Camel from Kyzylkum

Nikolai brought me to Navoi, but he had to return immediately to our geological party to continue to work while I waited for my delivery date. Right before he left, Nikolai went to a little radio station that kept in contact with our geological party by transmitting messages. He asked the radioman to send him a message as soon as the radioman received a phone call about my delivery. To make it easier for the radioman, he wrote a template of a message for him to transmit. It read something like this: “To Nikolai Gelya. Larisa has delivered a daughter/son and is waiting for you to come.” The radioman promised everything would be okay on his end. Nikolai and I said goodbye to each other, and he went back to work.

Two endless weeks still lay ahead before our baby came. I didn’t know anyone except our friend, so I started out anxious and lonely during those two weeks waiting for the baby. I was astonished to see Nikolai return just two days later. He, too, was wondering why I was still walking around with my big tummy. What happened was that the radioman got very drunk the day Nikolai left, and he saw the template of the message in front of him and transmitted it to our geological party for Nikolai: “Larisa has delivered a daughter (the radioman skipped ‘son’).” That’s why Nikolai had to do an extra trip back to Navoi and then return again to his work before my delivery date. Excessive drinking was a common problem in the Soviet Union, and in the geological industry, it seemed especially pronounced.

Finally, on June 14, 1969, our daughter, Natalya Gelya (Natasha for short), was born—the radioman had been right about the baby’s gender. The delivery went relatively easy (I spent only two hours in labor) and had no complications. Four days later, three of us were heading back to our little place in the middle of the desert that we called home. First, we took a train and then rode 60 more kilometers in the back of a big, heavy-duty truck, through the dusty passage in the sands, under the sweltering desert sun.

I was nineteen at the time and knew very little about how to take care of a newborn baby in such extremely harsh living conditions. We made milk from a dry powder mix—I still hate its taste even now. We cooked food on a make-believe stove: electrical spirals in the grooves of a brick. In the hot summertime, we slept with buckets of water near the bed—to make our sheets wet from time to time in an effort to cool ourselves. All of these adversities did not prevent us from being happy and enjoying our life together. We were young and had a lot of friends. Meanwhile, Natasha was growing. She started to walk and liked to play with camels that hung out near the cistern that held the water—we all used this water for drinking and cooking. Sometimes camels managed to open the faucet, then they drank as much water as they needed before walking away. We would get up in the morning to find out that we had no water until the next delivery was to be made.

One evening, while I was watching the sun go down where the dry brown land and always blue sky met, I thought, “I do not want to live here for the rest of my life. It is time to move out of here.” Soon, in 1972, we had moved to a bit more civilized place—to the geological expedition in the Muruntau region.