Mukoli

Ashgabat in Summer, Ashgabat in Marble

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What Moved the Judges

“Through the author’s experiences and beautiful story about Baba Nina, we learn about a country that pops up in the news from time to time, but about which we really know nothing. Readers learn about the beauty of Turkmenistan. Readers learn about how global politics have impacted the area. More importantly, readers gain a different perspective on Islamic women (Baba Nina was a truck driver) in that area. Though relevant for many reasons, particularly the influence of social media, this is also a beautiful tribute to Baba Nina.”

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On my FYP page, exotic travelers explore the world, filming places most of us will never get to visit, even places we’ve never heard of. As soon as I hear, “Come with me to one of the weirdest countries on Earth!” I pause, knowing it might be Turkmenistan. It often is. Due to its strict visa requirements and isolationist policies, it is one of the least visited countries on Earth. Although these videos are meant to be original, I’ve seen dozens of TikTok and YouTube travelers spit identical talking points about Turkmenistan: a country with no internet; a capital ostentatiously filled with marble; a totalitarian dictatorship that requires chaperones for all tourists; a desert country bordering Afghanistan, Iran, Kazakhstan, and Uzbekistan; a former Soviet Republic on the Silk Road; home to the Gates of Hell (the Darvasa gas crater, a collapsed cavern with natural gas that has burned since the 1980s); and a country filled with warm and lovely people. I watch these videos anxiously, scanning for details, catching glimpses of the buildings and landscapes, while it feels like a needle quickly pierces my chest. I see these travelers standing at the edge of Turkmenistan, peering in, all making the same trite observations mixed with traces of curiosity, pity, and awe and I feel envious and sad that they visited a place that I wish was closer. 

“You are Turkmen 
Let’s, O my heart, walk my heart. Let’s look around our land. 
With lions in its fields, the beautiful land of Turkmen, 
Now the day has come for the poor, sad, brave men,  
You are the Turkmen, with such heroes like Jelaleddin. 
Let’s select a thousand-winged horse 
And travel praying over her plains and mountains 
And seek for the ancestors who became part of them, 
And you are the Turkmen which hosts 360 saints.” 

– Poem from Rukhnama 

SUMMER 1999 

In Ashgabat, five minutes outside of the apartment my mother grew up in, was a community pool that I begged my family to visit. It had fallen into disrepair since the fall of communism, no one had maintained it, and the water had turned a putrid green, filled with algae, seaweed, water lilies, and frogs ribbiting loudly. But that didn’t matter to me, what I saw was a body of water, a respite from the unrelenting heat that pressed onto your body. My mother pointed out the foul water, laughing in confusion at the children, of all ages, from toddlers to teenagers, jumping in and out, swimming, wading, dunking their heads in the water.  

“It’s disgusting,” she said.  

“Mama, can I swim?” I pleaded.  

“If you want,” my mother shrugged, barely concealing a grimace.  

“I don’t have a bathing suit.” 

“Strip down to your underwear. No one cares.”  

I stripped down cautiously and I jumped in the water. I felt immediate relief from the heat and a surge of energy. The seaweed tendrils wrap around my legs and between my toes. I swam closer to look at the little frogs, which then made me queasy, so I retreated. I dunked my head in the water and opened my eyes. The water was a muted green filled with sediment and dotted with small fish. I watched other children speaking a mix of Turkmen and Russian play with each other. I was unsure whether to join them in their games, so I remained alone, fixating on the water around me. When my mother called me out of the pool, I emerged reluctantly.  

In the summer, Turkmenistan is hot, usually over 100 degrees, sometimes up to 120 or even 130. My grandmother’s one-bedroom apartment, where she lived with my great-grandmother, had no proper air conditioning: the bedroom had a wall unit from the 1970s that weakly blew air but had a mighty sound that vibrated the walls. The living room had a floor fan that I sometimes stood in front of, which ignited the ire of my great-grandmother who barked at me to stop hogging the cool air. Often, I was nearly naked in front of all my relatives, while the female relatives all wore thin, flowing robes, and my male relatives walked around in shorts and no shirts. In this way, the daytime was tolerable. 

Night time was torture. Since I was the oldest grandchild, the living room was my makeshift bedroom. I could sleep on the couch, but I opted for lying on the floor, pushing away the pillow and blanket. This way I could feel the air between my body and the rug instead of suffocating in the damp sheets. At night I stared at the ceiling, feeling my sweat roll down my shoulders and my back, and I felt tormented as I stared at the ceiling longing for sleep. The bristles of the rug itched, I felt every thread, and I yearned for the cool reprieve of the wood parquet flooring underneath as I dozed.  

My familial ties to Turkmenistan begin with my great-grandmother, who moved my family from the Ukraine-Russian border to Turkmenistan during the Great Patriotic War (what the Soviets call WWII) because of its abundance of produce. In college, I researched Turkmenistan and what I found was mostly in old Soviet textbooks. It is commonly accepted that the Turkmen people were a group of nomadic Turkic tribes in Central Asia, settling in the region around the 11th century. They were ruled by the Oghuz, another group in Central Asia, and then fell under Mongol rule in the 13th. Until they came in contact with the ever-expanding Russian Empire in the late 19th century, the Turkmen people continued to exist in nomadic tribes with little unity and occasional rivalry. The Russian Empire created a colonial outpost there, called Transcaspian, against strong local resistance. The Soviet Union also continued their colonization by forcefully joining the then renamed Turkmenistan to the union, and the Turkmens resisted even further. Attempts at assimilating the culture, closing mosques, and disbanding the nomadic lifestyle caused violent guerrilla warfare, which was ultimately futile. Eventually, the conflicts ceased and the Soviet Union developed Turkmenistan’s infrastructure and utilized their natural resources as a Soviet Republic.  

My great-grandmother, who we called Babulya, lost her husband during the Great Patriotic War. He served in the military and the family never received a death notice from the front, leading the family to two different theories: that he was either hit with a grenade, his military tag and body blown to smithereens, or that he was captured as a prisoner of war by the Nazis, a guaranteed torturous death sentence. Babulya gave birth to three children and adopted two more children who had been orphaned by the war and supported the family by working as a truck driver. It was a good job, especially because she was illiterate, and she was able to retire once she turned forty.  

My grandmother, who we called Baba Nina, was born there, she lived there, and died there. She gave birth to my mother there, getting pregnant against her doctor’s orders, who told her it was too risky due to her heart condition. My mother grew up with her mother and grandmother, without her father, who abandoned the family after domestic abuse, divorce, and neglected child support payments.   

DECEMBER 2012 

My last visit to Turkmenistan was during winter break as a college sophomore. I felt an obligation to visit, as Baba Nina was in the beginning stages of heart failure. Her sickness loomed over me since I had learned about her illness at nine years old. Once I understood that she was fragile, I took great care to be on my best behavior. Throughout the years, Baba Nina and my great-aunt, Baba Valya, would meet us in Moscow, where we stayed with my father’s family. Baba Nina bought me clothes that were outdated and unfashionable, yet I told her I loved them. She asked me detailed questions about my education and I took great care to describe the American school system to her. She asked me if I helped my mother around the house and if I helped my brother with his homework and made me promise to help them. I earnestly said I would. When I was older, we shared a bed, and at night she liked to stroke my face and my hair and whisper about how beautiful I was, how intelligent, how good I was. Baba Nina was the only member of my family that had such a naked display of positive emotion and I didn’t know how to absorb her affection, it made me feel embarrassed and heavy, but I endured these sessions, pretending I was asleep.  

At the end of our visits, Baba Nina would cry uncontrollably, heaving with pain, while airport security told her she was in the way. My mother and I told her it was okay, that we would be fine, that she would fine, and that we loved her, yet I had never seen such distress, which terrified me. I resolved not to cry. I was afraid that if I cried in front of Baba Nina she would break completely.  

At 19, I already felt old and weary, filled with the exhaustion that comes with knowing far more about your family than what you know about yourself. After months of listening to my mother worry about Baba Nina’s health, I felt compelled to visit and give Baba Nina the only gift I could: the presence and attention of a dutiful granddaughter. After 24 hours of travel, I landed after midnight and walked out of the airplane onto the vast, empty tarmac to take a bus to the terminal. There were only a few planes in the distance and no street lights. 

An official led all 10 passengers, a mix of Russian and American businessmen, through the empty airport to the bank kiosk. We waited for half an hour until they opened so we could pay the 12 dollar entrance fee. I handed 20 USD and received two dollars in change, short-changing me six dollars. I chose not to comment. At passport control, I produced my passport with my visa, along with my letter of invitation and my address of temporary residency. A baby-faced official my age dressed in military uniform addressed me in Russian in spite of my American passport.  

“When was the last time you visited Turkmenistan?”  

“I was six… 1999?” 

“How long is your stay? What purpose?” 

“Two weeks. Visiting my grandmother.” 

He continued questioning me and I answered calmly. When in doubt, be meek. 

My relatives met me after I exited baggage claim. Baba Nina’s face was hollow and the paper skin on her stick-thin arms and legs couldn’t conceal her popped veins. As she hugged me, I could feel her bloated stomach, one of the symptoms of her heart failure, through her coat squeeze against mine. Her eyes filled with tears and she kissed my cheek and grasped my hand, “Oh how beautiful you are… you’re here!” I held eye contact sheepishly.  

Baba Valya was there, dressed in a camel-colored coat, jovial and energetic, her grin revealing gold crowns in her mouth. My mom’s cousin, who I called Dyadya Vitalik, also greeted me. He was of medium height, muscular build, a strong forehead, and a stern face; a stereotypical Russian man clad in a leather jacket and a cigarette in his hand, cracking jokes every other sentence. Dyadya Vitalik drove us through the empty capital, Ashgabat, and into the apartment I hadn’t visited in 13 years. 

In the winter, Turkmenistan is cold, right around freezing. The harsh winter sun contrasted harshly with my hazy childhood memories, where I felt like a loved and spoilt grandchild, accepting presents of candy bars and butterfly hair clips. I was an adult now, with all the senses I had as a child, but with a political inclination and a greater knowledge of my family tree, which was getting older. Most of my family had left Turkmenistan: to Moscow, to Novosibirsk, to Paris. I wore a shell of cynicism to protect me from my sadness. The gravity of Turkmenistan’s oppression was a perpetual fog: still no internet, still no freedom of speech, still careful patriotic decorum, still a totalitarian dictatorship stuck in time.  

In the morning, we drove to the police station so I could register with the government, complying with the stipulations of my visa. We drove past the center of Ashgabat, which was full of tall marble government buildings, in fact, the city holds the Guinness World Book of Records for having the most marble buildings in the world. The city center was artificially splendid: expansive, pristine, filled with statues and monuments and memorials. There were fountains upon fountains that weren’t drained but stood frozen, the ice in misshapen arcs and icicles. Women dressed in traditional Turkmen clothing, long, embroidered shifts and headdresses with ornate Turkmen patterns, swept the streets with wooden brooms in clusters. The wide sidewalks were empty, with the occasional soldier policing the area and bellowing, “No photography! Put your camera away!” at the rare civilian. 

The marble looked even whiter in the sun and had the effect of making the city look even larger than it was, but it gave the city a cold feeling. Marble feels cold to the touch because it saps the heat from your body quickly. Phone calls had become the connective tissue between our family members, but the white marble around me seemed to nakedly display the true distance between our family and reveal the trick we performed on weekly phone calls, the trick of pretending that we’re not far, we’re close by, we’re a mere plane ride away.  

SUMMER 1999 

We used to have a lot of family in Turkmenistan, and we used to gather frequently, we had groups of 10, 15, or 20 of us. Once, we all visited the new attraction in the city: a gold statue of the President for Life at the time, Saparmurat Niyazov, was erected on top of a monument. The statue rotated with the movement of the sun. We took an elevator up to the viewing platform while my adult relatives giggled at the campiness of the dictator.  

Baba Nina and her sisters spent every Sunday together, sitting all day, drinking tea, and eating. The apartments were all small, so the dining table expanded and we would push it against the couch on one side, and line it with chairs on the other. The table was filled with food: olivier (potato, pickle, carrot, egg, and pea salad dressed in mayonnaise), seledka pod shuboy (pickled herring and beet salad), salami, cheese, pickles, pickled tomatoes, caviar, and liters of kvass and tea. Napoleon cake for dessert and Alenka and Three Bear chocolates. Those are the few times in my life where I was surrounded by so much family, brushing up against the noise and movement of a large family, the chatter, the squabbles, the kisses, the rivalries, the love, and the heartbreak. I had the impression that I was part of a breathing organism. Every detail was so different than the Western world that I memorized mundane objects knowing they would soon be gone: Soviet jewelry, gold teeth, beautiful carpets on the walls, ornate china, heavy wooden furniture, massive cans of food, and my mother’s old toys from the 70s.  

Baba Nina loved to cook, but it was not a hobby, or a skill, it was momentum, a dynamic propulsion to go into the kitchen and create succulent and fattening food. My adult self knows that her technique was learned from Babulya and others around her, thousands of lessons to sustain the vital practice of feeding, the ability to survive the famines of childhood, lines during food shortages, and the hyperinflation during Soviet collapse. If you didn’t cook and garden and pickle and can and bake and schlep the groceries up six flights of stairs, you didn’t eat. Babulya, Baba Nina, and Baba Valya cooked as naturally as they moved; it did not even occur to them that there would be any other way.  

Baba Nina cooked every meal for me and always asked what I wanted to eat, and for every meal I requested the same: pelmeni, meat dumplings, usually a mix of pork and beef. Baba Nina would grind the meat herself, make the dough, and assemble the dumplings within seconds, and boil them in water before serving with butter, sour cream, and my personal favorite, black pepper.  

“You put so much black pepper on! So spicy!” Baba Nina exclaimed three times a day after serving me a steaming bowl of pelmeni.    

Sometimes I ate golubtsi: steamed cabbage stuffed with minced beef and onions, picking around the cabbage to the meat. Occasionally I was convinced to slurp some borscht and I made sure to eat all the sour cream. We drank kompot: water and boiled fruit with a little sugar. I liked looking at the hundred of cans of pickles on the veranda: fat pickles, tomatoes, and eggs, arranged in beautiful rows on a massive shelf.  

WINTER 2012 

Dyadya Vitalik was my chauffeur, chaperone, and entertainer. Immediately, he took me to restaurants: a fast-food chicken spot, a bakery serving Western baked goods along with Russian ones, a hut that served baked fish in a clay pot, and ornate Soviet-style banquet restaurants. I was unimpressed, but I always assured him that the food was delicious.  

After my Great Uncle Volodya died, Baba Nina moved in with Baba Valya into her two-bedroom apartment. They were thrilled to cook for me three times a day and shooed me away from the tiny kitchen. I caught glimpses of how they worked. Their skill and precision was evident even with their age, even with Baba Nina’s health. No recipes, everything they made was from muscle memory, from feeling, from instinct, from cooking tens of thousands of times. I ate fat manti, large steamed lamb dumplings that dripped with butter and meat juice. Varenikki filled with sour cherries and sprinkled with powdered sugar were served for breakfast; the cherries burst in my mouth. I ate my forever favorite pelmeni with butter, pepper, and sour cream. Also served were kotleti (hamburger patties), belushi (meat in fried dough), pirozhki (pastries with mushrooms, meat, or mashed potatoes), golubtsi (beef stuffed bell peppers), and blini (thin, buttery pancakes). And tea, tea, tea, served five times a day with honey and walnut baklava, sesame halva, or stale Russian chocolates. Every morning they would ask for my breakfast order before I showered (in the gas-heated shower that I had to light with a match) and it would be served the second I emerged from the bathroom.  

Baba Valya needed a new cell phone case; she wanted one that she could wear around her neck, so we went on our daily trek into the bazaar. Bazaars were the center of city life; the stands were filled with all kinds of goods: eggplants, potatoes, thick cuts of beef, salami, barley, buckwheat, pirated DVDs, cheap factory clothing, and Turkmen souvenirs. Produce was mostly local and the imports were mainly from Russia, Turkey, and Dubai. Russia’s cultural impact was fading away as the Soviet Union fell further back into history, while influence from the Middle East had become more prominent, manifesting as increased trade and travel between the two countries. Western music blared to uninformed shoppers; Eartha Kitt’s “Santa Baby” played to my amusement. Shoppers called out, “Fresh lamb! It’s a great price! Only 50 manat per kilo!” Baba Valya bemoaned the winter season, otherwise I would be treated to sweet melons and watermelons.  

The bazaars were outside of the marbled city centers in the “sleeping neighborhoods”, or suburbs, although it was still part of the city, where all of the buildings were gray crumbling Soviet apartment blocks blanketed with enormous satellite dishes. Next to each group of buildings was an enormous dumpster overflowing with potential recyclables and trash. Emaciated stray dogs jogged the alleyways. Children ran around after school. This was where people walked the streets and did their shopping, hailed unofficial taxis, chatted with their neighbors, and yelled at children. 

Turkmenistan became independent in 1991 as the Soviet Union fell apart. This was the first time that Turkmenistan had the opportunity to develop its own nation independent from outside influence and establish a national identity. Turkmenistan culture was developed in full force: Islam was embraced, overturning the atheist Soviet policy, Turkmen dress was popularized, and Russian was removed as an official language. The first president of Turkmenistan was Saparmurat Niyazov, who styled himself Türkmenbaşy, or father of the Turkmen people. Turkmenistan became a one-party government and he became President for Life; upon his death, they built a mosque specifically for him, which reflected the grandiose nature of his persona. When he quit smoking, he banned smoking in the entire nation, he renamed months in honor of his relatives, he established a law requiring foreign men who wished to marry a Turkmen woman to pay a dowry to the government. It was estimated that half of the country’s GDP was diverted into a presidential fund specializing in extravagant construction projects.  

His philosophy can be best examined in the Rukhnama, required school reading, which stands above the Koran in terms of importance in Turkmenistan, and has an enormous statue in the city center devoted to it with a screen that illuminates a new page from the Rukhnama each day. The Rukhnama, with a cotton-candy pink cover, details the history and nature of the Turkmen people without any actual evidence, has nationalistic poems, and contains advice on how to be a good citizen and a good nation. For an official government document, it’s rambling and confusing, and claims that the Turkmen people invented the wheel. A few years after his death, the next President, Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedow, dismantled the gold statue of Türkmenbaşy, but continued most of the previous administration’s policies, those of a totalitarian dictatorship. Gerbanguly Berdimuhamedov served as President for 15 years until he stepped down, and his son, Serdar Berdimuhamedow, won the election in 2022. There is no term limit for the Presidency.  

The air was hushed and tense in Ashgabat. Three officials came to check upon my mother when she visited last time, checking the address on her registration. On the phone with my parents, I was cautious with my words, making sure nothing I said could be misconstrued as criticism of the government. When Baba Nina and I spoke about Russian politics, I mentioned the limited freedom of speech due to the state-run media and she recoiled. “Russia has all the freedom of speech.” Which, comparatively, it does.  

SUMMER 1999 

Turkmenistan teems with mosquitoes and flies in the summer. I was sitting outside at a plastic table with my mother, her cousin, and my second cousin drinking warm Coca-Colas out of glass bottles. My mother’s cousin sat still and dozens of flies would rest and buzz around her feet. She didn’t flinch, she ignored them. I couldn’t believe it. I felt tortured by the mosquitos, I felt they were waging a war against my body. I asked how she could stand it and she shrugged.  

“There’s nothing you can do to drive them away. I get used to them.” 

We were resting before going to an underground cave open for swimming. The cave was deep with steep stairs which led to a changing room. I wanted to change in private, while my mother laughed and said, “We’re all women here. We know what you look like.” I saw everyone’s naked body, I looked at everyone, unsure if I was allowed to look.  

The air was cool and the water felt heavy, full of minerals, and smelled like sulfur. My second cousin and I jumped in, giggling. The water was warm and said to cure diseases, particularly skin diseases, and we felt ourselves getting healthier.  

“You know, if you dunk your face in, you’ll become beautiful,” said my mom’s cousin.  

My cousin and I looked at each other incredulously. We splashed our faces, over and over again, and put our faces into the water, careful not to swallow any of the sulfuric water. My mother and her cousin laughed, egging us on. “Don’t swim too far!” they warned us. The lake extended past a dark pitch-black mouth in the cave. I kept looking at it, full of curiosity, knowing it was dangerous, yet wishing I could explore it all the same.  

In the evenings, when it cooled down, we often took walks in large groups. On these walks, my mission was to get ice cream, a relatively easy feat. In former Soviet countries, you can find ice cream stands often, sometimes every few blocks. Inevitably, Baba Nina, Baba Valya, or my other great-aunt, Baba Masha, would smile at me and ask, “Do you want an ice cream?” I savored Russian ice cream, it had a buttery base and taste, and the melted cream ran down my fingers. Eventually, someone would pull out a napkin or handkerchief, wet it with their tongue, and wipe my face, then wash my hands with bottled water. 

One night at dusk, dozens of bats flew by with a whoosh. Baba Nina grabbed me and kept me close to her. “I don’t want them to bite you,” she said. But I wasn’t scared, it was thrilling to see them, I only knew from cartoons. My mother always warned me that scorpions were native to the area, and to watch out for them, and I looked for them eagerly, hoping to catch a glimpse.  

Babulya and Baba Nina encouraged me to play outside and make friends. I tried, but this environment scared me. There was no playground, no natural place of congregation, children roamed the dusty streets however they pleased. The unrestrained freedom was too large, so I retreated to watch Soviet cartoons, hoping Babulya would switch off her Argentinian soap opera.  

In those days, the city would shut the water off for days at a time, usually with a warning. Ahead of time, Baba Nina filled the bathtub and buckets full of water. This water would be used for cooking and for tea (no potable water meant you could only drink tea). Meanwhile, we could only take sponge baths. Occasionally, they would shut the electricity off in the middle of the day. That’s when we would go to the zoo to look at emaciated and sickly animals, or to markets and shopping malls for air-conditioning.   

WINTER 2012 

Dyadya Vitalik wanted to drive me to the local mountains and to see the countryside scenery. Turkmenistan is mostly comprised of desert. Outside the city, the frozen expanse of sand swallowed us. We drove past a newly built, enormous horse-racing stadium, where the famed, athletic, and intelligent Akhal-Teke horses raced each other. We passed run-down villages filled houses with rusted copper roofs and crumbling stones without running water or electricity while goats and cows and dogs wandered through the dusty dirt roads. If the villages were more robust, they had camels and donkeys. These settlements were small, a couple hundred shacks with a tiny store adjacent, and they stood in solitude, many kilometers from the nearest village. The empty highway reached the snow-speckled mountains, which led to what used to be a public summer resort that was now only open to government officials. We wandered out onto a viewing platform and Dyadya Vitalik pointed south and said, “15 kilometers that way is the Iranian border.” The highway was desolate but every 10 kilometers there were enormous visible cameras, apparently set up to deter speeding. 

Dyadya Vitalik took me to the Ertugrul Gazi mosque, a relatively new mosque in the center of the city. We took our shoes off and someone fetched me a scarf, which I clumsily arranged on my head. The carpeted mosque was hushed; men were dotted around and praying within the enormous room. I would look up at the ceiling and my DIY hijab would fall off the top of my head so I awkwardly held it in place as I admired the breathtaking ceilings. Islam holds an interesting place in Turkmenistan, there are few who are legitimately pious, but most people identify with it culturally. They’re also very relaxed about certain rules, including drinking alcohol, and even though there were no women worshippers in the mosque, they didn’t object to my presence.  

As the Soviet Union fell apart and Turkmenistan gained traction in their own nationalism, Russians began to trickle out of the country, to Baba Nina’s disdain. I constantly heard her complain about how the main theatre didn’t stage productions in Russian anymore, how her doctors weren’t Russian anymore, and how the younger generation only spoke Turkmen. 

Baba Nina and Baba Valya’s home was lively thanks to their third roommate: their television. They turned it on upon waking and kept it on all day until bedtime. They only watched Russian TV through their satellite dish, as Turkmen TV only showed Presidential addresses, Congress, and traditional Turkmen music. We watched soap operas, daytime shows, movies, and the news. My family knew far more about Putin than they did about President Berdimuhamedov. On Russian TV, we watched news of Sandy Hook and I had to explain to them why it had happened, that there were hundreds of millions of guns in America, as they shook their heads.  

“How does an insane person get a gun?” Baba Nina asked.  

Dyadya Vitalik and his girlfriend Vika lived in a beautiful apartment with four-meter-high ceilings, hardwood floors, and chandeliers. I sat around the dining table as they whipped out salami and cheeses, concocted cocktails, and opened boxes of Belgian chocolates. They were unmarried due to their jobs which would show a conflict of interest; Vika worked at the United Nations while Dyadya Vitalik worked as part of the President’s Secret Service. Vika was lively, and in private, she openly complained about the government. About the ridiculous rules, about the fact that officially speaking, no single mothers existed, about the extensive corruption infecting everything, including issues with her son’s papers. “I’ve been point-blank informed that $5000 would take care of it,” Vika said disdainfully. I wandered over to the window and began to prop it open as she cried, “Don’t! They’ll call us and tell us to close the window.” 

“What do you mean?” 

“The apartment. It overlooks the road the President drives on. We’re not allowed to open windows, if we do we get a call telling us to close it.” 

“Does that mean there’s someone always watching the windows?” 

“Must be. Have you ever had Kahlúa?” 

Saparmurat Niyazov, the eponymous and beloved dictator, had a museum dedicated to his life in a grandiouse, hexagonal building with several forms of marble. Half of the museum was about his life, and the other half was devoted to national symbols of Turkmenistan: handwoven carpets, paintings of Turkmen clan leaders on horses, ornate national costumes and weapons. One room housed globes made from precious stones on which Turkmenistan was larger than on Western globes, engraved with phrases like “Turkmenistan the Neutral State”, “Turkmens Unite”, and “Turkmenistan the Golden Age.”  Uncle Vitalik and I were the only ones in the museum besides the bored museum attendants, young women dressed in their traditional garb who whispered and giggled to each other. 

We visited the Alem Entertainment Center, a building with an enclosed Ferris wheel, arcade games, and bumper cars. There were immaculate parks in the city center, with dozens of monuments: a statue dedicated to the 1948 earthquake that consisted of a steel globe on the back of a bull, a raised platform statue with a dozen Akhal-Teke horses in bronze, and a leftover Lenin memorial. The Carpet Museum had hundreds of handwoven carpets that Turkmenistan took incredible pride in, yet no photography was allowed in the museum. These attractions were always desolate and clean, as if freshly scrubbed.  

Baba Nina was too sick to go to any of these attractions with us, so at home I spent all day in the living room. We watched TV and played crossword puzzles, but mostly, we chatted. Sometimes she asked about my life, but I knew that it was difficult for her to understand, she had never visited the United States. She would shrug and say, “Things are done so differently now, and I don’t understand America.” She spoke about her life, and maybe because I was older, or maybe because she was dying, but she told me far more about her life than I had ever heard. She spoke about her ex-husband’s family and told me they were Baptist, she spoke about her belief in God, which I had never heard before, she told me she was so scared that my mother would start smoking when she moved to Moscow that she searched her things for evidence of cigarettes. Sometimes, she spoke in a stream as she remembered parts of her life, as though a part of her was reliving it.  

“At 17, I went to St. Petersburg to study at the university. I got into school but the stipend wasn’t enough to afford a fur coat and winter boots. So I decided to go home and it took three days by train and I didn’t have money for food. A woman and her son sat in the coupe with me and always offered bread or pastries and I refused every time. During train stops I would get off and come back and tell them I ate borscht in the cafeteria. I never told them the truth. I didn’t want them to pity me.” I looked at her eyes, which were watery, while I chewed pomegranate seeds.  

Baba Nina still worked as an accountant and wanted to show me off to her colleagues. Once again, I felt embarrassed as she bragged about how beautiful I was, that I was a strong athlete, that I was studying at a university as a scholar, a translation confusion regarding my scholarship. Her coworkers kindly indulged her, agreeing that I was special. Everyone I met asked me earnestly what I thought of Ashgabat.  

“Do you like it? What do you think?”  

“It’s beautiful. Yes, I like it very much.”  

As my last day grew nearer, Baba Nina started asking me if I could change my flight and leave at a later date. I said I didn’t know how, but inside I didn’t want to stay and I felt guilty. I was filled with a melancholic malaise and a deep sense of unease. I had the impression that I was being rubbed raw by everything, the heavy fog of oppression, Baba Nina’s fragile body, the pleading eyes of everyone I met, hungry for my American approval, the fucking marble, and my unsubstantiated regret. I regretted that we were so far away for my entire life, that I had never known the clamor of extended family, that Baba Nina would never understand my life, and yet I knew I couldn’t regret it, because I had never made the choice to begin with.  

The second-to-last day of my trip all of us went to a cemetery outside the city to visit Babulya’s grave, Baba Nina and Baba Valya held onto Dyadya Vitalik as he led them out of the car. Soviet cemeteries are individualistic: families buy a plot of land and are responsible for its maintenance, usually by plating with marble and fencing off picturesquely and cultivating flowers. This leads to varying decorating choices and a patchwork of gravesites, some that were immaculate and others that were completely abandoned and overtaken with weeds. Land had started to collapse and gravestones were sinking in the ground and cracking. Our family plot was clean and tasteful and we gathered around and placed bouquets of flowers near the headstone. We stood around, contemplating for several minutes: here lies Anastasia Matveyevna Maslieva, October 21st, 1911 – June 15th, 2002. 

SUMMER 2016 

My father and I were at the Shakespeare festival in Ashland, Oregon. My mother was supposed to be there, but a few days prior, Dyadya Vitalik called my mother and said, “Get here as fast as you can.” My mother was planning on visiting Turkmenistan the following month, but changed her ticket and flew out the next day. The first night of the festival I dreamt of Baba Nina. I saw her face, not the face I last saw, but the face she had in my childhood, plump and healthy. She was taller than me, dressed in the kind of robes she wore in the summer. And she was laughing. She was happy.  

My mother didn’t make it in time. She called the day after she arrived and screamed on the phone, the kind of scream that bellows from the gut. The scream hit me in the middle of my skull and I covered my face with my hands as my mouth opened into a sob. My father and brother looked at me, but didn’t cry.  

“Turkmenistan, my beloved motherland, 
My beloved homeland! 
You are always with me 
In my thoughts and in my heart! 
For the slightest evil against you 
Let my hand be lost! 
For the slightest slander about you 
Let my tongue be lost! 
At the moment of my betrayal 
To my motherland, 
To her sacred banner, 
To great Saparmyrat Turkmenbashy 
Let my breath stop!” 

– Poem from Rukhnama 

WINTER 2024 

I talk to Baba Valya on the phone every time I visit my parents’ house. She talks to me about her health, she speaks about how lonely she is, and updates us on various family news. She asks me about my life, and I never give her details, I just tell her everything is perfect. I don’t want her to worry. She invites us to come visit, and I diligently tell her I will upon the implicit urging of my mother. I feel guilty, knowing I don’t know how I will visit, or if I will. I don’t like lying, but I take on the burden because I think it’s kinder to give Baba Valya hope instead of realism.  

Last time, however, when she urged me to visit and told me to bring my husband along, something broke within me, and I failed to restrain my tears as my mother took over the call. We couldn’t let Baba Valya hear me cry, we both didn’t want Baba Valya to worry.  

“Why are you crying?” My mother asked after the call. 

“I miss Baba Nina. I miss her.” 

On my TikTok, a brown-haired, blue-eyed American, smiling with perfect white teeth, shows videos of gold statues and marble buildings and empty streets while he says, “Come visit one of the creepiest cities I’ve ever been to! Although this city looks amazing, where are the people? It’s like visiting the city of the dead.”  

I still haven’t visited Baba Nina’s grave, although I’m not sure looking at a gravesite would do anything for me. I feel too self-conscious at a gravesite. 

After Baba Nina died I scanned hundreds of phots of her to preserve them digitally. There were photos from her childhood: family portraits where everyone wears a serious expression, photos in her school uniform with her girlfriends, photos of her in her twenties and thirties in teased hairdos, photos of her holding my mom, photos of her taking my mom to school, photos of her in Soviet parades, photos of her in work suits, photos of her sitting at the dining table enjoying the all-day affairs of eating, where she is usually laughing. In one photo a man is giving Baba Nina bunny ears with his index and middle finger.  

We printed and framed some photos. My mother’s favorite was one from the last few years of her life, where Baba Nina is sitting next to my mother and looking directly into the camera and you have the impression that she is peering through the photo to look at you. I have many favorites. One where she is in her thirties eating an apple. A studio portrait of her and my mother as a teenager sits on my desk, where they look serious and beautiful with voluminous hair. I love the ones of Baba Nina as a teenager, with sharp cheekbones and two long braids, she looks from a different time, and I like to imagine her gossiping with her friends. In one, she is in a black dress and white apron in a field of cotton.   

In most of the photos, she’s mid-laugh, her mouth open in a smile. But what strikes me the most is how often she’s touching someone: hugging, clutching, holding hands, holding on to them, kissing them. She embraced my mother, myself, and my brother, with equal vigor, holding us tightly against her chest, across many decades. And always, at all ages, she’s hugging Baba Valya, leaning against her, looking at her, as though they’re in cahoots, as though they have a private joke, as though they fully understand each other.    

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