next to a young boy who stares at me, a glass eye rolling in its socket.
Half an hour later an Uzbek man in his sixties comes to see me. He tells me he’s a dentist, and has me stand up so he can stare into my mouth. I point below my cheek, where pain radiates like a glowing ember. He reaches into my mouth with his index finger and thumb and starts shaking my lower jaw. It feels like he’s just yanked out my tooth.
“I will pull all these,” he says. He adds that he’s very good at making gold teeth. I believe him; his own mouth is full of them.
He sighs when I say no, looks into my mouth again, and offers to drill around until he finds the abscess. It takes me a moment, but I understand what he’s proposing are three root canals.
I’m about ready to leave when he tells me he has another idea. “A Soviet miracle that will fix our tooth for good.” I know he means
my
tooth. But I’m curious now.
I follow him out the back of the hospital, up an outside stairway, along a catwalk, and into a room furnished with a daybed. He sits me down and leaves. A bleached-blond Russian woman in an apron arrives a few minutes later. She attaches two metal squares on the end of an electrical wire to my lower right gum where I tell her it hurts. She tells me to hold the plates in place and attaches the other end of the wire to an electrical box on the wall with a blinking emerald light.
“
Kharisho,
” she says. Russian for “good.” I notice she too has solid gold grillwork like the dentist’s.
She flips the switch, and a shock runs through my jaw and races around my head as if I’d plugged my nose into an electrical socket. I grip the side of the couch. She stands there watching for ten minutes before unhooking me. My entire face is numb, but not numb enough to know the abscess is still there. I hand her the equivalent of a dollar and leave.
Back at the Oktyabrskaya, I take more antibiotics, but they only dull the pain. I decide seeing a real dentist isn’t to be put off any longer. I can catch a ride on a C-130 to Frankfurt next week. But that means three days of flying. And what if I have to wave off this C-130 too? There’s no way I can wait for the next one. It leaves me with the only other option, a commercial flight to Moscow.
Thirty minutes out of Dushanbe, the pilot announces we’re making an unscheduled stop in Aktyubinsk, Kazakhstan. There’s not enough fuel to make it to Moscow, he says. I look down, but I can’t see a runway, only snow. It crosses my mind that an abscessed tooth is going to get me killed.
The plane hits hard, snow billowing in its wake. Before it can turn and taxi to the terminal, we’re surrounded by police cars and fire trucks, forcing the plane to stop. The lady next to me says she’s seen this before—we don’t have permission to land. The Kazakhs don’t trust anyone or anything that has anything to do with Tajikistan. She says we could be here for hours. Resigned that I’m going to miss my dental appointment, I watch a dog wander down the aisle and take a pee on the side of a seat.
I make it to the dentist at the last minute, and he takes care of my tooth. But as soon as I check into my hotel room, the phone rings. It’s Leah, a Russian fixer I’ve cultivated in Dushanbe. She tells me the Dushanbe airport is closed. She doesn’t know whether it’s because of fuel shortages or fighting. Either way, I’m stuck in Moscow.
I have an idea. A while ago I heard from a Russian friend that Leah’s mother was a KGB officer, a general assigned to Moscow. She might know another way to get back to Dushanbe, like a Russian military flight.
“Isn’t your mother in Moscow?” I ask.
“Don’t go anywhere,” Leah says. “I will call you back in an hour.”
She calls back in ten minutes. “Tomorrow, go out to Domodedovo and ask at the Aeroflot freight counter for Natasha. She’s a good friend of my mother’s.”
Domodedovo is Moscow’s domestic airport, which serves
Half an hour later an Uzbek man in his sixties comes to see me. He tells me he’s a dentist, and has me stand up so he can stare into my mouth. I point below my cheek, where pain radiates like a glowing ember. He reaches into my mouth with his index finger and thumb and starts shaking my lower jaw. It feels like he’s just yanked out my tooth.
“I will pull all these,” he says. He adds that he’s very good at making gold teeth. I believe him; his own mouth is full of them.
He sighs when I say no, looks into my mouth again, and offers to drill around until he finds the abscess. It takes me a moment, but I understand what he’s proposing are three root canals.
I’m about ready to leave when he tells me he has another idea. “A Soviet miracle that will fix our tooth for good.” I know he means
my
tooth. But I’m curious now.
I follow him out the back of the hospital, up an outside stairway, along a catwalk, and into a room furnished with a daybed. He sits me down and leaves. A bleached-blond Russian woman in an apron arrives a few minutes later. She attaches two metal squares on the end of an electrical wire to my lower right gum where I tell her it hurts. She tells me to hold the plates in place and attaches the other end of the wire to an electrical box on the wall with a blinking emerald light.
“
Kharisho,
” she says. Russian for “good.” I notice she too has solid gold grillwork like the dentist’s.
She flips the switch, and a shock runs through my jaw and races around my head as if I’d plugged my nose into an electrical socket. I grip the side of the couch. She stands there watching for ten minutes before unhooking me. My entire face is numb, but not numb enough to know the abscess is still there. I hand her the equivalent of a dollar and leave.
Back at the Oktyabrskaya, I take more antibiotics, but they only dull the pain. I decide seeing a real dentist isn’t to be put off any longer. I can catch a ride on a C-130 to Frankfurt next week. But that means three days of flying. And what if I have to wave off this C-130 too? There’s no way I can wait for the next one. It leaves me with the only other option, a commercial flight to Moscow.
Thirty minutes out of Dushanbe, the pilot announces we’re making an unscheduled stop in Aktyubinsk, Kazakhstan. There’s not enough fuel to make it to Moscow, he says. I look down, but I can’t see a runway, only snow. It crosses my mind that an abscessed tooth is going to get me killed.
The plane hits hard, snow billowing in its wake. Before it can turn and taxi to the terminal, we’re surrounded by police cars and fire trucks, forcing the plane to stop. The lady next to me says she’s seen this before—we don’t have permission to land. The Kazakhs don’t trust anyone or anything that has anything to do with Tajikistan. She says we could be here for hours. Resigned that I’m going to miss my dental appointment, I watch a dog wander down the aisle and take a pee on the side of a seat.
I make it to the dentist at the last minute, and he takes care of my tooth. But as soon as I check into my hotel room, the phone rings. It’s Leah, a Russian fixer I’ve cultivated in Dushanbe. She tells me the Dushanbe airport is closed. She doesn’t know whether it’s because of fuel shortages or fighting. Either way, I’m stuck in Moscow.
I have an idea. A while ago I heard from a Russian friend that Leah’s mother was a KGB officer, a general assigned to Moscow. She might know another way to get back to Dushanbe, like a Russian military flight.
“Isn’t your mother in Moscow?” I ask.
“Don’t go anywhere,” Leah says. “I will call you back in an hour.”
She calls back in ten minutes. “Tomorrow, go out to Domodedovo and ask at the Aeroflot freight counter for Natasha. She’s a good friend of my mother’s.”
Domodedovo is Moscow’s domestic airport, which serves
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