ANARBEK BENT DOWN on his hands and knees and crawled under his office desk, searching for the thumbtack he had dropped. He was attempting to hang the factory’s first MANAS 1000 YEARS poster. In an effort to proclaim its identity and connect to the outside world, the new nation of Kyrgyzstan had announced that it was throwing the biggest party the earth had ever known, to take place the following summer. The government had chosen to celebrate the thousandth anniversary of the Epic of Manas, the story of their country’s mythical hero. The Kyrgyz boasted that the Manas Epos—double the combined length of Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey—was the world’s longest poem. Traces of the ancient oral tradition remained. Illiterate men still wandered remote mountain villages and could sing the entire epic from memory in a trancelike state.
Manas was a giant who could toss boulders across the peaks of the Tien Shan and pull trees out by the roots and shoot them like arrows. Legend said he was immaculately conceived when his elderly father had begged Allah for a son. He had been born in the Talas Valley, not far from Kyzyl Adyr-Kirovka. As a child he vowed to free his people from oppression. His life played out in a series of noble campaigns epitomizing the heights of bravery, until he was at last betrayed and killed. To this day, if anyone approached the hero’s secret burial place, the heavens protected it with thunder, lightning, and a torrential rainstorm that could be quelled only by reciting the epic.
With independence had come an effort to revive interest in the Manas tradition. Young schoolchildren now memorized entire chapters of the epic, and nobody was better at this than Baktigul Tashtanalieva. Nazira had coached her, and Anarbek had watched his daughter place first in the yearly oblast-wide school competition, where, dressed in elaborate felt costume, her hands flying in fierce gestures, she recited the verses perfectly to mesmerized crowds. The prize won Baktigul a part, as an extra, in next summer’s outdoor dramatization of the epic. Baktigul’s recitation had also won Anarbek this poster.
He was still crawling on the floor when the government official arrived unannounced, slapping the hollow door with the palm of his hand. Startled, Anarbek jumped to his feet as the man strode into the room. He was wearing a solid green tie and bore a leather briefcase with an imprint of the Kyrgyz flag—the red sun rising on a yellow background. The word mencheekteshteeroo had been embroidered in black on the leather. He introduced himself as Bolot Ismailov. Anarbek offered him a seat, and the stranger flopped the briefcase onto the desk and clicked it open, so the flag and its label faced Anarbek upside down.
“Will you have some tea?” Anarbek asked. Behind him the Manas poster slid off the wall.
The squat man adjusted his glasses and cocked his head slightly, as if Anarbek had implied something illicit. “Perhaps later,” he said. “We need to have a conversation. Pressing business.”
Anarbek was overcome with dread. Jeff had warned him, and he had been expecting the visit, but now he decided it was best to play innocent. “Of course,” he said. “What have you come to talk about, brother?”
“I’ve driven from Bishkek today. I’m overseeing privatization of businesses in the valley. We’ve been in your oblast for nearly six weeks now. Are you aware we’ve opened an office in Talas?”
“Perhaps I have heard.”
Bolot explained that he had been sent to inspect state-owned farms and factories, in order to produce a list for this year’s coming auction. It would be a cash-and-coupon auction—the government was distributing vouchers to all state workers, who could now take part in the purchase of the former collectives or any industry in the country. “We’re making progress, you see. You can own your own factory now.”
Anarbek spoke quietly, respectfully, examining his own fingers. “I understand how it works. But even with the coupons, we will need credit, no? And foreign investors?”
“Certainly. A great deal of credit. With a fine, productive factory like this, I can’t imagine that would be a problem.”
“No. Of course not. We have an American working here.”
“Ah, wonderful. I didn’t know that. As I said, I’ve been sent to inspect the state-owned farms and factories—in order to create the list of enterprises for the privatization auction.”
Anarbek hesitated. “Yes. Would you like me to show you around?”
“Certainly, but first . . .” Bolot leaned back in his chair, stretched his legs, and with some effort crossed his right foot onto his knee. His brown leather shoe was rubbed to an impressive shine. He thought for a moment, his hand pulling at his rough-shaven chin, then he suddenly spoke in Kyrgyz. “Tell me! How are things in the village?”
Anarbek tried to answer calmly. “As you know, sir, it has been very difficult these few years.” It pained him to have to show deference to this short, stubby man, perhaps twenty years his junior.
Bolot asked if the government salaries were still arriving on time, and Anarbek told him not always, but regularly enough. They both agreed that the state of affairs in the country was very much up in the air. The official assured Anarbek that the changes would be for the long-term good.
“It is a difficult time right now,” Bolot said. “For everyone it is a difficult time. I myself would like to marry sometime soon, but it is so expensive to start a family.”
“I know. I have married twice.”
“A kalym. One thousand, sometimes two thousand dollars for a woman from Naryn. But even that won’t be enough. You understand me?”
“Yes, agai.” Anarbek shook his head and clicked his tongue in agreement.
“And one day she will want to have a house, and children,” Bolot added.
“I also have a young daughter. Two, in fact.”
“Is that right? Well, then you and I both must consider the costs of a wedding. Quite expensive, in the capital, for someone like me, with so many friends. So many very close friends, in the government.”
“I see.”
“Do you pay rent here?” Bolot asked. His eyes had narrowed into thin dark slits, like roasted sunflower seeds.
“For my factory?”
“For your home?”
“No, of course not. I built it myself, with my own two hands.”
“How wonderful. In the capital, you know, the rents have increased. Out of control. Many buildings have private owners now.”
“Yes, I’ve heard.”
“And we cannot grow our own food, as you do here. We must buy everything—food, clothing, butter—in the bazaar. Ten som for bread! Can you believe it?”
“It’s hard to believe the costs nowadays,” Anarbek said. “I don’t know how we live.”
The stilted conversation continued. Every time Anarbek tried to mention the factory, Bolot shifted in his seat, adjusted his tie, and changed the subject, relating the many hardships of city life. Anarbek listened impatiently, waiting for the guillotine to drop. He offered nods of commiseration, but behind the desk his knee quivered. At last Bolot searched his briefcase and drew out a notebook with orange carbon papers inserted beneath each sheet. He cleared his throat, and his voice turned solid, more official.
“Well, enough personal talk,” he said in Russian. “As you see, I’m compiling the lists of factories to offer for sale this year. You’re familiar with our law, ‘On the Basic Principles of Destatization, Privatization, and Entrepreneurship in the Republic of Kyrgyzstan’?”
“Yes, brother.”
“Then you know, of course, that the State Property Fund is the institution responsible for these sales.” Bolot went on to explain that, since independence, the government had closed two hundred state-owned enterprises and privatized the service industries in full, along with 50 percent of construction enterprises, 70 percent of housing, and 25 percent of all agricultural firms. The president had declared he would like to complete the privatization of agricultural firms this year.
“Will it happen?” Anarbek asked.
“Well, things sometimes progress more slowly than our leaders would like. You do not see the president coming to your village, inspecting your cheese factory, do you?”
“No.”
“No. It is only I. I’m the one who drives through the mountains, far from my home. I’m the one who organizes the auctions. I’m the one going from village to village, making the official lists for Talas.”
“Yes.”
“I write it here, you see. On this piece of paper. With this very pencil.”
“Then you’ll be assessing the value of our factory?”
“Perhaps . . . but not just yet.” He eyed the open door for a long moment and then returned his gaze to Anarbek. Anarbek rose, closed the door, and secured the bolt.
Bolot continued. “I can write the factory name here, like this.”
Slowly Anarbek seated himself, watching. Legs still crossed, Bolot was pretending to write and simultaneously exaggerating the words, “Kyzyl . . . Adyr . . . Kirovka . . . Cheese . . . Collective.” He lowered his head, winked at Anarbek, turned the pencil upside-down, and pretended to erase. “Or I can erase the name.” He smiled and laughed a discomforting guffaw, slapped the pencil on the desk, spun the notebook in his lap, opened his palms, then brushed off his hands. “What factory? You understand me, Tashtanaliev? What factory?”
Anarbek tried to smile, but his lips stretched only halfway. He thought for a second, weighing his choices. The silence in the room was oppressive. Finally he took the plunge.
“How much?” he asked.
Bolot leaned forward and whispered in Kyrgyz, “A small percentage of what you earn, Anarbek. Very small indeed. No one need know. We can get you a few years yet.”
Jeff did not mean to be cynical about the planned festival. One year into his Peace Corps service, he was making every effort to stay positive. Yet with the novelty of Kyrgyzstan fading and another winter ahead, he found himself sinking deeper and deeper into a morass of cynicism.
He had first learned of the extravaganza at the bazaar, where he had run into Nazira. She had pointed out a poster pasted on a kiosk, advertising next summer’s Manas celebration. Jeff was skeptically bemused. Nazira tried to explain the importance of the epic. “The legend brings our people together and gives us good examples to live by. You see, Jeff, our president has announced an international celebration and invited the world.” She spread her arms wide, as if to embrace the entire bazaar. “They say even President Clinton is coming! Your father and your friends from America must also attend.”
Jeff laughed. “We’ll see. When will it start?”
“We don’t know. May or June. It will last all of next summer. My sister will be one of the stars.”
“How are they getting the money for this?” he asked. “Shouldn’t the government pay unemployment or pensions first?”
Nazira blushed. “It is our ancient tradition,” she explained. “Nothing is more important than that. Some of the people have forgotten Manas, and that is very bad.”
Jeff recognized in Nazira his own foolish idealism. Last summer he had charged into Central Asia thinking he could preach the virtues of democracy and the necessity of basic human rights. Instead he was teaching the simple past tense to unemployed milkmaids for the fourth time. He was culturally exhausted. Life as a volunteer was becoming too much for him: too much vodka, too much attention, too much goodwill, too little progress. As his second summer ended, he did his best to escape the constant feasts. More and more he made up excuses. He avoided handshakes in the bazaars. And still, fearing unreasonable requests from his Kyrgyz friends, he refused to answer the door at night.
He reached his breaking point in mid-October. The American embassy, in support of Peace Corps volunteers involved in agricultural projects, had mailed Jeff a newsletter and application detailing a promising initiative of tax credits and loans available to dairy farmers. Before classes the next morning Jeff approached Anarbek in the factory office, showed him the information, and explained that it was the perfect opportunity for the doomed collective—even if it meant notifying the government of the oversight concerning salaries. “Look, you simply sign on,” Jeff said. “I promise you. It is the only way there will be a future for your factory.”
“Future?” Anarbek lifted the application papers between thumb and forefinger, as if they were wet laundry. “What future is there if the salaries stop? Half our village cannot get food now. You want to starve the other half?”
“I am not trying to starve anyone. Soon the government will discover that they have been mistakenly sending you money. What will you do then? Each year you check the privatization announcements and pray your factory is not listed. And now you’re paying off Ismailov. I am telling you to let the inevitable happen. I am telling you to get some legitimate money in here, rebuild, and work toward a joint venture. This application can ensure success. You just have to come clean, Anarbek. The state is doing this gradually. They will not let you fall into financial trouble. They are trying to find investors abroad. It is not in their interest to see you fail. Listen.” Jeff took back the application and read, “‘Additionally the government is concerned about the flow of dairy products out of the country. In an effort to regulate the sector, the Kyrgyz Agro organization has been established to help newly privatized corporations handle problems associated with operating in a developing market.’” Jeff waved the papers in the air. “You are perfect for this.”
Anarbek was shaking his head. “Jeff, you don’t understand. The finance ministers, the governors of the oblasts, are filling their own pockets. They are buying up companies for themselves, and they are the only ones with the money to do it. Regulation? There is no regulation! No stability, no laws. Would you want to chance that? In your country you can afford to take risks. You have money; you have security. If you lose one job, you find another. That is not how it works here. They’ll buy us out and close us—we could never compete with them. The village will starve.”
“Compete? How will you compete now? There are hardly any cows! You have almost no milk! You make no cheese!”
“Cheese! Who cares about cheese? We still have our salaries. Soon perhaps we will start over, Jeff. We will start small. Maybe we will try to produce yogurt or kefir to sell in Talas. Simpler operations.”
“You talk about corruption. It is you, Anarbek! You are the one stealing from the government, corrupting the system. Listen to me. You need to forget about the salaries and begin thinking of the future. All problems have solutions. You just need a change of—how do you say it?” Jeff laid the application papers on Anarbek’s desk, pulled out the dictionary from his backpack, and flipped furiously through the pages. “Mentality,” he said, pointing to the Russian word.
Anarbek stared at the word and seemed to lapse into thought. With each silent second Jeff felt his hopes multiply. If he could keep the factory from sinking—if he kept the workers in business—the village might not only survive but prosper. The free market might take off, and democracy might eventually take root here. Anarbek studied him; his eyes narrowed. He glanced down at the papers, lifted them from the desk, and held them closer to his face. “No, Jeff. Thank you, but for the last time, no. It is too much risk.” With a resounding tear he ripped the application in two, then into small pieces.
The signs for the festival hung everywhere by winter’s end. On every store around the oblast, every frozen highway billboard, every icy school gate, and every rusting bus: MANAS 1000 YEARS. Despite the lack of visible preparations, for Nazira these signs meant the festival was a certainty. In February she read a notice in the pochta, declaring the Manas celebration would take place over two weeks in June. The following Saturday a new notice corrected this, claiming the celebration would be held only the final week of June, after school let out.
“It is almost March already,” Jeff told her on a dinner visit to his host family’s house. It was a particularly frigid evening, and he had hardly touched the borscht or the manti Nazira had made. “In Talas they’re just breaking ground for the first hotel, near the stadium by the river. That is not much time to build a five-star Presidential Hotel.”
“It is the Kyrgyz way,” Nazira assured him. “Relax, relax, relax, and at the last minute, work, work, work.”
Jeff had only three months left, and Nazira realized she was running out of time. Soon he would leave—forever, perhaps—and in the larger world of teeming Western cities he would forget her. Her father made things no better with his constant questioning, with his prods, his schemes. “How are things between you and Jeff?” he wanted to know. “Have you brought him bread this week? Have you invited him to dinner? Is there progress?” She had stopped answering; there was too little time to hope.
In May Jeff spent an end-of-service weekend in the capital and returned to break the news that President Clinton was unable to attend the Manas festival; he had sent his regrets.
In late June Nazira traveled to Talas to secure festival tickets for her family; the event had now been shortened to three days. In town nothing was happening, although people claimed the celebration had already begun. It seemed the kumbooz, the central site of the festival, lay fifteen kilometers away, in the foothills. Since no hotels had been completed, international dignitaries would now sleep in yurts at the site. Nazira had hoped to impress Jeff—she had hoped the town would be full of parades, street musicians, shashlyk stands, and vendors capitalizing on this historic event. Perhaps it would all start tomorrow.
She wandered to the Talas airport. Near the dirt runway the town’s schools had assembled six yurts to welcome the invited presidents. Anxious people were pacing. A terrifying Russian babushka guarded a display of mannequins dressed in sequined national costumes. A group of bored schoolboys tortured a falcon chained to a post. Children in felt dresses and conical hats, waving flags of the new nation, had gathered on the road. In one yurt a school director explained that the presidents would all fly in at seven the next morning.
When Nazira brought this news back to their village, Jeff was incensed.
“This whole production was concocted just to welcome the dignitaries. Propaganda, that’s all it is. Why didn’t anybody tell those people at the airport that they were waiting one day early?”
She told him not to worry; the people were used to waiting. The akim of Talas had decreed that festivities should not begin until the visiting presidents arrived from the capital. To encourage promptness, the road to the kumbooz would be closed by seven in the morning. The performers, including Baktigul, had to arrive before then. The family would therefore have to leave the village by four in the morning, so Jeff must stay overnight at their house. And only the chong kishi—big people—like themselves, who had tickets, could attend.
Lola woke Jeff at three the next morning, and over breakfast he was surprised to see that Anarbek’s entire family had dressed up. While Jeff wore only his ASU Rugby T-shirt and a faded pair of sweatpants, Anarbek had put on a sports jacket and a brand-new stiff white kalpak. Lola wore a long blue printed dress, and more elegant still were Nazira and Baktigul, in matching equestrian costumes: lacy ruffled skirts and tight burgundy vests made of felt and embroidered with antler designs. “You look beautiful,” Jeff told Baktigul, who beamed and blushed. Anarbek placed a hand on his daughter’s shoulder and said, “She is our Hollywood star today. She is our Cybill Shepherd, our Yulia Roberts.” Nazira poured the chai, and when breakfast was finished she fetched Jeff’s boots for him. He laced them up next to the door and watched Nazira slip her slim, delicate feet into her high heels.
They drove two hours in Anarbek’s sputtering Lada, but when they approached the site, officials forced them to park a few kilometers away. As a group they began the hour-and-a-half hike to the kumbooz. Every other family in the area was doing likewise, a procession of zombies trudging through the yellow mist of morning. Jeff asked, “What time is the festival going to start?”
Anarbek told him the road closed at seven.
“That is not what I asked,” Jeff whispered to Nazira in English.
“It is Kyrgyz time,” she whispered back. “You will see.”
Police were everywhere, twirling their batons as if showing off, and they screamed at the lines of shuffling people for no apparent reason. Yet everyone kept hiking; fifty thousand had to be on the mountainside by seven, before the presidents arrived. Fifty thousand began the slow march to the opposite side of the grounds; they were directed to sit on a far hill to watch the celebration, which would take place in the immense hippodrome below. The organizers had cleared a path through the brush two meters wide, which wound around outhouses, yurts, puddles, and creeks. Fifty thousand had to jump stones to cross a pond, negotiate single warped planks that bridged pools of shit, and clamber up the muddy slopes. Jeff was furious, but Nazira, in high heels, did not complain. Approaching the hill at last, she turned to him and declared, “We must have walked five kilometers. Or eight!”
In the center of the grounds stood a small stadium with the exclusive seats. Only those with special colored tickets could enter. Security guards tried to let the performers in, but the teeming general crowd swelled at the gates, trying to force their way in as well. Just as Nazira kissed her sister goodbye and directed her to the performers’ gate, the police twirled their batons, and a mass of people surged back in uncontrollable waves. Baktigul shrieked. A few children fell and were nearly crushed. The celebration, Jeff thought, had begun.
No time or place had been set to meet up with Baktigul after the performance—this disturbed Jeff, but he shrugged it off as a typical Kyrgyz laissez-faire attitude. With the crowd they came to rest on the far hill, a half-kilometer from where it looked like the show might take place. Once again the waiting began—an hour passed, then two. The people sitting in front of Jeff began to play cards, and their neighbors clicked their tongues in disbelief. Someone chided them: how could anyone think to bring cards to the historic Manas celebration? From his backpack Jeff pulled out Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment.
Buses rumbled down the road that separated the general crowd from the exclusive stadium and dropped off the diplomats destined for the coveted VIP seats. The buses obstructed the general audience’s view of the stadium. But the Kyrgyz merely smiled and waved at the tinted windows.
At ten in the morning the crowd was still waiting in the dirt. Jeff reminded himself not to complain. He eyed Nazira—how gracefully she bided the time, with what assurance and good-natured acceptance she waited: laughing, telling jokes, taking deep breaths of the grassy air.
Finally, two hours later, the speeches introducing the thousandth anniversary of the Epic of Manas began. A single staticky loudspeaker broadcast the message to the general crowd on the hill. Nobody listened. Jeff could hardly make out, through the forest of kalpaks, over the buses, the distant dot of the speaker. One or two diplomats rattled on, and then a representative from UNESCO offered an incomprehensible dedication. For another hour the crowd sat, waving at the buses.
Every ounce of Jeff’s patience had dried up. Seething, he said to his hosts, “It is good so far?”
“Very good!” Lola agreed.
At one in the afternoon, with an uproar, the main performance finally started. Over the heads of the crowd, Jeff could see the hippodrome come to life. For the next thirty minutes a humongous cast of actors from the capital, dressed in bright flowing costumes, reenacted battle scenes from the epic. Acrobats performed on horseback, dancers twirled in lines, rainbows of fire shot over the field, gongs rang out, and banners were unveiled in synchronized patterns—a show worthy of a Superbowl halftime. Jeff was awed by it, and chastened himself for being so cynical.
Over the loudspeaker he recognized the voice of a manaschi singing the opening notes of the epic. Nazira scooted over excitedly and whispered in his ear, “Do you know what this is?”
“I can’t understand everything. Can you translate?”
“He is just beginning. I shall see.” In a sweet low voice, close to his face, she did her best with the lyrics:
“Oh, oh, oh, the ancient fairy tale,
It is high time to begin it . . .
For fearless Manas’s sake . . .
We will tell you energetically
For the sake of Manas’s memory . . .
Innumerable years have passed
Since dressed in chain armor,
Running when seeing an enemy,
Fast like the whirlwind,
The man ferocious like the tiger has passed.
Who was it, if not the hero?
So many people have passed through the centuries!
Since that time
The sea got dry
And turned into a desert.
The mountain peaks reaching the sky
Have vanished and turned into a swamp.
The peoples living on earth are getting less!”
“It’s wonderful. It’s really wonderful,” Jeff told her. Energized, he straightened his legs and settled down to enjoy the spectacle.
Anarbek had spotted Baktigul and pointed her out. She was playing a cousin or a niece of Manas—Jeff couldn’t be sure—and riding double on horseback behind one of the principal actresses, who was supposed to be fleeing a wartime burning village. Baktigul held on to the actress’s shoulders as the horse galloped across the field. Anarbek and Lola shouted and waved.
Jeff began to think this festival might have been worth it. Even if it wasn’t a season, or two weeks, or one week, or three days, or even two full hours, still, for this tiny new country, it was something. The celebration of a new nation meant something. His being here, at this historic moment, meant something.
Just as the performance was reaching a climax, the electricity and music cut off. The throngs of dancers, actors, and acrobats ignored the problem and continued marching, tumbling, and reenacting battles through the silence. After nearly a minute the loudspeaker coughed back on, and a voice apologized to the diplomats, the nine foreign presidents, the international community, and the Kyrgyz people. The voice directly addressed the performers and asked them to return to their original positions.
“Excuse us,” the voice said. “We have fixed the music. Please do it again. Our deep regrets. Please start over. Excuse us.”
Anarbek, Lola, and some of the crowd laughed. Nazira shrugged. A few people hissed and clicked their tongues. On the loudspeaker the manaschi opened the epic again. The music failed twice more during the second performance, but it no longer seemed important. The show continued in spurts. Baktigul fled the burning village a total of three times. Finally the hero Manas saved the Kyrgyz nation. Fireworks shot across the hippodrome. Gunshots, gongs, and the horsemen’s shouting resounded, flags from around the world were unfurled, and a magnificent hot-air balloon, made of brilliant orange taffeta, was inflated and lifted off, rising into the sky like a second sun.
“It is so beautiful,” Jeff said to Anarbek, sweeping his arm across the crowd, the Talas hills, the Ala Too mountains fringed with snow. Together everyone’s heads turned upward as they followed the path of the balloon.
Past the stadium the balloon floated, lost altitude, then crashed into a hill. The basket collapsed; the fabric fell, burst, and ripped into shreds.
Jeff’s heart ripped with it. Around him the Kyrgyz gazed, spellbound, at the balloon’s immolation. They did not appear disappointed. They simply turned away and resumed their chatter. Anarbek was inspecting his kalpak, and Nazira looked serene and content. No, Jeff thought, this was a disaster. As much as he wanted this new nation to develop, to flourish, with or without his help it was going nowhere. He was finished here. Let the hero Manas save the cheese factory.
The spectacle had ended. It occurred to Lola and Nazira only then, for the first time, that finding ten-year-old Baktigul in a crowd of fifty thousand was going to be a problem. Jeff separated himself from his host family and slouched around the festival grounds, looking for the girl and avoiding invitations to eat beshbarmak. Eventually he met up with Nazira and Lola. They had not yet found Baktigul, but now, together, they were pulled into a yurt by an enthusiastic Kyrgyz family overjoyed to meet an American. Their hosts sat them down, carried in the sheep’s head, and handed the knife to Jeff. Just as he cut into the ear, they proclaimed with unwavering smiles:
“Wasn’t our Manas celebration perfect?”
Jeff learned from Anarbek that it was a Kyrgyz tradition to throw oneself a farewell party. He could barely fathom another evening of forced vodka and excessive generosity. He had packing and cleaning to do, and he was busy organizing his belongings to leave for village friends. In an effort to travel as lightly as possible, he had carried most of what he owned up to his bedroom, where he waded through shoes, a tape player, his dubbed blues cassettes, a pocket calculator and his Italian spices. He had always hated goodbyes and had hoped for a quiet, graceful exit. In leaving he was abandoning the factory and the village to a state of uncertainty, and he wanted to get it over with as quickly as possible.
But Anarbek forced him to relent. “I’ll mention the party to a few people,” Jeff said. “Just a few, though.”
The following morning he cooked leposhka pizzas, using the flat loaves of bread from the bazaar. He boiled down a vat of spicy tomato sauce, chopped up his last precious hunk of imported cheese from the capital, then baked it all in a covered frying pan. He was impressed with the results. For his closest village friends, ten pizzas would suffice: a final taste of America.
The crowd began arriving at nine-thirty in the morning. Scarved women charged into his home, pointed to his pizzas cooling on the kitchen table, and laughed. They were followed by their husbands and children, who tracked mud inside and hauled Jeff’s furniture out the front door under the apple trees. Before he could object, three enormous tables had been improvised, covered, and set Kyrgyz style—the usual nuts, fruits, candy, and jams spread over them. Jeff heard protesting sheep dragged into the back of his yard, he heard the clanking of bottles as they were set up on the tables, and he braced himself for one final day of submission to traditions beyond his control.
Village children arrived. Upstairs the kids unpacked all of his bags, then made off with journals, photos, and his ASU sweatshirts (he would not know they were missing until weeks later). By noon Nazira was outside playing the kumooz, Jeff’s tape player was jammed into a window frame, and electric Indian film music blared out into the dusty street; babushkas gossiped under the apple trees, the neighbor’s dogs jumped up on the tables and stole pieces of borsok, and a group of men squatted around a bottle by the raspberry bushes, tore off berries, and swallowed them after each toast. Jeff brought out the pizzas and his guests scarfed them down in a matter of seconds, then complained how lousy American food was. The boiling of the sheep commenced, followed by the cleaning of the offal in the irrigation ditch, and Jeff was pulled inside his living room, where, as a gift, some of his neighbors recorded dedications on cassette; they thanked him for his two years of help and sang mournful farewell songs at ear-piercing volume; then they dragged him outside, where warm champagne was uncorked. Loaves of fresh bread arrived from the bazaar, someone brought homemade yogurt, and his students abandoned the factory and arrived with hunks of butter. A fight broke out between Dushen and Bolot Ismailov (“Former KGB,” whispered Anarbek), and it ended with both men half-drunk, half-beaten, and slumped, hugging each other, on the roots of the plum tree. Late in the afternoon a cow wandered into the yard and lapped up jam from the table while children took turns throwing sticks at it. The villagers gave Jeff presents, more presents than he had planned to give away himself: carved chess sets, a Kyrgyz lute, watercolors of the dried-up reservoir, and, most impressive, an embroidered riding whip, with his factory students warning him, “Always take it with you, wherever you go, and you will never be lost.”
Songs erupted outside, the dancing began, and the party spilled beyond his fence into Karl Marx Street. Swooning now, Jeff stared across the riot of his front yard, where he had enjoyed so many peaceful evenings reading, writing letters, and contemplating the mountains. In the growing frenzy of song, dance, and drink, it occurred to him that the entire village was there to say goodbye. His temples throbbed: he felt dizzy and sad.
“Are you okay?” The voice was Nazira’s, his ballast of equilibrium in the insanity of this place. She was standing beside him, and he realized she had been hovering close to him for much of the afternoon.
“I can’t believe all this.” He gestured to the raucous crowd.
“The Kyrgyz can make a holiday of any occasion,” she said. “We do not want you to forget us.”
“How can I forget this!”
By six in the evening the yard was finally abandoned, the sun setting behind the recently plowed fields. Drunk, exhausted, melancholy, Jeff wandered from room to room of his overturned home, trying to determine how he was going to clean up the mess before he left in the morning. He gave up and passed out on the shag carpet of his living room.
At midnight a gentle but persistent knocking woke him. He stumbled to the front door and found Nazira.
“My father has sent me over to check on you. I saw the lights on. I thought you might use my help.”
She stepped into his house, and with the instincts of a woman trained in the art of perspicacity set to work. At first Jeff followed her from room to room, amazed by the efficiency and confidence of her every movement. But after five minutes he retreated to the bathroom sink. The water, thank God, was running. He splashed his face, rinsed his dry mouth, and realized he was utterly unable to focus.
He found Nazira sorting effortlessly through the soiled dishes piled in the kitchen. She had begun to boil water; she had emptied three wastebaskets and was now in the process of clearing off plates. Jeff stepped in to help. He dropped the first glass he touched and it shattered on the hard stone floor.
Nazira smiled. “Why don’t you start cleaning upstairs?”
Jeff found his bedroom ravaged. He noticed the dusty footprints of the children. They had jumped on his pillows, unpacked his bags, torn out pages of his favorite novels, rifled through his two-year stack of letters, and smudged every single one of his photographs. It had taken him weeks to organize all of his things: what to ship, what to carry home, what to leave for the future Peace Corps volunteers, what to leave for his village friends. His work had been for nothing. Lost in the depths of cloudy judgment, he began stuffing items into any bag they would fit. When he had filled the luggage, half of his belongings remained on the floor. He realized he was getting nowhere, dumped it all out, and went downstairs again.
Nazira had finished the dishes and had swept the large chunks of mud off the living room carpet. Jeff was thoroughly impressed. Now, at two-thirty in the morning, she was trying to clear the thick brown cobwebs off a corner of the ceiling—a job he had never, in two years, gotten around to. She could not reach the highest webs with the broom handle and dragged over a wobbly chair.
“Nazira,” he said, “you are a goddess for helping me, but really, it’s late. This isn’t very important right now.”
She climbed onto the chair and with a smile answered, “These things might not be important to you, but they are important to me. Some person must live here.”
Jeff secured the shaking chair. She swiped at the cobwebs with her broom, stretching higher, and her leg slipped a few inches. He caught her calf and held her steady by both legs. It took her only a moment to clear the cobwebs, but he found, gripping her soft knees, that he was desperately aroused. She hopped down, and he turned away.
“How are you doing upstairs?” she asked.
He shook his head.
“Let me see.” Nazira marched him up the staircase.
“Uff! Jeff, Jeff, Jeff.” She clucked at him, observing the mess. She sat down among the T-shirts and sneakers and all of his worldly possessions and began folding clothes. He watched her noble face, her determined eyes, her constellation of freckles, and he opened his mouth in astonishment as she packed a pair of his boxer shorts.
“Really, enough, Nazira. I’ll take care of all this.” He tried to pull a pair of jeans from her hands. With a teasing smile she refused to let go, and the next thing he knew, they were locked in an embrace, rolling over hard lumps of his stuff, bumping their heads against the floor and the bedposts. Very soon neither had anything on—their clothes and bodies and cries mixed with the great disorganization of the room. She hugged him close and shook beneath him. Her thin legs were strong around his waist, her chest soft and flat; the musky taste of her neck could not have been more foreign, or more familiar, and inside her he thought he might never want to leave.
The nine o’clock sun slanted through the open curtains and Jeff awoke, alone, to a brilliant headache. He stood and tried to retrieve fuzzy lost pieces of the day before. What he could remember did not square with what he found. His clothes were perfectly folded in the room, all of his belongings packed and zipped in bags. He walked naked past the open bedroom windows; the air was cool and scented with wildflowers of the early alpine summer. Still naked, he crept down the groaning steps and found that the living room furniture had been brought in from the yard. The dishes had been cleaned, dried, and piled in neat rows; the kitchen table had been wiped to a shine, and on it two flat loaves of leposhka had been left for him. He lifted one warm loaf, and as it gradually cooled in his hands he thought, What have I done?
That morning he said goodbye to his students, to Altin Eje at the post office, to the fat Russian telegraph operator, and, with a great hug, to Anarbek. At the bazaar he said goodbye to the Kurdish milkmaids. He left all of his National Geographics with Yuri Samonov. He bid silent farewell to the drunks sleeping under the poplar trees by the statue of Lenin. He waved to the cheeseless cheese factory and left the village of Kyzyl Adyr-Kirovka, hitching a ride with his three oversize canvas duffle bags to Djambul, where he found a bus to the capital. The real world came rushing back to him, and the farther from the village he got, the more he dreaded America, massive wealthy modern America, waiting resolutely for his return.