Mira is Cursed
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Dear Friends,
They’re cutting down the poplar trees on Mira Avenue.
No one is happy about it, and everyone’s heard different reasons why it’s happening. The trees were sick, the trees were old. The root systems were failing, and the trees could fall in a storm. The trees cause too many car accidents because they block the sight lines for drivers turning onto Mira.
“Mira is cursed,” someone at work tells me. “That street has the most traffic deaths in all of Kyrgyzstan.”
I imagine the ghosts of dead drivers living in the tree branches, calling to the living to join them, swerving their steering wheels to an unpleasant end.
Will cutting down the trees get rid of the ghosts, or will they merely relocate? Maybe into the coffeeshops and cafes that line the street, beyond the walking path? Ease their pain with pastries and passionfruit lemonade?
The reason for removing the poplars is hard to pin down, just like the name of the street itself. Sometimes people call it Mira, sometimes Manas, sometimes Aitmatov.
There’s a sense, here, that people can choose whether, or how quickly, to opt in to change. Men still wear the traditional hat, the kalpak, as often as they might choose a knit beanie. You can shop at the bazaar or at the grocery store. Take the marshrutkas or the gleaming green buses bought for Bishkek by the Japanese government.
As a person nearly always in transition, this in-between makes a certain kind of sense to me. I’m no longer young, but not old. An American, but an expat. As we come up on our 4-month mark of living in Bishkek, I recognize that I am beginning to adapt, but there’s a lot I haven’t yet figured out. Just when I think I understand how things work here, something shifts.
I’m surprised, but not shocked, when the food I missed most in Bishkek (sandwich meat!) suddenly appears on the shelves at Globus.
“Is that ham?” Jake asks, watching me make my first sandwich of this tour.
“I think so,” I tell him, “though Google Translate says it’s called Festive Meat.”
The surprises keep coming. On Veteran’s Day (what we call a “Unicorn Day,” when the Embassy is closed for an American holiday, but school is still in session), we drive west to a village called Kuntuu, in search of a modern art museum a USAID colleague told me about.
We pass what Jake thinks is a power plant, but is actually a soccer stadium.
Horses wander beside the road. It’s amazing how quickly things start to look like Nebraska.
When we get to the location Google Maps promises is a museum, we see…nothing. Some warehouses. A fence. A sign warning us of dogs on the property.
N, our driver, gets out to look around and disappears behind the corner of the building.
“What is this place?” Jake asks.
I hear the dogs start to bark.
“Oh god, we cannot let N get attacked by dogs in the middle of nowhere,” I say.
Jake peers into the window of one of the buildings.
“There’s art in there,” he says. “I think this is it…”
N reappears with another man and a concerned look on his face.
“He wants 1800 som,” N says, suspicious.
1800 som, or about $20, goes a long way in Bishkek. That’s several hours of wages. A meal for two at a good restaurant. Quite a lot of groceries.
“Tell him okay!” I say. The museum’s website had mentioned the entrance fee, though it had neglected to mention the place is totally hidden and looks like where they might have filmed Saw.
Over the next few hours, we zip our coats to our chins and wander around several un-heated warehouses that used to be a wine and juice factory. There is art. There is a lot of art. There’s an exhibition of the complete works of Konstantin Shkurpela, a Kyrgyz artist who does not sell his work on principle, and who uses Soviet artifacts to create large-scale mixed media. Everything a challenge—a warning. Everything, a question--Is it worth returning to the world of anti-human agitation and propaganda?
I don’t pretend to know anything about the historical or political climate of this place. I joked with someone the other day that the only thing I ever learned in school was how to figure things out. In many ways, in Kyrgyzstan, Russia feels close and present. But in the art factory in Kuntuu, the past is the past.
On the non-Unicorn Days, it’s been strange to settle into a job that I’ve done before, but as previous versions of myself. My first time working in the CLO office in Riyadh, Jake and I were on our first tour, no kids. Then in Doha, I was CLO as a new parent, then in a pandemic. And now I have a child in full-time school.
Being back at work, in person, for the first time since Nora was a baby, is an interesting transition. In some ways, I feel like my brain is rehydrating after a long time in the desert. I always knew I liked working, as evidenced by the fact that I clung to the work I could do from home while Nora was small. But being back in the mix—rising every day to go be with people? I missed it.
But since the election, everything at work kind of feels like…dancing without background music. We’re still doing all the usual operational things, but there are big, unanswered questions that may not come clear for months, even after the new administration takes over.
There are bureaucrats remembering and assuming that the things that happened last time (hiring freezes, budget cuts) will happen again. There are those who insist that all transitions are mundane and there’s nothing to worry about. And there are those who are in low-key panic mode.
Having no expectations, especially in the foreign service, has served me well. I am nothing if not trained in uncertainty.
On Saturday, Nora wakes me up early, and we creep into her room to snuggle and play her new favorite game: “treehouse.” We don’t turn on the lights. Snow has blanketed the ground outside and is falling softly. I gather her into my lap.
“If I had a treehouse, I would have a room full of cupcakes,” Nora whispers. “Your turn!”
“My treehouse would have a giant library with a rolling ladder,” I say.
We go back and forth with embellishments. Then Jake stomps in.
“The power is out,” he says. “And it’s cold.”
Oof. He is right. Nora’s room is always a little chilly, but today, I realize, it’s downright frigid. By the lack of charge on my phone battery, it seems the power has been out for hours.
And yet, an unfamiliar hum reaches my ears.
It’s our new generator. Running away. Powering absolutely nothing.
“A power outage is only okay after we’ve made coffee,” Ellie says.
She’s been visiting since Thanksgiving (thus one reason for my lack of newsletters—we have been galavanting and shopping for Kyrgyz crafts). This is her third power outage of the trip.
We settle onto the living room couches and pile up the blankets while Jake calls the Embassy’s facilities duty phone. The emergency electrician comes out, on a Saturday, in the snow, and tells the generator to talk to the house. The power returns. The dishwasher sings its happy tune. We make coffee. Nora watches The Magic School Bus.
Perhaps transition and adjustment are always about knowledge and power. Who has it, who doesn’t. Getting used to not knowing the answers, or chalking them up to a curse. Then getting used to the change. Taking time to grieve. Sometimes calling for help. Sometimes filling an entire warehouse with the art you made while you were waiting in the dark.
Stay out of trouble, stay in touch,
Dot
Grieving the poplars.
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My fellow book nerds may also be interested to know that I posted my 2024 book roundup on Instagram this week. Happy reading!
DISCLAIMER: The views expressed in this newsletter are my own, and do not necessarily reflect those of the US Department of State or the US Government.