Ghost Train to the Eastern Star

Samarkand was a jolting stop at two in the morning. I could have gotten out and looked for a man with a jalopy, but I was half asleep and cold. The drunks, still drunk, were dragging themselves out of the compartment. Two more women got on. I glanced at the man in the luggage hole, and he waved an I'm all right signal to me and ducked his head, so I did not have to change places after all.

Nine of us in a four-person compartment, but it was orderly and safe nonetheless. Dirty, though, and smelly too—everyone sleeping in their clothes, the windows shut, wet boots steaming under the seats, stinky luggage, old leather jackets piled in a corner, chicken grease and bread crumbs and grated carrot littering the table. Filthy compartment, gracious people, no hassle: the railway experience of the Eastern Star.

The women were up early making breakfast—boiled eggs, pickled cabbage, chunks of hard bread. Did I want some? Yes, I said, and there we sat, rolling past Chinaz and Yangiyol, still nine of us, friends after a long night, entering the big city.

Shimoly Station—North Station—was one of the largest railway stations I saw on my entire trip, possibly the grandest, lovely even, and swept clean by old women with straw brooms. A ribbon of Uzbek motifs in bright mosaics ran around the top-story façade of this palatial building, which the Soviets had built as a monument to their power and influence in this, the third-largest city in the Soviet Union, now the capital of independent Uzbekistan.

For me it was the end of the line, the first leg of my trip. From here to India or Pakistan, the only overland route crossed the most isolated mountain passes in the world and the antagonistic fastness of the Islamic valleys that produced Al Qaeda recruits and opium growers—perhaps a route to avoid, because it was off the map, beyond the reach of any government or any law but its own, a place of suspicious villages where every woman was veiled and every man armed. It was possibly the most inaccessible area on earth: the Pamir Valley, Waziristan, the NorthWest Frontier, where the Wali of Swat held court. Osama bin Laden was last seen there, but how would any outsider know more than that? There was no road, only a network of mountain footpaths. The nearest railway was the line in Tajikistan that went nowhere except from Dushanbe to Termiz on the border of Afghanistan—nothing helpful to me between Tashkent and Amritsar, though there was a short direct flight.

Spring had come to Tashkent: daffodils in the city gardens, pale sunshine, cherry blossoms, and, as in Georgia and Azerbaijan, people gathered in the parks and gardens, the men to sell the family silver and hawk postcards, the women to prostitute themselves.

"Take me," a young woman said, and pursed her lips to make a kissing sound.

"Tomorrow," I said, so as not to be rude.

On the next corner: "Streep shaw, meester?"

"No, thank you."

"Dreenks?"

"No, thank you."

They were also selling old watches, chewing gum, bathroom fixtures, Soviet memorabilia, candelabra. A man from distant Chukchi offered me a walrus penis and some indigenous ivory carvings. Murat and Zahir specialized in Christian art; it seemed to be a niche market for enterprising Muslims. I bought another icon, for $100.

Rauf, at his stall of pirated videos, was studying English. Like Murat and Zahir and most other Uzbeks I met, he was eager to emigrate to the United States; like them, he hated the war in Iraq. Becoming an American did not interest Rauf much; he seemed to dislike America, but he wanted badly to go to America.

"Business very bad here, but worse in Samarkand," he said.

He was filling in the blanks in an exercise book.

Beside Can you swim? he wrote slowly, No, I cannot swim.

I picked it up. I read the next question: "Do you like to watch TV?"

"Yes, I like."

"Like what?"

"Watch TV."

"Yes, I like to watch TV."

"Yes, I like to watch TV."

I sat down. I read another one: "What did you do last night?"

"With my friends, we listen the music," he said.

"Do you own a car?"

"No, I am not have car?"

I pretended to read a question, saying, "Do you like George Bush?"

"I am not," he said, and stammered with fury, "I am not like Meester Bush President."

Rauf had a sister in Miami who had a green card. He lusted after one himself, and though he was hustling cheap videos and CDs at a stall, he wanted to get out of Uzbekistan and work in America. This eagerness to emigrate to the West seemed to soften people's attitudes towards me—I was never the object of personal hostility, except from the occasional customs official.