Camel from Kyzylkum

Natasha was set to marry Brian in Buffalo, New York on July 27, 1997. We invited Nikolai to the wedding. He had a hard time getting his visitation visa from Uzbekistan to the United States, and he arrived late. He stayed in Buffalo for about a month. It was the first time after many years that we had seen each other, and we talked a lot. I was working a few days a week in the store in the mall at Niagara Falls at that time, and he even went there with me. He walked through the mall while I worked. I’m sure he felt the same cultural shock and astonishment as I had when I first arrived in the United States and visited Hills department store in Buffalo.

After my working hours, we drove home together. For us, it was another chance to have a genuine conversation. The day he left for Uzbekistan is a vivid memory for me forever. Nikolai did not want to leave, but to keep him in the United States was impossible—he had neither legal permission nor the money to stay illegally and jump through the hoops to get legal status. We were also struggling, so we could not help him. At that time, I knew he was divorced from Olga, his second wife. What I did not know and he did not tell me was how he was living with a woman named Galina in Uchkuduk—we found out about her when she sent us a letter later on. I felt he expected some miracle to happen and he would stay in the United States. He did not want to go back, and it was his last hope. I remember his eyes when we took him to the airport to say the last goodbye—they were full of yearning and sadness. We heard later on that when Nikolai landed in Uzbekistan, all of the gifts he had brought from the United States were confiscated in customs, and he was detained and then thrown into jail. We do not know how long he was in jail and how he got out of it—we did not have any contact with him. I suspect he had to pay a bribe in order to get out. Perhaps Galina helped him to arrange that. Uzbekistan always was and probably still is a very corrupt country.

Approximately one year after his visit to us, Nikolai Gelya retired in Uchkuduk, Uzbekistan. As part of the retirement program, he got an apartment in the city of Poltava in Ukraine where he moved with Galina. For those people who worked for many years in the industry and were retiring, a special arrangement with apartments in Russia or Ukraine was available as a part of the retirement package. It made sense because the little city in the middle of the desert was built to provide for the needs of working people and could not offer anything for the lifestyle of the retired workers. The arid climate of the desert would have added a very negative effect to a person who would spend his retirement years there, too.

The 1990s were very strenuous years for the country we came from, as chaos ruled everywhere. In 1998, an economic austerity program was begun in Ukraine, which was based on a sharp cut in government spending. It was triggered by the Southeast Asia economic collapse. International investors had begun to quit the Ukrainian treasury bond market, increasing concerns of a looming financial crisis in the country. In Ukraine, Nikolai could not get his pension money because he worked in Uzbekistan. Since the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, Ukraine and Uzbekistan became two separate countries with ever-changing sets of laws. There was also a shortage of food, and Nikolai had to work as a night watchman for the store. It was at that time for Nikolai when his alcohol addiction became the only way to reduce the stress and escape the dreadful reality around him. We knew very little of his and Galina’s life together in Poltava, Ukraine, since letters from Nikolai came to us very rarely.