How Do You Say “Rump Roast”?
The Twelve Suitcases
In June 1996, the news I had been waiting for finally came. I would be going back to Kyrgyzstan in September for a one-year Fulbright Fellowship to teach journalism and mass communication at the state university in Bishkek, guest-lecture at other universities, and work with journalists and the new commercial TV stations that were starting up. Stephanie gamely agreed to join me for the year.
Fulbright scholar awards are typically made in the spring. That leaves enough time to apply for an academic leave, find a renter and pet-sitter, sort out the bills and bank accounts, and figure out what to pack. Unfortunately in 1996, politics intervened. I really can’t blame House Speaker Newt Gingrich, the Republican Congress, or President Bill Clinton. They were fighting over the federal budget and funding for Medicare, education, and the environment. Sending me to Kyrgyzstan did not require raising the federal debt limit. Nevertheless, the two government shutdowns (six days in November 1995 and twenty-two days in December 1995–January 1996) had a knock-on effect as spending bills and appropriations were delayed. Among the casualties was the Council for the International Exchange of Scholars (CIES), which administers the Fulbright Program. My Fulbright had been approved, the program officer assured me, but CIES did not yet have the money. I should certainly not do anything foolish, such as rent the house or buy an air ticket, until funding was confirmed.
When it was, CIES hurriedly arranged an orientation session in Washington, DC, for scholars and student awardees heading for Asia. It was standing-room only for India and China but less than a dozen gathered for the Central Asia briefing. It had taken a couple of years for the Fulbright program to get going in Central Asia, so few scholars and students had been there. An anthropologist who had done research in Kyrgyzstan presented a slide show of ancient sites and talked about nomadic culture and oral traditions. A nursing professor who had been in Uzbekistan talked about her attempts to educate her students about bad cholesterol. Her teaching included public health movies; the students’ favorite was called Killer Fat. No one discussed the higher education system, told us what to pack, or what we could buy at the bazaar in January.
In the mid-1990s, there were few resources for Westerners who were going to live in Central Asia for an extended period. For historical background, I could read about the Great Game with evocative descriptions of mountains and steppe by British and Russian explorers and military envoys. However, I was planning to arrive in Bishkek by plane, not on horseback from Delhi with wagons, porters, and formal greetings from the viceroy to the local khan. There were books on the Soviet era, but in the early 1990s, before the blossoming of Central Asia scholarship, there were few studies of the region in the post-Soviet era. Today, it seems that every Peace Corps volunteer teaching English in a Kyrgyz village blogs about the experience, but there were no such tales in 1996. Thankfully, the first edition of the Lonely Planet Guide came out in summer 1996, just in time to help us plan the trip.
Because new luggage is a target for thieves, we decided to travel with beat-up, yet sturdy, suitcases. We added to our collection of well-worn travel pieces with some thrift store $2 specials. Then we worked on packing lists. We simply didn’t know what to expect, so it all went in—winter and summer clothes, books and papers, aspirins and antibiotics, Ziploc bags, duct tape, a pressure cooker, cookbooks, and the contents of the kitchen spice rack. Someone had told Stephanie there was no basil in Kyrgyzstan; instead, it was one of the first things she saw at the bazaar. The Fulbright grant included a generous excess baggage allowance. It is almost embarrassing to admit, but we exceeded it. When everything was assembled, we had twelve suitcases—a total of 490 pounds.
Our flight from Washington to Frankfurt was delayed, and the Delta agent said we would not make the connection in Istanbul for the Turkish Airlines flight to Bishkek; we would have to wait two days for the next flight. The only option was to fly via Moscow to Almaty in Kazakhstan, and make the last part of the trip by road. The agent booked us on Transaero, a new Russian private airline.
We staggered up to the Transaero check-in in Frankfurt, our bodies sagging from the five heavy carry-on bags. “That looks like more than five kilos,” said the agent. “Oh, they’re not heavy, I’m just weak,” said Stephanie in her excellent German, trying to disguise her panting. A dispute was averted by the news that we had been bumped up to business class where there was no carry-on limit. We settled down for a glass of champagne, and wondered how we’d make the transfer to the Almaty flight in Moscow.
Moscow’s Sheremetyevo is, in my experience, one of the least welcoming airports in the world (unless you’re Edward Snowden, and you have to hole up in the transit area) with overpriced (even by airport standards) shops and restaurants, and few seats for transit passengers. In 1996, the arrivals hall was a soulless room with faded Soviet-era decor. Because we were taking another Transaero flight, we expected our luggage to be transferred. Our hearts sank when the first of our twelve bags emerged on the carousel. As we heaved them off the belt, other passengers stepped in to help. One pulled another bag off the carousel and added it to our stack. “Not ours,” said Stephanie. “Oh, we thought they were all yours,” the passenger replied with a wry smile.
There were no luggage carts, but Stephanie spotted a man with a dolly. “U menya dvenatsat’ chemodanov (I have twelve suitcases),” she announced. He broke into a smile; I was half expecting cartoon-like dollar signs to pop up in his eyes. Somehow, he loaded all twelve cases onto the dolly. It was a short walk to the terminal, but we felt he well deserved his $20. The Transaero agent was not welcoming. “You must pay $500 for excess luggage,” she said. We showed her the receipt from Delta. “That was in Washington. Now you are in Moscow. You must pay,” she insisted. We refused. Supervisors were called. The Delta paperwork was scrutinized, discussed, held up to the light, photocopied. Eventually, the agent gave up. “Have a nice trip,” she said, handing us our boarding cards.
In Almaty, we emerged from the arrivals hall into a clutch of tough-looking characters shouting “taxi, taxi.” The words “dvenatsat’ chemodanov’” and “Bishkek” gave us instant celebrity status, with drivers competing for what would definitely be the best-paying fare of the day. We needed two cars and decided to travel separately so that we could keep an eye on the luggage; we had been counting bags at each transit point. I rode in a comfortable, dented Mercedes; Stephanie had a more challenging trip in a right-hand-drive Toyota. No one has ever explained to me how right-hand-drive Japanese cars manufactured for the domestic market ended up in Central Asia in the 1990s, but they were pretty common, and among the more dangerous vehicles on the road. The two cars weaved through the midday city traffic, avoiding collisions by important inches. At one stoplight, the Toyota pulled up on the right side of the Mercedes. Stephanie and I wound down the windows, held hands for a moment, and glanced nervously at each other. “Have a safe trip, darling,” I said, without any sense of irony. Out on the two-lane highway to Bishkek, her driver kept pulling out to pass trucks and buses. “Nyet, nyet,” shouted Stephanie, who was always the first to see the approaching vehicle. The Toyota swerved back into the right-hand lane before the driver attempted his next suicidal maneuver.
The highway parallels the northern slope of the Zailiysky Ala Too range, a branch of the Tian Shan, running southwest along the treeless plain before dipping south through a serpentine pass to the Chuy Valley and Bishkek. Bathed in the late afternoon sun, the mountains, some with snow-capped peaks, were spectacular. Our adventure had begun.
The Mountains Are Always South
The first permanent settlement on the Chuy River at the site of present-day Bishkek was a clay fort built by the khan of Khokand in 1825 along one of the Silk Road routes across the Tian Shan. By the 1860s, the khanate was facing a double threat—the tsar’s armies advancing from the north and west, and Kyrgyz tribes who resented Khokand’s taxes and military
