Ghost Train to the Eastern Star

I heard the whistle blow. The train slowly left Ashgabat Station, and within minutes we were in the desert. The old man was monologuing to the student.

"He says that some years ago, an astronaut went to the moon," the student said. "He was from America. When he got to the moon, he heard a strange noise. It was an azan—the call to prayer, usually chanted by a muezzin from a mosque. "The astronaut recorded it. When he came back to Earth, the scientists in America analyzed it, and they came to think that it was the voice of the Prophet Muhammad."

"On the moon?"

"Yes. On the moon."

The old man was still speaking, his chin beard swinging.

"Furthermore, he says that because of this, the astronaut became a Muslim and began praying five times a day."

The old man was facing me, as though defying me to mock the story.

"I haven't heard this story," I said.

"He says he believes it."

"What does he think about it?"

When this question was translated, the student said, "For him, it's good news."

It seemed to me like a Turkmenistan version of a Pat Robertson story: divine intervention in an unlikely place, resulting in a beatific conversion, the sun breaking through the clouds. Instead of Jesus speaking to a searcher, the speaker was Muhammad; but it came to the same thing. Muslims at the fringe always sounded to me like born-again Christians, literal-minded and impervious to reason. An Arabic scholar once told me that a persistent urban myth in the Middle East was that Neil Armstrong, sometimes confused with Louis Armstrong, converted to Islam.

But as all of us were going to Mary, the best tactic on this overnight train journey was to get along, perhaps keep off the subject of religion.

As I was thinking this, the old man was talking to the student.

"He asks if you believe in God."

"I have a lot of questions on this subject," I said.

"He asks, 'But do you believe in life after death?'"

"I don't know about this. No one has ever come back from the dead to tell us anything, so how can we know?"

"The Holy Koran tells us"

"I intend to read it when I have a chance."

The old man, who was seated across from me, spoke directly to me in Turkmen and became very animated.

"He says: 'The grass grows. Then the grass turns brown. Then the grass dies. Then it grows again. It turns green and gets tall.'"

The old man was still staring, his face narrow, one skinny gnarled hand in his lap, the other gripping the long gray beard attached to his chin. His arthritic hands gave him an even greater look of piety.

"He says, 'Life is like that, I believe.'"

"Tell him I agree. Life is like that, even where I'm from."

"Where are you from?"

"Tell him America."

The old Muslim received this information with more interest than I had expected.

"He asks, 'Do you have cotton in America?'"

"Lots of it."

"Is it a good type of cotton?"

"Very good," I said.

"He is wondering how many hectares of cotton are growing in America."

"Tell him I'm not sure. Why is he interested?"

"He works in the cotton industry."

"What does he do?"

When this question was asked, the man showed me his ruined hands, his twisted fingers.

"He picks cotton in the fields some distance from Mary—near Yeloten, south on the road to Afghanistan, where there are cotton farms."

So he lived (according to my map) a few hundred miles from the Afghanistan border, a day's drive, not far from the ancient city of Herat, which I had visited on my first Railway Bazaar trip. Now Herat was dominated by a clan of well-armed warriors and a paranoid and vindictive warlord. A German traveler had been arrested there, tortured, and shot as a spy just a month before, a fate I wished to avoid.

The old man's name was Selim. He told me his simple history. He had been born near Mary. He had not gone to school. As a boy he worked in the fields, and had picked cotton his whole life—mostly Soviet times. He had married a woman from his clan and they'd had four children.

"I think you are about sixty," he said.

When I told him my age, he challenged me to guess his. He looked about seventy, so I guessed sixty. He laughed and said he was fifty.

At my Ashgabat farewell party in a Turkmen household, I had been given a bag of food for the train—spinach pies, mushroom turnovers, sticky buns, all wrapped in paper. In the dim light of the compartment I unwrapped the food.

"Ask them if they'll share my food," I said to the student.

They nodded politely when the question was translated, and so I handed the food around—to Selim, the young soldier, the student, and a hanger-on gaping in the doorway. Elderly-looking, gray-bearded Selim—could he really be fifty?—asked a question.

"He says, 'Ask the American if we can say a prayer.'"

"Of course," I said and nodded to the man.