PREVIOUS ENTRY:
I bet more than a few of my American readers can't find Uzbekistan on a map. Nor can my Canadian reader. That's right, buddy. I see you.
I bet even fewer can locate Tashkent. I couldn't either until going there. It isn't a place most Americans think about usually.
This isn't odd or spiteful. A lot of Americans only think about America. Most French only think about France. The rest only think about Paris.
As an illustration, consider the original Xbox Classic video game console classified the world as USA, Japan, and Rest of World. That's 6.5 billion people. And none of them bought an Xbox. Nor did anyone in Japan.
I worked in video games development for two decades. I'm also quite short. This means I drink and know things. Just not where Tashkent was. I do now. Obviously. And no one bought an Xbox there, either.
Through the magic of the modern day, one doesn't need to know anything, though. Travel is now so idiot proof it's difficult to end up anywhere you don't want. Other than police custody. That's real easy.
But if you say you're headed to Tashkent, wherever that is, they nod and give you tickets. You then naively give them your stuff when asked if you have any. As long as you're not traveling to Italy, anyway.
I'm never bringing luggage to Italy again.
If you make it through security, you find your way to a gate. Here, you sit and wonder if they are calling your name for two hours. You got there early since you never know how long the TSA wants to plumb your private parts.
Because you do not want to miss your flight. Doing so means more time at the airport. Where you can't smoke, unless you want to please another stranger in rubber gloves. And maybe you do. I don't judge. I get molested.
This is that story. Plus, one night in Tashkent.
My wife Megan is a dancer. She's also a tailor. In addition to having dabbled in what bean counters call accounting. This talent stack scored her a gig at a travel agency specializing in Central Asia.
This means the Stans. It sounds like a hipster brewery specializing in IPA. But no, smartass. It's Pakistan, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, and My Stan Uzbekistan.
Megan put together a tour package for Uzbekistan between directing finances at the company. She had to actually go there to see how it would go. This is the only way to know.
I didn't know exactly where Uzbekistan was. But I knew it meant the Silk Road.
Once again it was my inexplicable luck to be included as the chaos agent. She made sure The Company bankrolled this one. What a womensch she is. But enough about her, let’s talk about us.
Our tour was set, our tickets procured, our bags surrendered, and we got in line for the tender, tactile affections of the TSA. Things were going pretty well until I was randomly selected for more than an x-ray of my genitals.
A handsome fellow politely demanded I step to the side of the line where he dragged a wand over me. When asked why he was doing this he calmly replied he was looking for particulates used for making bombs.
I laughed. I don't make bombs. I write “jokes” that bomb. I also make video games that do the same. Looking at you, Too Human.
He politely and dutifully chuckled at his suspected mass-murderer. But he still ran a little strip of paper over my shoes. He then fed this lingua papier into a machine. It blinked, beeped, and a little display read Positive.
Deploying my usual brand of polite but firm honesty, I declared, “The fuck I am!”
And the fuck I was. Honestly. I swear to gods I have never made a bomb in my life.
Ah, well. Yes. That one time. But I'd hardly call it a bomb. The nightly news in their Quixotian pursuit of truth did that. Their words, not mine.
My gorgeous sex-predator giggled again as if finding bomb fixings was a daily occurrence for him. It turned out it was. Rather than ordering eight well compensated federal agents to end me, he asked if I had cats.
Oh my. This handsy Adonis was batting a thousand. Laughing at my terrible jokes? Inquiring into my cats? Dragging something vaguely phallic all over my body to make sure I was clean?
I'd never felt so pampered on the taxpayer's dime. Not even that time I got arrested in Oregon. Or detained at Warped. Or when cops drew on me while I sat helpless in my car waiting to die.
“Yes! I have three cats.” I resisted the urge to show him photos. No sudden movements.
He asked me if I scooped their box prior to leaving. I said I had. Apparently, cat poop is just loaded with fixings. I sort of knew this. Well, I knew it had nitrates. For, uh, reasons totally unrelated to any sort of nightly news report.
I really need to stay off the news.
Still, he cut me loose and released me back into the wild unbranded.
So far as I know, anyway. Brands these days are digital. More insidious than being burnt into the flesh. At least then you could see your scarred meat and know who thinks they own you.
This sucker didn’t even take my shampoo. I could kill eight people trapped on a plane with just eight ounces of Pert Plus. Rub a little on your shoes and bye-bye sky. What a rube.
But I did get his phone number. Handsome, handsy, and stupid. My absolutely not-sexist lady friends tell me this is the perfect man. He just needs to cook, do the dishes, and not ask too many questions about explosives.
We boarded our flight and transferred from port to port until landing in Istanbul Not Constantinople. This airport was different than the other airports. Like how Michael Jackson was different from the other boys.
But in real life. Not like the Thriller video.
This evil took the form of smoking areas right inside the airport. As you waddle through the place, you can't help but notice glass walls smeared in the sick, yellow tar one associates with badasses like Orwell or Hemingway.
These cancer-coffins are glorious. No need to leave the airport to smoke. Forget your smokes in the first place? No problem. Thirty seconds of shallow breathing in one could kill a baby. Except the couple I saw in there.
I suspect Istanbul Not Constantinople is in the business of raising emphysmic wolves.
These lung-algaed tanks reminded me of the Guild Navigators from David Lynch's Dune. I just swam around in them. My body melting, my consciousness expanding, and plotting a course to our Tashkent flight.
We took an escalator down to our gate. I should have abandoned hope before doing so. What we saw coming toward us in our slow motion descent was total chaos without the mohawks.
Dozens of beginner babushkas (babushkya) were mixed among Babellian towers built of bags burned hard. Once we stepped off the escalator, their bescarved heads swiveled as one, hunger evident, and they surged at us.
We were hit with a solid wall of babbled Russian. I was quite overwhelmed. Odd, considering how even keeled I'd proven to be with mobs in the past.
Dante never imagined such horror. Even if Lenin and Megan had. They'd both dealt with this kind of thing before but Megan saved us both with the steady hand of experience.
She explained dodging taxes isn't a uniquely American hobby or duty. This murder of mavens was trying to run around import taxes by having us mule their souvenirs into Uzbekistan.
We said no to all of them as not one seemed to be smuggling flour or anything remotely similar. Just cheap crap you can't bake or snort. Nothing I'd tax, so nothing I'd smuggle.
While I spent my time confusedly attempting courtesy, she told them all in no uncertain terms to, “Fuck right off.”
This appeared to deter about a dozen of them. The rest plagued us until a security guy rolled up his newspaper and started swinging. We crept through a rope walled rat maze mostly undisturbed after that. Mostly.
We boarded a flight without too much fuss. We hoped it was ours.
I had been up for twenty-four hours by now and no longer the young hooligan who slept on top of freight trains. I was exhausted and bored, but couldn't sleep, because the miracle of flight. Wide-eyed wonder sucks.
Megan fell asleep immediately as we put Istanbul Not Constantinople to our rear. Sleeping on planes is a superpower.
Airline flight all around the world is mostly the same. You sit for hours listening to people chew or snore while breathing deeply of their farts. Considering plane food, this communal flatulence is often your only sustenance.
You imagine this is what Purgatory must be like.
Fortunately, on some airlines, you can have a nice man recite Quran while you suffer. In Arabic, of course. But one does not simply speak the words like some sort of Christian Gospel or health code. Islamic suras are sung.
You find yourself quite hypnotized by it. There is a cadence which is undeniably trancelike. You understand you are hearing something ancient. Faithfully transmitted over centuries. You hear love - and fear - in the voice.
You don't have to understand the words to understand this.
At the same time, since you're me, you hear the naughty words in there, too. Profanity in sacred texts is endlessly amusing, but also practical. Real people cuss when they have to.
You want to be prepared when you land. You need to know a few good Arabic words for your destination. Like nutfah. My incidental and accidental manner of learning language meant it was my first Arabic word.
I won't spoil it for any of you by blurting out what it means. I like to take my time. Let the suspense simmer. The anticipation intensify.
But I learned it from the Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, while flying from Istanbul Not Constantinople to Tashkent. It was that or yet another bloody Avengers movie. Quran won that battle.
It means the combination of semen and vaginal discharge. Nutfah. Oh, gods damn it. I ruined it. Got too excited. I am so sorry. Scripture, like, almost never does this to me.
Time for an awkward retreat or a quick change of subject. Uh… right! As luck and physics would have it, after thirty hours of travel, we finally landed in Tashkent. And my patient readers finally get to read about it.
The Taskent Airport is an interesting little thing considering its international flavor.
From the outside, it looks like a three story super market. On the inside, it has one giant baggage claim with a few bored customs officers wielding stamps and frowns.
While there are no official smoking areas to speak of, a fog of cigarette smoke permeated the space. Interesting, I thought, as no one was smoking. The gang had a mystery on their hands.
I followed my nose and eventually hit pay-tar. Just outside the men's room an overworked trash can overflowed with smoking cigarette butts. The source of the butts should have been obvious.
A haze of life-taking smoke oozed out the restroom door passed a cigarette-buster sign. That's one of those circles with a smoke in the center bisected with a line. Historically, it means smoking is impossible there.
I leaped into the bathroom and lit up. It's good to test scientific hypotheses, you see. I found its claim of impossibility quite false. So did the dozen men lounging around smoking in there.
Every once in a while, one would rush out, toss their still smoking butt on the trash can pile, and then light up another. I have no idea how long it had been going on but Mt. R.J. Reynolds outside the door was five feet tall.
Their heads swiveled toward me as one and their chatter in a mix of Russian and Arabic stopped. They all stared until one said, “Amerikanski.”
They eyed me up and down. The look of a smoker unsure if they're going to have to cut a bitch. I nodded coolly and lit up, totally freaked out.
Their chatter resumed, occasionally glancing at me and laughing. They'd probably heard of me. I write you know. I stubbed my smoke before leaving and they laughed harder. Gods damn I'm good, I thought.
I carefully stuffed my dead butt into Mt. Tar outside the bathroom. Pack it in, pack it out. Just like condoms.
Megan and I grabbed all our bags - the Uzbeks don't steal them like the Italians apparently - and we stepped outside into the cool Taskent night.
We'd arrived on the Silk Road. Except it looked paved these days.
We got a ride to our hotel through wide, clean streets lit with city lights. Three to four lanes each way. You could fit a few Soviet tanks abreast if you wanted to.
Our friend from The Company enthusiastically conversed in Russian with the lovely hotel staff to check us in. We thanked all the gods and staff and peaced out into a comfortable bed in our room.
I slept maybe three hours before smiling with the rising sun. I wish I could write that with a straight face, but I don't smile at anything first thing in the morning that isn't coffee.
I was surprised to discover no one drinks coffee in Uzbekistan. They prefer tea. I do not. Learning this, I resolved to choke down a cup of that anti-human leaf-shit and begin packing to go home immediately.
But, just as I was underreacting, the waiter mentioned they did have Folgers Crystals in case any Americanski grew a pair and visited. Why, I would love some, I said. And I did. To this day, that cup of Hi-C sticks with me.
Perked me right up in a way no espresso or divine lady parts on display in Florence ever could. Yes, that's literally hubris. Dorks.
I drank it the rest of our stay in the country and every cafe carried it. It carried me through that first day, running on three hours of sleep out of forty-eight. Love you, Folgers! Call me!
Unfortunately, since the flight manager at The Company hated our guts, we'd arrived late to the tour. It was time to leave Tashkent already.
We met our tour buddies along with our most excellent tour guide you'll hear more about later, and piled into a couple cars. We were headed into the mountains to visit a place called Fergana Valley.
Farewell Tashkent. I wish I'd had more time to play with you. Just like my readers, I wager.
I'll make it up to you all in the next section. We drink iron quenching water and lick walls in Fergana. Well, I did. Megan stuck to water.
THE ADVENTURE CONTINUES IN FERGANA.
Excellent. Travel never fails to brighten our existence.
Great details of your gray travels! Loved them!