Ghost Train to the Eastern Star

"You might have a problem at the border," I was told. "They might hassle you. They could seriously hold you up."

So I walked three times around the tomb of Jaffari and Bureda.

What I liked of Merv was its innocence—no fences, no postcards, no pests, few signs, not even much respect. In this shattered and somewhat forgotten place in the desert, some visitors scrambled up and down the steep walls, kicking them apart, picking up pieces of broken pottery, and others picnicked among the crenelations. It was possible to see young Turkmen boys genially pissing on the ruins. This was what became of pompous plans: the trickle of urine darkening the dust, the laughter of picnickers scattering crumbs and plov grains, spilling lemonade.

I was shown the old cistern and the Sassanid dome and the rebuilt ("Notice the squeenches," Evgenia said) Sultan Sanjar Mosque ("Double dome, two khundred years before Brunelleschi designed Saint Peter's in Roma"), the third-century wall of Antiochus, the big ruined Buddhist stupa, the ice house, the site of the Mongol invasion where a million people were slaughtered, the ruined watchtowers...

And masses of tamarisks with purple blossoms graced the watchtowers. A sharp-angled falcon glided slowly above, circling, stalking. In the distance some men were grazing a herd of camels. Three small boys approached us where we stood. They were mounted on donkeys, yelling and galloping across an ancient wall, leaving hoofprints on it. They had no saddles, they held on to rope bridles, they kicked their skinny gray mounts.

"They are Beluchis, from Persia," Evgenia said. "They settled here many years ago."

These human touches made the place real for me. Evgenia said that local people, superstitious about the aura of slaughter and conquest, avoided Merv and used it only to pasture their animals or to pilfer bricks. Goatherds huddled by the single remaining part of the exposed wall of the complex known as Gyaur Kala. The sun was setting on Merv. The shepherds' fire scorched the ancient bricks as they cooked their evening meal.

***

IN MARY, OVER ANOTHER mound of plov, a young Turkmen—formerly an exchange student in the United States, a recent university graduate, new to Mary—listed for me the problems in his country.

"First of all, it is a police state," he said. "We have secret police, we have spies, it is terrible. It is also a corrupt system. It is impossible to advance in any government job without bribes. Even going to a university requires bribing the admissions office. And if you are non-Turkmen, forget about it. You'll never get in."

Unemployment was high, the teacher shortage was acute, salaries were low—a university professor pedaling his bike past the gold statues earned about $150 a month. The minimum wage was $20 a month; a cotton picker like Selim did not earn much more than that. Add to this the housing shortage, the potholes that characterized most streets, the interminable roadblocks and grouchy soldiers, the disgusting toilets.

"Many people are desperate."

"Give me an example," I said.

"Girls sell themselves on the street! Didn't you see them in Ashgabat?"

I had seen pretty girls on street corners—and by the way, all the major streets were named for members of Turkmenbashi's family—but how was I to know they were selling themselves?

"Where were you in the United States?" I asked, because he now and then mentioned his American host family. And he remarked on the fact that he had been twenty-two when he went to the United States but that this was his first time in Mary.

"Spokane."

"After what you've told me about Turkmenistan, do you sometimes wish you'd stayed there?"

"No. I am a Turkmen. I love my country. I would only go to the USA in order to make money and send it to my parents."

I met other former exchange students. They were cautious when they talked to me, for fear that anything they said would expose them to retribution.

But many of them said that life was hard, and it wasn't just the low salaries and the housing shortage. Because Turkmenistan was so near to the heroin-producing areas of Afghanistan, hard drugs were a serious problem in the country. Heroin addicts were numerous, and their need for money caused crime. Turkmenistan was also a transshipment route for drugs from Afghanistan to Russia. Afghan hashish was freely available.

In Mary I was told that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs was still watching me, and that this might be a good time to head east, to Turkmenabat and the Uzbek border. Someone would be sent to help me.

And one morning a man showed up at my hotel, the Margush. I shall call him Sedyk Ali. He said he had been deputized to accompany me to the border. He too had been an exchange student.

"What did you like about the States?"

"Good people. Clean conditions. No bribes."

"Tell me what you didn't like."

"The way that children treat their elders. Not good."