Read Online Daily Life in Turkmenbashy's Golden Age by Sam Tranum - Free Book Online Page B

weren’t very welcome in post-independence Turkmenistan. Most ethnically Russian Turkmen citizens had gone to Russia, but the Plotnikovs had stayed for some reason. I never found out exactly why, but I think the problem was money. They were just scraping by from week to week. They didn’t have enough saved to transport all their belongings to Russia and buy and apartment there. But they were always planning, always hoping.
    Despite Misha’s binge, as my 10-week training period wound down, all the trainees became Peace Corps Volunteers, and Allen, Matt, Laura, and Kellie prepared to move to their new homes in the far corners of Turkmenistan, I was glad I was staying with the Plotnikovs. So, as we organized the going away party, I was only a little bit jealous of the others. The party was at Matt’s host family’s apartment, in a building nearly identical to mine. He lived with Ana and Sesili Burjanadze, a Georgian mother and daughter who sold salads at the Abadan bazaar. Their apartment was on the ground floor, so it had a back porch and a fenced garden.
    Ana was in her 40s, cynical and sharp. About five feet tall with short black hair and dark eyes, when she wasn’t at work she sat at her kitchen table, chain-smoking, drinking cup after cup of coffee, and telling fortunes for a stream of visitors. She used playing cards, coffee grounds, whatever she could lay her hands on. The medium didn’t matter. What she was really doing was counseling people on their financial problems, their love lives, and their jobs. Sesili, barely 20, was shy, quiet, and grounded, a good counter-balance to Ana’s raucous volatility. Ana would sit in that crowded kitchen finishing a crossword puzzle and spinning out a story about how she once beat a woman’s face bloody with the spiked heel of her shoe. Sesili, looking at the floor, would sigh (“Oh, mom”) and stand up to wash some dishes and put on water for more coffee.
    I arrived early for the going away party and Ana put me to work. I skewered eggplants, green peppers, and tomatoes. I chopped carrots, cabbage, and hot peppers. I put chicken legs in a massive bowl to marinate in onions, vinegar, salt, and pepper. I carried an empty five-liter bottle down to the bar and had the bartender fill it up with draft beer. Then I built a wood fire in a grill in the back yard and spent the afternoon drinking beer and roasting chicken kebabs ( shashlyk ) and vegetables over the glowing coals.
    By the time the kebabs were ready, Ana and Sesili’s apartment and garden were crowded with friends, neighbors, and host families. Everyone had brought a little something to eat and every counter, table, chair, and windowsill in the kitchen was crowded with food: somsa s, piroshki s, cookies, chorek , and salads. The house smelled of frying onions, wood smoke, and beer. Ana’s two kittens ran around underfoot, looking for someone to pat them, hoping for a scrap of chicken. There wasn’t enough room at the kitchen table for all the guests, so we ate Turkmen-style. Ana laid out a long tablecloth – a klionka – on the floor in the living room and we all sat around it cross-legged.
    The klionka was loaded with plov (lamb pilaf), chicken shashlyk , roasted vegetables, pickled red peppers, salads, chorek , somsa s, cookies, sodas, beer, and vodka. For three hours we ate and took turns making toasts, which in Turkmenistan, are supposed to be sincere and several minutes long. We drank all the vodka so someone ran down to the corner store to buy more. Everyone wished the four departing Volunteers luck and told them to come back and visit soon. Toward the end of the night, Allen’s host mother raised her glass.
    “I’d never met an American before I met Allen and his friends,” she said. “I didn’t know much about your country. But now I know that you’re good people and I will never forget you.”
    We all emptied our glasses.
    Within a few days, the other Volunteers were gone. Autumn had arrived. The