We stopped about five times on the way out to buy things like fresh berries and flat loaves of bread, called "lepyoshki" ("pinched bread"). Rakhat, my host mother, finally started allowing me to help out, at least by carrying things, She started referring to me as her American son. Months later, after I had moved out and seldom visited her apartment, she began to jokingly call me her "illegitimate son." One stop was made in a mountain pass, where the reddish cliffs were covered lightly by green scrub trees. At the bottom of one cliff along the narrow clay road, a pipe protruded from the rock, and a small but steady stream of clear water poured out. On either side of the pipe for several yards and a good six or seven feet up the hill, all the trees and bushes were festooned with multicolored scraps of cloth, tied tightly round the branches. There were even some largish trees whose branches completely disappeared under the load of rags. Near the spring itself money was scattered, mostly the smallest denominations- one and ten- tyn notes - of the republic's new national currency, introduced in May. "This is a sacred place," Rakhat told me. "It's not an Islamic site, but left over from ancient, Shamanist times." Rakhat spoke Russian extremely well, which is not typical of all members of the ethnic Kyrgyz majority. Their native tongue is from the Turkic family, an ancient language that is spoken to the near exclusion of all others in rural areas. Rakhat was a former university Dean, however, and had studied in Moscow, so her Russian was only slightly marked by the characteristic choppiness of a Kyrgyz accent.
We were also accompanied on the trip by two of Rakhat's nieces, about thirteen years old, who had traveled twenty hours by train from their home in the South. They were typical of the people of that region, ancient Uzbek blood showing through in their dark complexion and quiet demeanor. They generally slipped about trying not to bump into anybody. They spoke Russian, but clearly preferred Kyrgyz, and didn't know at all what to make of me. Even when I addressed them directly, the would answer with as few words as possible, and would get flustered when I smiled at them. Rakhat's daughter Nazik quickly made herself the leader of this little pack, and with her citified boisterousness and boundless energy practically dragged the others back and forth. By the end of the trip the three girls giggled and joked together constantly, and one of them donned a pair of oversized, Hollywood-style sunglasses. As we bumped along the pitted road which twisted parallel to a clay-laden stream, we took turns singing. When Rakhat sang in Kyrgyz, she sang love songs, songs that ambled up and down scales with no regard for rhythm but by the very sequence of notes called to mind broken hearts. As she sang, she sat half turned toward Nazik, and the look of peaceful adoration in the girl's eyes, irregardless of the cracking in her mother's voice, stayed with me as the incarnation of domestic bliss.
The house where we were to stay turned out to be a bit of a problem, since the present owners had yet to pack their belongings to make space for us. Rakhat had bought the house from a Russian-German family, forced to return to Russia like thousands of others after generations in Kyrgyzstan.
Like America, Kyrgyzstan is an ethnic melting-pot: over sixty ethnic groups and nearly as many languages. The Kyrgyz themselves are hardly homogeneous, formed as a nation in the 16th century in a fusion of a multitude of Turkic, Mongolian, Chinese, and Persian tribes (the name Kyrgyz comes from the Turkic words KYRK-YZ, forty tribes). The face of Kyrgyzstan is as diverse as the face of America, with Uzbeks, Russians, Jews, Germans, Tatars, Chinese, Uighurs, and countless others trying to find their own space alongside the Kyrgyz in the small country. Unfortunately, this ethnic mosaic is not always harmonious. The sudden absence of Soviet authority has allowed the worst nationalist ambitions to rise to the surface after seventy years of dormancy. Ancient tensions related to land disputes between Kyrgyz and Uzbeks in the Southern city of Osh exploded in bloody raids carried out by sabre-wielding horsemen in 1992. The constant pressure of Kyrgyz nationalist groups has led to legislation gradually edging Russian-speakers from good jobs and political power, and consequently Russians, Jews and Germans have been streaming from the Republic at a rate of nearly 100,000 a year.
These particular Germans had built their house themselves, and had lived in it for over fifteen years. It was smallish, but had a beautiful garden growing high with tomatoes, cabbage, garlic and more. Such gardens are kept all over the former Soviet Union, more for survival than decoration. Grocery prices have risen in Kyrgyzstan by over a thousand percent in the past two years, while salaries have only increased about fourfold. It is a rare family that has enough money to feed itself without a well-stocked garden.
The atmosphere was sad as we sat around the table, Kyrgyz and American on one side, Russian on the other in a kind of formal handing over of the house. Neighbors had also come, and toasts began to circulate. The Kyrgyz, traditionally Muslim, did not drink alcohol before the Russians came to Central Asia in the late 18th century. But since then they have made up for lost time, both in the tradition of toast-giving, and unfortunately in widespread alcoholism. Rakhat gave the first toast, as the buyer. "Even when you sell a dog or a sheep, you want to know who the animal is going to. After all, you have passed part of your life with it and in a way it has become a part of you. So much more so for a house. There is no better way for a man to build himself than by creating a home for his family with his own hands." During dinner, the broad, red-cheeked matriarch of the Russian family told the story of their decision to move. "We came here in 1976, and you all welcomed us," she said, addressing her neighbor and the local schoolmaster. "We came to work on the collective farm, and we all worked together. We never fought. I didn't even know what they meant when someone said you were Kyrgyz. We were all the same, and that meant nothing to me."
Kyrgyzstan is a land of compromise and contradiction, where the Kyrgyz tell Russian jokes and watch Russian movies, while the Russians eat more shish-kabob and rice plof than they do borsch or pirozhki. Most Kyrgyzstanis feel more Soviet than Asian; they all had the same education dictated from Moscow, they all went to the same Young Communist camps in the summer. But even European ethnics here feel separate from the rest of the CIS. All are proud of their Central Asian heritage, irregardless of ethnic background. They consider themselves pioneers, used to doing without and living on hospitality and strong ties of family and friendship.
As the Russian mother continued her story, the words came faster and faster, tumbling out so quickly it became difficult to follow her. She was clearly trying to keep from crying. "The director of the collective farm was a very good man. A smart, smart man he was. A man ahead of his time, he was. He gave everybody all the freedom they wanted. More than fifteen years we lived and worked together. Now comes this stinking privatization program, and the collectives are closed and we have no work. Especially the young people. Even if we did have jobs, it wouldn't even make sense to work for these piddling wages." At that time, the average wage for a medical doctor was 20 som, or $4.00 a month, so it was hard to argue with her there. The Kyrgyz schoolmaster quickly responded to console her. "You know we never wanted you to leave, we never asked you to leave, and you are always welcome back here." The woman was not to be soothed. "And now, all the children have gone mean. I walk down the street, in broad daylight, and kids are fighting, drunk. Not even Russian against Kyrgyz, but Kyrgyz against Kyrgyz."
At that point I decided to leave, not because it was depressing, but because they were drinking home-brew vodka with each toast. The memory of gulping the stuff around campfires on the Black Sea coast of Russia and the havoc it had wreaked with my system was enough to make me excuse myself before any more damage was done. I walked down to the lake, where the girls had already gone to swim. Issyk-kul is the second deepest lake in the world, and for seventy years its geothermically heated and remarkably pure waters made it the vacation choice of the Soviet elite. I waded in. It was indeed warm, and there were even spots where the bottom wasn't too muddy. All around the far side of the lake and spinning off to the right, the high Tien-Shan mountain chain was like a Chinese rice-paper painting, snowy peaks shrouded in clouds. The far bank was only barely visible, some fifty miles away.
There are endless legends about the lake, which seem to sprout from the grassy shore where the village's flock of sheep is brought to graze each morning. The schoolmaster told me a contemporary legend about a pair of swans that had made a nest on the bank the previous year. They were always together, and swans mate for life. One evening, a drunken farmer shot one of the swans, leaving the other forever alone. It circled for two days, waiting for its mate to rise. Then it climbed as high as it could and dashed itself against the ground. The schoolmaster described how he had seen it himself, and when he approached the body of the suicided swan, he had seen that it was not white, but yellow from longing. There seems to be a tradition of love myths in Kyrgyz culture, and maybe it's because the Kyrgyz, like the swans, mate once and for life. We Americans have already lost our tradition of lost-love stories, because they hold no tragic weight in a land of multiple divorces and one-night stands.
On the way back to Bishkek the following day, we stopped for lunch at the home of a friend of Rakhat's. After tea, we moved from the main house into another building, a place that looked like a garage from the outside. Inside the room was large but stuffy, and the walls were hung with all sorts of tapestries, carpets, and placards. Carpets were folded and stacked along the walls; there must have been dozens. It turned out that this room was the site of the hostess' 50th birthday. Fifty is a very special anniversary for the Kyrgyz, observed with extremely large parties, painting of portraits, lavish gifts, and so on. This particular party had been so much of a success that afterwards the hosts had decided to close off the room exactly as it was- the carpets were gifts. As we had done at Issyk-kul, we sat crosslegged in a square on carpet-mats arranged around a central tablecloth on the floor. The main course was young lamb, which our host had just killed for us. There are countless traditions among the Kyrgyz regarding the entertaining of guests, but the most basic rule is that a lamb has to be slaughtered for any honored visitor. Kyrgyzstan is not the place for vegetarians, particularly if one is planning to visit friends, nor is it the place for the weak of stomach. The lamb was divided up, and as the male guest of honor, the entire head was served to me on my plate. The head was far too recognizable for my taste, and the poor thing looked up at me and I looked back, at a loss for what to do with each other. Rakhat leaned over and told me that all I had to do was take a little piece, and then I would have the right to share with everyone. With a sigh of relief, I took a bit of skin from between the ears, which at the time seemed the safest place, and passed the plate around. When it got to Dinara, a stylish young artist who was accompanying us, she dismantled the head with remarkable efficiency. Without utensils (everything was eaten with bare hands), she stripped all the meat off the head, popped out the eyes and broke them up, split open the cranium and dug out the brains into a little cup. Everyone must have noticed me watching wide-eyed and green around the gills, because the little girls started to giggle behind their hands.
After dinner, our host brought out his kumus, a three-stringed folk instrument that gives out a droning sound something like that of a mountain dulcimer. He was a national folk music laureate, renowned for his improvizational style. He would improvise rhyming verses about anything on the spot, and particularly enjoyed poking fun at guests. Rakhat translated into Russian in my ear, and after several verses honoring her achievements and value as a friend, the musician started in on me. "There once was an American / Who made the right choice coming to Kyrgyzstan instead of Someplace Else / It's clear his mother back home fed him quite well / Now he's found a new mother, Rakhat / Isn't he lucky to have found a mother so fine? / Let's hope he never gets any thinner!"
I have lived in Bishkek for over four months now, working and learning about my new hometown and adopted nation. The capital city was called Frunze until 1991, when the idea of honoring heroes of the October revolution suddenly went out of style. The name Bishkek has its own interesting etymology: The Kyrgyz traditionally lived in wigwam-like structures lined with wool carpets, which could be assembled and disassembled in fifteen minutes. From the ceiling of each of these YURTS, the nomadic Kyrgyz hung a churn which was used to beat horsemilk, or kumiss, into butter and cheese. The stick used to beat the kumiss was called a bishkek, and some hundred years ago there was a village by that name on the site of the current capital.
After a while, the strangeness of this place starts to wear off. It doesn't seem so strange anymore to have to stand in line for bread in the morning, knowing that by afternoon the same bread will have disappeared from stores to be sold for five times the price at street markets. It doesn't seem so strange that you have to wait so long for a telephone line, like my landlady, who has been waiting since 1979. It doesn't seem so strange anymore to see colorful Middle Eastern-style costumes alongside khaki Soviet Air Force uniforms. And it doesn't seem strange to be invited to dinner at a stranger's house where you know the family income is no more than six dollars a month, to find the table covered with a king's feast and the conversation laden with warmth, humor and optimism despite the loss and confusion of the last two years.
Noah Rubins (noachka@imfiko.bishkek.su) is TwentyNothing's foreign correspondent.