Camel from Kyzylkum

Zarafshan

WHEN THE AIRPLANE BEGAN its descent to the little airport of Zarafshan, the city appeared among ochre-colored dunes with clusters of standard blocks of flats built in the 1970s. They did not differ from the ones that could be seen in the outskirts of Moscow, Volgograd, or Novosibirsk. There were no monuments, tourist attractions, restaurants, or old buildings in the city. It was—and still remains—a mirage town, a ghost town, built by prisoners on Communist Party orders. The distance from Zarafshan to Muruntau is around 37 kilometers (23 miles) southeast, and “Zarafshan” translates from Uzbek to mean “gold-bearing”. The sky was unusually clear almost year-round, and the sun was always bright. One could not hide from it. It was always there—above, ahead, to all sides, or behind.

In Zarafshan, we got a real apartment on the eighth floor of a nine-story building. It was 1975, and for the first time in our lives we were living in a real apartment building, not a barracks or tent, and we had a real bathroom and toilet, a kitchen, and two rooms with a balcony. There was no central air conditioning system for the building, and the window air conditioner was not known to us at that time. In the summer months, scorching, desiccating heat prevailed during the day, and nights remained hot long after the sun went down. These all made our existence tough, even in our new apartment. But it was a reality we could not change, so we adjusted our level of tolerance.

We bought our first set of proper furniture. Our nine-story building was in the center of the city, on Lenin Street. Across from our apartment building, the prisoners were building a movie theater, the only movie theater/club in the city when it was done. The prisoners were not in a hurry and would sit for a long time on the roofs of the buildings, observing life behind the barbed wire that surrounded the construction site. Very often they knew us, young women, by name and tried to initiate conversations when we passed by.

From the eighth-floor view of our apartment, the horizon was open on three sides, and I could see far, far away. The biting desert wind was blowing through the city and falling stars streamed above the streetlights at night. The local weather center claimed that Zarafshan was the regional center of dryness. Sometimes, a very aggressive and strong wind called an Afghan (“Афга́нец”) would blow over Zarafshan. The name was coined since it always came from Afghanistan. This wind could occur in any season. In Afghanistan, it is called Kara-Buran, which means “black storm,” or body Shuravi, meaning “Soviet wind”. When an Afghan began, it carried huge clouds of sand and dust. We could see it moving on the horizon. It resembled an enormous hurricane wave in the ocean, only it was brown. These clouds of sand and dust rolled through the city, through our apartments. Invisible to the eye, barely running in the air, thin, caustic dust penetrated everything in its way, leaving furniture in the house covered with a thin layer of sand, and it would get into all of the pores of one’s skin. It had the distinct smell of sand. An Afghan passed through Zarafshan at least once a year, but sometimes more, and it became an unforgettable experience for me.

There were three special cities in the Kyzylkum Desert—Navoi, Zarafshan, and Uchkuduk. These three cities reported directly to Moscow and not to Tashkent, the capital. Also, they were supplied with goods and products directly from Moscow. Navoi was at the south end of the Kyzylkum Desert, Zarafshan was in the center of the desert, and Uchkuduk was north of Zarafshan. Salaries of everyone working in any of these cities were at least two times higher than average salaries in Uzbekistan or Russia at that time. Basically, we were paid more for the extreme living conditions in the Kyzylkum Desert.

Many evenings at sunset, I would stand on the balcony of our apartment on the eighth floor, gazing at the horizon where earth and sky met, and the sun was going down to disappear for the night, thinking about my life, trying to guess what lay ahead. For some mysterious reason, one evening, I thought, “Will I really live here in this desert all my life and never see America?” Looking back now, I have no idea why I thought about America at that time. I was not allowed to go abroad because of the place I worked and what was there—uranium deposits with mine excavation. But I guess some little piece of me knew or sensed that America was somehow my destiny.