July 10, 2010
Three Rocks
The first rock hit me on the leg right under the knee. The road was full of newly laid gravel, so I ignored it and kept walking. The second rock hit me in the back between the shoulder blades. A quick sharp pain took me out of my reverie, and back onto the unpaved road I took to the subway from the library. It was summer of 1993, the last summer before my final year in high school. I had already set my sights on entering the English Language Department of the World Languages University, and spent most of that summer at the library practicing my English in a Conversation Club led by a group of American expatriates.
The library was a small old building with elegant columns and a wide staircase located in the Old City of Tashkent. There were very few old buildings left after the earthquake in 1966, but this one survived; the paint was chipping off the columns, the floor inside was in terrible disrepair, the roof leaked after heavy rains (which, thankfully, were not a frequent visitor in this region), but it still had that old charm of the bygone era. The Old City was not an official name, but rather something people used to describe the northwest part of town, which was spared by the Soviet architects and the infamous earthquake alike.
The labyrinth of dusty narrow streets lined by mudbrick houses and mosques, the famous huge open air market, Chorsu Bazaar, selling fresh produce, spices, cheeses, meats, clothes and every imaginable household item, were not the only artifacts the Old City preserved. It was also a stronghold of a more conservative faction of local Islam. Women were more piously dressed and men on the constant lookout for transgression. I was aware of the district’s reputation, and, during those library trips, had been given a fair share of glares and called names I do not wish to repeat. I dreaded the long trips to the library, but I never once considered not going.
Every other day I would get up early before the heat would grow unbearable, take a cold shower, eat a quick breakfast, put on the most modest outfit I could come up with, and walk to the bus stop. On my luckier days the bus would arrive within twenty minutes. On other days, I’d spend an hour or more under a narrow benchless bus enclosure. Normally, waiting for an hour would not cause me much discomfort- my life up until then taught me to be patient in the face of omnipresent red-tape and delays, but waiting for a bus in the summer had always been my least favorite kind of waiting. The bright sun, unsparingly scorching despite the early hour, would tire me out before I set out for my journey. There used to be schedules posted on every bus stop, but it seemed that with the collapse of the Soviet Union the new government abandoned all pretense of order.
Most buses were old, overcrowded, and smelled of gasoline and body odor. Grungy men in unwashed clothes would send me lascivious smiles and try to get close and rub against me. Overweight women with gold teeth, baskets, swollen plastic bags, and wailing children would push me aside to get to that one rare seat by the window. Riding on local buses was always an exercise in humility. I would close my eyes and imagine I was somewhere else, where another passenger’s sharp elbow did not threaten to fracture my ribcage and the air smelled of freshly washed laundry. Sometimes, I would practice irregular verbs or recite a poem. Since taking my books out was not an option, I learned to visualize textbook pages and go over them one by one mentally turning them over. Once I got to the subway station, I would promptly disentangle myself from the crowd and sprint inside, dreaming of nothing else but a never-ending cold shower. I would breathe in the cool air of the subway with some relief, but this was just the beginning. I still had to take two subway trains to get to my destination.
The Chilanzar line would be packed with people carrying all sorts of oddly shaped objects: bags of clothes and cigarettes, baskets of freshly baked bread, children’s toys and bicycles. Sometimes, when the trains were too full, the uniformed subway workers would walk down the line and forcibly push people inside in order to close the doors. I sighed as I finally made it inside the train and found myself squeezed against the sign specifying the nature and dimensions of objects allowed on the subway. Had the posted rules been abided by, it would have been a lot easier to breathe, both literally and figuratively. Sadly, it seemed that many signs and social norms had become largely optional for people too intent on surviving to pay them any mind.
When I arrived at Pahtakor station, I knew I was on the home stretch: only one more train to go. This was the shortest part of the trip, but also the most strenuous. If the Chilanzar line was busy, the Uzbekistan line, that would take me to the Chorsu station, was always complete pandemonium. Crowds arriving from two different subway lines would join, like a confluence of two broad gurgling rivers, and get packed promptly but inefficiently into arriving trains. The expression about sardines packed in a can does not come close to describing how crowded the place was; the sardines might have had a mighty good time compared to the people on the subway, but for the fact that they were dead. It was a tenuous distinction at best, as far as I was concerned, when after being pushed, pulled, poked and groped, I’d finally make it. I braced myself as I envisioned getting on the train. Sometimes, I would dive into the human flow and let the crowd carry me inside: other times I would just stand there dazed before I could regain my senses and take the plunge.
“Why do you have to study so much?” my mother would say. “You don’t have to go the library every other day, do you?” I did not share any of the unpleasant incidents with my family, because their solution would be not going. The trips were exhausting and took a toll on my mood, making me either irritable or morose the day after. This was a time when everyone was fighting some sort of a battle: lack of money, loss of a job, or the general uncertainty about the future. Some struggled with all their might trying to take control of their lives, others watched passively by, fatalistically going with the proverbial flow.
My parents took the latter path, unable and unwilling to change themselves to fit their new realities. Both trained as engineers, they had their moderately paid but stable jobs, my mother working for the Academy of Sciences and my father for the Ministry of Internal Affairs. After the collapse, the Academy lost most of its funding, as research was no longer a priority, and the Ministry had undergone a reshuffle resulting in longer hours, more supervision and less pay. “We are not able to sell or steal,” my father would passionately declare at the dinner table. “Nor do we have wealthy relatives,” my mother would chime in. At times I felt infuriated by their passivity. It felt like my life was slipping away in the most mundane and unexciting way, and they did not seem to grasp the urgency of the situation. Young people, and I was certainly no exception, have a tendency to be very self-centered: only later did it dawn on me what they might have been going through at the time.
While the older generation overwhelmed by a new world order was flung into inertia, the younger generation embraced our newly found freedom in a most precarious way. Schools were ill-prepared to provide guidance; barely scraping by to keep their buildings intact and have enough teachers. The stern looking babushkas, previously an indispensible attribue of any neighborhood, suddenly abandonded their posts as unappointed guardians of social mores having to supplement their meager state pensions by selling everything they could bear to part with at spontaneously errupting street markets. Having been raised under strict adult supervision, my generation was suddenly left to fend for itself when we reached our teens. As a result, many were lost to alcohol, drugs, and prisons. It was an exciting time full of hope and latent possibilites, a short window in history as the old monster of a regime was dying but the new fledgling one was still too weak to take hold. This was the time to make it or break it.
I was still unsure about what I wanted to do in life, but with the ache of youth I longed for change. I was surprised to learn from my American teachers that people in the West thought our situation had recently improved. Gone were the shackles of communism and the free people were supposed to rejoice and embrace their new identity as a democracy. Rejoice I did, not having to hear about the Communist party and its achievements no one believed in anymore, but it seemed that most people were too immersed in their daily struggles to pay any attention to the new political order. As the new government staged a half-hearted experiment in democracy, its people whole-heartedly embraced the notion of the survival of the fittest. Going to the library had become my personal struggle that summer. I needed to hold on to something not to be subsumed by the chaos of the times.
The third rock whooshed past my right ear taking a small piece of my skin with it. I touched my ear instinctively, and gazed at my red fingers still not completely aware of what had just happened. When I heard more rocks flying by, and landing on the gravel behind me, the fear kicked in and I ran. I heard voices of young boys behind me, voices full of raw hatred. They were shouting in broken Russian and Uzbek as they were picking up handfuls of gravel and sending them in my direction. All sorts of thoughts raced through my head as I was running, but mostly I was shocked at how much hatred these boys had harbored in their young hearts. I remember thinking that no child could possibly be born with that much hate. I wondered what had caused it and made it grow.
I wished I had worn a pair of jeans that day instead of a long summer skirt that I thought would be less provocative in this neighborhood. The mermaid shaped skirt loosely hugged my waist, hips, and knees, which made running almost impossible. The flip-flops I was wearing did not help either: my feet kept sliding to the sides and getting hurt on the rough gravel. To make things worse, my backpack full of heavy dictionaries and library books was dragging me down.
“Urus djalab,” I heard a boy behind me yell, spewing saliva mixed with anger. He must have been only ten. He was dark-skinned and scrawny, his clothing consisting only of a pair of ill-fitting shorts and rubber sandals. “Russian whore? Me?!” I thought indignantly as I ran. I was neither Russian, nor a whore. I did not even have a boyfriend, what with spending most of my time at the library that summer. Part of me wanted to turn around, grab the boy by the ear and give him a good spanking, but I knew there were more of them, some my age, some younger, some older. I did not even want to imagine what would happen to me if they surrounded me. Warm tears of helplessness welled up in my eyes, but there was no time to feel sorry for myself, I had to keep running.
Most of the makeshift stalls were closed for the day, but there were a few still open with men and older women selling cigarettes, candy, and soft drinks. I hoped that when I reached that stretch of the road, the boys would be deterred by adults and stop chasing after me. To my dismay, the two middle-aged men seemed amused rather than disturbed by the scene in front of them. They exchanged some comments that I could not hear, and snickered. The women gave me a quick look over and busied themselves with packing their skimpy merchandise. My only hope was the subway station. I gathered all my strength and ran on. My heartbeat loudly reverberated though my entire body. My mouth went dry. Time seemed to freeze.
I forged into the station just barely escaping from my pursuers. My skirt was covered with dust, my feet bleeding and sweat pouring down my neck. I took out a handkerchief that my mother insisted I carry with me at all times, and wiped my face. I do not remember the long trip back. A myriad of faces swept in front of me, trains and buses came and went, light turned to dark, late afternoon heat gave way to an evening breeze. Time was no longer static; it was moving again. It kept moving me away from the incident, from uncertainty, from fear, into the present tranquility of my life in a new country. No matter how far or fast the time moves those three rocks are always with me as mental souvenirs of my narrow escape.
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