underlying cultures that have existed from well before the time of Ghengis Khan with a strong overtone of Soviet political power, which has influenced the last 70 some years. Soviet era cement block apartment buildings share the same atmosphere as centuries old mosques that themselves share the place with new monuments to the country's leader with this last to an almost comical degree.
Also, although John's mission while in Turkmenistan was to supervise USAID programs, his journeys cannot be said to be mere reports. You get the picture that much of what Westerners must do is not only provide the money and the know-how, but reawaken the prior pride in the country's history through a respectful curiosity. We should not treat any country's past as something quaint from a history book, but rather a vibrant component to understand who these people truly are.
In this respect John opens our eyes to a strange, but admirable country that lies on the edge of our imagination. (Thanks to K. Mortensen)
Again, mindful of warning about local airlines I opt to leave Turkmenistan via an expensive German Lufthansa flight to neighbouring Azerbaijan (my next destination) – vowing to take a cheaper bus or train on the next leg to save money!!
The flight itself is pleasant enough and much quicker than the 19+ hours quoted to travel by bus. I leave Ashgabat at the ungodly hour of 2.15 in the morning and am touching down at Heydar Aliyev International in Azerbaijan’s capital, Baku, by 3.50. The only downside is the cost - £515 for a 1 hour 35 minute flight…
Still, I arrive in one piece (if a little groggy) to Azerbaijan – an oil-rich land which gained independence from the Soviet Union in 1991 amid political turmoil and internal strife (as well as a war with neighbouring Armenia fought in the disputed province of Nagorno-Karabakh).
My stay here is courtesy of “Azerbaijan Diary” by Western correspondent Thomas Goltz of which more soon.
Tuesday, 6 September 2011
Monday, 5 September 2011
Wars of Terror: Afghanistan Across the Decades with ‘A Thousand Splendid Suns”
My next destination is, inevitably, much better known than Tajikistan - I am travelling to Afghanistan, courtesy of the novel “A Thousand Splendid Suns” by Khalad Hosseini.
Anyone whose heart strings were pulled by Khaled Hosseini's first, hugely successful novel, “The Kite Runner”, should be more than satisfied with this follow-up. Hosseini is skilled at telling a certain kind of story, in which events that may seem unbearable - violence, misery and abuse - are made readable. He doesn't gloss over the horrors his characters live through, but something about his direct, explanatory style and the sense that you are moving towards a redemptive ending makes the whole narrative, for all its tragedies, slip down rather easily.
“The Kite Runner” was the tale of two Afghan boys struggling to live decent lives amid the warfare and ethnic rivalries of contemporary Afghanistan, and this is the female counterpart. It is both the tale of two women, and a tale of two cities - Herat and Kabul. At the beginning, we are dropped into the world of Mariam, a young girl living alone with her unmarried mother on the outskirts of Herat. And what a sad world it is. Poor Mariam is bullied by her epileptic mother, and she lives for her weekly visits from her insincere, charming father who runs Herat's cinema, and whose real family she longs to join.
We don't stagnate with Mariam in Herat, however - Hosseini likes to move his narratives along - and before many pages have been turned Mariam's mother has died, and her unfeeling father has married her off to an acquaintance from Kabul. Despite the trauma of going to live with a complete stranger who insists that she must wear the burka and hide upstairs when visitors arrive, a tentative hopefulness begins to grow in Mariam that she may be able to win some affection from her husband, especially when she becomes pregnant.
But Hosseini vividly brings home what life is like for women in a society in which they are valued only for reproduction. Once she has suffered a series of miscarriages, Mariam's marriage becomes a prison: "Mariam was afraid. She lived in fear of his shifting moods, his insistence on steering even mundane exchanges down a confrontational path that, on occasion, he would resolve with punches, slaps, kicks, and sometimes try to make amends for with polluted apologies and sometimes not."
Just as the impatient reader might start to wonder what Hosseini is going to do next with his narrative energy, we switch from Mariam's life to that of a neighbour, the young Laila, who is growing up in a liberal family with a father who believes in her education. This means that we suddenly see Mariam from the outside: Laila never speaks to her, but one day she "passed Rasheed, the shoemaker, with his burka-clad wife, Mariam, in tow". In a flash we see, as Hosseini clearly intends us to, how behind every silent burka in Afghanistan is an individual with a hidden history.
As well as an education, ambitions and opinions, Laila even has a respectful and intelligent boyfriend, who goes with her to the cinema and on a trip to see the Buddhas of Bamiyan. By putting Mariam and Laila in contrast like this, Hosseini is, you feel, not just trying to burrow into individual lives, but also trying to explain the complexities of Afghan society to the reader.
That sense that you are listening to a history lesson as much as experiencing a fiction becomes stronger as the narrative moves on. Hosseini is almost too careful to describe for ignorant westerners the political background to these women's lives, from the Soviet occupation that ruled Laila's childhood to the growing strength of the mujahideen that her brothers join, amid "rising rumours that, after eight years of fighting, the Soviets were losing this war". Once the Soviets are ousted, he takes an even more didactic turn, spelling out how the mujahideen turned from idealised freedom fighters to oppressors. "It was dizzying how quickly everything unravelled. The leadership council was formed prematurely. It elected Rabbani president. The other factions cried nepotism ... Hekmatyar, who had been excluded, was incensed ... The Mujahideen, armed to the teeth but lacking a common enemy, had found the enemy in each other."
But Hosseini doesn't get bogged down in the ins and outs of Afghan politics. His energetic narrative speeds on through the political and domestic worlds, as we move through the tragedies that fall on Laila's family. Eventually we see her, orphaned and alone, allowing herself to become Rasheed's second wife. You might think this novel is becoming too melodramatic, as one horror succeeds another, with rockets blowing families apart and attempted escapes and even murder, alongside the beatings and whippings and threats that make up the women's daily experiences. But when I started to think this I remembered women I met in Kabul, and how many of them had stories to tell almost as melodramatic as this.
Where Hosseini's novel begins to sing is in depicting the slowly growing friendship of the two wives in the face of the horrific abuse from their shared husband. Laila looks at Mariam, and "For the first time, it was not an adversary's face Laila saw but a face of grievances unspoken, burdens gone unprotested, a destiny submitted to and endured. If she stayed, would this be her own face, Laila wondered?" The women's only hope of affection or solidarity is with one another, and they survive not just physically but also emotionally by putting their faith in each other and in their love for Laila's children.
Hosseini does not challenge the usual western view of Afghanistan, but he does enrich it - he adds greater knowledge and understanding to it, and makes the Afghans come alive as loving, feeling individuals. There is something marvellously hopeful in this process, and if there is a problem with the novel, it is not with the plot or the intentions behind it, but with the neatness of its narrative style. Hosseini's prose is stolidly direct, and he tends to explain away not only the political but also the personal, presenting each experience in a wrapper on which the emotion is carefully labelled. Whether it is love - "She had fallen for Tariq. Hopelessly and desperately" - or hate - "What harmful thing had she wilfully done to this man to warrant his malice?" - each distinct emotion is spelled out a touch too clearly.
His desire to believe in the eventual redemption of Afghanistan means that the ending verges on the schmaltzy. Undoubtedly the removal of the Taliban was positive for Afghan women, and we shouldn't be surprised if his characters draw strength from it. But in the last chapter, as the rains return, the cinemas open, the children play and the orphanages are rebuilt, the reader cannot help but feel that Hosseini's understandable longing for a beautiful return to life for the oppressed people of Afghanistan has made for an ending that is just a little flimsy.
(Review in italics by Natasha Walter. The Guardian, Saturday 19 May 2007)
For me, this novel was a little too pat, i.e. sympathetic characters overcome terrible adversity and finally triumph to reach a happy ending. As Natasha states above, Hosseini’s “desire to believe in the eventual redemption of Afghanistan means that the ending verges on the schmaltzy.”
I can’t blame him for that on a personal level, but I can’t help feeling that this adds a gloss that isn’t there, to the current straits of many Afghans in the country today. That said, there can be no disputing that Hosseini, with his two novels, has brought a sense of the lives of ordinary Afghans to a vast Western readership which might otherwise have been indifferent or downright hostile to their fate.
I now move on to Afghanistan’s rather less well-known neighbour, Turkmenistan. Turkmenistan was once the world's most feared territory. Since the time of the Mongols, the nomadic tribes of its vast desert wastes were deemed ungovernable. Russians and Persians were captured as slaves and carried off by the fierce Turkmen. Even now, as an independent country located between the hot spots of Afghanistan and Iran, with one of the planet's largest natural gas reserves, Turkmenistan remains virtually unknown to the outside world.
Therefore it is with some trepidation that I set out from Kabul to Ashgabat, the capital of Turkmenistan. There are no direct flights from Kabul to Ashgabat, and in selecting flights you should be careful on two counts – safety and price!
The British FCO warns against the use of a number of Afghan airlines due to safety concerns so it is worth paying a bit extra, even it if means an inconvenient connection. There is a difference between adventurous and reckless! That said, you should beware of ridiculously inflated air prices. Having been quoted over £3000 to fly via Delhi (with Air India) to Ashgabat; I find a more direct and less pricey flight with Turkish Airlines that leaves Kabul at midday and arrives in Istanbul at 16.15. After a rather lengthy wait I then leave on a connecting flight for Ashgabat at 23.35, arriving 05.10 the next day – for a less pricey £653 one-way!
My trip in Turkmenistan is courtesy of “Unknown Sands” by John W. Kropf. A lawyer with the U.S. State Department, Kropf, his wife and their two-year-old daughter travelled to the far corners of a country still reeling from Soviet occupation and, later, the impact of the 9/11 attacks (which occurred whilst he was there).
Anyone whose heart strings were pulled by Khaled Hosseini's first, hugely successful novel, “The Kite Runner”, should be more than satisfied with this follow-up. Hosseini is skilled at telling a certain kind of story, in which events that may seem unbearable - violence, misery and abuse - are made readable. He doesn't gloss over the horrors his characters live through, but something about his direct, explanatory style and the sense that you are moving towards a redemptive ending makes the whole narrative, for all its tragedies, slip down rather easily.
“The Kite Runner” was the tale of two Afghan boys struggling to live decent lives amid the warfare and ethnic rivalries of contemporary Afghanistan, and this is the female counterpart. It is both the tale of two women, and a tale of two cities - Herat and Kabul. At the beginning, we are dropped into the world of Mariam, a young girl living alone with her unmarried mother on the outskirts of Herat. And what a sad world it is. Poor Mariam is bullied by her epileptic mother, and she lives for her weekly visits from her insincere, charming father who runs Herat's cinema, and whose real family she longs to join.
We don't stagnate with Mariam in Herat, however - Hosseini likes to move his narratives along - and before many pages have been turned Mariam's mother has died, and her unfeeling father has married her off to an acquaintance from Kabul. Despite the trauma of going to live with a complete stranger who insists that she must wear the burka and hide upstairs when visitors arrive, a tentative hopefulness begins to grow in Mariam that she may be able to win some affection from her husband, especially when she becomes pregnant.
But Hosseini vividly brings home what life is like for women in a society in which they are valued only for reproduction. Once she has suffered a series of miscarriages, Mariam's marriage becomes a prison: "Mariam was afraid. She lived in fear of his shifting moods, his insistence on steering even mundane exchanges down a confrontational path that, on occasion, he would resolve with punches, slaps, kicks, and sometimes try to make amends for with polluted apologies and sometimes not."
Just as the impatient reader might start to wonder what Hosseini is going to do next with his narrative energy, we switch from Mariam's life to that of a neighbour, the young Laila, who is growing up in a liberal family with a father who believes in her education. This means that we suddenly see Mariam from the outside: Laila never speaks to her, but one day she "passed Rasheed, the shoemaker, with his burka-clad wife, Mariam, in tow". In a flash we see, as Hosseini clearly intends us to, how behind every silent burka in Afghanistan is an individual with a hidden history.
As well as an education, ambitions and opinions, Laila even has a respectful and intelligent boyfriend, who goes with her to the cinema and on a trip to see the Buddhas of Bamiyan. By putting Mariam and Laila in contrast like this, Hosseini is, you feel, not just trying to burrow into individual lives, but also trying to explain the complexities of Afghan society to the reader.
That sense that you are listening to a history lesson as much as experiencing a fiction becomes stronger as the narrative moves on. Hosseini is almost too careful to describe for ignorant westerners the political background to these women's lives, from the Soviet occupation that ruled Laila's childhood to the growing strength of the mujahideen that her brothers join, amid "rising rumours that, after eight years of fighting, the Soviets were losing this war". Once the Soviets are ousted, he takes an even more didactic turn, spelling out how the mujahideen turned from idealised freedom fighters to oppressors. "It was dizzying how quickly everything unravelled. The leadership council was formed prematurely. It elected Rabbani president. The other factions cried nepotism ... Hekmatyar, who had been excluded, was incensed ... The Mujahideen, armed to the teeth but lacking a common enemy, had found the enemy in each other."
But Hosseini doesn't get bogged down in the ins and outs of Afghan politics. His energetic narrative speeds on through the political and domestic worlds, as we move through the tragedies that fall on Laila's family. Eventually we see her, orphaned and alone, allowing herself to become Rasheed's second wife. You might think this novel is becoming too melodramatic, as one horror succeeds another, with rockets blowing families apart and attempted escapes and even murder, alongside the beatings and whippings and threats that make up the women's daily experiences. But when I started to think this I remembered women I met in Kabul, and how many of them had stories to tell almost as melodramatic as this.
Where Hosseini's novel begins to sing is in depicting the slowly growing friendship of the two wives in the face of the horrific abuse from their shared husband. Laila looks at Mariam, and "For the first time, it was not an adversary's face Laila saw but a face of grievances unspoken, burdens gone unprotested, a destiny submitted to and endured. If she stayed, would this be her own face, Laila wondered?" The women's only hope of affection or solidarity is with one another, and they survive not just physically but also emotionally by putting their faith in each other and in their love for Laila's children.
Hosseini does not challenge the usual western view of Afghanistan, but he does enrich it - he adds greater knowledge and understanding to it, and makes the Afghans come alive as loving, feeling individuals. There is something marvellously hopeful in this process, and if there is a problem with the novel, it is not with the plot or the intentions behind it, but with the neatness of its narrative style. Hosseini's prose is stolidly direct, and he tends to explain away not only the political but also the personal, presenting each experience in a wrapper on which the emotion is carefully labelled. Whether it is love - "She had fallen for Tariq. Hopelessly and desperately" - or hate - "What harmful thing had she wilfully done to this man to warrant his malice?" - each distinct emotion is spelled out a touch too clearly.
His desire to believe in the eventual redemption of Afghanistan means that the ending verges on the schmaltzy. Undoubtedly the removal of the Taliban was positive for Afghan women, and we shouldn't be surprised if his characters draw strength from it. But in the last chapter, as the rains return, the cinemas open, the children play and the orphanages are rebuilt, the reader cannot help but feel that Hosseini's understandable longing for a beautiful return to life for the oppressed people of Afghanistan has made for an ending that is just a little flimsy.
(Review in italics by Natasha Walter. The Guardian, Saturday 19 May 2007)
For me, this novel was a little too pat, i.e. sympathetic characters overcome terrible adversity and finally triumph to reach a happy ending. As Natasha states above, Hosseini’s “desire to believe in the eventual redemption of Afghanistan means that the ending verges on the schmaltzy.”
I can’t blame him for that on a personal level, but I can’t help feeling that this adds a gloss that isn’t there, to the current straits of many Afghans in the country today. That said, there can be no disputing that Hosseini, with his two novels, has brought a sense of the lives of ordinary Afghans to a vast Western readership which might otherwise have been indifferent or downright hostile to their fate.
I now move on to Afghanistan’s rather less well-known neighbour, Turkmenistan. Turkmenistan was once the world's most feared territory. Since the time of the Mongols, the nomadic tribes of its vast desert wastes were deemed ungovernable. Russians and Persians were captured as slaves and carried off by the fierce Turkmen. Even now, as an independent country located between the hot spots of Afghanistan and Iran, with one of the planet's largest natural gas reserves, Turkmenistan remains virtually unknown to the outside world.
Therefore it is with some trepidation that I set out from Kabul to Ashgabat, the capital of Turkmenistan. There are no direct flights from Kabul to Ashgabat, and in selecting flights you should be careful on two counts – safety and price!
The British FCO warns against the use of a number of Afghan airlines due to safety concerns so it is worth paying a bit extra, even it if means an inconvenient connection. There is a difference between adventurous and reckless! That said, you should beware of ridiculously inflated air prices. Having been quoted over £3000 to fly via Delhi (with Air India) to Ashgabat; I find a more direct and less pricey flight with Turkish Airlines that leaves Kabul at midday and arrives in Istanbul at 16.15. After a rather lengthy wait I then leave on a connecting flight for Ashgabat at 23.35, arriving 05.10 the next day – for a less pricey £653 one-way!
My trip in Turkmenistan is courtesy of “Unknown Sands” by John W. Kropf. A lawyer with the U.S. State Department, Kropf, his wife and their two-year-old daughter travelled to the far corners of a country still reeling from Soviet occupation and, later, the impact of the 9/11 attacks (which occurred whilst he was there).
Hurramabad – a Russian Perspective on a Tajik Tragedy
"Hurramabad" is a collection of short stories on the theme of ethnic Russians in Tajikistan. The Russians of Tajikistan, who arrived as Soviet administrators and skilled workers, emigrated en masse in the late 1980s and early 1990s, especially in the lead-up to the civil war.
The English translation of "Hurramabad" includes seven short stories, only one of which does not have ethnic Russians as the protagonist(s). Russians (and other ethnicities) had many reasons for leaving Tajikistan. Fleeing a country at war is obvious enough, but there were many other factors, including rising nationalism and economic problems. I don’t suggest here that Russians were the primary victims of the war, as it was Tajiks, Uzbeks and Pamiris who made up the overwhelming majority of casualty figures. But many Russians were victims in the broad sense. Volos should know, as his family was forced to leave this country where he had been born and raised.
Volos’ book falls into the category of historical fiction, as real people, places and events form the backdrop for the fictional protagonists. But the fiction is barely fiction. “Hurramabad” is obviously Dushanbe, and the events in the book all match up nicely with what actually happened. That may lead some readers into not seeing as large a picture as those who know the history of Tajikistan. For example, in one passage men have a cantankerous debate about which public square to go protests at, an anecdote that lets the informed reader know that the date is April-May 1992. In another instance two Russian women discuss riots that occurred in February, an obvious reference to the February 1990 riots and demonstrations in Dushanbe. And “that snake Yusupov” is clearly Shodmon Yusuf, the then leader of the Democratic Party of Tajikistan, who scared the hell out of ethnic Russians when he got on the radio and strongly hinted that bad things may happen to non-Tajiks (although in the novel the event is out of its proper place in time).
In the first short story an elderly Russian lady is being walked up a hill to a graveyard by her grandson. On the way to the grave of her husband she recounts – for the hundredth time – how she arrived in Tajikistan, or rather the Tajik Soviet Socialist Republic, in 1930. Her account of a boat ride up the Amu Darya and the Panj river is one of trepidation, as anti-Soviet Basmachis rebels still make incursions across the river from Afghanistan. She has no idea if her husband, sent as a Soviet administrator, is still alive. As she struggles up the hill towards the graveyard you are left with the image of a dying old woman who, despite not being a Tajik or other local nationality, knows nothing but Tajikistan, and who will never leave.
The second, and my favorite, is the story of a Russian man who never lived in Tajikistan, but who became enchanted with the country and desperately wanted to “go native” and stay in the country. Abandoning his wife and children in Russian he takes a low-paying job in a bazaar and marries a Tajik. He becomes fluent in Tajik, much to the confusion of locals who mistake him for Tatar, as almost no Russians ever bothered to learn the language, even if born and raised in Tajikistan. Desperate to be accepted, but considered an outsider by locals, the man suffers through his daily existence as the country falls apart on the streets of Hurramabad (Dushanbe). And then finally, there is a chance to be accepted as a local… and it’s not what he wanted.
In the next story, an old Russian lady welcomes what she thinks is a harmless grass snake into her home while expressing her desire to remain in Tajikistan, whatever the terrible consequences may be. Nothing is what it seems, especially the snake. I guess this is where the English and Literature students take over and pull out the symbolism, metaphor, whatever… I get it, but I didn’t dwell to much as I was eager to move on to the next story.
In ‘A Decent Stone for a Father’s Grave’ you already know what the story is about. Searching out a decent gravestone the Russian protagonist encounters locals trying to buy his possessions at a price suitable to be asked by a man desperate to leave the country and who can’t bring all his possessions with him. The greed and opportunism of a local prospective buyer of the Russian man’s car is then put into perspective when the Russian finds out that the Tajik man who could build the gravestone to his specific needs was executed on the street recently.
The other stories include the kidnapping of foreign journalists by a local warlord, the trading of a kidnapped Tajik girl for a weapon, the theft of a Russian man’s dream house by armed commanders of the winning side, and the account of a man waiting to leave to Russia.
And the writing style? It’s quite clearly realism. The descriptions of activities on the streets and in the bazaars is nothing grand, but it’s gives you a clear image in your head. And the stories are mostly of very small events punctuated by the crisis droning on in the back ground. Things seem normal, and then you are given passages like this:
“The crucified city was howling in fear and pain; the air itself seemed full of violence, rape, and robbery. It would have been better if the telephones had not been functioning at all, because rumours of what was going on in the outskirts of Hurramabad were enough to drive you mad.”
But at times the characters’ – and indeed the author’s – love for the land is clear:
“ ‘I’m a foreigner here now,’ Dubrovin forced himself to say, shrugging his shoulders. He frowned as he repeated the word to himself. A foreigner, a foreigner! He found it to be a meaningless aggregate of sounds, because everything around him gave it the lie: this hilly, jagged land lit by a reddish moon in which two generations of his ancestors had been laid to rest; the hot violet sky in which the pure stars twinkled moistly; the smell of sunbaked dust and camel thorn; the chirring of the crickets; the outbursts of barking dogs in the kishlak”.
Volos is not often this florid in his writing style, and he wisely saves it for the right moment. Overall, you are given a vivid image of the place and time. You may not get all the references, and having been in the country may help you to imagine things more “accurately.” But you should get the same satisfaction even if you don’t understand the war, the country, or even the sprinkling of Tajiki. And despite the cruelty on the part of some of the locals, the book does show affection for the people and the country – so many of which were victims of the civil war.
(Christian Bleuer, Registan.net)
My next destination is, inevitably, much better known than Tajikistan – and similarly the author is likely to be more familiar to many than Volos. I am travelling to Afghanistan, courtesy of the novel “A Thousand Splendid Suns” by Khalad Hosseini (also known for his debut novel “The Kite-Runner”).
And so I brave the charms of Dushanbe airport once again, catching a Kam Air flight at 5.30 in the morning and arriving in Kabul, Afghanistan an hour later (for the eye-watering amount of $230 economy). I spend a few hours in the new International section of the airport before heading to the slightly dowdier domestic terminal to catch another Kam Air flight to my destination, Heart (another hour-long flight leaving at midday for a slightly less eye-watering $122.)
Herat Airport also known as Herat Airfield, was established in the 1950s with American aid Herat Airport was initially used for military purposes. Later it was opened for civil use, although it has had to be extensively repaired following Allied forces bombing in 2001. It is now opened up to international air flights and is known as Herat International Airport – although it retains its militaristic feel, a reminder of the country’s recent and ongoing conflict…
The English translation of "Hurramabad" includes seven short stories, only one of which does not have ethnic Russians as the protagonist(s). Russians (and other ethnicities) had many reasons for leaving Tajikistan. Fleeing a country at war is obvious enough, but there were many other factors, including rising nationalism and economic problems. I don’t suggest here that Russians were the primary victims of the war, as it was Tajiks, Uzbeks and Pamiris who made up the overwhelming majority of casualty figures. But many Russians were victims in the broad sense. Volos should know, as his family was forced to leave this country where he had been born and raised.
Volos’ book falls into the category of historical fiction, as real people, places and events form the backdrop for the fictional protagonists. But the fiction is barely fiction. “Hurramabad” is obviously Dushanbe, and the events in the book all match up nicely with what actually happened. That may lead some readers into not seeing as large a picture as those who know the history of Tajikistan. For example, in one passage men have a cantankerous debate about which public square to go protests at, an anecdote that lets the informed reader know that the date is April-May 1992. In another instance two Russian women discuss riots that occurred in February, an obvious reference to the February 1990 riots and demonstrations in Dushanbe. And “that snake Yusupov” is clearly Shodmon Yusuf, the then leader of the Democratic Party of Tajikistan, who scared the hell out of ethnic Russians when he got on the radio and strongly hinted that bad things may happen to non-Tajiks (although in the novel the event is out of its proper place in time).
In the first short story an elderly Russian lady is being walked up a hill to a graveyard by her grandson. On the way to the grave of her husband she recounts – for the hundredth time – how she arrived in Tajikistan, or rather the Tajik Soviet Socialist Republic, in 1930. Her account of a boat ride up the Amu Darya and the Panj river is one of trepidation, as anti-Soviet Basmachis rebels still make incursions across the river from Afghanistan. She has no idea if her husband, sent as a Soviet administrator, is still alive. As she struggles up the hill towards the graveyard you are left with the image of a dying old woman who, despite not being a Tajik or other local nationality, knows nothing but Tajikistan, and who will never leave.
The second, and my favorite, is the story of a Russian man who never lived in Tajikistan, but who became enchanted with the country and desperately wanted to “go native” and stay in the country. Abandoning his wife and children in Russian he takes a low-paying job in a bazaar and marries a Tajik. He becomes fluent in Tajik, much to the confusion of locals who mistake him for Tatar, as almost no Russians ever bothered to learn the language, even if born and raised in Tajikistan. Desperate to be accepted, but considered an outsider by locals, the man suffers through his daily existence as the country falls apart on the streets of Hurramabad (Dushanbe). And then finally, there is a chance to be accepted as a local… and it’s not what he wanted.
In the next story, an old Russian lady welcomes what she thinks is a harmless grass snake into her home while expressing her desire to remain in Tajikistan, whatever the terrible consequences may be. Nothing is what it seems, especially the snake. I guess this is where the English and Literature students take over and pull out the symbolism, metaphor, whatever… I get it, but I didn’t dwell to much as I was eager to move on to the next story.
In ‘A Decent Stone for a Father’s Grave’ you already know what the story is about. Searching out a decent gravestone the Russian protagonist encounters locals trying to buy his possessions at a price suitable to be asked by a man desperate to leave the country and who can’t bring all his possessions with him. The greed and opportunism of a local prospective buyer of the Russian man’s car is then put into perspective when the Russian finds out that the Tajik man who could build the gravestone to his specific needs was executed on the street recently.
The other stories include the kidnapping of foreign journalists by a local warlord, the trading of a kidnapped Tajik girl for a weapon, the theft of a Russian man’s dream house by armed commanders of the winning side, and the account of a man waiting to leave to Russia.
And the writing style? It’s quite clearly realism. The descriptions of activities on the streets and in the bazaars is nothing grand, but it’s gives you a clear image in your head. And the stories are mostly of very small events punctuated by the crisis droning on in the back ground. Things seem normal, and then you are given passages like this:
“The crucified city was howling in fear and pain; the air itself seemed full of violence, rape, and robbery. It would have been better if the telephones had not been functioning at all, because rumours of what was going on in the outskirts of Hurramabad were enough to drive you mad.”
But at times the characters’ – and indeed the author’s – love for the land is clear:
“ ‘I’m a foreigner here now,’ Dubrovin forced himself to say, shrugging his shoulders. He frowned as he repeated the word to himself. A foreigner, a foreigner! He found it to be a meaningless aggregate of sounds, because everything around him gave it the lie: this hilly, jagged land lit by a reddish moon in which two generations of his ancestors had been laid to rest; the hot violet sky in which the pure stars twinkled moistly; the smell of sunbaked dust and camel thorn; the chirring of the crickets; the outbursts of barking dogs in the kishlak”.
Volos is not often this florid in his writing style, and he wisely saves it for the right moment. Overall, you are given a vivid image of the place and time. You may not get all the references, and having been in the country may help you to imagine things more “accurately.” But you should get the same satisfaction even if you don’t understand the war, the country, or even the sprinkling of Tajiki. And despite the cruelty on the part of some of the locals, the book does show affection for the people and the country – so many of which were victims of the civil war.
(Christian Bleuer, Registan.net)
My next destination is, inevitably, much better known than Tajikistan – and similarly the author is likely to be more familiar to many than Volos. I am travelling to Afghanistan, courtesy of the novel “A Thousand Splendid Suns” by Khalad Hosseini (also known for his debut novel “The Kite-Runner”).
And so I brave the charms of Dushanbe airport once again, catching a Kam Air flight at 5.30 in the morning and arriving in Kabul, Afghanistan an hour later (for the eye-watering amount of $230 economy). I spend a few hours in the new International section of the airport before heading to the slightly dowdier domestic terminal to catch another Kam Air flight to my destination, Heart (another hour-long flight leaving at midday for a slightly less eye-watering $122.)
Herat Airport also known as Herat Airfield, was established in the 1950s with American aid Herat Airport was initially used for military purposes. Later it was opened for civil use, although it has had to be extensively repaired following Allied forces bombing in 2001. It is now opened up to international air flights and is known as Herat International Airport – although it retains its militaristic feel, a reminder of the country’s recent and ongoing conflict…
Revolution Baby: Motherhood and Anarchy in Kyrgyzstan
From one Central Asian country that is still reeling from the after-effects of independence from the USSR, I travel to a neighbouring country undergoing similar growing pains: Kyrgyzstan. For this leg of my journey I am reading “Revolution Baby: Motherhood and Anarchy in Kyrgyzstan”, an account by British writer Saffia Farr of her time spent there as the ex-pat wife of a water-engineer husband working on an aid project to bring safe drinking water to the countries outlying regions. As with the previous book, this is a uniquely personal account by a non-native: yet one which is both insightful and engaging, and which explores the process of a Western outsider coming to terms with what is initially an alien environment.
Where this book differs from its predecessor is in its narrator; Saffia Farr, an Englishwoman from Bristol who travelled with her water-engineer husband to Kyrgyzstan just before the country’s revolution. Complicating matters further was the fact that she was expecting her first baby as she arrived in this remote, largely unknown country. Indeed, the Revolution of the title is as much a reference to the personal revolution precipitated by her pregnancy as the wider political revolution going on in the country.
Giving away the ending of a book is not a good idea in a review; but knowing the end of this book will not spoil the experience of reading it.
“Revolution Baby” is not a novel, although to many readers some of it may seem stranger than fiction' - this is an account of Saffia Farr's experiences living in Bishkek, the capital of Kyrgyzstan.
The revolution of the (brilliant) title comes very near the end of the tale - in 2005, Kyrgyz people overthrew Akayev, the country's corrupt president who "only built the Switzerland of Central Asia for his family". Saffia Farr credits an opposition politician with this last quote but it demonstrates her own lightness of touch and humour evident throughout the book.
It is really interesting to learn about the politics and history of this country, part of the former USSR (so remote Rough Guide hasn't found it yet'); but the abiding sense I've taken from Revolution Baby is of the writer herself.
Now living in Tockington, close to where she was brought up, Saffia Farr engages us with accounts of how vulnerable she felt expecting her first baby in a grey, grimly poor country.
We share her very real concerns (like worrying about being infected with AIDS from a less than hygienic blood test) but admire her ability to just get on with living.
And soon, the vertical concrete shoeboxes, inside one of which is her home apartment, become fascinating and even attractive - "I started to appreciate that tenements had different architectural styles; curves and crosses of concrete repeated over facades to create striking geometric patterns." Saffia's photographs deserve more exposure than the reproductions in the centre of this book.
The supporting cast in Revolution Baby is the Bishkek International Women's Club, a bizarre but comfortingly constant collection of ex-pats'. Playgroup' is the backdrop to Saffia's maternal pre-occupations ranging from holding out against having a nanny to Baby Tom's delayed' walking ability.
No review of the book would be complete without mention of the Kyrgyz food and drink that sounds so unappetising to western' ears - koumys (fermented mare's milk), parts of sheep's heads and plaited horse intestine sausages for instance. "The meat hall at Ortosai bazaar is not somewhere to visit if you are verging on vegetarianism."
And the pervading presence of vodka is intriguing - Soviet influence untouched by Islamic sensibilities in this region buffeted by so many greater powers.
In the book's Forward', Brigid Keenan recommends Revolution Baby to anyone who has ever had to travel abroad with a spouse. (Saffia is in Kyrgyzstan with her water-engineer husband Matthew.) I think the book has a much wider impact than this - I look forward to reading more of Saffia Farr's writing.
(Review in italics by Emily Thwaite, for which grateful acknowledgement is given.)
Flying regionally in Central Asia is probably not the safest thing in the world. That being said, fellow travellers have described it as being rather exciting and so with a degree of trepidation I take a plane from Bishtek to Dushanbe, in neighbouring Tajikistan.
The planes that fly between Bishkek and Dushanbe are all local (Tajik Airlines) and are quite small, seating fewer than 50 people, goats, etc.. The flight itself is quite dramatic, as the planes fly at a low altitude over the very dramatic Fergana Valley and Ayni Pass. A one way ticket cost $150, although cheaper options are probably avaialble if you know where to look…
The flight arrives into the international airport in Dushanbe. This is a not the most welcoming experience! The arrival gate, in the Customs Area, is a free for all, with fellow passengers pushing to get ahead in line. Customs and border enforcement can be seen blatantly receiving bribes and the arrival area is without electricity when I arrive...although fortunately it is daytime.
Thus I arrive in Tajikistan ready for the next leg of my journey, “Hurramabad” by native author Andrei Volos. This book is actually a series of novellas that describe various perspectives on the 1992 civil war that followed independence – largely from the viewpoint of the Russian community who suffered some of the worst violence and many of whom fled the country as a result. The Hurramabad of the title is a city, which is a very thinly disguised depiction of the capital Dushanbe.
Where this book differs from its predecessor is in its narrator; Saffia Farr, an Englishwoman from Bristol who travelled with her water-engineer husband to Kyrgyzstan just before the country’s revolution. Complicating matters further was the fact that she was expecting her first baby as she arrived in this remote, largely unknown country. Indeed, the Revolution of the title is as much a reference to the personal revolution precipitated by her pregnancy as the wider political revolution going on in the country.
Giving away the ending of a book is not a good idea in a review; but knowing the end of this book will not spoil the experience of reading it.
“Revolution Baby” is not a novel, although to many readers some of it may seem stranger than fiction' - this is an account of Saffia Farr's experiences living in Bishkek, the capital of Kyrgyzstan.
The revolution of the (brilliant) title comes very near the end of the tale - in 2005, Kyrgyz people overthrew Akayev, the country's corrupt president who "only built the Switzerland of Central Asia for his family". Saffia Farr credits an opposition politician with this last quote but it demonstrates her own lightness of touch and humour evident throughout the book.
It is really interesting to learn about the politics and history of this country, part of the former USSR (so remote Rough Guide hasn't found it yet'); but the abiding sense I've taken from Revolution Baby is of the writer herself.
Now living in Tockington, close to where she was brought up, Saffia Farr engages us with accounts of how vulnerable she felt expecting her first baby in a grey, grimly poor country.
We share her very real concerns (like worrying about being infected with AIDS from a less than hygienic blood test) but admire her ability to just get on with living.
And soon, the vertical concrete shoeboxes, inside one of which is her home apartment, become fascinating and even attractive - "I started to appreciate that tenements had different architectural styles; curves and crosses of concrete repeated over facades to create striking geometric patterns." Saffia's photographs deserve more exposure than the reproductions in the centre of this book.
The supporting cast in Revolution Baby is the Bishkek International Women's Club, a bizarre but comfortingly constant collection of ex-pats'. Playgroup' is the backdrop to Saffia's maternal pre-occupations ranging from holding out against having a nanny to Baby Tom's delayed' walking ability.
No review of the book would be complete without mention of the Kyrgyz food and drink that sounds so unappetising to western' ears - koumys (fermented mare's milk), parts of sheep's heads and plaited horse intestine sausages for instance. "The meat hall at Ortosai bazaar is not somewhere to visit if you are verging on vegetarianism."
And the pervading presence of vodka is intriguing - Soviet influence untouched by Islamic sensibilities in this region buffeted by so many greater powers.
In the book's Forward', Brigid Keenan recommends Revolution Baby to anyone who has ever had to travel abroad with a spouse. (Saffia is in Kyrgyzstan with her water-engineer husband Matthew.) I think the book has a much wider impact than this - I look forward to reading more of Saffia Farr's writing.
(Review in italics by Emily Thwaite, for which grateful acknowledgement is given.)
Flying regionally in Central Asia is probably not the safest thing in the world. That being said, fellow travellers have described it as being rather exciting and so with a degree of trepidation I take a plane from Bishtek to Dushanbe, in neighbouring Tajikistan.
The planes that fly between Bishkek and Dushanbe are all local (Tajik Airlines) and are quite small, seating fewer than 50 people, goats, etc.. The flight itself is quite dramatic, as the planes fly at a low altitude over the very dramatic Fergana Valley and Ayni Pass. A one way ticket cost $150, although cheaper options are probably avaialble if you know where to look…
The flight arrives into the international airport in Dushanbe. This is a not the most welcoming experience! The arrival gate, in the Customs Area, is a free for all, with fellow passengers pushing to get ahead in line. Customs and border enforcement can be seen blatantly receiving bribes and the arrival area is without electricity when I arrive...although fortunately it is daytime.
Thus I arrive in Tajikistan ready for the next leg of my journey, “Hurramabad” by native author Andrei Volos. This book is actually a series of novellas that describe various perspectives on the 1992 civil war that followed independence – largely from the viewpoint of the Russian community who suffered some of the worst violence and many of whom fled the country as a result. The Hurramabad of the title is a city, which is a very thinly disguised depiction of the capital Dushanbe.
Tuesday, 21 June 2011
Taxi to Tashkent: Two Years with the Peace Corps in Uzbekistan
Before I commence my review of “Taxi To Tashkent”, an account of two years’ spent in Uzbekistan’s Fergana Valley by American Peace Corps volunteer Tom Fleming, I’d like to pause and reflect on my recent travels.
It occurs to me that it has been 13 books and nearly 6 months since the last book authored by a writer native to the country in question (“The Oath”, by Chechnyan Khassan Baiev – who himself wrote the book in exile in the US). This is not through want of trying, on my part, to find a native authored book for each subsequent leg of my journey – they are simply not out there. Of course, this is no doubt partly down to the lack of English translations (a necessity due to my shameful monolinguistic status) but I feel there is something more. In each post-Soviet state I have encountered there is a sense of a nation re-merging from the cultural repression imposed upon it by the former USSR. Under Soviet rule individual national identity - be it religion, arts, literature or even language - were subjugated under the Russian autocracy: even states within Russia itself, which previously had their own cultural identity.
And it is the issue of language which is most pertinent here, and which perhaps explains the lack of native-authored literature for these places. Not only were the inhabitants of these countries stripped of their native languages in favour of the dominant Russian, but in the process they were stripped of their literary heritage – as only those works deemed in keeping with the Communist ethos were ever translated into Russian. The rest of many nation’s literature disappeared along with the native tongues… one can only hope that – along with these newly independent states’ religious and cultural freedoms of expression – a new indigenous literary culture will emerge for these areas.
In the meantime, I have been reliant upon largely Western perspectives for the huge Russian and former Soviet area (with the exception of Victor Pelevin’s brilliant “Sacred Book of the Werewolf” in Moscow back in November 2010). Of course, these perspectives should not be dismissed simply because they are written by ‘foreigners’, but inevitably such accounts will have they own limited focus – be it one of scientific research, travelogue, personal adventure or aid worker…
Which brings me neatly on to the next book on my journey: “Taxi to Tashkent” by 40-year-old American Peace Corps volunteer Tom Fleming. This is a diary format account of two years which he spent in Uzbekistan, teaching AIDS prevention and sex education in the conservative Fergana Valley region. One can hardly imagine a more illustrative example of East – West culture clashes than this, and this interesting book certainly bears this out.
I must admit it took me some time to warm to Fleming as a narrator here… from the outset he comes across as a brash – almost stereotypical – American. The fact that the first chapter is called “Shock and Awe” (referring to his initial disorientation in his new surroundings, but, rather oddly, using a term more commonly associated with overwhelming military force used by US campaigns in the Middle East), seemed to bear this out. Similarly, his early reaction to the unfamiliar locale and people of Uzbekistan appears to be bordering on paranoia:
“ “GOO MORNING!” Uzbek schoolboys shouted, staring with the intensity of vultures as we walked past them.”
To an outsider this seems a slightly churlish description of native children trying out a welcome phrase on a new intake of foreigners…
However, Fleming quickly establishes himself to be a perceptive and eloquent narrator – leading myself as a reader to question whether some of my initial reaction was in itself a stereotypical assumption of the US Peace Corps on my part.
Indeed, Fleming himself is no fan of the Peace Corps’ overly bureaucratic set-up, quickly identifying that administrative processes and internal politics seem to take precedence over actually making a difference to the people the organisation purports to be helping.
Initially, Fleming’s reaction is one of frustration, then rebellion (he and two other friends rent an apartment in Tashkent against Peace Corps rules – and under threat of expulsion – rather than stay in their billeted accommodation), and ultimately anger at the impotence of the mission to make an effective difference. Eventually Fleming strikes out on his own, making rogue presentations on AIDS awareness to communities where discussions of sexual relationships are largely taboo, although frustrations at the long-term effects of his – and his fellow volunteers’ – assignments remain throughout the book.
Indeed, one gets a sense that the real achievements made in Fleming’s assignment are painted in much smaller – though no less impactful – brush strokes. The real story here is not one of US volunteers making a difference on a developing Central Asian nation – rather it is the difference that Uzbekistan and its inhabitants made upon this particular American volunteer. From his initial feeling of paranoia Fleming appears to make some genuine friends during his time in the country. Murat is one individual who springs to mind – a gold-toothed individual who delights in lewd comments (mainly involving his ‘big whale’ and local waitresses), except when piously observing Ramadam; also Timur the Pink Floyd loving barber; and Gulnora - a young student whom Fleming initially takes under his wing to teach English, but whom ultimately he engages in a non-sexual (yet still taboo-breaking, in Uzbek culture) relationship and who dreams of breaking beyond the traditional confines of subservient matrimony. I must admit that this latter relationship left me feeling slightly uncomfortable – there is never a chance of Fleming and Gulnora forming a full relationship in this context, and Fleming’s leaving of Uzbekistan – counterpointed by a tearful phone conversation from Gulnora – seems almost callous and rather egocentric:
“I must go now, Gulnora. Please remember that you helped me out so much.. Promise me that you’ll always remember that.”
Her voice was empty. “I promise, Tom.”
I hung up the phone... a thought came to me that if I were writing a book about all this, my character would say, It was then that I realised that I was ready to leave this country. And that’s exactly how I felt.”
So much for Gulnora. One is tempted to read some sort of colonialist subtext into this exchange but perhaps we are back to my own stereotypes here.
It occurs to me that I have overlooked some of the key descriptions of Uzbekistan in this book, which Fleming provides, and as I say, he is an eloquent and engaging narrator. Certain scenes that linger are his description of his initial billet, which he quickly escapes:
“Across the courtyard the mother picked pebbles from the rice she had spread across a tabletop. She watched nonchalantly as the boy yanked down his shorts and squatted, dropping a little brown turd onto the concrete porch. The boy looked at me with a proud smile…I sat on the sagging bed staring at four dingy walls, my baggage resting by the door. This was my new home in the city of Quva. I would be living here for two years.”
This is a description that makes one wince, and many of the other descriptions in this book make one wince also – generally because of the painful culture clash between well-meaning West and uncomprehending East (most notably the ill-fated staging by one of Fleming’s feminist compatriots of “The Vagina Monologues” in an ultra-conservative district) – but also in recognition of the awful legacy left upon this, and neighbouring nations, by the former Soviet state.
There is a particularly poignant description by Fleming of a trip to the Uzbek coast of the Aral Sea. This is the Sea that Christopher Robins describes in the previous book on Kazakhstan as being decimated by a disastrous Soviet-imposed cotton-growing scheme which involved diverting the Aral’s two main tributaries. As a result, from 1960 to 1998, the sea's surface area shrank by approximately 60%, and its volume by 80%. The region's once prosperous fishing industry has been essentially destroyed, bringing unemployment and economic hardship. The Aral Sea region is also heavily polluted. Whilst there is now an ongoing effort in Kazakhstan to save and replenish the North Aral Sea, Fleming’s description of the ongoing cotton production in the southern Uzbek region – further adding to this ecological disaster zone - is heartbreaking…
To summarise then, this is a book that is largely about Tom Fleming’s personal development through the 2 years he spent in Uzbekistan, yet thanks to Fleming’s engaging writing style, we are able to gain insights into the wider nation and also into the realities and – in many instances – disappointments of Western intervention, no matter how well-meaning, in developing countries. Indeed, a month after Fleming left Uzbekistan, the Peace Corps withdrew from the entire country.
From one Central Asian country that is still reeling from the after-effects of independence from the USSR, I travel to a neighbouring country undergoing similar growing pains: Kyrgyzstan. For this leg of my journey I am reading “Revolution Baby: Motherhood and Anarchy in Kyrgyzstan”, an account by British writer Saffia Farr of her time spent there as the ex-pat wife of a water-engineer husband working on an aid project to bring safe drinking water to the countries outlying regions. As with the previous book, this is a uniquely personal account by a non-native: yet one which is both insightful and engaging, and which explores the process of a Western outsider coming to terms with what is initially an alien environment.
I decide to take the quick and reasonably priced option (€145 one-way) of flying to my next destination, and so I make a trip to Tashkent International Airport, seven miles from the city centre, on Friday. I arrive by midday as I am told passengers need to arrive 3 hours before departure (the flight leaves at 16:35). The airport has all the amenities one would hope for in any airport, and the modestly sized AR8 airplane takes off - and lands – on time. So I arrive after a journey time of 1 hour 20 minutes – in Kyrgyzstan’s decidedly Soviet-looking Manas International Airport at 18:55 (allowing for the hour’s time difference) just north of the capital city of Bishkek, which will be my home for this leg of my trip.
It occurs to me that it has been 13 books and nearly 6 months since the last book authored by a writer native to the country in question (“The Oath”, by Chechnyan Khassan Baiev – who himself wrote the book in exile in the US). This is not through want of trying, on my part, to find a native authored book for each subsequent leg of my journey – they are simply not out there. Of course, this is no doubt partly down to the lack of English translations (a necessity due to my shameful monolinguistic status) but I feel there is something more. In each post-Soviet state I have encountered there is a sense of a nation re-merging from the cultural repression imposed upon it by the former USSR. Under Soviet rule individual national identity - be it religion, arts, literature or even language - were subjugated under the Russian autocracy: even states within Russia itself, which previously had their own cultural identity.
And it is the issue of language which is most pertinent here, and which perhaps explains the lack of native-authored literature for these places. Not only were the inhabitants of these countries stripped of their native languages in favour of the dominant Russian, but in the process they were stripped of their literary heritage – as only those works deemed in keeping with the Communist ethos were ever translated into Russian. The rest of many nation’s literature disappeared along with the native tongues… one can only hope that – along with these newly independent states’ religious and cultural freedoms of expression – a new indigenous literary culture will emerge for these areas.
In the meantime, I have been reliant upon largely Western perspectives for the huge Russian and former Soviet area (with the exception of Victor Pelevin’s brilliant “Sacred Book of the Werewolf” in Moscow back in November 2010). Of course, these perspectives should not be dismissed simply because they are written by ‘foreigners’, but inevitably such accounts will have they own limited focus – be it one of scientific research, travelogue, personal adventure or aid worker…
Which brings me neatly on to the next book on my journey: “Taxi to Tashkent” by 40-year-old American Peace Corps volunteer Tom Fleming. This is a diary format account of two years which he spent in Uzbekistan, teaching AIDS prevention and sex education in the conservative Fergana Valley region. One can hardly imagine a more illustrative example of East – West culture clashes than this, and this interesting book certainly bears this out.
I must admit it took me some time to warm to Fleming as a narrator here… from the outset he comes across as a brash – almost stereotypical – American. The fact that the first chapter is called “Shock and Awe” (referring to his initial disorientation in his new surroundings, but, rather oddly, using a term more commonly associated with overwhelming military force used by US campaigns in the Middle East), seemed to bear this out. Similarly, his early reaction to the unfamiliar locale and people of Uzbekistan appears to be bordering on paranoia:
“ “GOO MORNING!” Uzbek schoolboys shouted, staring with the intensity of vultures as we walked past them.”
To an outsider this seems a slightly churlish description of native children trying out a welcome phrase on a new intake of foreigners…
However, Fleming quickly establishes himself to be a perceptive and eloquent narrator – leading myself as a reader to question whether some of my initial reaction was in itself a stereotypical assumption of the US Peace Corps on my part.
Indeed, Fleming himself is no fan of the Peace Corps’ overly bureaucratic set-up, quickly identifying that administrative processes and internal politics seem to take precedence over actually making a difference to the people the organisation purports to be helping.
Initially, Fleming’s reaction is one of frustration, then rebellion (he and two other friends rent an apartment in Tashkent against Peace Corps rules – and under threat of expulsion – rather than stay in their billeted accommodation), and ultimately anger at the impotence of the mission to make an effective difference. Eventually Fleming strikes out on his own, making rogue presentations on AIDS awareness to communities where discussions of sexual relationships are largely taboo, although frustrations at the long-term effects of his – and his fellow volunteers’ – assignments remain throughout the book.
Indeed, one gets a sense that the real achievements made in Fleming’s assignment are painted in much smaller – though no less impactful – brush strokes. The real story here is not one of US volunteers making a difference on a developing Central Asian nation – rather it is the difference that Uzbekistan and its inhabitants made upon this particular American volunteer. From his initial feeling of paranoia Fleming appears to make some genuine friends during his time in the country. Murat is one individual who springs to mind – a gold-toothed individual who delights in lewd comments (mainly involving his ‘big whale’ and local waitresses), except when piously observing Ramadam; also Timur the Pink Floyd loving barber; and Gulnora - a young student whom Fleming initially takes under his wing to teach English, but whom ultimately he engages in a non-sexual (yet still taboo-breaking, in Uzbek culture) relationship and who dreams of breaking beyond the traditional confines of subservient matrimony. I must admit that this latter relationship left me feeling slightly uncomfortable – there is never a chance of Fleming and Gulnora forming a full relationship in this context, and Fleming’s leaving of Uzbekistan – counterpointed by a tearful phone conversation from Gulnora – seems almost callous and rather egocentric:
“I must go now, Gulnora. Please remember that you helped me out so much.. Promise me that you’ll always remember that.”
Her voice was empty. “I promise, Tom.”
I hung up the phone... a thought came to me that if I were writing a book about all this, my character would say, It was then that I realised that I was ready to leave this country. And that’s exactly how I felt.”
So much for Gulnora. One is tempted to read some sort of colonialist subtext into this exchange but perhaps we are back to my own stereotypes here.
It occurs to me that I have overlooked some of the key descriptions of Uzbekistan in this book, which Fleming provides, and as I say, he is an eloquent and engaging narrator. Certain scenes that linger are his description of his initial billet, which he quickly escapes:
“Across the courtyard the mother picked pebbles from the rice she had spread across a tabletop. She watched nonchalantly as the boy yanked down his shorts and squatted, dropping a little brown turd onto the concrete porch. The boy looked at me with a proud smile…I sat on the sagging bed staring at four dingy walls, my baggage resting by the door. This was my new home in the city of Quva. I would be living here for two years.”
This is a description that makes one wince, and many of the other descriptions in this book make one wince also – generally because of the painful culture clash between well-meaning West and uncomprehending East (most notably the ill-fated staging by one of Fleming’s feminist compatriots of “The Vagina Monologues” in an ultra-conservative district) – but also in recognition of the awful legacy left upon this, and neighbouring nations, by the former Soviet state.
There is a particularly poignant description by Fleming of a trip to the Uzbek coast of the Aral Sea. This is the Sea that Christopher Robins describes in the previous book on Kazakhstan as being decimated by a disastrous Soviet-imposed cotton-growing scheme which involved diverting the Aral’s two main tributaries. As a result, from 1960 to 1998, the sea's surface area shrank by approximately 60%, and its volume by 80%. The region's once prosperous fishing industry has been essentially destroyed, bringing unemployment and economic hardship. The Aral Sea region is also heavily polluted. Whilst there is now an ongoing effort in Kazakhstan to save and replenish the North Aral Sea, Fleming’s description of the ongoing cotton production in the southern Uzbek region – further adding to this ecological disaster zone - is heartbreaking…
To summarise then, this is a book that is largely about Tom Fleming’s personal development through the 2 years he spent in Uzbekistan, yet thanks to Fleming’s engaging writing style, we are able to gain insights into the wider nation and also into the realities and – in many instances – disappointments of Western intervention, no matter how well-meaning, in developing countries. Indeed, a month after Fleming left Uzbekistan, the Peace Corps withdrew from the entire country.
From one Central Asian country that is still reeling from the after-effects of independence from the USSR, I travel to a neighbouring country undergoing similar growing pains: Kyrgyzstan. For this leg of my journey I am reading “Revolution Baby: Motherhood and Anarchy in Kyrgyzstan”, an account by British writer Saffia Farr of her time spent there as the ex-pat wife of a water-engineer husband working on an aid project to bring safe drinking water to the countries outlying regions. As with the previous book, this is a uniquely personal account by a non-native: yet one which is both insightful and engaging, and which explores the process of a Western outsider coming to terms with what is initially an alien environment.
I decide to take the quick and reasonably priced option (€145 one-way) of flying to my next destination, and so I make a trip to Tashkent International Airport, seven miles from the city centre, on Friday. I arrive by midday as I am told passengers need to arrive 3 hours before departure (the flight leaves at 16:35). The airport has all the amenities one would hope for in any airport, and the modestly sized AR8 airplane takes off - and lands – on time. So I arrive after a journey time of 1 hour 20 minutes – in Kyrgyzstan’s decidedly Soviet-looking Manas International Airport at 18:55 (allowing for the hour’s time difference) just north of the capital city of Bishkek, which will be my home for this leg of my trip.
Wednesday, 8 June 2011
In Search of Kazakhstan: The Land That Disappeared
I've heard it said that since the release of the British satirical film 'Borat', tourism to Kazakhstan has rocketed. Having neither seen the film, nor being remotely inclined to, I cannot pass any comment on how likely that is. But having read Chris Robbins' book about the country - "Searching for Kazakhstan", I can say I hope it's true. Kazakhs deserve the economic input of tourism, and the country is certainly one that should be explored.
Sadly most travellers will not get the access that Robbins (journalist and award-winning non-fiction author, who speaks Russian and has all the right connections) was lucky enough to obtain... but even so... it's a place to add to the wish-list.
Chris Robbins is tempted to visit Kazakhstan by a chance encounter on a plane. On a flight to Moscow a fellow-passenger from Little Rock tells him that he is en route to Kazakhstan to meet his future wife... he also tells him that Apples are from Kazakhstan ~ which would have been a much better title for the book.
Although in traditional travelogue style Robbins tells us about his wanderings in this unknown country squeezed south of Russia between China and the Caspian Sea, a country as big as Western Europe but virtually unheard of until that movie, what he is really setting out to do is explain Kazakhstan. As he tells one of his friends on a subsequent visit... he wants to put across "a sense of Kazakh courage and heart... Unless people understand where Kazakhstan has come from, they won't be able to appreciate what it has become."
He certainly manages to get that sense of the Kazakhs across and to convey just how far the country has come, how quickly, how unfairly it has sometimes been misrepresented in the West and how the people and their president know they still have a ways to go.
He does this by clearly having done his research before he went. This isn't a wanderer's tale by any means. This is a project. Robbins has clear ideas of the places he wants to see, and probably (in general terms) the stories he wants to tell, before he arrives in the country. After all, he freely admits before he starts that he "has a publisher" - so the story is already sold... he just needs to fill in the details. That shouldn't detract, however, because the details he finds to fill in are serendipitous.
Getting locked in a subterranean disco where even the bouncers can't let you out, probably wasn't part of the plan.
Finding your friend has connections to the president might make you hopeful of gaining an interview... but presumably doesn't lead you to anticipate an invitation for a three day presidential tour, access to some remote and forbidden places, further meetings stretching over a two-year period, including late-night conversations about what it was like to grow up on a collective and then "betray" your family by joining the communist party and rising through the ranks, unashamedly doing the things that were done in that rise (albeit in the name of getting what your state needed from the system).
Conversations with President Nazarbayev provide an "official insider's" view of the country and its relations with its neighbours. A view that is balanced by other journeys with more ordinary people... journeys to visit the berkutchy (the eagle ruler) who hunts with a golden eagle as casually as a falconer would fly a Merlin... or to find a jewellery maker whose wares fund his labour of love restoring the grave goods from ancient Kazakh noblemen - goods which suggest links with the fables of our country the Knights of the Round Table, the Holy Grail ... or to find an old man who treasures the political disagreements at his kitchen table for the very fact that they can happen, a man who survived the Gulag.
With witty asides and the usual run of travellers' tale anecdotes, the real stories are told in straightforward journalistic style. There are few passages that I found moving (the Gulag survivor aside), but much that is shocking in terms of the horrors inflicted in past times, which always become more real when individualised.
The real gift of the book, though, is in the simple telling of things that we already know and things that we don't... things linked only by the fact that they are all part of Kazakhstan's hard-won heritage. The nuclear tests and the precise moment when Sakharov finally understood the reality of his work. The destruction of the Aral Sea... and the endeavours to bring it back from the brink. Covert operations with the USA to deal with nuclear material that the Russians couldn't take back because they'd (a) forgotten about it, (b) wouldn't be able to account for it since it was 'missing' from the original records and (c) couldn't afford to deal with it if it was returned. We travel with early English explorers and learn of the pre-flight rituals of the cosmonauts. Spend time in the Gulag Archipelago with its author, and discover how he is viewed in the country today... share similar reflections on Trotsky and Dostoevsky who have their own strong connections to the area.
It is still a country of contradictions. One coveted on all sides (by China, by Russia, by Turkey) but which chose to be nuclear free. A country which, when the higher echelons were accused of political assassination, invited the FBI to investigate - but is gradually turning its economic interests towards China. A country ruled by a firm presidential power, but determined to become democratic enough to win the approval of the US & the UK. A country sophisticated enough to introduce a new currency virtually overnight, but one where barter was commonplace right at the end of the 20th century. A place with a wealth of minerals that is only just beginning to reap their rewards. Where nomads might still hunt with eagles, but Sir Norman Foster is the architect of choice for civic structures. A country with some of the most beautiful, unspoilt places on earth and without a doubt some of the most devastated wasteland ever created by man.
It is a place that is not easy to visit - not because you won't be welcome, the Kazakh hospitality is legendary (though vegetarians might struggle a little) - but because of sheer scale of the emptiness. 15 million people spread over 1 million square miles. (Compare with Britain's 59 million crammed into 93,000 square miles). The steppe is bleak and more vast that we can imagine. The summer heat and the winter cold are extremes beyond the experience of Western Europeans. Infrastructure is still in its infancy, and transport vehicles often struggling on well into their old age. But it is a place that Robbins will tempt you to... to see the original wild apple orchards, to smell the crushed wormwood, to the beautiful mountains, and even the much reduced Aral Sea is still an inland wonder of a kind. There are city parks, and superb new architecture. The soviet era remnants are slowly being swept away... but it is still a place steeped in the momentous history of the 20th century - its politics, its literature, its science, all have roots or have left traces here.
Stylistically simple, ill-served by the choice of cover design and illustrated throughout with Bob Gale's ink-sketches, it has the feel of somewhat naïve book that doesn't do justice to the wealth of information it contains.
Not a book that makes you immediately want to go back and start the journey over again... but one that you will find yourself dipping back into for half-remembered facts and amusement... and one that might just make you want to go see for yourself.
(Thanks to Lesley Mason)
And so, without further ado, I continue my global trek to Uzbekistan. Having spent nearly two days on a train in my last transfer – as well as various modes of travel during my stay in Kazakhstan, including some hair-raising helicopter trips! – I opt to fly from Almaty to Tashkent (the Uzbek capital) on an Uzbekistan Airways 764 flight. For £90 I get a 1 hour, 50 minute non-stop journey, and find myself in another former Soviet Republic struggling to cope in a post-independence era. On this occasion my stopover is courtesy of American Peace Corps volunteer Tom Fleming, with his account of a two-year posting in the country entitled “Taxi to Tashkent”.
Sadly most travellers will not get the access that Robbins (journalist and award-winning non-fiction author, who speaks Russian and has all the right connections) was lucky enough to obtain... but even so... it's a place to add to the wish-list.
Chris Robbins is tempted to visit Kazakhstan by a chance encounter on a plane. On a flight to Moscow a fellow-passenger from Little Rock tells him that he is en route to Kazakhstan to meet his future wife... he also tells him that Apples are from Kazakhstan ~ which would have been a much better title for the book.
Although in traditional travelogue style Robbins tells us about his wanderings in this unknown country squeezed south of Russia between China and the Caspian Sea, a country as big as Western Europe but virtually unheard of until that movie, what he is really setting out to do is explain Kazakhstan. As he tells one of his friends on a subsequent visit... he wants to put across "a sense of Kazakh courage and heart... Unless people understand where Kazakhstan has come from, they won't be able to appreciate what it has become."
He certainly manages to get that sense of the Kazakhs across and to convey just how far the country has come, how quickly, how unfairly it has sometimes been misrepresented in the West and how the people and their president know they still have a ways to go.
He does this by clearly having done his research before he went. This isn't a wanderer's tale by any means. This is a project. Robbins has clear ideas of the places he wants to see, and probably (in general terms) the stories he wants to tell, before he arrives in the country. After all, he freely admits before he starts that he "has a publisher" - so the story is already sold... he just needs to fill in the details. That shouldn't detract, however, because the details he finds to fill in are serendipitous.
Getting locked in a subterranean disco where even the bouncers can't let you out, probably wasn't part of the plan.
Finding your friend has connections to the president might make you hopeful of gaining an interview... but presumably doesn't lead you to anticipate an invitation for a three day presidential tour, access to some remote and forbidden places, further meetings stretching over a two-year period, including late-night conversations about what it was like to grow up on a collective and then "betray" your family by joining the communist party and rising through the ranks, unashamedly doing the things that were done in that rise (albeit in the name of getting what your state needed from the system).
Conversations with President Nazarbayev provide an "official insider's" view of the country and its relations with its neighbours. A view that is balanced by other journeys with more ordinary people... journeys to visit the berkutchy (the eagle ruler) who hunts with a golden eagle as casually as a falconer would fly a Merlin... or to find a jewellery maker whose wares fund his labour of love restoring the grave goods from ancient Kazakh noblemen - goods which suggest links with the fables of our country the Knights of the Round Table, the Holy Grail ... or to find an old man who treasures the political disagreements at his kitchen table for the very fact that they can happen, a man who survived the Gulag.
With witty asides and the usual run of travellers' tale anecdotes, the real stories are told in straightforward journalistic style. There are few passages that I found moving (the Gulag survivor aside), but much that is shocking in terms of the horrors inflicted in past times, which always become more real when individualised.
The real gift of the book, though, is in the simple telling of things that we already know and things that we don't... things linked only by the fact that they are all part of Kazakhstan's hard-won heritage. The nuclear tests and the precise moment when Sakharov finally understood the reality of his work. The destruction of the Aral Sea... and the endeavours to bring it back from the brink. Covert operations with the USA to deal with nuclear material that the Russians couldn't take back because they'd (a) forgotten about it, (b) wouldn't be able to account for it since it was 'missing' from the original records and (c) couldn't afford to deal with it if it was returned. We travel with early English explorers and learn of the pre-flight rituals of the cosmonauts. Spend time in the Gulag Archipelago with its author, and discover how he is viewed in the country today... share similar reflections on Trotsky and Dostoevsky who have their own strong connections to the area.
It is still a country of contradictions. One coveted on all sides (by China, by Russia, by Turkey) but which chose to be nuclear free. A country which, when the higher echelons were accused of political assassination, invited the FBI to investigate - but is gradually turning its economic interests towards China. A country ruled by a firm presidential power, but determined to become democratic enough to win the approval of the US & the UK. A country sophisticated enough to introduce a new currency virtually overnight, but one where barter was commonplace right at the end of the 20th century. A place with a wealth of minerals that is only just beginning to reap their rewards. Where nomads might still hunt with eagles, but Sir Norman Foster is the architect of choice for civic structures. A country with some of the most beautiful, unspoilt places on earth and without a doubt some of the most devastated wasteland ever created by man.
It is a place that is not easy to visit - not because you won't be welcome, the Kazakh hospitality is legendary (though vegetarians might struggle a little) - but because of sheer scale of the emptiness. 15 million people spread over 1 million square miles. (Compare with Britain's 59 million crammed into 93,000 square miles). The steppe is bleak and more vast that we can imagine. The summer heat and the winter cold are extremes beyond the experience of Western Europeans. Infrastructure is still in its infancy, and transport vehicles often struggling on well into their old age. But it is a place that Robbins will tempt you to... to see the original wild apple orchards, to smell the crushed wormwood, to the beautiful mountains, and even the much reduced Aral Sea is still an inland wonder of a kind. There are city parks, and superb new architecture. The soviet era remnants are slowly being swept away... but it is still a place steeped in the momentous history of the 20th century - its politics, its literature, its science, all have roots or have left traces here.
Stylistically simple, ill-served by the choice of cover design and illustrated throughout with Bob Gale's ink-sketches, it has the feel of somewhat naïve book that doesn't do justice to the wealth of information it contains.
Not a book that makes you immediately want to go back and start the journey over again... but one that you will find yourself dipping back into for half-remembered facts and amusement... and one that might just make you want to go see for yourself.
(Thanks to Lesley Mason)
And so, without further ado, I continue my global trek to Uzbekistan. Having spent nearly two days on a train in my last transfer – as well as various modes of travel during my stay in Kazakhstan, including some hair-raising helicopter trips! – I opt to fly from Almaty to Tashkent (the Uzbek capital) on an Uzbekistan Airways 764 flight. For £90 I get a 1 hour, 50 minute non-stop journey, and find myself in another former Soviet Republic struggling to cope in a post-independence era. On this occasion my stopover is courtesy of American Peace Corps volunteer Tom Fleming, with his account of a two-year posting in the country entitled “Taxi to Tashkent”.
The Road to Miran: Travels in the Forbidden Zone of Xinjiang
I now visit another 'Autonomous Region' of China - Xinjiang - courtesy of "The Road to Miran" by German author and traveller Christa Paula.
Christa Paula, an intrepid young student of Asian art and archaeology, set off in 1989 to explore an area closed to Westerners as well as to most Chinese, and one which is firmly under military rule. Tall and blonde, she travelled for the most part incognito, disguised in a Pathan cap, old grey jacket and big padded trousers. Her goal was Miran, the ancient Buddhist site of second-century wall paintings. In the company of Chang, a maverick taxi driver, Christa Paula travelled through an area dotted with nuclear testing sites, forced labour camps and mines in which prisoners dig and process asbestos without protective clothing. She discovered that villages which exist on maps are now radiation-contaminated ghost towns, and she witnessed everywhere the seeds of discontent and political unrest.
This book is a truly engaging and insightful account of this remote and politically isolated region. A full review which does this book justice will follow soon - however, time constraints mean that I cannot complete this just now. As soon as I have finished an appropriate account of this fascinating trip – which it truly deserves - I will update this entry.
In the meantime, I take my leave (for now, there will be several more trips in the future journey) of the massive landmass that is China, and make my way to the former Soviet Republic of Kazakhstan, courtesy of Christopher Robbins’ “In Search of Kazakhstan.”
I decide to take the twice-weekly train (N895) that links China with Kazakhstan, starting in Ürümqi and running to Almaty. The train is called the 'Zhibek Zholy' and it has modern air-conditioned soft class (4-berth sleeper compartments) and hard class (open-plan bunks). A Chinese restaurant car runs from Ürümqi to Druzhba and a Kazak restaurant car runs from the Chinese frontier at Druzhba to Almaty.
The ticket is very reasonably priced at 834 yuan - £78 - and is sorted out by a local (Ürümqi) travel agent with minimal fuss. He charges 100 yuan commission for each ticket which is fine given the smooth transaction. His name is Steven Zhang (zyztouratyahoo.cn.com) and he speaks excellent English.
What makes the price even more of a bargain is the fact that I get the tickets in advance at my hotel and I am the only person in a four bed cabin on this journey – an unexpected luxury! And such a luxury should not be underestimated on a trip of this nature: despite travelling to a neighbouring country, this is no short-hop trip: the train leaves Ürümqi at 23:58 on Monday, arriving at the Kazakh border at 09.20 on Tuesday, before finally pitching up in Almaty station at 06:40 on Wednesday…
It takes a long time to cross the border, about three hours wait on each side but I have to say it wasn't a bad place to wait, looking out at the empty steppe and the mountains. I would recommend getting this train, it's quite an experience and a very comfortable way to travel from China to Kazakhstan.
Christa Paula, an intrepid young student of Asian art and archaeology, set off in 1989 to explore an area closed to Westerners as well as to most Chinese, and one which is firmly under military rule. Tall and blonde, she travelled for the most part incognito, disguised in a Pathan cap, old grey jacket and big padded trousers. Her goal was Miran, the ancient Buddhist site of second-century wall paintings. In the company of Chang, a maverick taxi driver, Christa Paula travelled through an area dotted with nuclear testing sites, forced labour camps and mines in which prisoners dig and process asbestos without protective clothing. She discovered that villages which exist on maps are now radiation-contaminated ghost towns, and she witnessed everywhere the seeds of discontent and political unrest.
This book is a truly engaging and insightful account of this remote and politically isolated region. A full review which does this book justice will follow soon - however, time constraints mean that I cannot complete this just now. As soon as I have finished an appropriate account of this fascinating trip – which it truly deserves - I will update this entry.
In the meantime, I take my leave (for now, there will be several more trips in the future journey) of the massive landmass that is China, and make my way to the former Soviet Republic of Kazakhstan, courtesy of Christopher Robbins’ “In Search of Kazakhstan.”
I decide to take the twice-weekly train (N895) that links China with Kazakhstan, starting in Ürümqi and running to Almaty. The train is called the 'Zhibek Zholy' and it has modern air-conditioned soft class (4-berth sleeper compartments) and hard class (open-plan bunks). A Chinese restaurant car runs from Ürümqi to Druzhba and a Kazak restaurant car runs from the Chinese frontier at Druzhba to Almaty.
The ticket is very reasonably priced at 834 yuan - £78 - and is sorted out by a local (Ürümqi) travel agent with minimal fuss. He charges 100 yuan commission for each ticket which is fine given the smooth transaction. His name is Steven Zhang (zyztouratyahoo.cn.com) and he speaks excellent English.
What makes the price even more of a bargain is the fact that I get the tickets in advance at my hotel and I am the only person in a four bed cabin on this journey – an unexpected luxury! And such a luxury should not be underestimated on a trip of this nature: despite travelling to a neighbouring country, this is no short-hop trip: the train leaves Ürümqi at 23:58 on Monday, arriving at the Kazakh border at 09.20 on Tuesday, before finally pitching up in Almaty station at 06:40 on Wednesday…
It takes a long time to cross the border, about three hours wait on each side but I have to say it wasn't a bad place to wait, looking out at the empty steppe and the mountains. I would recommend getting this train, it's quite an experience and a very comfortable way to travel from China to Kazakhstan.
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