December 18, 2007

“I’ve been traveling for a long time,” he paused for emphasis.

I focused my stoned grin on the little chinless man, “Oh yeah? How long?”

“Two months” he announced importantly.

I leaned against Katia, my arm around her waist.

“Wow.” Katia responded.

“Hey, are you Russian? You sound Russian. I was married to a Russian girl.”

“Yes, I’m Russian but Lee and I live in the U.S. Where are you from?”

The little man’s lecherous eyes got wide, “I’m British of course.”

“Of course” I echoed. I watched the little man’s feet dangle inches from the floor as he rolled a microscopic joint on the seat in front of him.

“Are you a bit Asian, as well?”

“What!” Katia scowled and squinted.

No Chin was oblivious, “Well, your eyes…. they look Asian.”

“Yeh. All Russians are Asian aren’t they?” a voice boomed from above.

Big American Jeff slouched over us, “Scooch over.”

No Chin lit his joint, inhaled, and passed it to Jeff.

“Where are you from again Jeff?” I asked.

“I’m from Indiana, California and Alaska,” he spoke lethargically, “but I live in Homer Alaska now.”

The scent of free weed had wafted to the other side of the bar where Oliver was sitting. He wandered over and took the joint from between Jeff’s fingers “Jeff, he is very American,” Olly announced proudly in a thick German accent.

“Well I wouldn’t say that. Being Alaskan isn’t the same as being American.”

Olly gave Jeff a confused look, passed the joint back to No Chin and returned to his bench on the other side of the bar.

No Chin continued his monologue, “I spent a month in Bangkok with this woman,” he sighed, “but my cell phone was stolen and now I have no way to contact her.”

“That’s too bad man.” Bored with No Chin, Jeff lumbered to his feet and sat down next to Olly’s reclining legs, “scooch over.”

“Have you ever fallen in love? You know, while your traveling,” No Chin continued unperturbed.

“Only with each other,” Katia gave me a kiss on the lips.

No Chin looked stunned. “Oh….”

A few minutes later he scurried over and introduced himself to the only other two women at the bar. Katia and I sipped from our shared can of Singha beer and listened to the waves. Olly was lying down on the other side of the bar, his eyes closed, singing to himself. Greta, the Australian bartender with freckles and a huge head full of dreads was drawing on Mary, the young Scottish bartenders feet. They stopped occasionally to roll and smoke another joint.

Salva bounced up from the sand to the candle-lit wooden platform of the bar and sat down next to us.

“Where’s Ryeko?”

“She’ll be here soon. She is relaxing in the hammock,” Salvo sighed significantly, “ahhhh women.” Salvo pulled his legs up onto the bench and rested his hairy chin on his knees.

Katia and I waited. “I don’t know what to do,” he continued in his thick Sicilian accent, “Ryako, she is so beautiful. But I love my girlfriend in Germany.”

Salvo ordered himself a Beer Chang and played with his thick black curly hair. “I feel so guilty. And my girlfriend has kids. That’s a big responsibility.”

“How long have you and your girlfriend been together?” I asked.

“We have been together eight months already. But four months of traveling… it is very hard,” Salva sighed again, “ah well. I am Italian.” He shrugged in resignation.

A few minutes later Ryeko arrived and Katia emerged from her stoned haze to say hello. She settled between Katia and Salva at the bar and shined her smile on us. Katia and I agreed -- Ryeko certainly was beautiful. She was a Japanese model who lived in Paris. I looked from Ryeko to Salva and wondered how this short hairy Italian managed it.

“Hey guys!” Fiona waved and sat down next to us at the bar. Jeff smiled and stepped behind the bar to make them drinks.

“Fiona. Do you know a guy named Eric from Antwerp?” Fiona and Jeff ran Karma bar and knew everyone on the island.

“I don’t think so…. “

“He said he was just here but he’s an odd one. Funny though.”

We had already had two encounters with Eric. One of them earlier that evening when we were getting ready to walk over to the bar. I recounted the conversation between Eric and Katia.

“I just came from Karma bar now. Where is it?”

“If you just came from Karma bar now, you would know where it is.”

“I am an amnesiac, where am I going?”

“To Karma bar. Anyway, how much longer are you staying here?”

“Another couple of minutes.”

“On the island!”

“I don’t remember.”

“Are you sure you are not French?”

Eric responsed in a thick French accent “I am from Antwerpen. I know your neighbor.”

“I don’t think our neighbor likes us very much.”

“Ahh, that is because he thinks you are lesbians,” Eric whispered conspiratorially.

“That’s because we are lesbians.”

“You are lesbians?!”

“Yes.”

“That explains everything.”

“I can’t see your eyes with your sunglasses like that. I have no idea what you are thinking,”

“Thank you for your compliment,” The Antwerpen amnesiac smiled at us and wandered off.

“Was he handsome?” Fiona wanted to know.

“I guess so….”

“Nope. Didn’t meet him.”

The joints continued to circulate as Katia and I said goodnight to everyone and headed back to our bungalow.

I looked at the two books Jeff and Fiona had brought for us to borrow. “Can you believe Jeff and Fiona gave us two books -- one about autism and the other about schizophrenia? What does that say about us?”

“Maybe it says something about them – maybe they like to take care of mentally ill people?”

“Which would explain why they are running a bar on this island.”

November 30, 2007

“Just remember Bangkok Women Really Are Fellas,” Adrien barked with a grin. Adrien, my diving instructor was born in Botswana and raised in South Africa. He had tan skin and somewhat Indian features with straight black shiny hair he kept pulled back in a ponytail. In the U.S. he could pass for Hispanic or Native American – in contrast to his features he had the thick unmistakable accent of a white South African. To me his accent was comforting. Every South African I had ever met was intensely competent – sleeping in the bush with lions, cooking a gourmet seafood dinner on a rusted out tin can on a roof in Kenya – South Africans were people you could trust in extreme situations. They travel in the bush with enough food and equipment to survive a nuclear holocaust and when you hobble into a campsite in the Okavango Delta with a flat tire and no jack a South African license plate on a beat up range rover is a beautiful site. I liked Adrien a lot, he had a gruff no nonsense way of teaching and I was confident that no matter what happened underwater Adrien would take care of us.

I went through each piece of equipment, BCD – the inflatable life vest thingy, Weights – the 300 pound belt I couldn’t possibly forget I was wearing, Releases – not sure what those are exactly, Air – I sprayed some air from my regulator, it smelled like old plastic tubing and Final check – I looked down at myself and shrugged, I guess I was ready.

Before I had any more time to think Adrien had us lined up at the edge of the boat and I stepped off into the water holding tightly to my regulator and facemask. I quickly popped to the surface, my eyes level with the water. I floated there for a minute still holding onto my regulator trying to remember how to get my head fully out of the water. I grabbed my snorkel – nope that wasn’t it, Adrein and the two Germans in my class had already started swimming towards the big orange buoy when I found the button on my BCD. There was a wosh of air and suddenly my entire head was out of the water. I awkwardly swam towards the buoy. The equipment made me feel like I was wearing a snowsuit. I ploughed forward and finally caught up with the others. It was our second open water dive of the four we needed to finish our PADI diving certification.

The first dive had been from a beach in fairly shallow water -- knowing the beach was there, only a few hundred meters away was extremely comforting. This time we were out in the middle of the sea and I was nervous. From what I could tell Adrien’s motto was to make sure we didn’t think too much -- before I knew what was happening everyone else had disappeared below the surface of the water. I finished rinsing my mask; grabbed hold of the rope attached to the buoy and deflated my BCD. I had hurt my ears in the first dive bouncing up and down out of control, this time I descended slowly, stopping every few feet to blow air out of my nose and stick my finger in my ears to keep them equalized. A murky green fog surrounded me on all sides. I felt like I couldn’t breathe -- the green was closing in around me. I forced myself to calm down and fixed my eyes on Adrien at the bottom of the line.

Once on the bottom we balanced ourselves awkwardly on the sand and Adrien checked in with each of us. After giving the O.K. sign we started swimming slowly behind him. Soon we were over beautiful beds of purple soft coral. It was a world of tiny delicate flowers swaying in the current. Beautiful tropical fish flew by me on all sides. Adrien pointed out a Lionfish hiding in the sand and an angry looking moray eel. I had just started to relax when I checked my air gauge. I was nearly out of air.

Adrien had us swim back to the sandy area -- it was time to perform our tricks. The first day of our course had been spent learning various skills – how to take all of our equipment on and off under water as well as on the surface, how to find our regulator in case it was knocked out of our mouths – that sort of thing. The skills had been difficult for me but I stubbornly completed each one -- not being able to lift my own weight belt after I took it off under water, I had finally layed down on the bottom and stayed there with it wrapped around my waist until I managed to hook the clasp and pull it tight.

Today’s trick was to simulate running out of air. We had to ascend slowly to the surface without using our regulator while blowing air slowly out of our mouths. We were 12 meters (36 feet) deep. I stretched my hand out in front of me and swam towards the surface – we were not supposed to go any faster than our tiny air bubbles so I swam slowly. Adrien swam directly in front of me watching intently to make sure I didn’t take a breath. Halfway to the surface I knew I wouldn’t make it. I stopped and made the thumbs down sign to Adrien. He nodded and I dropped back down and started again. This time I let my air out very slowly and made it to the top with no problem. Adrien congratulated me and I bobbed around on the waves while the two Germans had their turn. A few minutes later they had popped to the surface and we all began swimming back to the boat. Katia was watching and waiting for us -- she clapped and took lots of pictures as I peeled off my “sexy cat suit” – Katia’s name for my wet suit. I was exhausted, thrilled, and relieved that the day’s dives were over. We relaxed over cups of tea and slices of watermelon during the boat ride back to the island. I kept turning to Katia, smiling, I couldn’t believe I had done it. I had been incredibly nervous about diving -- it had taken me over a year of traveling to get up the courage to sign up for the PADI course, and I had finally done it! I was diving!

A Mozambiquan Rasta man, wearing no shirt but with plenty of muscles rolling under his smooth skin, sauntered over to us as we heaved off our backpacks.

“You all right?” he asked with a crooked stoned grin.

I smiled back. “Yeah, we want to camp.”

Rasta-man nodded and led us around the corner of the main dorm barracks to a small dirt lot. There was a gray concrete wall blocking some – but not nearly all – of the noise and exhaust from the busy downtown Maputo street on the other side. We thanked Rasta-man, wandered around the tiny red dirt lot and picked a spot furthest from the one other lonely tent. We set up our little tent – barely big enough for two people -- and crawled in to hide. We were exhausted but too hungry to sleep. The night before had been horrible, staying at a backpackers in one of the worst parts of downtown Durban, fending off the advances of drunk creepy white South Africans. The bus ride into Mozambique was sweltering – we were in the very front of the top floor of a double decker bus. We arrived in Maputo sun cooked after 15 hours of being baked behind the large curved windshield.

It was getting dark and although we had hardly eaten in the last 24 hours, we were happy to have arrived somewhere and to have at least the illusion of privacy. Reluctantly we crawled out of the tent and into the common area of the backpackers -- a little courtyard -- where Rasta-man ran around, sucking salty butter off his fingers and giving orders to two Spanish women who giggled and flirted as they chopped and cooked. We cornered Rasta for a moment to ask him where we could find some food.

“Ahhh, I’m cooking seafood tonight.” He flipped his dreadlocks off his face. “You eat with us! Just give a little money for the food.” Clearly, he had the situation under control.

“Great. Is there anything we can do to help?” I glanced over at the chopping Spaniards. They glared back, angry to have lost Rasta’s full attention.

“Nah, just relax. Get a beer. Food will be ready soon.” He flashed his ladies-man grin at us and nodded in perfect agreement with himself. It was plain to see why the Spanish girls were fawning over him.

In the tiny courtyard, under garlands of colored light bulbs strung from palm trees, we pulled up a couple of white plastic chairs at a long make-shift table. Katia bought beers from a shy young guy behind the reception desk/bar and we watched the scene around us. There were scraggily backpackers sprawled on beat-up old sofas and chairs around the courtyard drinking beer and chain smoking. A beautiful cat with a tiny body and squashed pug like face took up residence on Katia’s lap. Soon Rasta called us over and we ate a delicious meal of Portuguese style seafood, and drank cold tangy sangria. The other backpackers were mostly Spanish and German and chatted in their own languages. That was fine with me – I was too tired for socializing.

“Do you like to smoke weed?” Rasta man was hovering, his muscled little body leaning towards us conspiratorially. He looked over his shoulder, reached into the crotch of his pants and extracted a clump of weed placing it in the palm of my hand with a meaningful look. Katia was definitely reaping the benefits of my dreadlocks. Rasta refused any money from us for the weed – it was a welcome to Mozambique gift -- and after sharing a joint with him and the scowling Spaniards it was time for bed.

The next couple of days we wandered around Maputo. The streets all named after famous communists, were once grand boulevards but now were full of giant gaping gullies, the sidewalks unpaved. What were once grand houses sat burnt and gutted – their pastel pink and green colors barely visible next to fancy new cafés frequented by NGO and embassy workers. Graffiti took ownership of decayed old verandas, and weeds claimed the rest. Garbage overflowed from huge dumpsters and rotted in the humidity and heat. After sunset the city was lit only by lights from shops and houses, we felt exposed as we hurried from one pool of light to the next, avoiding seas of garbage. Still the city had a vibrant energy. Local cafes were full of men and women drinking wine, beer and coffee at outside tables. We found one that we liked around the corner from our backpackers and went there nearly every day. The Portuguese menu was impossible to decipher so we just ordered whatever was on special and had delicious meals of meat soup and liters of cheap white wine. In the evenings, we relaxed and played with the sweet cat on the beat-up couches in the courtyard of the backpackers.

“Do you guys want to go out tonight? We rented the car for one day, and I don’t know how to drive a stick shift -- what do you think?”

The girls were Swedish or Danish, and nice, and despite our reservation about leaving the safety of the backpackers’ courtyard after dark, we were looking forward to exploring Maputo’s nightlife. We told the girls about a Jazz club we had heard about earlier that day.

The club was full of young stylish, Mozambiquans. The women wore tight skirts and ruffled shirts in bright festive colors and patterns. The men’s pants were equally as tight – polyester shimmering as they swung their hips and moved along with the music. Beautiful faces ranging in complexion from café au lait to dark chocolate, watched the man on stage intently. He was singing in a gravely voice American jazz and reggae songs, his graying dreadlocks swinging and his hands moving arthritically along to the music. He scowled out at the audience as he sang, occasionally breaking into a smile and winking at the pretty women in the front row. We spotted the man who had invited us and he waved us over. We had met him and his wife earlier at a restaurant -- they had come over to our table to welcome us to their city. He said he was a doctor and was one of the few people we had met in Maputo who spoke English. It turned out he spoke Russian as well and Katia tried to talk to him over the music. Unsurprisingly, the Doctor had shown up at the club without his wife. He pulled out a post card from his tailored jacket, and invited us both to spend the night with him at the hotel resort depicted on the postcard photo. Katia and I excused ourselves and headed for the bar.

“He kept pressing his leg up against mine and putting his arm around my waist,” I shivered.

“No! Why didn’t you tell me?” Katia’s eyes got wide.

“I kept moving away from him but he just didn’t get the hint. Didn’t you notice I was almost sitting on your lap?”

“Yuck,” Katia frowned and bought us each a beer.

We wedged ourselves into a spot against the wall. Going back to our seats with the Doctor was out of the question. Everyone was getting drunk and the dance floor in front of the old jazzman was full of women: their heads held proudly high, their hips performing African booty jerks while their feet moved to a salsa beat. The men stood watching through slitted eyes, arms crossed, their backs against the sweating wall. Two women passed in front of us heading for the bar. I elbowed Katia and nodded my head in their direction. One of the women was white and had short hair and glasses. She was wearing a man’s shirt and pants, and purposefully strutted through the crowd toward the bar. Behind her was a beautiful young woman with coffee-colored skin and a hundred long thin braids that swayed as she sashayed toward the bar in her tight mini skirt and heels.

“Bat! They are gay! You have to go talk to them,” I grabbed Katia and stared at the backs of the two women.

“How am I supposed to do that?”

“I don’t know but they are definitely gay.” Katia and I waited to make eye contact with the two women, who got their drinks and resolutely left the bar. As they passed us, we smiled and nodded.

The fierce femme gave us a suspicious look as they walked toward the exit.

“Damn, you didn’t talk to them.”

“I didn’t get a chance.”

Suddenly the femme stalked back into the bar and over to us. She stood in front of Katia and yelled at her in Portuguese, demonstratively waving her hand in Katia’s face to accompany what we could only assume to be curses. Katia and I hadn’t a clue what she was saying so we stood there and looked at her with huge grins on our faces trying to look friendly and non-threatening. We had obviously offended her somehow. Eventually she realized we didn’t understand what she was saying. She gave her braids a proud toss and marched back out the door, her braids swinging behind her.

“What the hell was that all about?” Katia looked at me.

“I don’t know, but I think she was mad at us. Maybe she saw us watching them.”

I glanced at the door. The white woman was there waving for us to come outside. Katia and I looked at each other.

“Do you think they want to beat us up? Should we go?”

“Of course we should go.” I grabbed Katia’s hand and we made our way through the crowd and out onto the sidewalk.

The white woman and the fierce femme were sitting at a table outside the club. With them was a heavy brown woman with a friendly face and a dark girl with cornrows -- she looked like a tiny female Snoop-Dog. We walked over and said Hi. The white woman immediately started to interrogate us in Portuguese. We didn’t respond.

“You don’t speak Portuguese?” Snoop said in thickly accented English.

Katia gave an apologetic smile and said “No.” I glanced across the table; the fierce femme was still scowling at us.

“I don’t speak English. My name is Chinoca,“ said Snoop.

“I’m Katia and this is my girlfriend Lee.”

“Are you two only friends?”

“Of course not! Lee is my girlfriend. We have been together for three years.”

Snoop translated and everyone started talking at once in Portuguese. They all stood up smiling and greeted us with handshakes and kisses. Within minutes they had rearranged themselves and we were seated on the narrow bench next to Snoop. Snoop introduced the rest of the girls.

“We are the only lesbians in Maputo!” She declared proudly. “Let’s have drinks.”

We sat with our drinks; Snoop translating questions from the other three. The heavyset woman turned out to be a French teacher. The conversation continued half in French which Katia translated and half in Portuguese which Snoop translated.

“We are going to a strip club now. You come with us!”

I gave Katia a quick look and nodded: “Of course! We’d love to come.”

A few minutes later we had all piled into the white woman’s tiny car and were driving through the dark streets of Maputo. The white woman screamed at traffic with a gravely voice as she hurtled through red lights and around corners. She parked in a dark alley and we all fell out of the car.

“This is our club” Snoop liked to make announcements.

“Is it a gay club?”

Snoop laughed, of course not. It is a strip club. But it is the only place for us.”

Soon we were all seated at a table in front of the dance floor. A white woman was slowly taking her clothes off to the music.

“She’s South African.” Reported Snoop.

“How come no one is giving her tips?”

“Why give her tips? She has a salary.”

I laughed. “Do you believe the strippers are on salary? Now that’s some kind of communism.” Katia grinned back at me. She didn’t seem to mind this kind of communism.

The girls asked us what we wanted to drink and soon the table was littered with empty rum bottles. Every time my glass was half empty someone refilled it. The girls wouldn’t let us pay for a thing. Our new, or perhaps just white, faces were drawing attention from the working girls. Gorgeous strippers kept coming over to the table and shyly introducing themselves to us. Snoop was a big hit with the girls and one or two of them settled onto her bony lap to whisper in her ear.

“I thought you were the only lesbians in Maputo?” Katia asked her.

“Yes we are. These girls all sleep with men and women. We are the only ones who do not have boyfriends.” She gave us her sly grin.

In between shouted conversations we watched the stage. Strippers performed on the dance floor for a song or two and then during next few songs the floor filled with people dancing. Most of the music was salsa or tango, some of it with a distinctly African sound. Katia and I danced salsa together to the delight of our friends and soon beautiful women were grabbing each of us and spinning us around the floor. The woman I danced with had big eyes and flirted as she danced. She had no problem leading and I could barely keep up with my flimsy salsa.

Katia was clearly enjoying dancing with a tall elegant girl who spun her around the floor and kept whispering in her ear. Our new friends didn’t enjoy us dancing with the girls, though. Maybe because they worried about our fidelity to each other, or because they didn’t want us to trust the girls we danced with, they shooed them away and wanted Katia and me to only dance with each other. Through the noise and the darkness and the lack of common language, we made out shreds of meaning in our friends conversations. Snoop was heart-broken over her break-up with her girlfriend, but that didn’t stop her from flirting with and kissing the girls in her lap. The white woman was heart-broken because her girlfriend had left her to return to her husband. The fierce femme sat in her lap and comforted her. The heavy-set French teacher didn’t seem heart-broken, and Katia asked Snoop about her.

“Is she gay?”

Snoop translated the question to the woman, and then her answer to us: “She loves her husband and her children.”

By the time we left the club we were all extremely drunk and the sun was starting to rise. We all stumbled back to the car and our Portuguese friend weaved dangerously through the deserted dark streets. She dropped the fierce femme in front of row of corrugated tin shacks. After making several phone calls she kissed our driver on the lips, got out of the car and started banging on the tin that served as a security wall. After ten minutes someone cracked a gate and let her in and we drove off.

Our driver smoked and spewed a steady stream of gruff Portuguese as she tried to find our backpackers. Snoop, whose English kept improving throughout the night, spoke soothingly and told us not to worry – she was always like this. Finally the girls found our home. Our gruff friend announced through Snoop that she would take us to dinner the next night. We kissed them goodbye and promised to call later that day to make plans. Katia and I were in a daze as we knocked on our own corrugated tin gate. The security guard had been napping in a chair on the other side and squinted at us suspiciously through the hot fog of Maputo morning. Once he realized we were white he swung open the door with a grin. We kicked off our boots, crawled into our tent and passed out. We woke up a few hours later sweating in the humid gray heat, suffocating from exhaust fumes. Katia and I climbed out of our tent and sat in the dirt lot discussing the night’s events. We both agreed – despite the horrible hangover -- we were thrilled to have met the Lesbians of Maputo.

October 14, 2007

We spent our last weeks in Kazakhstan hiding out in our apartment. It wasn’t just us, our friends were also hiding. Summer was over and the weather had turned cold. The city was sun-less, damp and gloomy during the day, and even worse in the evening --leaving the apartment seemed like an unnecessary torture. We pulled on our thick camel’s wool socks bought at lake Issyk-Kul, Kyrgizstan, from knitting babushkas, and stayed in the kitchen cooking or just sitting on our couch near the stove to stay warm. We had decided to go to Thailand and then on to Malaysia, and all I could think about was the warm sun and the beach. Thinking about the inevitable loss of our kitchen and TV, I kept music videos on at all times and Lee in the kitchen cooking. She made me delicious fajitas and spaghetti bolognaise as well as anything else elaborate that I could come up with.

We ventured outside only to stock up on food and English-language movies, and then made up for it by closing all the windows and turning up the stove. After almost two years of summer, cold fall weather seemed like an injustice. Our hiding came to an end once we told our friends that we were leaving. Lee had been worrying for days about how to tell them and how they would take it. I wasn’t worried, they knew all along that we would eventually leave, they would not be shocked.

But telling the girls turned out to be much harder than I thought it would be.

“What! Why! Are you coming back?” Vika rasped at me in disappointment.

“Couldn’t you get a job here? A cheaper apartment?” Nastia chirruped.

We kept explaining that our visas were impossible to renew, that jobs for us in Almaty were ridiculously underpaid, and that apartments were impossibly expensive. And that’s besides the fact that our visas were running out. Still, I felt like I had somehow betrayed them. It was as if, without noticing it, we were accepted and absorbed, assimilated. We were just part of ‘the girls’ – a family that we found, and that found us. These were the girls who called us and announced that they would be at our apartment in fifteen minutes and showed up with cognac and stories. The girls whom I called to announce that we were on our way over when Lee was sick of sitting at home with a cold. The answer on the phone was ‘Of course, come over right now. We are waiting.’ They expected nothing from these get-togethers, ‘these shuffles’, besides the pleasure of just being together, and laughed at themselves and at jokes that weren’t even trying that hard to be funny. I felt like we were deserting these girls.

And not just the girls we were close to, or just Rimma and Vika who lived a block away and became our closest friends. We were leaving behind so much more: the area of the park that Almaty Tema claimed for themselves – the benches and the green slope where any one from Tema at any time could find old friends or meet new ones. The spontaneous parties evoked into existence with a single text message ‘come over’ and lasting for days at a time as friends came and left. The way that a girl could tell a friend that she is looking for a new job, or a new apartment, and within hours somebody from Tema was on the phone with her scheduling interviews and discussing a moving-in date. How you could be talking and laughing at your friend’s kitchen table, and if you got hungry all you needed to do was to open your friend’s fridge and cook something for everyone to share. Usually, as the partying went on, the only things left to cook were an omelet or frozen pelmeni. We were leaving all that behind, all that interconnectedness, and it was making me sad and restless.

“You guys should come and visit us in America. Come during Pride, we’ll take you to New York. Hundreds of thousands of lesbians of all kinds, and non-stop partying, you are gonna love it,” Lee and I told the girls sitting on the couch in our kitchen.

“How can we come. We would never get visas. No one gets American visas. China and India – and Russia – are about the only places we can go.” Vika was puffing on a cigarette explaining this, and Rimma was looking away. Maybe she was embarrassed to be living in a country where, despite her well-connected parents, despite her prestigious education as a psychotherapist, and despite living in her beautiful apartment that was the envy of all Tema, America still did not deem her civilized enough to be just a tourist and not someone trying to sneak in and stay illegally. America considered her sub-standard, and it hurt Rimma’s pride.

“I have a friend,” Vika was smiling as if telling a secret, “who wanted to go to America to study. She was accepted by a University and everything. And her girlfriend wanted to come with her, because they are together, they live together. So at the visa interview at the American consulate she was allowed, but her girlfriend was denied. Not just denied for that trip, but denied for life to enter America.” Vika grinned her cat grin at us.

“Did they tell the interviewer that they are a couple and want to go together?”

“Of course not.”

On the last Monday before our flight to Bangkok, we went to club ‘Real’ for the last time. We arrived in the dark, damp, smoky club with our neighbors, Vika and Rimma, but soon texts came from Nastia and Koritsa, ‘Are the Americans there? We are coming.’ Nastia and Koritsa, then Yulia and Sofa, then Rita, then others -- even girls we had only seen and never met -- they all knew we were leaving and came to kiss us, to shake our hands, to say good-bye. I was really surprised and moved, unprepared for the feelings I had: I didn’t realize that I was so embraced, so enveloped in these girls’ warmth, so used to their attention, and now Lee and I were about to sever that connection.

Lee and I danced salsa, avoiding the eyes that were watching us because they had never seen anyone dance salsa before us, and because we were now leaving. After the dance, a girl we never met came up to us and said: “I will miss the way you dance.” I almost cried. We returned to the booth where our friends waited and Vika announced:

“We came up with a way to visit you in America. We will come to the interview at the American consulate and tell them the truth: that we are going to visit friends and to go to the gay parade in America. They cannot deny us a visa then because it would be discrimination. And isn’t it illegal in America to discriminate against gays?” Vika was beaming.

Lee looked at me, then at Vika: “This is a good idea, it may even work.”

I hope that it does.

September 24, 2007

Katia and I were loitering near the “lesbian bench” in Arbat watching the beautiful Kazakh women in their skin-tight mini-skirts and heels promenading arm and arm through the square. On and around “The Bench” girls were gathering in small groups to chat, drink beer, and smoke. Every few minutes someone would come over to us, shyly say hello and kiss us on both cheeks before joining their favorite cluster of girls. Our friends Vika and Rimma were sitting on the bench whispering together and looking meaningfully into each other’s eyes. Our plastic pink phone started vibrating and Katia answered it mouthing ‘It’s Oxy.’ I frowned and tried to decipher the conversation.

Katia hung up and translated: “She wants us to meet her at the ‘Tent Café.’ She says she’s with some very interesting people and that we won’t regret it. She was all excited and mysterious – even more so than usual.”

“Who are these people?”

“ She wouldn’t tell me but she says we have to come immediately.”

I sighed. “I don’t feel much like crossing town to meet some mysterious new people. Where is this Tent Café place anyway?”

“Somewhere near our apartment I think.”

I looked around at the girls. It was a couple of beers into the evening and chatting had turned to either flirting or arguing. Rimma and Vika were still entwined on the bench and our other friend Nastia was smoking vigorously, looking beautiful and bored.

“There’s nothing going on here. I guess we might as well go.”

Katia agreed and we said goodbye to our friends and acquaintances. A few dozen kisses on the cheek later, and we were standing out on the street trying to catch a ride. Katia stood facing oncoming traffic with her arm pointing at an angle toward the ground. I stood on the sidewalk trying to look less foreign. In Almaty every car was a “taxi.” If anyone happened to be going in your direction they would drop you off for 200-300 Tenge (the equivalent of two or three dollars). The fourth car Katia stopped agreed to take us so we climbed in and settled into the back seat.

“I can’t believe she still wants to hang out with us after that conversation at Lena’s,” I said to Katia.

“Well, we are “The Americans. And besides, she doesn’t take it as a fight, everyone here speaks their mind.”

Obviously, Katia understood these girls much more than I ever would. When we were at Lena’s house Oxy had told us about a girl she was beginning to date, and was very excited about. The girl, Oxy proudly told us, was so highly positioned in her job – some kind of finance director – that her position prevented her from “shuffling” with other lesbians. She was afraid someone might recognize her and find out she is gay. Oxy explained that they only have straight friends, and never go to gay or lesbian clubs. However, for us Oxy was going to make an exception, since there was little chance of us revealing the girl’s gayness to any of her friends or clients. I wasn’t sure how I felt about such an “honor.”

“She doesn’t like gatherings of friends or going out,” explained Oxy, “someone might recognize her. But you might get to meet her,” she winked at us.

“Doesn’t it bother you that you can’t even introduce her to your friends or go out on a date with her?” Katia translated my question.

“No,” said Oxy, “you don’t understand, she has to protect her high position. Why should anyone beat themselves on the chest and announce that they are gay? I don’t want my co-workers to know about my personal life, and she doesn’t either. It’s my business who I sleep with.”

“But being gay is not just who you sleep with. It’s who you have a relationship with, who you spend your weekends with, who your friends are…”

“And it’s none of my co-workers’ business.”

“So your co-workers don’t come in on Monday and ask you what you did on the weekend, or what your plans are for the evening?”

“Of course they do. We eat lunch together at the table every day, and when I am sick my boss comes to my apartment with medicines to check that I am really sick in bed and not blowing off work.”

“Now that’s weird, but never mind. So what do you tell you co-workers when they ask you about your life?” Katia and I took turns trying to make our point.

“I tell them I went biking with friends or that I hung out with friends. Or I can say, I spent the weekend with the person I love.”

“So you say anything but the truth, and ‘the person I love’ is gender neutral, right?”

“Yes, they don’t need to know. I am a professional at work, they don’t need to think of me as human.”

“But they do anyway, don’t they! Don’t you know who is married and who’s not, and how many children they have, and all their names?”

“Yes, we discuss everything.”

“Except your life, you hide yours behind gender-neutral expressions and avoid using pronouns to refer to girls you date.”

“It’s because I am not married. Unmarried people slide below the radar. People assume that we are just playing and don’t have a serious relationship, so no one focuses attention on me.”

“So at your work straight people don’t discuss how they spent the weekend with their girlfriend or boyfriend?”

“They do all the time.”

“So their relationships are real even though they are not married.”

“Yes, but we have a conservative society, we don’t have gay marriages here.”

“So your relationships will never be real? Not even to you?”

Oxy laughed: “They are real, but no one has to know. You are always saying how in America you two go to the gay clubs, to the gay resort towns on the beach, to gay parades… everything is gay with you. I don’t like that. If you separate yourself from normal society, then I think normal society should separate itself from you. They should have places ‘no gays allowed, straight people only’.”

“I can’t believe this girl,” I whispered to Katia under my breath.

“Oxy,” I said, “They already do. Normal people, as you call them, run the world and exclude gays, that’s why you are in hiding and think you are ‘abnormal’. This gay parade you refer to, is really called ‘gay pride parade’. Pride, the word you omit in Russian, means respecting yourself for who you are. Obviously, a foreign concept here.”

“We don’t have a liberal society, we have a Muslim society here…”

“And we have a conservative Christian society. How do you think we got our rights? Do you think straight people said, you should have equal rights, here go get married? We fight for our rights. We insist on being visible and recognized, not hiding.” I was getting worked up.

“I am not hiding.”

“Really?” Does your mom know you are gay?”

“No, she doesn’t need to know. She loves me any way that I am.”

“Then why not tell her, if you already decided that she accepts you no matter what.”

“I will tell her when I find the love of my life and I will bring her to my mother and tell her: mom, this is my girlfriend and I love her.”

“What does your girlfriend have to do with you being gay? She is just a person off the street, what does your mom care for her being gay. It’s you being gay that your mom cares about. You aren’t just turning gay when you have a girlfriend. How many years have you been gay?”

“Many.”

“How many girlfriends have you had?”

“Many.”

“See?”

“I’ll do what my chosen brother did, he only introduced his mother to his ex-wife, and his wife to be. They’ll be married by New Year.”

“That boy is twenty and straight. He doesn’t have to come out to his mom.” Lee was getting mad now. “You say your mom kisses your hands and accepts you no matter what. You live with her, you are that close… How is she going take it when she finds out you’ve been lying to her all these years?”

“I am not lying.”

“Avoiding the truth then!”

That conversation had happened several days earlier, and now Katia and I were on our way to meet some “very interesting people.” The taxi dropped us off at home and we walked around the corner to the ‘Tent Café.’ The café was typical of Almaty with a few plastic tables and chairs outside a small restaurant where a disco ball cast multicolored shadows on the walls -- the soundtrack Russian pop interspersed with drunk Kazakh men belting off key to a small karaoke machine in the corner. Oxy introduced us to her friends, three Kazakh lesbians. Sabina, her girlfriend Maral, and Asel. Unlike the rest of our friends who were mixes of Russian, Georgian, and Tartar, these girls were ethnically Kazakh.

“Do you think that’s why Oxy told us this bunch doesn’t mix with the rest of the girls? “ I whispered to Katia as we sat down.

Katia shrugged, “Could be.”

Vodka and beer had been flowing freely and the girls were already feeling good.

“We have made huge progress in the last six years,” reported Sabina. “Before, we didn’t know each other, it was impossible for girls to meet each other. I was there right in the beginning of the Almaty Shuffle. I am one of its originators. Now we are free and out.” She filled our glasses with vodka.

“Really,” I said. “You guys are out? At work? To your families? In public?”

Sabina laughed as if I made a joke: “Of course not. We are free in our online forum, free to meet with each other and chat.”

“Which is what we do all day,” said Asel. “I come to work, log in and see who’s there. That one,” she pointed at Sabina, “she’s on all the time, we crack each other up all day.”

“It’s a huge step for Tema, said Sabina importantly. And I was right there in the beginning. But what you mean by being out – that’ impossible in Kazakhstan.”

“Why?”

“Because this is the East. We don’t do things directly here, we avoid confrontations and instead use covert methods.”

Oxy chimed in excitedly: “We have a saying in the East: ‘don’t offend others, but get your way.’”

“We care about our families,” explained Sabina. “And that means the most important thing is our families’ status.”

“If I told my parents I am gay, they would have a heart attack,” said Maral. “I can’t disappoint them like that. And if others find out I am gay, then everyone is going to point fingers at my family. They would lose their status, they would lose their jobs.”

“We don’t need to come out in Kazakhstan,” Sabina concluded authoritatively. “This is not America. We have a conservative society.”

“If I hear one more person tell me some bullshit about being in a conservative society or having conservative parents, I’m going to loose my mind,” I whispered to Katia, probably a little too loudly.

“Hold on, let’s hear them out,” Katia put her hand on my shoulder to calm me down.

“Don’t do that, they might freak out that you are outing them to the waitress,” I snarled into Katia’s ear.

“So how can you guys live happy, fulfilled lives when you are constantly hiding and pretending. How can you say that it’s okay and you are happy that way?” I asked Sabina.

“In the East we put our families above ourselves. Their benefit outweighs our needs.” This answer seemed to be a hit with the other girls, glasses were cheerfully refilled with more vodka. Toasts made all around.

“But if family is everything, wouldn’t your families stand up for you as you stand up for them? Couldn’t they support you in being gay and use their high status to change society’s perception of gays and lesbians?” Katia was on a roll.

“Why,” Oxy beamed at us. “Why make life so hard when you can just do what you want and please your family at the same time?”

“How can you do that?”

“Easy. Just marry a man to please your family, and do your business in your free time. Fictitious marriage.”

“What. Are these girls nuts!” I was about to loose my temper. “What about kids? Don’t you want to have kids with your girlfriend. You can’t even live together, how are you going to do that?”

“I don’t think two women should be raising a child together,” said Sabina authoritatively.

I looked around at the girls at the table smiling and nodding.

Katia said: “So these girls don’t think their relationships are real at all. Being gay to them is some dirty little secret they are ashamed of.”

“I can’t wait to go home. Take me out of here. These girls depress me,” I put my head on Katia’s shoulder.

Unfortunately, there was still another carafe of vodka to drink and as we had just learned, in The East being polite is everything.

October 4, 2007

Lee was just beginning her morning at one in the afternoon, when we got a text from Rimma.
“What does she say?” mumbled Lee, toothbrush in her mouth and tooth pasty spit running down her chin.
“Shit. She says her parents are coming to visit her today. You know what that means.”
Sure enough, an hour later we got a text from Vika: “Are you home? Rimma’s parents are coming at four, and Dolly and I need to be out of the house. It’s freezing and pouring outside.”
“What are we supposed to say?” I said to Lee. “I don’t want Dolly here, but we can’t leave Vika out in the cold. I can’t believe Rimma is kicking her out, and Vika just takes it. And her dog too? What should I say?”
“Tell her we are out.”
"I don’t want to lie.”
“I know.”
It was gloomy and gross out and Lee and I were anticipating having a cozy day of hiding in our warm kitchen, with no guests to entertain. But now Vika and her dog were hanging over us, menacing to take away our day of chilling. We decide to try to act non-committal without lying. I texted back to Vika that we were planning to head out soon, but if she needed a place to go, we would change our plans. As expected, Vika wrote back for us not to worry about her, that she would find a place to wait out Rimma’s parents’ visit. This made us feel guilty, instead of relieved. So we texted back insisting that Vika and Dolly come over immediately.
Vika showed up before four, with her dog, Dolly, in tow. With frozen cheeks and mascara, she plopped down on the kitchen couch. Dolly, round, wet and stinking, paced around the kitchen sniffing and making desperate whizzing noises. Her nails made a constant clicking noise on the linoleum floor.
“Dolly, calm down,” cooed Vika. “She is afraid that she’s been kicked out of her house and that I am going to leave her here,” Vika explained to me. “Pour her some water in a bowl to calm down.”
I poured water for Dolly, and the cognac Vika brought for us.
“Today is our anniversary. Two months Rimma and I have been together.” Vika blinked her mascara-ed eyelashes at me and grinned guiltily. Her grin looked unstable to me, as if ready to erupt into a laugh or to disintegrate into tears. Dolly kept running around the kitchen wheezing and sniffing, only pausing to lap at the water in her bowl.
“But you are celebrating alone,” I blurted. Shit. I promised myself not to say anything, and this was the first thing I said. “I mean, it’s your anniversary and you have to leave your house because Rimma’s parents are coming. It just makes me sad for you. I am sorry.”
Vika pulled in her chin like a duck and smiled at me: “This is normal. Everybody is this way here.” She flapped her eyelashes at me for emphasis.
“So it doesn’t hurt your feelings?”
“No.”
“I would feel like, is this girl not taking our relationship seriously. She wants no trace of me or my dog in the house, does this mean she doesn’t give a shit about me.” Now I joined Dolly pacing around the kitchen opening cabinets, forgetting what I was looking for. Vika followed me with her mascara-ed eyes.
“Not at all,” she said. “Rimma wants to tell her parents, but it’s hard for her. In her family, no one asks her about her personal life, so it’s hard for her to raise the issue. When she’s drunk, she says, ‘I’m gonna tell them.’ When she sobers up, ‘Oh my god, what if they find out.’
“This would be a perfect occasion to raise the issue: your anniversary, her parents coming over. What is she afraid of? What would happen?”
“Her parents will not approve. She doesn’t want to disappoint them,” shrugged Vika.
“What does it matter if they are disappointed. They will get over it. Rimma is an independent adult, she has her own apartment…”
“Ah you are wrong there,” Vika grinned and nodded as if agreeing with herself. “The apartment isn’t hers, it belongs to her father.”
How could I argue with her now. I had nothing to say. My American mentality and firm belief in entitlement to personal autonomy did not apply here. Living in Kazakhstan, you could never become an adult in the American sense. The girls didn’t feel entitled to live the lives they lived, they lived their lives secretly. If they didn’t feel the need to come out to their parents, how could their parents ever accept them being gay? If they didn’t think their relationships were legitimate, how could their parents?
“Hmmmn… Well… Happy anniversary,” I said. Vika and I toasted with cognac in our tea cups.

September 27, 2007

Lena put the plate of steaming hot horse meat in the middle of the coffee table. The smell made me hungry. But before I could stab it with my fork, Lena winked at me: “Let’s go in the kitchen to have a smoke.” Lena wanted to talk to me. I wasn’t gonna get any horse meat for a while.

In the kitchen still filled with the juicy smell of frying meat, Lena perched on the window sill, stuck a long thin lady cigarette between her lips, and lit it with a pink lighter, cupping her hand around the flame.

She sucked in the smoke and said: “When I first got in with Tema, I was shocked by the question the girls always asked me as soon as our clothes came off.” Lena made an oratorical pause for emphasis, then continued: “Are you acteev?”
“What!” That I didn’t expect.
“Yes. That’s what I said. What do they mean by that?” She sucked hard on her lady cigarette, turning her head away from me to blow out the smoke, but not breaking our eye contact.
I was sure she knew what they meant by that, but answered anyway, since she clearly wanted me to. Acteev was supposed to be the English word ‘active’, and I heard other girls use it the way Lena was talking about now.
“You know,” I said, “they mean, are you gonna just lie there or are you gonna do something.” I even met girls in Almaty who introduce themselves that way: Hi, my name is Tania, and I am acteev.
Lena laughed at my explanation: “But how would you answer this question?” she wanted to know.
“I would say, wait and see for yourself.” She seemed to like that.
“You know,” she said, “I used to try to seduce straight girls, and was proud to add each new notch to my belt…”
“But it’s a whole different thing to sleep with real lesbians, isn’t it?”
Lena lowered her eyes: “I learn all these things about myself with women – I never knew I could be this, do this, I surprise myself.”
“And you like that.”
“Yes. My husband used to not take my women seriously: if I am not with another man then I am not cheating. But he is noticing. He is beginning to ask me now, what do these women do to you that I can’t do?”
“Ooooo that just sounds painful,” I said. Lena seemed want to embark on a long heavy conversation, but I didn’t want to leave Lee and the horse meat waiting for me in the other room for too long. “Let’s go back in the living room and join the girls,” I said to Lena.

Back in the living room, the meat was delicious, and apparently so was the cognac, since the bottle was considerably emptier than when Lena took me into the kitchen. Vika was comfortable passed out on the couch, Lee was talking to Rimma in semi-Russian, and Rimma was picking at the meat, sipping cognac, and feeling nice and pensive. Her head was tilted forward, and her eyes were trying to focus somewhere to the left of me. She switched to full Russian when I was back at the table and ready to translate.

“I keep thinking and wondering,” Rimma began, “why in high school I was a mouse. And now, not a mouse. I used to have so many complexes. So many. There was all that pressure to have a boyfriend. I didn’t want a boyfriend. I didn’t know what was wrong with me. I didn’t like to wear skirts and dresses, even as a child. You know, when my mom was younger, she didn’t wear skirts or dresses either, only pants; she was sporty. Maybe” – she took another sip of cognac – “in another time and place, my mom would have been gay too.”
“Maybe,” I said, “although what you wear doesn’t really have anything to do with your desire to sleep with women. I think you wear these clothes that identify you as a lesbian to other lesbians deliberately, to fit into this subculture.”
I translated what I said to Lee, and she joined the conversation: “Psychologists always argue about nature vs. nurture, ask Rimma what she thinks about it,” said Lee.
Rimma answered: “There is obviously a biological basis to being gay.”
I smiled at Rimma: “But not to your clothes or your hair style,” I said.
“Well,” said Rimma, “you must admit that among lesbians there is an extra-high number of athletes. It’s because lesbians produce too much testosterone, a hormone that’s responsible for aggressive behavior. Sports provide an outlet for this aggression. So lesbians are drawn to sports because of their high levels of testosterone.”
Lee said: “There are plenty of lesbians who are not into sports. And besides, you can like sports and not like girls.”
“Ah. But there is another caveat,” Rimma raised one finger into the air. “High testosterone levels affect the clitoris, it becomes more sensitive.”
Lee and I exchanged looks.
“Yes,” confirmed Rimma, “lesbians have extra-sensitive clits, you may have noticed.”
“That’s just crazy,” announced Lee. “And even if that was true, having an extra-sensitive clit would not make you want to sleep with women. Tell Rimma that.”
But Rimma was undeterred. Conspiratorially leaning toward us across Lena’s coffee table with horse meat, and pressing her cognac glass to her chest, Rimma continued:
“There is another thing. You probably noticed that Tema girls don’t like… you know…” She flashed her eyes and her dimple at us. “Anything inside. Penetration,” she concluded. “We have sensitive clits that compensate for that.”
This completely outraged Lee: “What! These girls don’t fuck? That’s just gross.” Lee loudly whispered her indignation to me. In English, so I edited it out and didn’t translate it to Rimma. I noticed myself doing that a lot: editing my translations for politeness.
“What. In the U.S. it’s different?” Rimma’s cheeks were glowing.
I said: “Of course. You can’t get away with not fucking a girl thoroughly. That just wouldn’t be acceptable. Lesbians are extremely into penetration.” Lee and I nodded at each other in enthusiastic agreement, and I said to Lee: “Now I understand why they all have long nails.”
Lee nodded: “That’s terrible.”
“Rimma,” I said, “haven’t you ever heard about the G-spot?”
“What!” Rimma’s eyes got wider, and somehow sideways.
I explained: “The G-spot. It’s this erogenous zone on the front wall of the vagina.” Again I was feeling like I did when Lena asked me what Acteev meant in the kitchen. Weird. As if Lee and I were supposed to represent all American lesbians and to impart their experience to Almaty Tema. I stretched my hand out to Rimma: “You can reach it like this, if the girl is facing you.”
Lena, who was listening to this conversation, was amazed by the revelation of the G-spot, her head was still shaking in disbelief. Rimma was blinking uncontrollably.
“These girls must seriously be gay,” I said to Lee, “to insist on sleeping only with women even without fucking. Craziness.”
Lee said: “If no one has ever taught them how, I guess they just don’t know about it.”
“Then I really am confused: what do they mean by ‘Acteev’?
“Who knows. It’s Kazakhstan.”
“Yeah. But they sure know about cognac here. Let’s have some more. Do you think that by telling them about all this stuff we are influencing the sexual practices of Kazakhstan’s lesbians?”
“I doubt they’ll remember anything we said tomorrow,” Lee shook her head and smiled at me.
“Good point. Let’s toast to ‘Acteev”.

October 24, 2007

Lee:

I was relaxing on the pea soup green paisley couch in our kitchen when the cell phone beeped from the other room. I jumped up, ran to the other room, hit the answer button and thrust the phone at Katia. I concentrated trying to make sense of Katia’s half of the conversation. I only caught a word here and there. Katia hung up and glared at me. “It was Rimma and she wants to “shuffle” right now!”
“What did you say to her?”
“I told her to come over of course.”
I quickly ran into the other room and changed out of my pajamas and into jeans and a t-shirt.
“We don’t have anything to eat or drink!”
“I know! I’m going to the store right now.” Katia gave me a quick kiss and vaulted into the smelly elevator outside our apartment door.
I ran around dumping dirty dishes in the sink, gathering piles of underwear from the sofa and sweeping, trying to make our apartment look decent. In 10 minutes the doorbell rang and Rimma, Vika and Lena walked in. Two minutes later Katia rushed through the door with bags full of cheese, sausage and cognac.
At first these sudden interactions or “shuffles” as our friends liked to call them, felt like invasions but by now we had gotten used to the idea and even appreciated these unexpected visits. We had discovered that the girls had an amazing ability to party every day. Just because we cooked them a huge dinner and entertained them for hours in our apartment one day, did not mean that they did not want to ‘shuffle’ again the next day. Every day around three in the afternoon our cell phone started beeping and buzzing. We exchanged endless SMS messages organizing plans for the evening. Even girls who didn’t want to hang out texted with reports of their daily activities. We couldn’t believe how interconnected these Tema girls were.
That Saturday we hiked into to the Altai mountains outside of Almaty with Nastia, Koritsa, and Vika, arriving back way after dark, slightly hung over from the Sangria we had made during our picnic. The next day we drove to another spot in the mountains and cooked amazing shashlik with Yulia, Shura, Lena, Duke and his boyfriend – our contribution of course a bucket of Sangria. We continued to party at Lena’s apartment with bottle after bottle of cognac and delicious meat from an endangered species of mountain ram. We were exhausted, but the Tema weekend was still going. It was time to meet Vika, Rimma, and others at club Real for girls’ night on Monday. By Tuesday, when the phone rang and Nastia instantly asked ‘what are you doing?’ code for either: ‘great, I will join you in an hour,’ or ‘let’s hang out right now’, we were ready to unplug the phone and hide.

Katia:

“What’s going on with these girls?” I asked my mom for help. Obviously there were things about Russian culture that I didn’t remember.
“Well, you are friends, and friends like to spend time together.”
“Yeah… but this much time? I mean, we hung out with this girl yesterday, now today she wants to see us again. They all do it, they hang out together every day. What’s there to talk about if you see somebody every day?”
“Katia, you are looking at this all wrong,” diagnosed Mama. “You got used to how Americans think. Americans work very hard, are exhausted by the evenings, and the weekends are what precious little time they have to have fun. They see friends so that they can spend quality time together. Right? They plan the meetings days – weeks in advance, and when they get together they expect something out of the interaction. Russians are different. They don’t work hard, they work hardly at all, so every evening is a party. If they like somebody, then they want to spend as much time as possible with that person. And they don’t expect anything from you – no quality time bullshit. Just being together with the person they like, with their friend, is enough. They can just sit together on a bench and observe the passers-by silently. And that’s enough. That makes them happy. You don’t have to entertain them, they entertain themselves. Did you forget how when you were in school in Kiev you spent all your time together with your friends? You came from school together, you did homework together. Think about it.”
“I see what you are saying.” I was grinning into the phone. “But when do they spend time with their girlfriend? Privacy? They do everything with friends, never as couples, and Lee and I like to have time alone.”
“That’s more American bullshit,” said Mama. “Couples-shmupple. If they live together, they get plenty of time alone.” I thought about my parents and all their friends and how they always go on all the romantic vacations together as a group. “Anyway,” Mama continued, “you don’t have to hang out every night if you don’t want to.”
“Yes I do!” I protested. “They call and right away ask what we are doing. Then they join us or come over. Just invite themselves. What am I supposed to do?”
“Don’t pick up the phone if you want a quiet evening at home. Or make up plans.”
“Lie to them?”
“Yes,” Mama did not even hesitate.
“O.K. Well, here is an example.” This was the reason for asking Mama in the first place. I felt like I was committing a huge Russian social faux pas, yet I lined up justifications for myself that sounded American even to me. “This girl,” I told Mama, “Yulia, she called us up yesterday and asked what we were doing. I told her that Lee and I were cooking dinner, and after dinner we were planning to go for a walk. I thought that would convey to Yulia that we had plans – private plans. But no, she just said, great, Sofa will drop me off at your house in twenty minutes and we’ll go together. Are you listening?”
“Yes. And?”
“And I said to Yulia that instead, let’s meet up at Arbat (the area in the park where the lesbians congregate) later, after we finish dinner. So she waited for us there while we leisurely ate and promenaded. Then Yulia called us two hours later all upset that she had been waiting for us all alone. Alone! As if she can’t stand to sit alone on a bench, tons of people around, what’s her problem.”
“Katia. Don’t’ you understand. Of course she’s upset. You stood her up.”
“But she imposed herself. And we were getting there, slowly.”
“You did to her the worst possible thing. You made her feel alone and un-needed. Like nobody cares about her.”
“What. Seriously. Couldn’t she just read a book or something while waiting.”
“Read a book!” Mama exclaimed like I proposed an activity so preposterous, no self-respecting person would do it in public. “Reading a book is something they can do in bed before falling asleep. To sit alone in a public place, where everyone sees you alone, that’s terrible.”
I mulled it over: “Do you think she would forgive me if I apologize?”
“Yes. She might.”
“Phew!”
“Be simple. Forget the American bullshit: quality time, privacy, planning ahead, and you’ll be fine.”
I told Lee Mama’s advice, and Lee understood and took it seriously. Things changed after that. We stopped cooking elaborate meals every time the girls came over. Instead, if they were coming over, we pulled out whatever we found in our fridge, and the girls were happy. Any time the mood decided to strike, or when nothing good was found on the two English-language channels, we picked up the phone and a bottle or two of cognac, and walked across the street to our favorite girls’ apartment, Rimma’s and Vika’s. They were always happy to see us, and needed no notice. Rimma fired up the sheesha, Vika cooked some frozen pelmeni that we all ate from a common bowl, and drank, laughed about silly things, as Zimfira, the queen of Russian lesbian music, screamed heart-wrenching screams in the background. And when the phone rang, and a Tema girl on the other end immediately asked us what we were doing, we knew what to answer: “Let’s shuffle.”

Katia and I stepped into the sunlight dazed and squinting. We had been in the gray concrete maze of OVIR for hours. All foreigners were required to register themselves within five days of arriving in Kazakhstan and OVIR was the place to do it. It was a deeply soviet process involving an excruciatingly specific choreographed circuit of photocopies and multiple ‘kassas.’ My job was to hold our place in various lines while Katia ran around photocopying every piece of paper they could conceivably request. We elbowed our way through the crowd of Russians, Chinese and Turks all shouting and pushing their money through the slot where the surely woman required two photocopies of our passports, two of the visas, two of the applications for registration, two of the immigration cards, and all the originals before she would accept payment. Anyone without exact change was immediately sent to the back of the line. She pushed our receipt through the little slot and slammed it shut, demonstratively ignoring the pleas of the frustrated line of people behind us. We raced to the second window and Katia shoved all our documents through the window slot just as the woman had begun to close it. She glanced at our American passports, sighed and agreed to take the documents, obviously angry at the one and a half minute delay in her lunch break.

We were thrilled to be out of there and wandered aimlessly through the crowds of promenading people. Suddenly I noticed two girls walking towards us.
“Bat, look! Lesbians.”
“Is that a guy?"
“No, they are girls. Should we talk to them?"
By the time we had determined that they were indeed lesbians it was too late. The couple, a scraggly tomboy and a stylish femme, had walked past us, deeply involved in an argument.
The scraggly lesbian was flexing her hand bouncing an imaginary ball as she rasped: “It’s my job, don’t tell me how to handle it. It’s my business,”
“Well, I guess, we are not gonna talk to them.”
The lesbians reached the intersection, turned around, and walked back toward us, continuing their argument. We stopped where we were in the middle of the sidewalk and watched as they passed. Katia smiled and nodded at them. Ignoring us, they kept walking. Suddenly, they stopped, turned around and stared. We had finally registered in the lesbian-identifying centers of their brains. Katia waved to them, the scraggly one waved back. Katia motioned for them to come toward us. The scraggly one repeated her gesture.
“Should we go meet them?” said Katia. By now we were only a few steps away from the girls.
“Of course.”
“Hi, I am Sofa,” said the scraggly one.
“And I am Yulia.”
Katia introduced us in Russian and I said my “Hello” in English.
“Where are you guys going?” asked Sofa, her eyes peeking out between the extra-cool aviator sunglasses hiding one half of her face and the shaggy hair hiding the rest.
“To the Green Bazaar.”
“Then get in, we’ll give you a ride.”
Sofa was a taxi driver, somewhat off-duty. Sitting in the heat and haze of Almaty’s traffic jams we had time to talk. Sofa turned to us sweating in the back seat and rasped: “Do you smoke weed?”
“Come to Real tonight,” chirruped Yulia. Mondays girls get in free, so all the lesbians come on Mondays, it’s the girls’ night.” She batted her mascara-ed eyelashes at us in the back seat. “We’ll wait for you outside at eleven, ‘cuz the club is unmarked. It’s so nice to meet grown-up, cultured lesbians,” she added with a smile.
As we climbed out of the car, Sofa and Yulia were well into a new argument: Yulia demanded that Sofa take her home to change before the club, and Sofa barked back: “Are you crazy, drive across the whole city for that!”
Yulia didn’t need to worry about us finding Club Real. Emanating from the doorway of the club were dozens of lesbians. They fidgeted in clusters, hunching to look tougher. They smoked purposefully, pinching the cigarettes with the thumb and forefinger over the top. Girls in jeans and wife beaters, hair spiked and mulleted, forcefully shook hands with each other and kissed the cheeks of the girls in tight mini skirts. We felt right at home.
Sofa and Yulia led us into the club and proudly introduced us as “The Americans” to their friends. We met Nastia, Sofa’s ex-girlfriend who was currently dating Yulia’s ex-girlfriend, ‘Koritsa’ -- Russian for Cinnamon. Nastia, a blond blue-eyed chain-smoking beauty, adopted us and later introduced us to much of the also chain-smoking Almaty lesbian community. We learned that in Almaty gay men and lesbians referred to themselves with the secret code word, ‘Tema’ – or ‘The Theme’. A thematic club is a gay/lesbian club. A thematic girl is a lesbian. A thematic bookstore is a gay/lesbian bookstore. The girls wanted to know all about lesbians in the U.S.
“How do you say ‘The Theme’ in the U.S.?”
“We don’t have a secret code word like that for ourselves. We just say ‘gays and lesbians’.
The Almaty Tema were shocked.
After the club Sofa and Yulia dropped us off at our hotel. We said goodbye and made them promise to hang out with us again soon. Little did we know that by the next Monday every Tema girl in Almaty would know about ‘The Americans.’

Hey, our website is now fast and furious. Check it out for all the photos that are not on our blog. Here is the link: http://www.grrrilla.com/trip-2006-index.htm

July 25, 2007

The thick stench of garlic, onions and lamb, mixed with sweat and un-brushed teeth accosted us as we clawed our way over boxes of pots and pans, bales of cheap Chinese underwear and clusters of Uighur women. It was 35 degrees Celsius. As usual the air conditioning was broken and none of the windows opened. Every time the shriveled old woman in the seat behind us spoke the smell of decaying teeth wafted between the seats. When she wasn’t talking she was banging on the back of my seat with her fists, upset that I dared recline into her space. The bus was extra long, 48 people could be seated. Instead, the last 15 rows, the aisles, and the storage compartments underneath were bursting with boxes and bags – all bought in China on their way to be resold in Kazakhstan. We had found our way onto a bus full of Uighur traders.

We stopped for a breakfast of plov (rice with vegetables and chunks of meat) and goat’s head soup in the last town before the border with Kazakhstan. The passengers were predominately women and nearly all of them spoke perfect Russian. It was a huge relief to be able to communicate with people after two months on busses in China, never knowing what was going on. A few of the women called us over to their table and began interrogating me about Lee’s hair. After a thorough investigation they were satisfied that Lee was really American and immediately started posing for pictures. They put Lee in the middle and wrapped their arms around her like she was an old friend. The women took responsibility for us for the rest of the trip. They helped us with the border crossing and made sure no one stole from us when we were changing money. By the time we reached Almaty we had invitations to stay with all of them in their villages.

We crossed the border without incident. The bus rolled across the baking plains. Kazakhstan was even hotter and more desolate than China. Slender poplar trees looked startled and huddled close together among the shrubs. The horizon hinted at blue mountains. We burst out of the bus at the first stop in Kazakhstan. I was gulping air when a heavy set but well contained woman with hennaed hair and thick black eye liner charged over and introduced herself as Sonya.

“How long did you stay in _____?” She asked.

“Where?”

“_______.” She repeated the incomprehensible word.

“Do you mean Yinning?”

“Yinning is the name the Chinese gave our city. It’s an Uighur city named after the ancient river that flows through it. We still use it’s real name. All the land between Urumqi and Almaty is Uighur land -- Yinning, Turpan, Urumqi, those are all Uighur cities. Back in the 5^th, 6^th and 7^th centuries Uighur people ruled there. Now our people are divided between two countries. We are persecuted both in Kazakhstan and in China. Did you stay in ______ at the same hotel with all of us?”

“No we couldn’t find a hotel that would except foreigners. No one at the bus station, when we arrived last night from Urumqi, could tell us anything about how to get to Almaty. Luckily we met an Uighur woman who spoke English and she told us about this bus and let us stay at her house for the night. She even took us to an Uighur wedding.”

Sonya listened to my story with appreciation: “Yes, we Uighurs are friendly people. When we get to Almaty I’ll move you into a nice hotel. Don’t worry.”

“Are you going all the way to Almaty?”

“Yes yes, I’m overseeing this bus. At the border they were surprised to meet a Uighur woman bus company owner. I collected 1000 Tenge (about 10 dollars) from each passenger to bribe the customs officials. Otherwise they would have taken every bag and box off of the bus and opened it. They took the money and let us go without searching anything. The other trader busses will be here for five or six hours before they are allowed to cross the border.

“All they care about is your money.”

“They are Kazakhs. They’re not like us. We like hard work. We tend our land, we grow things on it, we keep clean. Kazakhs are different. They’re closer to Chinese people. They like to skim off the top while we do all their work. The same with Uighurs in China. The Chinese came in and took our land, now they keep bringing in more Han Chinese – they put them into power, and our people do all the hard work. If we could take our land back from them and from the Kazakhs we could reunite and have our own country again -- Uighurstan.”

“China doesn’t want to give up your land. It has 30 percent of all the oil deposits in the entire country.”

“No one knows how badly the Chinese treat the Uighurs who live in China. They take away their passports so they can’t go to Kazakhstan and visit relatives. They can’t get jobs.”

The woman was getting very worked up. She blotted the sweat off her face and took a break while I translated for Lee.

“No wonder China is afraid of the separatists: they’re on fire.”

I smiled at Lee: “I think this woman could not only direct her bus company – she could direct a revolution.”

Sonya got her second wind: “You know the nation of Uzbeks.”

“Yes – Uzbekistan.”

“Ai! That’s made up. Uzbeks are the same as Uighurs. We all came from the same people. When China conquered our land, Uzbeks said ‘We’re different.’ But wait until we get our own country. They’ll come right back and say they were Uighurs all along. Think of us as two brothers.” The woman shifted to another foot and adjusted her glasses. “One brother is learned, cultured. The other is a trader. We are the studious brother, the Uzbeks are the traders.”

I looked over at the bus full of Uighur traders and then back at the woman.

Undeterred she continued: “The Uzbeks led caravans, they were nomads, not even Muslims until 100-200 years ago. We Uighurs have been Muslims for many centuries. Before that we were Buddhists. We have a very old culture. And when the Chinese come to live among us, we affect them. They see us sitting in cafes and restaurants like civilized people and they stop spitting and blowing their noses on the floor.”

Sonya, her speech finished, filled a bottle of water from the tap on the side of the road and signaled it was time to get back on the bus. Once back on, fired up by her own speech, she was ready to party. “Put on the music, girls!” she commanded to no one in particular. The little man driving the bus complied and Middle Eastern music boomed from the speakers. The passengers, sharing the fruit and bread they bought at the last stop, chewed and nodded to the rhythm. Tossing her chin into the air, and casting fiery looks at the passengers, she stepped into the isle. Arms above her head, wrists elegantly twirling and head switching side-to-side Shahirizade style, Sonya flowed along the isle like a giant hennaed swan.

The next time the bus stopped, I popped out to use the roadside toilet. I waited my turn trying to ignore the stench. Inside the dark wooden room were two holes in the ground with just enough space between them for two people to squat. As I stepped inside I heard a booming voice. Too late to retreat, I tried to smile as Sonya squatted in front of me directing a powerful stream of urine into the hole.

“Here! Take my business card,” She stretched her arm towards me teetering precariously over the hole.

I took the card trying to avoid the urine stream: “Nice to meet you.”

The thick stench of garlic, onions and lamb, mixed with sweat and un-brushed teeth accosted us as we clawed our way over boxes of pots and pans, bales of cheap Chinese underwear and clusters of Uighur women. It was 35 degrees Celsius. As usual the air conditioning was broken and none of the windows opened. Every time the shriveled old woman in the seat behind us spoke the smell of decaying teeth wafted between the seats. When she wasn’t talking she was banging on the back of my seat with her fists, upset that I dared recline into her space. The bus was extra long, 48 people could be seated. Instead, the last 15 rows, the aisles, and the storage compartments underneath were bursting with boxes and bags – all bought in China on their way to be resold in Kazakhstan. We had found our way onto a bus full of Uighur traders.

We stopped for a breakfast of plov (rice with vegetables and chunks of meat) and goat’s head soup in the last town before the border with Kazakhstan. The passengers were predominately women and nearly all of them spoke perfect Russian. It was a huge relief to be able to communicate with people after two months on busses in China, never knowing what was going on. A few of the women called us over to their table and began interrogating me about Lee’s hair. After a thorough investigation they were satisfied that Lee was really American and immediately started posing for pictures. They put Lee in the middle and wrapped their arms around her like she was an old friend. The women took responsibility for us for the rest of the trip. They helped us with the border crossing and made sure no one stole from us when we were changing money. By the time we reached Almaty we had invitations to stay with all of them in their villages.

We crossed the border without incident. The bus rolled across the baking plains. Kazakhstan was even hotter and more desolate than China. Slender poplar trees looked startled and huddled close together among the shrubs. The horizon hinted at blue mountains. We burst out of the bus at the first stop in Kazakhstan. I was gulping air when a heavy set but well contained woman with hennaed hair and thick black eye liner charged over and introduced herself as Sonya.

“How long did you stay in _____?” She asked.

“Where?”

“_______.” She repeated the incomprehensible word.

“Do you mean Yinning?”

“Yinning is the name the Chinese gave our city. It’s an Uighur city named after the ancient river that flows through it. We still use it’s real name. All the land between Urumqi and Almaty is Uighur land -- Yinning, Turpan, Urumqi, those are all Uighur cities. Back in the 5^th, 6^th and 7^th centuries Uighur people ruled there. Now our people are divided between two countries. We are persecuted both in Kazakhstan and in China. Did you stay in ______ at the same hotel with all of us?”

“No we couldn’t find a hotel that would except foreigners. No one at the bus station, when we arrived last night from Urumqi, could tell us anything about how to get to Almaty. Luckily we met an Uighur woman who spoke English and she told us about this bus and let us stay at her house for the night. She even took us to an Uighur wedding.”

Sonya listened to my story with appreciation: “Yes, we Uighurs are friendly people. When we get to Almaty I’ll move you into a nice hotel. Don’t worry.”

“Are you going all the way to Almaty?”

“Yes yes, I’m overseeing this bus. At the border they were surprised to meet a Uighur woman bus company owner. I collected 1000 Tenge (about 10 dollars) from each passenger to bribe the customs officials. Otherwise they would have taken every bag and box off of the bus and opened it. They took the money and let us go without searching anything. The other trader busses will be here for five or six hours before they are allowed to cross the border.

“All they care about is your money.”

“They are Kazakhs. They’re not like us. We like hard work. We tend our land, we grow things on it, we keep clean. Kazakhs are different. They’re closer to Chinese people. They like to skim off the top while we do all their work. The same with Uighurs in China. The Chinese came in and took our land, now they keep bringing in more Han Chinese – they put them into power, and our people do all the hard work. If we could take our land back from them and from the Kazakhs we could reunite and have our own country again -- Uighurstan.”

“China doesn’t want to give up your land. It has 30 percent of all the oil deposits in the entire country.”

“No one knows how badly the Chinese treat the Uighurs who live in China. They take away their passports so they can’t go to Kazakhstan and visit relatives. They can’t get jobs.”

The woman was getting very worked up. She blotted the sweat off her face and took a break while I translated for Lee.

“No wonder China is afraid of the separatists: they’re on fire.”

I smiled at Lee: “I think this woman could not only direct her bus company – she could direct a revolution.”

Sonya got her second wind: “You know the nation of Uzbeks.”

“Yes – Uzbekistan.”

“Ai! That’s made up. Uzbeks are the same as Uighurs. We all came from the same people. When China conquered our land, Uzbeks said ‘We’re different.’ But wait until we get our own country. They’ll come right back and say they were Uighurs all along. Think of us as two brothers.” The woman shifted to another foot and adjusted her glasses. “One brother is learned, cultured. The other is a trader. We are the studious brother, the Uzbeks are the traders.”

I looked over at the bus full of Uighur traders and then back at the woman.

Undeterred she continued: “The Uzbeks led caravans, they were nomads, not even Muslims until 100-200 years ago. We Uighurs have been Muslims for many centuries. Before that we were Buddhists. We have a very old culture. And when the Chinese come to live among us, we affect them. They see us sitting in cafes and restaurants like civilized people and they stop spitting and blowing their noses on the floor.”

Sonya, her speech finished, filled a bottle of water from the tap on the side of the road and signaled it was time to get back on the bus. Once back on, fired up by her own speech, she was ready to party. “Put on the music, girls!” she commanded to no one in particular. The little man driving the bus complied and Middle Eastern music boomed from the speakers. The passengers, sharing the fruit and bread they bought at the last stop, chewed and nodded to the rhythm. Tossing her chin into the air, and casting fiery looks at the passengers, she stepped into the isle. Arms above her head, wrists elegantly twirling and head switching side-to-side Shahirizade style, Sonya flowed along the isle like a giant hennaed swan.

The next time the bus stopped, I popped out to use the roadside toilet. I waited my turn trying to ignore the stench. Inside the dark wooden room were two holes in the ground with just enough space between them for two people to squat. As I stepped inside I heard a booming voice. Too late to retreat, I tried to smile as Sonya squatted in front of me directing a powerful stream of urine into the hole.

“Here! Take my business card,” She stretched her arm towards me teetering precariously over the hole.

I took the card trying to avoid the urine stream: “Nice to meet you.”

Jackpot! The bus only had two operable windows and I was next to one of them. Katia had the middle bunk and next to us were the only other foreigners on the bus, a tall broad British guy and his girlfriend. I watched as he attempted to fold himself into his bunk. I could feel his feet under my pillow as he twisted around. It was impossible for me to sit upright or to stretch my legs out. I couldn’t imagine how he was going to sleep.

I eyed the big British guy: “Comfy?”

He laughed: “This is our first sleeper bus. We usually take the train.”

“Every time we get on a bus I think the seats can’t get any smaller, and every time they do.”

The landscape was flat and brown – a high dessert with mountains wavering in the distance. It was monotonous and soon the bus driver started the in-flight entertainment. The usual, American or European movies dubbed into Chinese with Chinese subtitles. We had become masters at following the plot without having any idea of the dialogue. This one was easy since I’d seen it before, The Italian Job. Next up was a post-apocalyptic German movie where drug dealers jumped from rooftop to rooftop shooting at each other with AK- 47s. This one was much more difficult to follow and somewhere in the middle I fell asleep.

I woke up disoriented. It was dark. I sat up and bumped my head on the bunk above me. I was still on the bus and it had stopped on the side of the road. Not wanting to miss one of the sporadic pee stops I stumbled out of the bus and to the side of the road away from the row of men lined up pissing. I stepped off asphalt and immediately sunk to my ankle in mud. I hopped on one foot trying to fish my flip-flop out of the mire. Flip flop safely rescued, I looked around for a less perilous place to pee. There was a row of trucks and busses lined up in front of and behind our bus. The men were still busy with their own pissing contest so I decided to squat on the road. Modesty was one of the casualties of traveling for two months on busses in China. The bus could be driving through miles of mountains and it will stop in the only flat area the driver can find. All the women wear skirts so they have no problem squatting anywhere to do their business. At first we used to try to find some privacy but eventually we just joined the women a few feet away from the men. Of course we didn’t generally travel in skirts. I figured if someone is burning with desire to see my ass while I’m peeing then let him look.

I walked back across the road trying to clean the mud off my foot. My bed was dirty enough; the greasy sheets had not been changed in … well maybe they had never been changed. The big English guy was standing next to the bus smoking. We introduced ourselves and went through the traveler ritual of exchanging itineraries. His name was Ali and he and his girlfriend had been teaching English in Shanghai for a year and were spending their summer break traveling around trying to see “the real China.”

We stood chatting for a while. It didn’t seem like the bus was preparing to go anywhere any time soon. I pointed at some shacks set back from the road: “Do you think the driver knows of a good brothel in there somewhere and we are waiting for him to finish?”

Ali laughed. “Probably. I speak a little bit of Chinese. I’m going to go and see if I can find out what we are waiting for.”

I listened as he attempted to communicate with one of the men in broken Chinese. Most of these men were Uighur and didn’t speak Mandarin.

Ali walked back over: “Well, I understood ‘road’, ‘water’ and ‘broken’. It looks like the road has been washed out and we have to wait here until they fix it.”

We continued talking for another couple of hours until I was finally tired enough to climb back onto the bus. It was hot. Men sat and smoked in the front while the rest of the bus snored and farted. I opened my window and tried to breathe the unpolluted air from outside. When I awoke at dawn the bus hadn’t moved. People slowly awoke and climbed out of their bunks. The men gathered in clusters outside shaking their heads and pointing at the road ahead. The driver in the truck behind us sipped from a bottle of vodka and gnawed on a pale pink sausage.

Around 8:00 a.m. Katia woke up and immediately began to worry that we would starve to death on the side of the road. We usually stocked up on food when taking the bus but this was a short ride, only 12 hours, so we hadn’t bothered. She went to look around and came back with three bottles of water and two bottles of pineapple flavored beer.

“I found a gas station up the road. They didn’t have any food. Just a cooler.”

I dug around in the bottom of our bag and came up with two of our own pale pink sausages. We ate our sausages and sipped the beer. I couldn’t detect any flavor of pineapple or beer but didn’t think we would starve any time soon.

The men gathered at the front of the bus and started playing cards. They slapped their cards down on the table furiously all the while pulling more money out of their pockets. I wondered if they would all be broke by the time the bus started moving again. Other games of cards started up around us. We had just pulled our cards out and started playing when everyone started shouting. The women who had wondered off to use the bushes came running back and there was a flurry of activity as everyone pushed and shoved each other up the bus stairs.

The trucks and busses revved their engines trying to cut each other off as they simultaneously pulled onto the road. Everyone cheered! We were finally moving after 17 hours of sitting on the bus. One of the drivers miraculously appeared with a dozen large round onion-flavored flat breads and handed them out to everyone. We ate the bread as the bus sped up and braked trying to cut off as many trucks as possible. I had just settled back onto my bed to stare at the drab brown scenery when we stopped again. The trucks we had been racing pulled over in front and behind us. The news spread -- the bridge ahead had been washed out. We had to wait for it to be fixed.

Katia went back to worrying about food and I reminded her that we still had two chocolate bars and one nasty pineapple beer. We could live on that for at least another day. We climbed off the smoke-filled bus and found a spot to sit on the side of the road. The English couple played games with the kids throwing rocks into a cesspit. Eventually it began to rain and we were forced back onto the reeking bus. The men, tired of gambling, turned to their next favorite activity – Karaoke T.V. The screens on the bus filled with blonde white women dancing erotically while surrounded by young Chinese girls who clapped and moved their feet from side to side. I sat staring blankly at the screen in front of Katia’s bunk. After four hours the bus jerked into motion and we were back on the road.

This time we kept moving for most of an hour before pulling into a roadside restaurant. We devoured a plate of thick white noodles with spicy meat and downed two real beers. The friendly people who ran the restaurant fed us their famous Hamin melons while we sat grinning at them. They shoved another one into our hands as we headed back onto the bus. Our stomachs were full and everyone was in much better spirits. The women in the bunks above us laughed and shared the fruit they had bought. They all enjoyed feeding the foreigners and smiled shyly when we thanked them with one of our only Chinese words. It was getting dark and we only had ten more hours before we would arrive in Urumqi. I guess that was reason enough to party.

July 17, 2007

Lee let a handful of pistachio shells fly out the window. I watched as they sailed over the dessert lining the highway -- pink sand, faded yellow clumps of grass, occasional camels, and a surreal gray glowing sky. It was almost 8:00 p.m. and still the sky glowed, undecided what to make of the remaining day light.

“These pistachios would be even better with parmesan cheese and red wine.”

“Or white wine. Do you think a pistachio tree would grow from these shells?” Lee tossed more shells into the wind: “Maybe a pistachio shell tree.”

We passed more camels.

“Can you believe how lucky you are to have the seat with the only operable window on the bus.”

“And they are smoking back there. Can you even imagine sitting back there?”

“I think this is supposed to be a very fancy bus. The windows don’t open, implying that it once had air conditioning, and it doesn’t have one of those communal beds in the back. ”

The air from Lee’s operable window kept getting colder, and the dessert began to turn a deeper pink, with patches of purple.

“Dunhuang was a nice town. I hated to leave that hotel. What did you think of the caves?”

I reached over and grabbed another handful of pistachios: “They were amazing. The one with the 35-meter tall Buddha was impressive if only because of its sheer size. I loved the wall paintings, but the sculptures looked like dolls to me. Still, they cast cool shadows, as if they were real. But I tell you, remember early Christian caves in Cappadocia? The cave cities in Tunisia? All that art carved out of rock, surrounded by rock and dessert – it felt organic, like it belonged there, it was part of nature and derived it’s magic from it. But here, they built all these walls and doors and stairs around the caves, it’s like they put all of this beautiful art in a closet.”

“I know what you mean. It felt like an amusement park. Still, it’s nice to do something cultural.”

“Let’s have some chocolate.”

The bus carried us across pale-brown flatness fringed by distant blue mountains; so far away they could have been a mirage. The sky still glowed.

I woke up at one in the morning. The buzz and movement that kept me sleeping had stopped. It seemed like we hadn’t been moving for a long time. I heard Lee’s laughter from outside.

I stumbled out of the bus: “What’s going on?”

“I don’t know. Someone says there is a flood up ahead and the road is washed out.”

“What. In a dessert?”

“Yeah, there are flash floods in desserts all the time.”

A convoy of trucks stretched as far ahead and behind us into the darkness, as I could see. Most had cut their engines. People milled around on the side of the road. Rain was dripping with no conviction.

“So in South and Central America, where are your favorite places?” Lee was talking to the tall British guy on our bus.

“Oh by far, Mexico. It’s just so laid back.”

I climbed back onto the bus, lied down on my bunk and pulled my eye patch over my eyes.

At nine in the morning our bus was still in the same place, wedged between two of the endless line of trucks. No engine was running except a long white freight truck with two polar bears stenciled on its back. The truck’s driver sat with his forehead on the steering wheel, his arms crossed over his head. I went out to pee and saw a sign in the distance. I quickly walked the kilometer to the gas station and returned with three waters and a “fruit” beer drink.

At 11:00 a.m. the bus moved two kilometers before it stopped again.

At 12:40 Lee and I and the rest of our bus were sitting on the side of the road. The British couple initiated a game of throwing rocks at a water bottle floating in a giant mud puddle. Most of the passengers joined them.

“If Martha Stuart was on our bus,” I said to Lee, “we would be somewhere by now.”

“What do you mean?”

“Maybe team crocheting -- we would crochet an escape rope.”

“How about we would knit an escape car.”

The dessert around us was an endless sea of mud. The sky still glowed noncommittally.

“Maybe this is what it’s like to sit in jail.” Lee and I were playing cards in the aisle of the bus on our bag. We were 20 hours into this bus ride, and the bus still wasn’t moving.

Lee frowned: “They feed you in jail, and give you entertainment.”

At 4:00 p.m. after 22 hours, the driver tooted the horn. Everyone scrambled back onto the bus. Cut throat bus drivers competed with cutthroat truck drivers. The race was fierce. We finally stopped for food after an hour of driving. It was the most beautiful plate of thick greasy noodles I had ever seen.

At 1:30 in the morning, two days after we set out, our bus rolled into an Urumqi parking lot behind a huge hotel, every inch of it glowing and blinking in neon. Stunned, we stumbled out of the bus in a cloud of funk. After 33 hours on the bus we felt like we deserved an award. Instead we got a taxi.