December in Ashgabat

by Tanya Kornilovich (United States of America)

I didn't expect to find Turkmenistan

Ashgabat was just below freezing in December. Frost rolled in on empty roads and sidewalks and the fountains that stayed on during the winter had frozen water in misshaped arches. Before I left the apartment my grandma tugged my hat down and my scarf up, determined to shield me from the cold. That day’s daily trek to the was prompted by my great aunt’s need to get a new cell phone case; she wanted one on a lanyard so she could wear it on her neck. We walked through the old Soviet buildings blanketed by satellite dishes, right by the overflowing dumpsters. We passed stray dogs, nimble and emaciated, and a grandmother leading a kid in a school uniform by the hand. My great aunt’s gait was hobbled so she hailed a cab: an unmarked Zhiguli. In a city where the presence of the government is suffocating, the open-air bazaars offered a reprieve. There were rows of stalls of produce: eggplants, barley, thick cuts of beef, fresh chicken, salami, and ham. They still sold their famous melons, even if the winter ones weren’t as good as the summer melons. Mounds of tomatoes, corn, onions, and apples, piled high and flecked with flies. We bought caviar, pomegranates, smoked fish, and onions. Besides the produce they had stalls with pirated DVDs and CDs from Pink Floyd to Led Zeppelin, cheap clothes from India and China imported through Dubai. My great aunt tried to buy me a T-shirt, a sweater, anything, just to show her affection, so I smiled and thanked her and told her I didn’t need anything. Ashgabat is a strange blend of Soviet building and marble behemoth buildings consisting of government agencies, museums, and long, expansive parks in the boulevards. The city holds the world record for the most amount of marble in a city. The streets are bare and pristine. Just outside the city are the sleeping neighborhoods where my grandmother lived; they still had the remnants of Soviet architecture and were marble-free. Ashgabat is the city my grandmother lived her whole life in, where my mother was born, and where my grandmother would eventually die. It is where my great-grandmother moved her five children from Ukraine because Turkmenistan was warm and had plenty of food. I spent my childhood summers there: bathing in putrid green pools, eating ice cream and sunflower seeds and pelmeni, and sweating in my great aunts’ apartment drinking tea. By the mid 1990s, after the fall of the Soviet Union, it had turned into an authoritarian and isolated country, with some critics quipping that it was “the North Korea central Asia.” I was questioned at customs and had to register at the police station during my stay and was wary of what I said on the phone. There’s no freedom of speech, no political dissent, limited internet access, and countless arbitrary rules that citizens must follow lest they are imprisoned. Everyone writes about those injustices, the gaudy marble, the eccentric President, but no one writes about regular life or Turkmen culture or the rugged beauty of the desserts. During my visit, my grandmother would stay up late drinking tea and doing crosswords and laughing and telling me about her time at university in St. Petersburg. I walked up to a vendor, who was selling a copy of the Rukhnama, by former President Niyazov; it was green, with a pink border, and a golden portrait of Niyazov. It was Niyazov philosophizing on Turkmen values and history, his family, his accomplishments, it was a holy text. I traced the edge discretely. The desecration of this sacred book was severely punished. My great aunt waved me over. She had wandered off the to the area where beautiful handwoven Turkmen carpets were sold. Turkmen carpets had distinct patterns, developed over centuries, and were worth thousands abroad, and sold for a fraction of their price in the capital. My family’s house was littered with them and I eagerly approached. As I turned the corner, I heard the sweet croon of Eartha Kitt’s ‘Santa Baby’ playing over the loudspeaker.