Our first summer in the Czech Republic without any COVID restrictions was like a breath of fresh air. Literally. No more masks, not even in government buildings, allowed unhindered breathing, and no more social distancing made socializing with friends much easier. Leaving our little Czech village at the end of August, and saying goodbye to neighbors and our cozy house, was as sad as every summer since we had bought the house. But Nukus, with its amazing students, was again awaiting us. Once we had boarded the plane and felt the flaps retract, our focus shifted to our destination – Tashkent. There, we spent a few days attending an annual training conference and enjoyed seeing some people we had not seen, in some cases for an entire year, because they ended up teaching at Presidential Schools in different Uzbek locations. As in any large group of people thrown together, there were some we were happier to see than others. Some we were downright surprised to see again. “Can you see that guy over there?” Dave turned to me and nodded slightly. I followed his gaze.
“Yeah. He was in your Math group.” I remembered some amusing anecdotes Dave had shared with me about the tall guy and his attitude. “I am shocked he is still here. He did nothing but complain the whole time. How did he survive the year?”
Each day of less than scintillating meetings sapped our wills to live but, in the evenings, we were left to our own devices to recover. With our evenings free, and the weather wonderful, we spent a lot of time walking around Tashkent. It was on one such balmy evening that I came across a puzzling sight. A group of five people was squatting on the ground in a city park picking something off the ground. I did not see any implements, so I dismissed the notion that they were cutting grass. That is a sight I’ve grown accustomed to in Nukus. Quite often I see people on the university grounds cutting the grass with sickles or shears, loading it to their little carts or bundling it in oversized scarfs and hauling it away to some hungry livestock waiting for them at home. Near our school is a nice-looking house with a word Klinic, designating it as a place of some medical happenings. In my first year in Nukus, I often heard a sound coming from there that sounded like a cow bellowing. It all became clear one day, when someone left the gate opened while I walked by. A cow tied in the yard with a calf nearby looked at me inquisitively as I came closer to the opening to assure myself that I was not dreaming. After all, it takes only a half hour of brisk walking to reach the main square and all the governmental buildings.
The people who come and help themselves to the university grass are probably a welcome sight to the uni maintenance staff, as they decrease the amount of grass mowing for them. As our biology teacher might say, this is a lovely symbiotic relationship in action.
The five people I observed in Tashkent did not have any tools, but I noticed two sacks and a bucket on the ground near them for collecting the mysterious something. Of course, I couldn’t resist the urge to find out what was going on. “What are you getting?” I asked in my faltering Russian. One of the two girls in her late teens looked up from her task and checked my face to determine if the question was serious. I suppose anyone else would know what they were doing. When she assessed me as a clueless foreigner, she offered a ghost of a smile and said flatly two words that were supposed to clarify everything. “Sheep, eat.” I looked into her bucket.
My previous wild expectations to see cigarette butts or weeds in it were discarded. These were not unreasonable guesses. Uzbekistan, like the rest of Central Asia, is still fully enthralled with the cigarette culture and it has more cleaners per square mile than Switzerland has banks. This dedication to cleanliness and to maintaining the city parks tidy probably keeps the unemployment of unskilled labor down. But neither of my guesses was correct. The bucket was half-full of acorns! The inevitable question followed as I looked around my surroundings. After all, this was central Tashkent. A few steps from the park edge was a wide avenue with traffic streaming in both directions. The tidy modern high-rises competed for real estate with governmental buildings, some of better design than others, none offering any suggestion where sheep could be housed.
“So where do you live?”
“In Tashkent,” came a laconic answer.
“But where?” I was not giving up.
“There,” she pointed vaguely leaving me as clueless as before. However, I recalled the ride to the airport. She must live somewhere on the outskirts and come here to the nice city parks not to walk around and enjoy the scenery, but to work with her family. Which begged another question.
“Are you a family?” I waved at the other four people; two elderly women and a young boy. She nodded. So, this was a family outing, destination park, intended to provide a meal for their livestock, which will later provide a meal for them. I thanked the girl for wasting her time with me and left, carrying in my mind the sight of the industrious family for further contemplation.
After the few days in Tashkent, we made the final hop of our return journey to Nukus. Being away from home for a big chunk of time, you never know what to expect upon your return. It pays to have friendly people living next door. If, however, you have a neighbor who freely borrows your newspaper and generously leaves you his dog’s crap in exchange, you probably return home with some trepidation. We were relieved to find things more or less in the same state, albeit a bit dirtier, as we left them. The worst was our balconies. Judging by their state, all the birds of Nukus must have spent the entire summer there, and several of them suffered some digestive issues. But still, it was nothing that several buckets of hot water could not fix.
Back in June, before we left for the summer, we were asked to complete an inventory of our rooms with the assistance of our maintenance manager. At that time, before Timur appeared at my door, I had made sure that the room was tidy, and I even dug out the kettle that had spent the year hidden in the closet. I was even ready to count with him the one fork and spoon the school had provided. What I was not prepared for was checking off the list the continued presence of a built-in wardrobe and a bathtub. Really? I remember thinking. Has anyone really walked away with a tub? I remember chuckling as I put the required tick next to it.
On our return, I was greatly relieved to find the wardrobe and the tub still in my room. I also found all my plants alive and happy, except for tall Joy. My green babies spent the summer in the hall with all the other school plants left in the care of the cleaning staff. Joy – my tall plant – looked healthy enough when Dave brough her back into my room. I welcomed her home and gave her some water to celebrate our re-union. Several days later I noticed a leaf lying at her base. A few days later it was another leaf. In a span of three weeks, she lost nine of her precious leaves. With each day and each leaf gone, I grew increasingly concerned. I would sit in my chair looking at her, thinking. Sometimes I even voiced my thoughts aloud. “Joy, I don’t know what you need. Are you overwatered or too dry?” She had not been a particularly robust plant the day I had bought her and, with so many leaves gone, she started to resemble an upside-down, well used toilet brush with her top still heavy with leaves but the bottom part bare like a broom handle except for two lonely branches with a few forlorn leaves. “I need some sign,” I would whisper to her. “I don’t dare to water you, but I don’t want you to die from thirst.” I dipped my finger into the soil yet again. It was neither moist nor dry. I have a humidifier running every night and it makes a big difference not just to my plants but to my skin as well. Nukus in September is hot and dry. People socialize outside only when the sun goes down. I still shudder, remembering the first Monday of our new school year. On that first day of school, we had our traditional opening ceremony. To this day, I don’t know why we had to gather outside for this important event. We could have taken refuge from the high temperatures in the Assembly Hall. At least there one lonely A/C unit would have tried to keep us alive.
Listening to one national anthem in a language you don’t understand is taxing enough. Double it and place yourself under a scorching sun. That’s what we experienced our first Monday morning. Karakapakstan is an independent republic within Uzbekistan with Nukus its capital. People are proud of their heritage and their language which is very close to Kazak. Each Monday morning during the morning assembly we listen to not just one but two national anthems. One for Karakapakstan and one for Uzbekistan. That first day of school was no different. Before the two anthems finished, two kids had to be taken inside as they were on the verge of collapsing. I too felt the beads of sweat building up on my forehead. I wiped them off and noticed with some gratification that my colleague standing in front of me did not fare much better. His sweat was building up on the collar of his shirt. And then I noticed something else. Louis is shorter than me, so I got a good view of the top of his sleek, black hair. I spent the rest of the first speech wondering if whatever it was in his hair was a booger or hair gel. And does it really matter if you can’t tell the difference? Should I tell him? Will it embarrass him? But to let him wander about all day would be cruel. Finally, I opted to compromise by shifting the responsibility to Dave. “Look! You need to tell him,” I whispered. Before Dave had a chance to respond, I noticed something else. A fifth grader started slowly keeling over a few steps from me. His friend barely caught him before I stepped in and got hold of him. I was surprised how heavy a ten-year-old actually is. They don’t look it, those slim Uzbeks, but the weight doubles under the hot sun. Luckily for me, and him, another two teachers quickly helped and took the boy inside.
The two speeches, one by our director, the other by some ministry representative, were mercifully short. They were of course either in Uzbek or in Karakapak and, listening to them, I felt like Melania Trump with a smile reserved for just such occasions plastered on my face, pretending to care. Listening to the anthems and observing solemn, placid faces around, I had a hard time reconciling the events of the past July. Dave and I were luckily not here at that time, but several of our friends who remained because of their jobs witnessed it firsthand. The news trickled down to the masses that the Uzbek President intended to take a very special sentence out of the text of the Constitution. The critical text granted the Karakalpakstan people the right to secede from Uzbekistan by referendum at any time. When the rumor got out, the normally placid people, but proud of their special status within Uzbekistan, would have none of it. The events that followed turned Nukus into an unsafe place. Protests I could not envision prior to July erupted in several places, the National Guard got involved, things escalated, people died, and a state of emergency was declared for the rest of the month. The President backpedaled quickly, announcing on all available channels that it was all misunderstanding, that the precious sentence was never intended to disappear. But the damage was done. Some friends working for Doctors Without Border confirmed, once the Internet came back after being down for almost three weeks, that people had indeed died. How many remained unclear. The war in Ukraine and the clashes on the Kyrgyz/Tajik border at that time overshadowed this relatively minor conflict. But even one life lost is too many. Words have power. Enough to sacrifice a life? Everyone must answer that one alone.