.the timorous may stay at home

Written July 6, 2008

Roughly over the fifty-hour mark into the Peace Corps Experience I found myself eating corn on the cob in front of an Egyptian obelisk flanked by the spiraling minarets of Istanbul’s Blue Mosque. Behind me across a sprawling cobbled compound packed with all sorts of humanity speaking a myriad of languages lay the opulent Hagia Sophia, a former orthodox church that had been converted into a spectacular mosque at some point over the city’s turbulent span of history. An hour prior, I had walked over the Byzantine walls that had marked the boundaries of old Constantinople: they had fallen in the fourteenth century when bombarded with stone cannonballs.

The corn on the cob was far waxier than the kind I’d normally consumed in the States; I actually have the sneaking suspicion that it was maize, the stuff that my mother decorates the house with come Thanksgiving. I traced the Blue Mosque’s minarets with my eyes wordlessly for a few moments, before turning to face my companions, new friends with bonds cemented over drinking ourselves into the wee hours our last nights on home soil and connected by a bizarre drive to go live somewhere we’d never even heard of before.

“Cool,” I said. They all nodded agreement, and we walked the winding ancient roads of Istanbul to the waterfront, where we found a cafй atop yet another ancient crumbling structure, where we drank tea and Turkish coffee, and meditated over a nagliz (or sheesha, or hookah: I swear I’ve never been two places where they call it the same thing).

So, to gather, it had been a pretty wild ride so far. And this was only the layover in Istanbul we’re talking about.

The flight itself was pretty much everything you’d expect it would be: long, kind of boring, and filled with hours of shifting restlessly in coach seats, trying to find a position that didn’t, you know, suck too badly. We didn’t get into Bishkek until 1:30 in the morning.

Kyrgyzstan so far? Pretty good. The hotel that we’re staying at is about as Soviet as a sickle, and almost charming about how… genuine it is. It’s eight identical floors chiseled out of a single block of cement: other than us, the place is almost empty. And though the K-16 (sixteenth year of service in Kyrgyzstan) group is 63 people, which is a pretty sizable amount, it does little to fill this monstrosity of a hotel.

It clearly doesn’t have enough people to maintain it, so entire sections of the hallway walls are cracking and crumbling away to reveal live wires and pipes beneath; the uneven wooden floors are covered with fraying and faded red rugs, but only to a point. About twenty feet down from the room where I’m typing this, the rugs end, and so does the electricity. The hallway tapers off into pitch black, which is sort of unnerving. Of course, I explored it with friends and it passed by some open, empty rooms that were duplicates of the one I was staying with. Weirdly, one has a gigantic white wicker basket covered in pink saran wrap sitting it the middle of it. The basket is empty.

I have no idea.

It still has a weird sense of grandeur about it, though. The rooms all have chandeliers and balconies, and the dining room is spacious and wood-paneled, with architecture inspired by a yurt. The bathrooms come equipped with rusting bidets, and the complementary towels were hanging off of what looked like water pipes, which would likely warm the towels when warm water ran through them.

This is, of course, assuming that there is any hot water to be had. The first night we arrived I wasn’t so lucky, and I ended up standing in the rusted out bath and using the towel as a sponge to attempt to just rub the stink of sitting in coach for fifteen hours and six more hours of pounding the streets of Istanbul out of my pores. Today was better, though: the water wasn’t necessarily warm, but it didn’t induce goosebumps, so I was happy.

The food, however, is spectacular, and there’s certainly no shortage of it. They feed us breakfast, lunch, dinner, and “coffee break.” It’s all served by silent Kyrgyz men in white and black, under a golden chandelier decorated with the national symbol of Kyrgyzstan wrought in what’s probably brass-plate.

The grounds around the hotel are expansive and equally as intriguing and run-down. This is good, since we had to give up our government passports with visas yesterday, because the visa that got us into the country was only good for one day. So, I mean, if we leave the hotel compound, we’re essentially wandering around a former Soviet republic with no official documentation, which could end badly when we got inevitably stopped by the police.

But the hotel grounds are wild and overgrown, peppered with interesting things like old broken water fountains and rusting statues dedicated to the glory of Kyrgyzstan. Grasses grow tall and flowers and weeds push doggedly through cracked concrete patios and vines are starting to win a battle against one corner of the hotel. Just adjacent to the hotel is a wonder called “Manas Park,” which was erected shortly after Kyrgyzstan’s independence and celebrates the legend of Manas, the mythical figure that united the forty tribes of Kyrgyzstan. It’s also the longest epic poem in the world: supposedly reciting it from beginning to end takes a full forty hours.

The park itself is an interesting example of post-modern design: more concrete and wire bent in right angles and curves, representing the forty tribes with a representation of Manas’ yurt on a raised stone platform. Unfortunately, there hasn’t been money to dedicate to the park’s maintenance, so it too is starting to go the way of the hotel. Plants are pushing their way past the cobbles in the floor, and graffiti in an eclectic mix of Russian, Kyrgyz, English, and Chinese cover most surfaces. Despite this, though, there was a small group of workers at one corner of the complex, painting over the graffiti and picking up the garbage.

There’s also a tall, tall tower at the top of the complex that has a wide, twisting staircase: climbing up and up offers a fabulous view of Bishkek in the far distance, and even more amazing, the mountains.

I never take pictures, because there’s just no point. How in the hell can a 3x5 square appropriately capture standing on the rickety top of a monument and leaning over into the warm evening air, staring up at alpine-covered and snow-capped mountains looming in the distance above a modern city and the remains of Soviet decay?

I’m learning Russian, which, frankly, surprised the hell out of me. I’m teaching secondary English (along with everybody else on the program and their sister), and as such I was expecting to pick up some Kyrgyz, but I’m in one of the two English-teaching groups that got selected for Russian language. I’m actually pretty stoked: not that learning Kyrgyz would somehow be lesser or the end of the world, but more that I’ve actually always kind of wanted to learn it.

In high school, I agonized for a while over whether I should go with Japanese or Russian for my language studies. Well, I guess I get to do both, in the end. They say that Russian is the harder of the two languages, and that the kids that study Kyrgyz generally get fluent faster, but, hell. Challenge, ahoy, full speed into Cyrillic and finally learning how to roll my r’s.

And now I’m drop dead tired, and I have shots to get tomorrow, and a third language to learn, and I don’t think I’ve actually slept more than ten hours since Wednesday, so I’m going to go to bed now.

.me and the wanderlust

My flight for Philadelphia leaves in approximately five hours and forty-five minutes. It leaves in exactly five hours and thirty-seven minutes. Not like I'm counting or anything. I should probably sleep, but I know I'm far too wired for it.

These last few hours before lift off aren't exactly what I'd call a case of cold feet, but more of a final, stark appreciation of what I'm on the edge of. I've been listening to the same song from a folk artist on repeat for the past two hours; today was spent in a frenzy of paperwork and final goodbyes to friends, and girding myself for the familial goodbyes at the airport. Apprehensive, Jonas decided. But, you know, psyched.

All I keep thinking is that these are not necessarily real partings, but simply the next chapter of our lives, is all. Section X out of ? parts. Pick up the pen or the word processor, and compose, damn it, just like any other thesis I've ever embarked upon, scholarly or non. Starting is always the hardest part.

Five hours and twenty-seven minutes, now.