Well, we’ve had an exciting week out here this week! The president rolled through Naryn oblast, stopped a volunteer schools, my host-mom’s hospital, and even one of the handicraft cooperatives that I work with. And I, in true ambulance-chasing fashion, followed right on her coat tails, but with projects of my own.
Those particular trips, however, are not really our subject for today. Instead, it is the side effects, the externalities of those trips that have surprised me. Travel, as always, ignites the fires within me, part in seeing new places, but also in meeting new people. On my way on to a very little cooperative in a very little village this past week, I met a old man who made it all worth while. And from the great din of my last week here, I will present only this one conversation, and hope it excites you all, just as it did me.
“Who are you,” he demanded in Russian, while putting slips of cardboard in his shoes to help keep his feet warm.
“I am an American,” I told him in Kyrgyz, “and I don’t speak Russian, only Kyrgyz.”
“You are a spy,” he said frankly, but with energy, “you work for the CIA.” This, while not unheard of statement, caught me a little off guard, thanks most to his tenacity. “What is your nationality?” He asked.
“I am American.”
“There is no American nationality,” he said with utter conviction, “didn’t you once have natives there?”
“Yes,” I said, “but they mostly died.”
“You killed them!” he shouted, “just as the Russians tried to kill us!”
“I didn’t do anything,” I told him. This situation would earlier have gotten me a little wired, I think. But today my impressions are different. I felt that it was almost a challenge, and his tenacity fueled my calm.
“You learn Kyrgyz because you are a spy. That is the only reason. You are a spy,” he was back to this, when I heard a gathering crowd of men start to mumble. They were mostly other taxi drivers, waiting for clients, who had come to watch the show. They giggled every time I said, “I didn’t do any of those things,” but this time almost sprang to my defense. “Gee,” I heard them say, “we should be thanking him for learning our language.”
While we waited for more people, of all things, the man started to warm up to me. I think my simple insistence that I was not to blame for historical American misdeeds, rather than defend them, had softened him. “Do you believe in God?” he asked.
“Yes, I am Catholic,” I answered.
“And what God is that? Is that Jesus Christ?”
“Yes.”
“There is no Jesus, he is false,” and I was afraid I had a Muslim Evangelist as a car-mate, “there is also no Mohammad. They are all false, lies. There is only The Party. The Communist Party. Do you know about the Communist Part?”
I had to work to keep my jaw from hitting the ground. This was the stuff of Communist legends and ghost stories. “Yes, I do,” I said.
“Like in America, you have Democrats and Republicans. Parties,” he said.
And there, in that one little follow up sentence, I felt the shift. What he wanted to do, really, wasn’t to fight, but to link my world with his. It wasn’t Communism that he was preaching, but how America also had political parties (albeit with a few differences). By the time we were on the road, he was telling me about the philosophy of Hegel and the child rearing suggestions of Dr. Spock. He rattled off the names of some other famous Americans, notable presidents, and then got to the kicker.
“I want you to know,” he said, “that 9/11 wasn’t carried out by Muslims.” We’ve all heard the conspiracy theories, and I wanted to know where he would take his, “it was the grandchildren and great-grandchildren, and great-great grandchildren of the Rockefeller’s.” While he never really explained why they would do this, his logic, in a way, was actually somewhat flattering. “You, in America, you have defense planes and protections. This kind of thing simply cannot happen in America unless it is allowed to happen. That is the only way.”
I made it a point to take no position on his statements, but only listen. He was not talking to insult me or make me angry, instead, I do believe, he only wanted to edify me, to teach me, to show me ways of the world. “I learned all this myself,” he said, “I studied in school, and at home. I was a Russian teacher in my village.” He lived in a tiny village far off the beaten path. He was going back for just a little visit, but our conversation had warmed him to me greatly. As we prepared to part, he said to me, in English, “How are you?” and “Good day,” just to let me know that he knew a little of my language, too. He told me that he learned to make our “h” sound by imitating the breath you take when you eat a potato that is too hot.
“Now,” he said, “here is my phone number. Come to my house, we are Kyrgyz, there is no money. Come visit us, have dinner with us, and spend the night. I will prepare all of these interesting things for you. It will be my pleasure.”
