Ghost Train to the Eastern Star

Taking his suggestion, I hurried out of the station and into the nighttime snow flurry to the market. I bought noodles, beer, water, and chocolate cookies, and over the next seven days, whenever I saw Nobu, I thanked him for his suggestion. I did not see him often. He was traveling hard class and I was in soft.

We watched an express train pull out of the station for China. It would arrive in Harbin, capital of Heilongjiang Province, the following morning. Most of the passengers were Chinese traders who had come to Vladivostok to sell clothes and household goods and electronics. They were taking nothing back to China but money. They looked delighted to be heading home.

About an hour before the Rossiya left, I found my coach and introduced myself to the conductor, a woman in a Russian Railways uniform—black jacket with gold braid, black skirt, black boots. She showed me to my compartment, calling it a kupe, where a dark balding man with Levantine features was already sitting, talking on the phone.

"Where are you going?" I asked. If he said Moscow, I would have him as a roommate for seven days.

"Khabarovsk," he said.

"Tomorrow?" I said.

He confirmed this. He said there was no flight there—in most of Siberia the only reliable way to get around was the railway. He added that his English wasn't very good. But it wasn't bad, though he had a heavy accent. His name was Rashid. He was about fifty, a Kurd, originally from Iraq but had been brought to Armenia with his parents in the 1960s. For close to twenty years he had been living in remote Kamchatka, a frozen appendage of far eastern Siberia in the Sea of Okhotsk. He was a businessman in Petropavlovsk. He had four children—he showed me their pictures, stored on his cell phone.

"You're nearer to Alaska than Moscow."

"I been Yeleska." He'd done a circuit, starting and finishing in the Arctic: Kamchatka-Yeleska-Meeamee-Yolando-Deesnee Whorl-Teexah-Yeleska-Kamchatka.

As we were talking, the train whistle blew and we left Vladivostok, heading north to Khabarovsk and then turning left for the long haul around northeastern China.

Seeing that I had pulled out my map, Rashid put his finger on Afghanistan and said, "I was here, too. And here. And here."

"What doing?"

"Fighting."

Moving his finger, he traced his route through towns to the east and south of Mazar-i-Sharif, the places where he had fought in the Soviet army from 1985 to 1987, marching with his battalion, dragging cannons, firing on Afghan positions. He smiled as he read the names of the towns he'd bivouacked in: "Kunduz!...Baghlan!"

"What do you think about that war?"

"Big mistake."

"For you?"

"For us. For you. For anyone. Afghanistan"—and he smiled again—"I seenk no one can win in Afghanistan, except Afghanistan people."

Rashid made a few more phone calls while I sorted out papers. To keep busy, I intended to write notes for a memory of my father. Since his death, I had been unable to write about him without becoming sad; but now, almost twelve years on, I felt it was time. He was a loving father, a private man, and a hard worker without any obvious ambition. Although he was a reader of history, of classic novels, he had never read anything I'd written; or, if he had, he'd never mentioned the fact to me.

With a week of solitude on the train ahead of me, I knew I could write a portrait of this kind and somewhat mysterious man.

Suddenly Rashid said, "Why America doesn't like Azerbaijan?"

"I'm not sure."

"They are on side of Georgia."

"There aren't many Armenians in America, but they're powerful. They want the U.S. government to settle the Nagorno-Karabakh problem."

"Political problem! It's all stupid." He laughed. He pointed to himself. "I live in Kamchatka!"

It was like saying he was from another planet, and a glance at the map confirmed it. He said he'd gone to Kamchatka after he'd finished fighting in Afghanistan and left the army. I had the impression that his wish was to get as far away from political follies as possible.

I said, "Rashid, you're a Muslim?"

"Not Muslim. Zoroastrian. When the sun comes up, I pray."

"Where else are there Zoroastrians?"

"Plenty in Iraq. Plenty in Turkey. India—many."

This led to talk of the Iraq War.

"America in Iraq," he said, shaking his head. "Yes, Saddam was a problem. He killed my people. He gassed them, he bombed them. Not good. But this American war? It is"—he spread his hands for emphasis— "disaster."

He went back to phoning, I went back to reading the history of the yakuza I'd bought in Niigata. Then I was drowsing, and I turned my reading light off. Rashid did the same. Then I heard him clear his throat.

"Who will be next president?" he said in the darkness, over the banging of the train's wheels.

"I don't know."

"Maybe Gillary," he said.

"Gillary?"

"Gillary Cleenton."

"I like Obama."

"Black one. Good one, I seenk," he said.

I slept soundly, and the next morning at nine we arrived in Khabarovsk. Rashid gave me a bag of tangerines he'd bought in Vladivostok and stepped into the snow.