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We set out from Tashkent into the mountains of Uzbekistan. Megan and I sat in the back. Her, foxy tailed and bright eyed. Me, lizard brained and sleep deprived. I was told I could sleep in the car, and I did try.
But rural Uzbek roads are what one could consider rough.
I don’t mean, “Oh dear, this Idaho road doesn’t have a lane divider.” I mean, “My cheeks haven't taken a pounding like this since Sea-Tac International.” There are no lanes, either. Just potholes.
After several hours snaking between most the craters, we pulled over to give our butts a break. There in the mountains, next to a highway akin to the surface of the moon, I noticed the sky in Uzbekistan is just bigger.
What nonsense, I hear you say. I agree. But it's true, anyway. Also, don't interrupt please. You can leave comments at the end.
I no longer wondered why anyone would worship the sky there. I wondered why more didn't. I considered this while checking for blood in my urine during a piss stop. I can't emphasize the rough roads enough.
Piling back into our cars, we bumped and yowled our way to a roadside bread market near Fergana. The stalls - exclusively helmed by young ladies - lined the road a good quarter mile.
Stamped on the bread for sale were phone numbers baked right in. Rather than swiping left or right, or searching on keywords like blond or power bottom, you called them. If you liked their bread.
In Uzbekistan, bread is everywhere and served with every meal. It's a lot like Olive Garden, except the bread is good and comes with soup. Soup is great, too. Barak was my favorite, because President Dumpling Obama and I'm a patriot.
We attracted a crowd while we stood around trying to figure out what was going on. Apparently, I was a big shot. They'd heard of me in the mountains, too. Not just those fellows from the airport men's room.
It seems Uzbeks show respect by looking passed or around you at your blue-haired girlfriend with a tongue ring. And if they really like you, they hand her a baby.
Much to my surprise, Megan didn’t drop that screaming infant like a bag of red-hot glutens. Nor did she spike it like a football. Instead, she bounced it in her arms as if it was the most natural thing in the world.
It continued screaming.
While Megan was distracted by a stranger's baby, a couple of the local ladies asked me how long we had been married. I told them we weren't, because she hadn’t asked me yet.
People are always laughing at the wrong time.
After a half-day of hair care inquiries and tongue ring displays, Megan handed the baby to someone we hoped was its mother. Then we piled back into cars and howled and yowled our asses down into Fergana Valley.
One last note on strange, bread/meat markets in the mountains of Uzbekistan. Stay away from the cheese balls. They’re jawbreakers made of salt, painted orange, and stuffed full of dry, ancient hate.
Traditionally, the sentence for smuggling silkworms was to eat some of these balls. Prior to beheading. They took that kind of thing real seriously.
Do not like. Bad!
But no palate is so salted or encrusted it can't be cleansed with some delicious and convenient Folgers Classic Roast Instant Coffee Crystals.
As we pulled into Fergana, our most excellent guide informed me this was the conservative part of the country. I nodded. I understand conservatives. You see, they're mostly concerned with conserving things.
This seemed to mean the ladies wore miniskirts and heels like in Tashkent, but also headscarves. Because conservative Muslim. Not bad!
I considered stopping a few and telling them to get in the kitchen and bake some bread if they wanted to hook a man. I understand men. You see, they're mostly concerned with bread and shoes.
I'd hooked one just two days prior with my own shoes, as you'll recall. But when visiting anyplace, you must be unfailingly polite. Or not surprised if you end up at least a little dead. I did not harass the ladies, to be clear.
I'm a careless risk-taker, not suicidal.
The conservative nature of Fergana became clearer once we visited a few local tradesmen. Rather than voting a certain way, it meant they were preserving ancient ways of making stuff along with adopting new ones.
We checked out a blacksmith - with a hammer and anvil - pounding out knives for all kinds of stuff. Cutting bread, snorting and cutting flour, opening a mouthy American with ideas on how other people should behave.
I still hadn't slept more than… only Allah knows. Maybe four hours in the last forty-eight? So naturally, I was creeping about the forge sniffing and licking the walls. It tasted like blood, or good barbecue, and I announced as much.
Our tour mates seemed disturbed at this revelation, no doubt offended on our host's behalf. Their favorite hobby. Megan and Vulcan didn't even blink. He laughed and offered dessert.
After quenching a brand-new blade, he ladled some of the used water into a cup and handed it to me. I tossed it back like a Jägermeister after a divorce. Not bad!
After the blacksmith, some of our tour mates began assuring me we would find real coffee somewhere soon. I have no idea why. Never in my life have I explicitly wished for Starbucks, and I certainly didn't in Uzbekistan.
It isn't even coffee. It's milk someone tried and failed to improve with espresso. Bad!
Still, every stop we made, our worldly white tour mates assured me I wanted some. After the eighth assurance, I realized I was just a proxy for their own sick wants and desires. They craved social domination and milk.
I figured they wanted me to be like them, instead of gutting them when the revolution comes. I probably won't do that. I've never wished anyone's death. But I suspect I will read a few obituaries with some satisfaction.
Either way, I'll still drink delicious Folgers Classic Roast Instant Coffee Crystals.
We spent another day in Fergana among the unfailingly hospitable conservatives.
Upon encountering Americanski, rather than hating us as some in the United States tell me conservatives do, they seemed curious. They wanted to know more about me. So, Megan had to field countless questions about herself.
We checked out a silk factory where they painstakingly weave big, beautiful rugs by hand. They had the Uzbek version of a world tree. A sort of agricultural and economic idol. Most regions have their own unique version.
In Fergana, it's a mulberry tree. In Seattle, it's a statue of Lenin.
I learned silk is actually worm poop after allegedly licking this giant mulberry tree. It allegedly tasted like a mulberry tree, not poop, and I’ll fight anyone who disagrees.
I also learned silk-makers definitely brandish rolled newspapers if you allegedly lick their stuff. On a related note, the gutters in Fergana are several feet deep and only rarely graced with a protective grating.
One can step right in, up to their crotch, their chin slamming on their knee, and find themselves allegedly performing an impression of a one-legged stork.
This is done at high speed while allegedly fleeing the scene of an alleged mulberry tree licking.
Bonus points if your nose is being beaten with the Sunday paper while a curiously angry silk-man shouts in a mixture of Uzbek, Arabic, Turkish, Tajik, and Russian. A truly cunning linguist, he reserved English for the choicest curses.
We hit a local mosque, as well. I suppose our most excellent guide figured I had some reason to repent and I’m sure I do. For some reason or another. I went to Catholic school, so I don't really need a reason to feel guilty.
Images are not allowed in or on mosques. It is forbidden. Pictures of people, animals, etc. Exceptions apply, as we’ll see in Samarkand later. I won’t ruin it for now, but Napolean Dynamite knows what's up.
Rather than images of Obi-Wan Kenobi being whipped and crucified, verses from Quran in Arabic emblazon the walls. I assume most read, “Muhammed was here.” Or “Like and Subscribe.” Or “Don’t sass the imam.”
Interlocked, tiny geometric shapes covered every surface, creating a dizzying pattern drawing the eye ever upward into a dome over its center. It is dazzling in its austerity. Not bad!
Allah has no wants according to Quran, but he quite obviously has preferences. And according to the Imam on staff at the mosque, Allah prefers you don’t allegedly lick the mosque.
Conservatives, man. What are you going to do?
Quote Quran at them. That’s what. Then rub your sore nose while reflecting on what a bad boy you’ve been in between sips of delicious Folgers Classic Roast Instant Coffee Crystals.
We allegedly fled Fergana not long after. I’m told it was all a part of the tour, but my degenerate-sense was certainly tingling about something. I never did get to the bottom of this.
Everyone just watched the news - delivered in a mix of languages - occasionally frowning at me and my inquiries. The only word I recognized was Americanski. Our tour mates were no help.
I hoped they'd learn to be better visitors. Our tour mates. The Uzbeks let us into their homes, for crying out loud. We couldn’t just bail without notice. At least, that's what the hotel staff said. I think.
Still, we all packed into a bus for a moon ride on the highway. Maybe fifteen of us total. The highways are also a bit rough on the butt in places.
I didn't mind so much this time around. It gave me the opportunity to practice meditation in the back of the bus where I could get the most lift out of every bump.
Mindfulness is important to me. And I like extreme meditation. It's like weight training for your mind, attempting stillness amid chattering, projecting weirdos and potholes the size of a Starbucks drive-thru.
I achieved levitation one second at a time thanks to Uzbek highways. Not bragging. Levitation is strangely painful it turns out.
Our next stop wasn't a city, though. Or even a town. It was a rural village called Hayat. There was no wi-fi, no milk-as-coffee rebrands, and no politics I’d pretend to understand.
This village looked nothing like the village in New York. People seemed genuinely happy rather than just gay. And the only beasts they saddled and rode through the streets were donkeys rather than accountants named Paul.
It sprawled out over a hillside leading towards the mountains. Not foothills, though. A day's ride would probably see you to the summit. If you rode a donkey, anyway. Or a wild sheep.
The village sits aside an endangered argali preserve. They hung out in the village sometimes. None got close enough for me to allegedly lick, sadly. Probably for the best. Who knows how the locals would react this time.
Across the river from Hayat, I spied the ruins of some older houses. I asked about them and my guide sighed in a way I suspected - for once - didn’t have anything to do with me at all.
Back in the Soviet days a career criminal and mass-murderer named Joseph Stalin rearranged millions of people’s lives according to a YouTube video he saw online once. Economists hate this one weird trick! So did a hundred million real people.
Here in Hayat, that meant forcing the locals with millennia of generational experience to stop doing what they knew and start doing things that didn’t work. Failure to fail in this new and exciting way meant execution, or a slow, state sponsored starvation.
The ruins across the way were the failed result of this collective farming initiative.
I sat down next to a creek running from the river dividing the failures of communism from the successes of self-determination and read Quran.
Where and how I ingest information matters. This time as a stranger in a strange land surrounded by Allah’s bounty. With Man's wreckage in clear view.
The creek bubbled and wild sheep bleated. Baa'd? Neh'd? Whatever it is they say exactly. “We're in danger,” I guess. Also, it turns out the imam at the mosque knew his Quran better than I did. Weird.
I did this while the rest of our group went hiking several miles straight up a mountain for some reason.
I’m like that sometimes. Lazy. But I have my extraverted moments and my introverted ones. In fact, one often precedes the other. Extraversion leads to introversion, right around the time the police become involved.
I know I always have the right to remain silent. Even if I don't always exercise it. Because I am free.
We stayed in a beautiful home and ate a wonderful dinner of barak and shashlik. Some sort of salad, too. But that's not important.
Shashlik is akin to the shish kabobs you’re likely familiar with, but the chunks of meat skewered on the thing are larger than some children. I couldn't even lift the bloody stick with one hand. Not bad!
We said good night to our fabulous hosts and slept under a pile of these fuzzy, comfortable mats as if we were a royal laundry bin. I slept well, finally, in the Uzbek countryside. It was absolutely silent, topped with a night so black it seemed endless.
Our hosts were the most welcoming farmers I’ve ever met. And I have known farmers, friends. Mostly the American variety, no doubt. But they fed us, they pampered us, they welcomed us into their home. We, absolute strangers and alleged fugitives.
At least one of us, anyway. As I mentioned, I never did find out who.
We left eventually, after a search party found me twenty feet up in a tree reading Quran. Apparently, I gave myself away. I do love lamb, but my digestive system isn’t accustomed to consuming so much of it.
Also, Muhammad has a habit of making an American liberal shit.
I’d planned on rejoining the tour eventually. I swear. But I didn’t like the looks of those flashing lights I’d seen down the highway. Discretion, valor, etc.
Still, I began to realize our tour mates looked up to me - in their way - as a proxy for their various complaints and whines. I was the idol they projected themselves onto so they could whine without feeling like they were.
I quit finding complaints about their complaints. Instead, I found peace blanketed with an endless blue sky. Besides, I had it on the highest authority, peace be upon him, they were all going straight to hell.
It's hard to be upset on your way to Bukhara. City of legend, the Silk Road, and the setting for at least 500 of the 1001 Arabian Nights stories. I found a desert oasis.
I also found delicious and decadently delightful Folgers Classic Roast Instant Coffee Crystals.
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This article was very descriptive, which I love. It made me wish I was there enjoying the people, transportation and sand!