five if we stop for food and peeing. So it was with this knowledge that I headed to the taxi stand on Monday
by 4pm so that I’d be home by eight or nine at that latest, before it got dark.
When I got to the taxi stand, I was surprised that no one came rushing up to me as usual to try to get a passenger.
I actually stood around for several minutes before I decided I would have to go hunt someone down. When I found a driver, he quoted me a price of 50 manat, which is expensive, but I figured he may be my only option, and, especially since I was still harboring a cold from India, I took it. The fortunate thing was I was able to claim shotgun. This is very important because it means two things: one, I wouldn’t be smushed in the backseat with two sweaty Turkmen
and two, I would have a seatbelt. As I put it on, the driver, of course, told me I didn’t need it, as they always do, but I ignored him. There were only two Turkmen men in the back and as the driver headed in the wrong direction, I began to worry that I was being ferried away to some unseemly outcome. It turns out they were going to the train station to pick up a dayza (old Turkmen woman). While this added fifteen minutes to the trip, it put my mind at ease to know there would be another woman in the car.
We commenced on the road to Balkanabat. However, shortly after passing Gypjak, which is close enough to Ashgabat that it is a training site for volunteers during PST, the driver told me he was going to visit his son. I thought,
‘Oh, he must live in Ashgabat and won’t be home tonight so he’s going to quickly say goodnight to his little boy. How sweet.’ No, that was not the case. He drove twenty minutes out of the way to a place called Yzgant to visit his son at the military base, and he was there for 42 minutes. Yes, I clocked it because it seemed incredibly rude to keep his passengers waiting while he took care of personal business. And I need to point out that his car had no air conditioning so the whole trip was hot.
After that little excursion, we stopped a few blocks later so he could buy water at a dukon. Then we stopped again maybe twenty minutes later so the guy sitting behind me could go pee at the side of the road. We made a few more such stops when I got fed up and told him I needed to get to my house fast. He said the road was bad and I replied that I knew that, however, I still needed to get home as soon as possible. We’re not supposed to be traveling at night because of the added danger and I was sick and tired and just wanted to get home so I could sleep. They, of course, were greatly amused at the white girl speaking Turkmen and the driver asked me the cliché questions Turkmen strangers ask us when they discover we’re American and speak Turkmen. You’re from America? How long are you in Turkmenistan? How did you get here? (as in, did you take a plane? No I walked across from the Afghan border.)
What do you do here? Are you married? This last question I answered honestly. Now I wonder if it would have helped if I’d said, “yes and my husband will be very angry if I’m not home by ten.”
I pulled out the book I’m currently reading, Shantaram and tried to be zen about the situation, but found it difficult.
Still, I managed to get engrossed in my reading and time passed and it started to get dark. When it got to be too dusky to read, we passed what looked like the rest stop in Serdar (the midway point) so I asked if that was where we were. My driver said no and responded with a name I didn’t recognize. I wondered if there was some alternate
road I didn’t know about so I asked if it was a different road and he said yes. We went a little further and I saw the Serdar Merkezi. I said “this is Serdar,” and he said yes. I have no idea what he thought I said before that he was answering to. My reply was an exasperated Allahjan just so he’d get the hint. No such luck. The man was as obtuse as a 170̊ angle.
I pulled out my phone and for the first time ever, talked to my host mother by phone. Speaking Turkmen over the phone is much more difficult than in person and I hoped I could adequately explain the situation. I told her I was in Serdar and would be late, but had a key so I would let myself in quietly when I got home. I was concerned they would lock the house with the bar and not the keys. There are two ways to lock our front door. If they lock it with the bar, I have to ring the doorbell for them to let me inside. I didn’t want to have to wake them up. At that point, the concern for my family was what was making me the angriest about how long the trip was taking. Even after I called my mom
and she seemed to understand, I thought, ‘I called from Serdar at 9:30, she must know that with a normal driver I should be home by 11:30 or midnight. What if she waits up for me and then gets worried?’ I don’t want to ever be an inconvenience to my host family and I was pissed that I might be due to someone else’s inconsiderateness.
Just outside of Serdar he stopped at a restaurant to eat. I bought a package of cookies and some water. I wasn’t
about to eat roadside Turkmen food and I wasn’t very hungry anyway. I sat alone and read my book while the rest of them sprawled out at the topjan (a kind of platform that Turkmen lay on) drinking chai and eating. The other three passengers finished and went out by the car to wait. I followed, looking for a bathroom. I didn’t find one so I went to one side of the building in the shadows to squat and was just dropping trou when I heard a dog start barking. The last thing I needed was to get attacked by a dog while trying to pee, so I pulled my underwear back up and went inside to ask if there was a bathroom. The girl pointed to the other side of the building and when I went back out and squinted in the darkness, sure enough, there was the black outline of the building. I am very grateful that my phone has an effective flashlight on it, otherwise going wouldn’t have been an option. When I opened the door of the outhouse, something scurried across the floor to hide in the corner behind a bucket. I have no idea what it was, I just
thought, ‘as long as it stays behind that bucket.’ I did my business and joined the other passengers at the car, waiting for the driver. We waited another fifteen minutes for him to finish smoking and chatting up the proprietress.
Again, the man had no thought for anyone but himself.
About ten minutes after getting on the road again, he had to stop for gas. We made two more stops so the man behind me could pee. He must have had a bladder the size of a marble. As we drove this entire journey, the driver smoked and ashes from his cigarettes blew onto my lap. At one point, we hit a bump and he dropped his cigarette on the floor of the car, so he had to pull over and stop to retrieve it. Another time, he stopped, got out of the car and fiddled with the grill, maybe the headlights. Whatever it was, it seemed ineffectual to me. At that point I seriously considered knocking his ugly gold teeth out. However, I was wise enough to know that I had no real recourse.
I could easily find myself standing at the side of the road in the middle of the desert in the dark.
At some point, he turned to me and told me the road was bad, again. I said, “it takes four hours from Ashgabat to Nebitdag (that’s the old name for Balkanabat).” He said no and tried to act like I was crazy. I told him I travel a lot
and every time I go back and forth it takes four hours. Then I turned to look out the window so I wouldn’t have to talk to him anymore.
It would have been nice if I could have slept, but I was angry and filled with a haunted feeling that I had better stay awake as a defense against the man’s incompetence. At about 1am, the man behind me decided to start ramming his knees into the back of my seat. At about 1:45, when I could see the lights of Balkanabat spread out before us, we got pulled over by the police. (They were probably bored). When the police were done with us, the car wouldn’t start. I wish I could make this stuff up; I’d be a best-selling novelist by now. At that point, I almost started to laugh. It was just too much. I thought, ‘is it ironic that I’m an editor of a paper named after Murphy’s Law?’ And I thought of my grandmother’s saying,“you might just as well laugh about it as to cry.” I was amused. For a brief moment. Then I was pissed again. Because it was two in the morning, and I had spent ten hours in a taxi. My back hurt and I still had the cold from India, though my boyfriend said it might be the flu when I told him I kept waking up at night sweating. The two men and one of the police had to push while the driver fiddled with the gears and we got going again.
When we got to my beautiful host city, the driver acted as though he was going to drive straight through, and I think he might have if I hadn’t turned and told him my block number. He said he didn’t know Nebitdag, so I had to direct him to my block. When I got out, I tried to only give him 40 manat. He told me it was 50. I told him it was two in the morning and the trip took ten hours. But the other passengers backed him up and said they were paying 50 manat. I wanted to tell them that was because they were stupid, but I just handed him another 10 manat and said in English, “I hope you use it to buy a brain.” Was that childish of me? Yes. Did it make me feel better? A little.
I suppose I should be grateful that I made it home safely and no one whipped out their member as happened to another volunteer a couple months ago. Some Turkmen are myhmansoyer (hospitable) like that.
At 2:15, I stealthily sneaked into my house and tiptoed past my sleeping family to my bedroom where I didn’t even bother to take out my contacts or brush my teeth. I just set my alarm for work the next morning, excuse me, the same morning because I’m American and industrious like that, and plopped down on my bed and cried. Sorry, grandma.