Ghost Train to the Eastern Star

I had agreed to give a harmless pep talk in Ashgabat to some writers and journalists. About thirty men and women showed up at a sort of boardroom in a hotel that the U.S. embassy used as an annex. This being Turkmenistan, they were of every physical type: stylish women in velvet dresses and white collars with the impassive faces of nomads, dark beaky men in heavy coats, younger mustached men in suits, Russian aunties in blue dresses and carrying satchels, some hefty warrior types braced behind their chairs with arms folded, a furtive man fussing with a big shoulder bag, and two pale young women, slender Slavic beauties with lank blond hair, standing shyly by the wall, staring at me with limpid blue eyes.

My topic was again the return journey, the pleasure of a traveler's growing older, how the passage of time reveals the truth of people and places. I spoke for about twenty minutes, with a young Turkmen translator who was fluent in English. At the end there was polite applause. The man who had been fussing with his shoulder bag had taken out an expensive camera and begun snapping pictures.

"Any questions?"

Hands shot up.

"What do you think of Islam?" one man asked.

I made a tactful reply, commending the verses of the Koran encouraging hospitality that I, a traveler among Muslims, appreciated, and quickly I moved on to the next question.

"I am a poet," one of the Russian aunties declared. She went on to ask how she might get her poems translated into English and published in the United States.

I referred her to the fellow who had translated her question.

"How do you write a novel?" a young man asked.

I mentioned needing an idea, and characters, and a setting, and about two years of solitude.

"You are not here for very long," another man said. "How can you understand us in such a short time?"

"You're right," I said. "It's impossible. So what particular thing do you think it's important for me to understand about Turkmenistan?"

"Do you know about the pensions?"

"No, I don't. Tell me"

"The government has reduced the state pensions for some people," he said, his voice rising. "In some cases, these were people who were granted pensions by the Soviet government, but when Turkmenistan became independent, these were eliminated. What do you think of that?"

As he spoke, the man with the camera leaned over and began snapping his picture.

He turned and snapped my picture as I said, "We have a similar problem in the United States. A lot of older people will have to work longer because the government pension fund is running out of money. The qualifying age for Social Security is now almost sixty-six, and it's rising."

"But what about us?" the questioner asked. Now his voice was strident. "This situation is serious."

The photographer positioned himself at the edge of the row of chairs and was clicking away.

"You're not getting your pension?"

"Many thousands of people are not getting it! They were workers. Now they're old and they have nothing to live on. This is a wealthy country, but they are poor. The government has done this to us. Why don't you write about that?"

"You're a writer—all you people are writers," I said. "You are the people who should write about it, not me. You have all the facts. So why don't you do it?"

"I am not a writer," the man said. "I am chairman of the Unity and Neutrality Party of Turkmenistan."

Before this could be translated, the photographer leaped forward and snapped pictures from several angles, his shoulder bag bumping his side.

And then an American security officer took three strides towards the photographer and, approaching him from behind, grasped his coat in one hand and snatched the camera with his other hand. He frog-marched the man to the back of the room and outside. This all happened so fast, the photographer did not have time to protest, though I heard him howl as the door slammed.

"Do you write about love?" one of the pretty blue-eyed women asked.

Constantly, I said. I elaborated on this subject, and then declared the meeting over. The room emptied quickly.

But the harm was done. I had allowed a political dissident a forum. It turned out that this was the first anyone had heard of this underground party. And there was collateral damage, so to speak, for the writers and journalists who had been quietly invited (many of them unpopular with the government) had all been photographed. The photographer was a government spy, sent to make a record of the meeting and to report on what had been said.

"Not good," said the young man who had done the translating.

"What just happened?" I asked the American security man.

I had been impressed by his deftness: without hesitating, almost without creating a scene, he had plucked the man and his camera from the room. Out in the corridor, the security man had popped out the camera's memory card and wiped it of its images as the photographer howled. The force of this expulsion came afterwards, like a shock wave, when it was apparent what had just occurred.