Somewhere East of Life Page 26

  At last it was all over. The crowd cheered with more diligence than fervor, the gun barrels of the tanks dipped in salute. The band struck up what is generally termed “a lively air,” presumably to awaken hypnotized intellects: in this case, airs from The Merry Widow.

  As they elbowed their way through the crowd, Haydar remarked, “Oh, to live in a country where cowards are allowed to rule…”

  Burnell said, “People always rant after a war. Perhaps it’s a necessary part of the build-down from the excess of adrenaline swilling about in national veins. Generally, though, nothing gets done. So what emerged from the general’s speech? Is the secular state or the Islamic one to prevail?”

  “Nothing’s clear… Maybe that’s best for a while…”

  “Diyanizov himself made no appearance. Why’s that?”

  “I warn you, have care in what you say.”

  Remarking that the crowd didn’t exactly go wild, Burnell said that a speech and its reception were like a novel. A sort of blind deal is struck. He elaborated on this fanciful idea as they elbowed their way back to the Volkswagen. A writer may be clear in what he wishes to say, though the ends of the book may be obscure—what it will earn in the way of fame and approval. You might say the same about a speech-maker and his speech: his listeners also have a blind date, like readers. They expect to be entertained and informed, and maybe…well, moved to get on with their lives. From what Haydar translated, it seemed that both sides today were disappointed. The novel, in other words, would not sell. It had nothing new to offer.

  Baffled by this, Haydar said that Makhtumkuli never wrote novels.

  At the car, Haydar restored the spark plugs. He merely remarked that some people like to hear what they had heard before; it was like reading and rereading an automobile maintenance manual; it reassured them in times of transition.

  This time, Burnell was baffled and remained silent. He had never read a maintenance manual, which listed facts: whereas novels—even when they got some facts wrong—strove to present a record of the complexities of human existence.

  Flinging his brother’s car into gear, Haydar backed through the slowly dispersing crowds, hooting vigorously. “Could be it’s always transition time. Muddles, Dr. Burnell. Countries with arbitrary frontiers—here as in Africa created with a ruler on a map by an imperial power. Rulers create sorrow. It’s not just a religious question solely, no. Tribes here—‘ethnic groups,’ we learn to say—they must compete against one another. Two varieties of Tekkes form a large group in Central Turkmenistan. There are also Ersaris, Yomuds, Goklans…” He sighed. “Not bad people, pretty easy-going. But with needs.”

  He added that those needs were constantly frustrated by the peculiar climatic, geological and geographic situation of Central Asia. All things conspired against the aspirations of the people—as Burnell would see when they reached the Friendship Bridge.

  They moved into a main avenue where progress became easier. Haydar ceased to interrupt himself with shouts at other drivers.

  “But don’t you really like the Turkmen?”

  “Let me say you of one incident when I liked them so much. I could kiss all of them. We have bomb outrages in town, occasionally. A few months since, a cafe ‘Faraghi’ was blown up. Customers liked that place. So immediately the fire was put out, they came back. With them they brought chairs, tables. They set them up outside the “Faraghi.” Then others fetched what drinks could be saved, or other lemonades they fetched from home. The customers all came every day, to eat and drink there, outside, until the owner could get his services going again, properly. They would not allow to die a place they loved. Then I knew these were good people at heart.”

  “Mind this fool!… Phew! So you don’t intend to return to Syria or the West?”

  “The West I hate, honestly. Not her literature, which I find enlightened, Tommy Hardy especially. But the rude behavior, the ambitions. They cause many troubles. That’s how Russia always makes mistakes, looking to the West, not to the South. Maybe it’s envy, maybe admiration. I grow to hate Russia more and more. And maybe nationalism most!”

  He raised his large hands off the tiny wheel to laugh at his own folly. “You see, all men here believe wanderer’s blood to run in their veins. Also, my wife is a local lady of the Goklan tribe. Maybe I introduce you one day, if you will stay long enough. Being Goklan, she wishes never to eat the bread of any other nation. Let me ask, Dr. Burnell, do you like your own nation?”

  “Umm, yes, I suppose so. Yes. How far is it to this Friendship Bridge?” He and Haydar were friendly, but Burnell’s feelings were private.

  At last they were moving through the suburbs, amid light traffic, mainly lorries. Pleasant trees shaded the streets. It was a while before Haydar spoke again.

  “Then why you wish to come to such a place as this?”

  “I tried to explain to you. I know my stolen memories were exported as EMV bullets from Hungary into this region. Murray-Roberts informs me that President Diyanizov and his wife have a large library of Western so-called pornographic bullets. Mine may be among them. I want them restored to me. I need them.

  “Unfortunately, after this idiotic football match, the British Embassy is at rather a stand-off with the government. Can you arrange for me to secure an audience with Diyanizov, or some senior government representative?”

  Haydar made a deep noise in his throat, something between a growl and a sigh. In moralizing tones, he declared that memory was a curse. In his opinion it only made trouble. They had just been forced to listen to what he described as “that fine little General Makhkamov, who never met a live enemy on the battlefield.” Makhkamov had been about the old business of stirring up memory in the people for his own purposes—to remain in power. Leaders always needed enemies; people didn’t. The general had reminded his audience of thousand-year-old grudges against other peoples, Uzbeks and so on. Such tactics led to further disruption, victimization, war, and madness. Memory was the curse of nations.

  Better, he said, overtaking a line of camels, to live without memory.

  One of the hazards of travel was to hear other points of view; Burnell was always impressed by the firmness with which people clung to their own ideas—and by how much people talked, as if talking were a major pleasure like eating and fornicating.

  “Dr. Haydar, it’s memory that gives us identity as individuals. Without my memory I can have no future. Let me ask you again. Is it possible to have audience with Diyanizov?”

  Again the growl. “Don’t be in a hurry. It’s a fault. Maybe tomorrow. I see. Old Goklan saying is, ‘Sit tight on your horse and watch the grass grow.’ Today it’s we visit the bridge.”

  Although he hated to ask favors, Burnell persisted. “Murray-Roberts is trying to trace the chain of dealers. Although EMV is illegal here, he says there are EMV dealers in Ashkhabad. Maybe one of them sells to the president. The section of my memory that was stolen was reproduced maybe five hundred times, so I am informed. I need one of those bullets to restore my memory. It covers a crucial period of my life, missing years. I could have the memory reinserted. I’m incomplete without it, can’t live, can’t go forward, can’t develop, can’t—”

  “What if you were a thief or swindler in those years… You should be glad it’s forgotten.” Haydar smiled at the thought. “Maybe you lived in Australia or committed murders…”

  “How far is it to this bloody bridge of yours?”

  They were approaching a roundabout. To one side stood small boxlike houses, white-painted, to the other a large boxlike factory, grey-painted. In the distance, a luminous line of mountains.

  Haydar slowed the car, muttering to himself. There was a road block ahead. A camouflaged tank was maneuvering into position near it. Armed guards were unbaling razor wire across the road, directed by an officer. The scene was dusty and dead, except for a woman dragging a child into the safety of a house.

  “Trouble.” Haydar switched off the engine. They sat waiting. A lorry drew up
behind them as an officer on a motorcycle approached.

  The officer dismounted. He thrust his face into the car on the driver’s side and looked about the interior suspiciously. Without speaking, he opened the rear door and pulled away a rug lying on the back seat. Finding nothing under it, he threw it back, slamming the door. He demanded Haydar’s and Burnell’s identifications. They handed over their documents. Haydar made mild soothing remarks, smiling at the officer in a mollifying way. The officer’s face remained frozen. A radiophone crackled information at his shoulder.

  The officer scrutinized Burnell’s EU passport and his WACH credentials before returning them with a few courteous-sounding remarks. His stiff manner had suddenly changed.

  “He says you need not look worried,” Haydar translated. “As a visitor from the West, you are welcome to be here. He also wishes to announce you he is a football expert, and thinks that the English team deserved their 18-3 victory over Ashkhabad United.”

  “Please thank him and say I hope that next year the victory will go to the home team.”

  More conversation passed between Haydar and the officer, with much nodding towards Burnell and emphatic smiling. The officer shook Burnell’s hand before instructing Haydar to turn the car around and head back to town. Before moving to the waiting lorry, the officer gave them a salute and a smile in farewell.

  “He’s one of the Orazov family,” announced Haydar as they headed back into Ashkhabad. “I happen to know them, since once I made a deal with them for some valuable carpets, which he remembers. He regrets we cannot leave the city today.”

  As tonelessly as possible, Burnell asked why they could not leave the city.

  Captain Orazov had explained that there had been trouble in the main square as everyone was dispersing after the speeches. As General Makhkamov was entering the mosque, some bad guys had fired at him from close range. Fortunately they had missed. It was believed they were members of PRICC.

  “ ‘Prick?’ Is that a rapist group?”

  Haydar said the acronym stood for the Party of Renaissant Islamic Counter-Culture. The army was now hunting these terrorists and had ordered all exits to the city to be closed, so that the villains could not escape.

  “It’s what happens, I fear, Dr. Burnell. So we visit tomorrow the Friendship Bridge. It will still be there, doubtlessly.”

  To hide a certain degree of frustration, Burnell remarked on the courtesy of the officer.

  Haydar agreed. “Ali Orazov is a good man, and all Turkmeni are hospitable. We are invited to take dinner with him this evening, to compensate for the disappointment to our foreign guest. I hope that will be to your British taste.”

  Evening brought a measure of coolness to Ashkhabad; the streets were crowded with people. The rendezvous with Captain Ali Orazov was held in the restaurant “Faraghi” which Haydar had previously praised. It transpired that he was a part-owner. It was luxuriously carpeted and fully patronized. Western music issued at tolerable levels from the loudspeakers.

  Despite his reservations about Dr. Hikmat Haydar, Murray-Roberts had agreed to come along with Burnell. On his arm was a bony and rugged Mrs. Murray-Roberts, who looked about her with either displeasure or myopia, saying nothing. When Burnell greeted her, she informed him she disliked Fezzes; consequently, he took against her blue English dress, which revealed the pale hollows behind her collar-bones.

  Two other women were present.

  Haydar was not escorting his wife, who, he said, preferred to remain at home; but Orazov and another male friend, a cousin Orazov—”enlightened people,” said Haydar—brought along their wives. These ladies, corpulent and grand, dressed for the occasion and wore sari-like garments of gold and crimson. They said little during the meal and ate plentifully. The service was excellent, the manager fawning on Haydar. Wine was brought, with lemonade for the ladies.

  The meal was half over before Burnell managed to catch Mrs. Murray-Roberts’ attention, although she sat on his left side. When, by way of opening a conversation, he asked her if she enjoyed the local food, she replied one had to accept whatever was one’s lot.

  To which Burnell said, raising an eyebrow, “How fortunate then, that one’s lot contains such a tasty pilau.’ ”

  She said, in a low voice, so that her husband on the opposite side of the table could not hear, that Burnell was only in Ashkhabad for a few days, for pleasure. Emphasis was laid on this last word.

  “You have no taste for the exotic, then, Mrs. Murray-Roberts?”

  In a tone even lower and more pointed, she said, sighting him with her nearest eye, “I suppose you’ve had intercourse with the local whores.”

  “Not yet, ma’am. Do you happen to know a good address?”

  She had stopped eating. Her whole face did a sort of shiver. “Your father was a lecher, too. And a breaker of homes.”

  He was surprised they had become so intimate so quickly. “You are acquainted with my father on both counts?” He poured himself more wine.

  Murray-Roberts, seeing a situation was developing, shot his wife a warning glance across the table. She picked up her fork, only to wag it and say, “I’m disgusted to have to sit next to you…” After a pause, receiving no reply, she began a catalogue of woes. Her first husband, Reggie, had been employed in a chemicals company in the south of England; he had worked his way up to managerial level at an early age. In the early nineties, Tarquin Burnell, Burnell’s father, had come along. As a management broker, he had advised the directors and shareholders to divide the company into two. Tarquin, she asserted, made a rich living in industrial advisement. Her first husband had been moved to the struggling paints division and relocated in the north-east. Within a year, the new company was bankrupt, though the other half in the south prospered. Her husband became unemployed; within months he had to sell up everything to pay the mortgage on their new house. That too had had to go, and the marriage broke up.

  “You left him for someone in a safe job, eh?” said Burnell. He realized that the industrial tale was vaguely familiar; he had heard a less prejudicial version of his father’s activities. Much of Tarquin’s income derived from his industrial advisement services; the division of an ailing chemicals company, stricken by recession, had been hailed as a triumph of foresight at the time.

  Mrs. Murray-Roberts said, “I blame your father for Reggie’s suicide. I always have. Everything was fine till he came along.”

  “Still, your present husband seems a splendid chap.”

  When it appeared she was not intending to answer, Burnell continued with his meal. He was about to enter the conversation on his other side, when she nudged him in the ribs and said, “Reggie’s sisters took care of the kids. They never speak to me. That’s what your father did. Do you wonder I’m bitter?”

  “I don’t suppose he meant it personally.” They were distracted when the manager of the “Faraghi” brought the men complimentary brandies and joints of strong grass.

  Orazov’s cousin, who spoke a little German, drew the company’s attention to six Russians who were sitting at a table nearby, concentrating on getting noisily drunk.

  The cousin explained that many Russians had remained in Central Asia when the Soviet Union collapsed. They had never integrated and were unpopular. Fortunately, the “Faraghi” was enlightened, and allowed in foreigners, even Russians. But you could smell that Russian smell from here, couldn’t you?

  “Och, they’re OK. They get the work done,” Murray-Roberts said. “They make pretty good mechanics.”

  The argument spread. Everyone began to talk at once, excitedly, laughing and gesticulating. Only the two Turkmeni women ate on, unmoved by controversy. Mrs. Murray-Roberts, too, sat tight, looking disapprovingly from speaker to speaker, as if awaiting the moment when someone asked her, as final arbiter, for a definitive opinion on the matter. Ali Orazov issued more anti-Russian sentiment, looking to Haydar for support. Haydar blew out a gust of smoke and said that Russians brought criminal habits with them wherever the
y went. But ah, what music! Russia was a musical nation with a musical soul which Turkmeni lacked. Mother Russia reverenced music more than any other nation on earth.

  Burnell remembered hearing similar received opinions from Father Kadredin in Ghvtismshobeli. Mellowed though he was by this time, he said, “That isn’t strictly the case, Hikmat. When the Russians invaded Poland in 1831, they burned down Chopin’s house and threw his grand piano out into the street.”

  “Well, Chopin!” said Haydar crushingly, appealing to the company with a wide gesture. “What do you expect? Chopin was Polish, nein?”

  16

  Burnell Speaks!

  Black sand and red piled up against the window panes, found no purchase, slipped to the concrete sill. The next blast of wind, which was felt throughout the building, cleared the sill, only to add fresh sand. The process was hypnotic. It was like being inside an egg-timer, constantly turned this way and that.

  The contents of one of the largest sand deserts in the world, the Karakum, were attempting to pour themselves into the city and make of Ashkhabad one more of the buried cities of the region. But the wind was uncertain of itself, blowing mainly from the north-west, then veering to north. The color changed, tending toward a red like rust.

  And indeed it carried rust within its mighty breath; and not only rust but insecticides, pesticides, fertilizers and defoliants. For to the north, over the frontier in Uzbekistan, lay the remains of the Aral Sea, poisoned lakes of what had once been the world’s fourth largest inland ocean.

  Local people blamed the great wind on many things, on the war, on the Uzbeks, on the catastrophe in Bulgaria, on global warming, on the season, on EMV, on the government, and of course on the Wrath of God.

  But blame for the death of the Aral Sea rested squarely on the bleak ignorant centralizing science-fiction brains in 1960s Moscow, which longed for a gigantic project, in order to show off the superiority of Soviet engineering. Accordingly, these dinosaurian brains decided to deflect the great rivers flowing into the Aral in order to irrigate the so-called “Virgin Lands.” Cotton crops would thrive where the Aral died.