Ghost Train to the Eastern Star

Because even the most absorbing travel involves spells of tedium, it is boring to relate one's complaints about delays. This open-air border crossing took half a day—another rainy day. I was anxious, because I had checked out of Turkmenistan and could not reenter. I could enter Uzbekistan only when I was allowed. But in the course of waiting in the rain to pass through the fence to the Jalkym customs post, I got acquainted with an old Turkmen who was traveling with his wife and daughter. He spoke no English, I had no Turkmen, and yet he grasped that I was going by road to Bukhara, and he gave me to understand that he was going to a village called Qorakol, about halfway there. Gesturing and grunting, he conveyed to me that we could go together.

I said, "Okay."

"Okay, okay."

He was a powerfully built man in his fifties, wearing a lambskin cap and a heavy coat. Both of the women with him wore cloaks, and head-scarves that were yanked forward to keep the rain off, so I could hardly see their faces; but I could tell that one woman was younger than the other. They were drenched, their boots muddy. In this group of people waiting to enter Uzbekistan there was very little chatter. I took this to mean that some were Uzbeks and the others Turkmen. They had the solemn patience of the poor in the presence of soldiers, with plastic bags for luggage and wet heads.

Hours of this. It was now midafternoon. No signs of life on the other side of the fence. But then a soldier appeared. The Turkmen called out to him. The soldier walked away, into his shed. Half an hour later he emerged and walked the fifty yards to the fence.

The Turkmen said something to him, the soldier cracked open the gate, and then, in a paternal gesture, the Turkmen helped the two women through, and finally he pushed me through, while the others stared. We walked to the shed, but by the time I got there all I saw in the drafty open-sided structure were two soldiers at a table. I handed over my passport.

"America," one said. He examined my passport, turning the pages slowly, wetting his thumb with saliva, and transferring the saliva to my passport.

The other soldier shrugged and stamped it and gestured for me to leave the shed in the direction of Bukhara, another empty stony road.

There on the road, standing near an old jalopy, a beat-up Lada with a broken windshield, was the Turkmen and his two women. He beckoned to me. He introduced me to the driver, a small, sad-looking man in a dirty sweater.

"Bukhara," I said.

"Qorakol," the Turkmen said.

"Five dollar," the Uzbek said and showed me five fingers.

I paid and, doors banging, springs creaking, tires bumping, we began to race across the desert, the drizzle streaking the dust on the cracked windshield.

The driver's name was Farrukh. He wasn't a taxi driver. He was one of the men you see at such places: he owned an old car, and he knew—as all such men know—that at borders like this he could find helpless people in need of a lift. Since so few people were allowed to leave Turkmenistan, and no one with any sense wanted to enter, business was slow.

I considered myself lucky, up to a point. There was always the chance—it had happened to me before—that the driver was an opportunist. Farrukh's first promising sign was that he asked for the $5 in advance. Dishonest drivers said, "Pay me later," and on arrival at the destination there would be threats and a shakedown. In another classic crooked maneuver, the driver might pull off the road, choosing a ghoul-haunted woodland, and tell me that he wanted more money, or else no more ride. There were more menacing ploys too, involving dire threats and lethal weapons.

After an hour we came to Qorakol, a town of low cement houses. The side streets were littered with baseball-sized rocks. Boys stood watching us, the only car. One yanked on a goat's tether, another kicked a tin can. The rain came down. The Turkmen in the rear seat gave directions and was dropped off at the gate of a high wall. He beckoned me out of the car—why? Yet I got out, and when I did, he embraced me in a big bear hug, as thanks for my paying, and then he wished me salaam and placed his hand on his heart, the most touching of Asiatic gestures.

"Bukhara," Farrukh said.

It was another forty miles through the desert. Farrukh drove fast—it seemed he was not going to rob me. My bag was in his trunk, my briefcase in my lap. From it I heard a familiar buzzing—my BlackBerry, which had not worked since Tbilisi, was alerting me to messages, now that we were in Uzbekistan and away from the enclosed world of Turkmenbashi.

A message from Penelope. She was worried. She had not heard from me for quite a while. Where was I?

We were passing a settlement of one-story stucco houses, Farrukh slowing down for the potholes. I made a querying gesture, to ask the name.

"Jondor," he said.