Ghost Train to the Eastern Star (20 page)

But the harm was done. I had allowed a political dissident a forum. It turned out that this was the first anyone had heard of this underground party. And there was collateral damage, so to speak, for the writers and journalists who had been quietly invited (many of them unpopular with the government) had all been photographed. The photographer was a government spy, sent to make a record of the meeting and to report on what had been said.

"Not good," said the young man who had done the translating.

"What just happened?" I asked the American security man.

I had been impressed by his deftness: without hesitating, almost without creating a scene, he had plucked the man and his camera from the room. Out in the corridor, the security man had popped out the camera's memory card and wiped it of its images as the photographer howled. The force of this expulsion came afterwards, like a shock wave, when it was apparent what had just occurred.

"Government guy," the American said. "He should know better. This is technically U.S. government property. Can't take pictures here."

"Is this going to be a problem?"

"We'll see," he said. "Hey, I liked your talk."

The problem developed later that day when the photographer complained to his superiors at Turkmenistan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs. And the next day, the deputy chief of mission of the U.S. embassy in Ashgabat was summoned to a meeting with the foreign minister.

Who is this Paul Theroux? she was asked. What are the details of his
visa? Does he have permission to speak? When is he leaving? How is he leaving? What border crossing?

I had the answers to some of these questions. My visa was in order, and in a few days I planned to take the train to Mary, to see the ruins at Merv. Then the train to Turkmenabat and the Uzbekistan border at Farap, and then, I hoped, another train.

I spent the rest of my time in Ashgabat doing what Turkmen like doing most, sitting on a lovely carpet, eating my way down a spit of lamb kebab or through a mound of rice
plov.
Always there was hard bread, sometimes dumplings, tea, and wine.

"Georgian wine," one of my Turkmen hosts said. "Stalin's favorite. He wouldn't drink anything else."

Now and then these meals were served in homes that stood in empty fields, like the stage set for a Beckett play—a house in a wasteland that had been bulldozed to make room for a future prestige project or gold statue. Niyazov's people simply seized the houses and got rid of them, rarely compensating the owners. In the distance were the empty marble palaces and tower blocks, huge white follies trimmed in gold. Niyazov fancied himself a city planner, and he was obsessional, his megalomania on view for all to see. He had the dictator's most obnoxious trait of greatly resembling a dysfunctional person who had won the lottery.

Because I was now under a cloud, and being watched by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, my position as an alien in Turkmenistan was explained to me. I had to be careful. But having Niyazov—Turkmenbashi, Leader of All the Turkmen—as an enemy was helpful, because when Western diplomats explained my predicament, they revealed Niyazov's quirks.

"He hates people meddling. He hates NGOs—in fact, he banned them," one diplomat told me. He had banned human rights groups, religious groups, and environmental groups. "He allowed the Peace Corps in when they left Uzbekistan, but they can't work in any schools—they give language lessons mainly, and do what they can to make friends."

"You see what you're up against?" another diplomat said. "He's refused any help from the IMF or any loans from the World Bank, because if he accepted any money, he would have to disclose his own financial information. And that's his big secret. He considers most of these profits from gas his own, which makes him a billionaire many times over."

A person who had spent some time with him in one of his palaces
said, "He's a tease. He's a mocker. He banters with his ministers and humiliates them."

"Of course his system's corrupt," a student explained to me. "You need to bribe a lot of people to get into college, but only Turkmen are allowed. A Russian or an Uzbek or a Korean wouldn't have a chance. They have no future here."

"He stopped education at the ninth grade for most people," a bureaucrat said to me. "He was once asked about that by a foreign head of state. He said, 'Uneducated people are easier to govern.'"

***

EARLY ONE EVENING
I took the night train from Ashgabat to the eastern city of Mary. When I found that the sleeper ticket cost $4, I became anxious: this was the price of six melons at the bazaar, and a ticket so cheap boded ill for a long journey. I guessed that the train would be dirty and crowded, a mass of people traveling in the light of a few 25-watt bulbs, and it gave me no satisfaction to be right.

The railway station itself was lovely, a classic Soviet building from the 1950s, very clean and patrolled by soldiers with machine guns. Yet no passenger was searched, and while all travelers on Turkmenistan's roads were subject to numerous roadblocks and the arbitrary search-and-seizure rules of the security forces, train travelers were blameless and carefree—another instance of railway passengers regarded as being beneath notice.

I sat in my four-berth compartment with a soldier in his dark uniform, a student of about twenty-two, and a chin-bearded old man in traditional Turkmen dress—a cylindrical black lambskin hat, a long brown cloak over a smock, one of those national costumes that seem eternal and all-purpose and comfortable everywhere, in all seasons. He saw me and began to speak to the student.

"
Salaam. Dayf al-Rahman"
he said.

"Welcome," the student translated. "You are a guest of Allah, the Merciful One."

"Please thank him for me."

The man spoke again.

"He has a question for you," the student said. "Will you answer?"

I heard the whistle blow. The train slowly left Ashgabat Station, and within minutes we were in the desert. The old man was monologuing to the student.

"He says that some years ago, an astronaut went to the moon," the student said. "He was from America. When he got to the moon, he heard a strange noise. It was an
azan
—the call to prayer, usually chanted by a muezzin from a mosque. "The astronaut recorded it. When he came back to Earth, the scientists in America analyzed it, and they came to think that it was the voice of the Prophet Muhammad."

"On the moon?"

"Yes. On the moon."

The old man was still speaking, his chin beard swinging.

"Furthermore, he says that because of this, the astronaut became a Muslim and began praying five times a day."

The old man was facing me, as though defying me to mock the story.

"I haven't heard this story," I said.

"He says he believes it."

"What does he think about it?"

When this question was translated, the student said, "For him, it's good news."

It seemed to me like a Turkmenistan version of a Pat Robertson story: divine intervention in an unlikely place, resulting in a beatific conversion, the sun breaking through the clouds. Instead of Jesus speaking to a searcher, the speaker was Muhammad; but it came to the same thing. Muslims at the fringe always sounded to me like born-again Christians, literal-minded and impervious to reason. An Arabic scholar once told me that a persistent urban myth in the Middle East was that Neil Armstrong, sometimes confused with Louis Armstrong, converted to Islam.

But as all of us were going to Mary, the best tactic on this overnight train journey was to get along, perhaps keep off the subject of religion.

As I was thinking this, the old man was talking to the student.

"He asks if you believe in God."

"I have a lot of questions on this subject," I said.

"He asks, 'But do you believe in life after death?'"

"I don't know about this. No one has ever come back from the dead to tell us anything, so how can we know?"

"The Holy Koran tells us"

"I intend to read it when I have a chance."

The old man, who was seated across from me, spoke directly to me in Turkmen and became very animated.

"He says: 'The grass grows. Then the grass turns brown. Then the grass dies. Then it grows again. It turns green and gets tall.'"

The old man was still staring, his face narrow, one skinny gnarled hand in his lap, the other gripping the long gray beard attached to his chin. His arthritic hands gave him an even greater look of piety.

"He says, 'Life is like that, I believe.'"

"Tell him I agree. Life is like that, even where I'm from."

"Where are you from?"

"Tell him America."

The old Muslim received this information with more interest than I had expected.

"He asks, 'Do you have cotton in America?'"

"Lots of it."

"Is it a good type of cotton?"

"Very good," I said.

"He is wondering how many hectares of cotton are growing in America."

"Tell him I'm not sure. Why is he interested?"

"He works in the cotton industry."

"What does he do?"

When this question was asked, the man showed me his ruined hands, his twisted fingers.

"He picks cotton in the fields some distance from Mary—near Yeloten, south on the road to Afghanistan, where there are cotton farms."

So he lived (according to my map) a few hundred miles from the Afghanistan border, a day's drive, not far from the ancient city of Herat, which I had visited on my first Railway Bazaar trip. Now Herat was dominated by a clan of well-armed warriors and a paranoid and vindictive warlord. A German traveler had been arrested there, tortured, and shot as a spy just a month before, a fate I wished to avoid.

The old man's name was Selim. He told me his simple history. He had been born near Mary. He had not gone to school. As a boy he worked in the fields, and had picked cotton his whole life—mostly Soviet times. He had married a woman from his clan and they'd had four children.

"I think you are about sixty," he said.

When I told him my age, he challenged me to guess his. He looked about seventy, so I guessed sixty. He laughed and said he was fifty.

At my Ashgabat farewell party in a Turkmen household, I had been given a bag of food for the train—spinach pies, mushroom turnovers, sticky buns, all wrapped in paper. In the dim light of the compartment I unwrapped the food.

"Ask them if they'll share my food," I said to the student.

They nodded politely when the question was translated, and so I handed the food around—to Selim, the young soldier, the student, and a hanger-on gaping in the doorway. Elderly-looking, gray-bearded Selim—could he really be fifty?—asked a question.

"He says, 'Ask the American if we can say a prayer.'"

"Of course," I said and nodded to the man.

All Muslims wash before they pray. But in the desert, or when water is unavailable, they use sand or dust. If (as on a train) there is no sand, they perform the dry ablution called
tayammum,
making an elaborate business of rubbing the hands and wrists and arms, and slowly wiping the face, massaging the eyes, the cheeks, the jaw, then drawing the hands downward. Selim went through this ritual as the train rushed across the desert, rattling the windows and the door handles.

Then he prayed for almost a full minute, his eyes closed, speaking into the stifling air of the compartment. When he was finished I asked him what he had said—was it a standard prayer or had he improvised it?

He said it was improvised for the occasion. "I thanked Allah for the food. I thanked the friend who brought the food and gave it to us. I wished the friend blessings on his journey."

"
Sagbol"
I said, and in thanking him, exhausted my knowledge of Turkmen.

"Do they pray in America at mealtime? he asks."

"Many people do."

"Do they pray at other times too?"

"Yes. Americans pray a lot."

A knock at the compartment door: the conductor. He was handing out sheets for sleeping. The arrangement was that in return for our ticket we would be given a sheet. Tomorrow morning, we'd hand over the sheet and get our ticket back—we'd need it to pass through the station at Mary.

Though it was not late, the light was so bad there was nothing to do
but sleep. The others, even the student, were early-to-bed people, I could see. So we turned in, each of us in a bunk. After the feeble light was switched off, I could see the dark plains passing, the low scrub, the boulders glowing, smooth and bluish in the moonlight.

Hours later, it was still dark as we approached the town of Mary. Another knock at the door, demanding the sheets, offering tickets. The others were awake and yawning.

I said to the student, "Ask him if he's met any Americans before."

"No," Selim said. He thought a moment. He said, "But I met an Uzbek once."

Ashgabat had been hot and dry. Wishing to lighten my bag, I had given my sweater to Mamed and my scarf to Gulnara. Approaching Mary, I gave my heavy long-sleeved polo shirt to the student, who had been so helpful.

"It's a lucky shirt," I said.

In return, he gave me another multicolored cord to ward off the evil eye.

Selim said, "I will wait at the station until eight o'clock. Then I'll get the bus to Yeloten. It costs five thousand manat. A shared taxi costs ten thousand manat. But I say, better to take the bus and give the extra money to my children."

It was a lesson in rural Turkmen economics and paternal love: this man who'd just had a fitful night of sleep on the train would crouch in the darkness and cold of Mary Station and wait for three hours, wrapped in his cloak, to save 30 cents to divide among his four kids.

***

THE CONCEIT IN THE ANTIQUE
land hereabouts, Khorrasan, with its noble capital called Merv, was that it was once the center of the world. In one extravagant metaphor, it was called "the Soul of Kings." It is almost axiomatic that such an oasis would eventually be turned into a dust bowl, and Merv had. But in its day, which is to say for thousands of years, it had been a marvel—an imperial metropolis, a center of learning, a place of citadels, a walled city, or rather several of them. My interest was simply that of a wandering observer, seeing once again (as I had in the great Silk Road city of Turfan, in western China) that in the course of time, all great cities and their kings and their artifacts and their splendor and their pomps turn into dust. Looted of their treasures,
their porcelains shattered into a million shards, their fortresses overrun and trampled, their people scattered, they remained a crumpled example of the vanity of human wishes.