Camel from Kyzylkum

Greeley Street

AFTER BEING IN MY FIRST apartment on Delaware Street for four months, I moved to the first floor of a little house on Greeley Street. The house was old and small, but cozy. I installed new wallpaper in the kitchen, painted walls in the bathroom, and put in new window treatments. Soon it became my home sweet home. The owner of the house was Rose Marie, a widow who lived in a nice house in North Buffalo. She had three adult children from her first husband, who was Armenian. Her second, Indian husband, was a doctor who had passed away. Rose Marie was (and still is) a very interesting person. She traveled to faraway countries where she taught English and helped those who had been deprived of their human rights. We became friends, and our friendship continues at present.

Rose Marie moved to Boulder, Colorado, around 1998 and still lives there. In November 2004, Sparky and I visited her in Boulder. She took us to dinner at the Boulder Dushanbe Teahouse. Its hand-carved and hand-painted ceiling, tables, stools, columns, and exterior ceramic panels had been made in the sister city of Dushanbe, the capital of Tajikistan, and shipped to Boulder. Tajikistan and Dushanbe in particular, are very familiar to me as I had my first summer internship from the Geological College in the expedition at the Pamir Mountains near Dushanbe. There I was badly bitten by the Akbash dog that guards sheep in the mountains.

At that time, Tajikistan was (and still is) a small, mountainous country in Central Asia, lying side by side with Afghanistan. It was one of the republics of the Soviet Union. This was a land where one could feel the breath of the romance of oriental fairy tales and the Great Silk Road. In Dushanbe, people immediately understood that they were in the East. All women wore bright trousers and tunics, and colorful scarves were wrapped around their heads. Dushanbe was a pleasant city: mature Plane trees growing on both sides of the streets created green canopies that, even in the hot summer, maintained a comfortable climate; people were friendly. Another attraction of Dushanbe was an amazing market with an abundance of local produce such as nuts, dried and fresh fruit, vegetables, meat, spices, and Tajik-style round bread. The most striking and unforgettable for me were two items in the Dushanbe market: pyramids of yellow melons—enormous, oblong and pointy at the ends like an American football; also piles of grapes called “Ladies fingers”—one of the most ancient and delicious grape varieties, which got its name from the elongated shape of the berries. The Tajik-style round bread with “Ladies fingers” grapes always made an excellent lunch.

Another reason why I remember and love Dushanbe even now is because my love story with Nikolai Gelya started there.

Nikolai had just graduated from the same college that I was in and got his first job in a different geological expedition not far from Dushanbe. It was a tradition for all of us youngsters who worked in the geological expeditions around Dushanbe—to descend from the mountains and to meet in one particular restaurant in Dushanbe on Friday evenings to start a weekend of fun. I remember how I walked into the restaurant and felt someone's gaze on me. I looked up and, sure enough, a handsome young fellow with big greenish eyes was looking right at me. When our eyes met, he smiled at me, looking friendly, and I smiled back. He made sure to take a seat next to me at the dinner table. We talked, we laughed, we danced until it was way past midnight. Then we wandered around the sleeping city until morning, talking about ourselves and everything else in the world. After this day, we couldn't wait for the next weekend to come. When I was in the hospital after being bitten by the Akbash dog, Nikolai came to visit me. When summer and my internship were over, I had to return to Kiev, but at this point we decided that we were going to be together. Nikolai was transferred to work in the Kyzylkum Desert, and I joined him there just before New Year’s Day, 1969.