Stories We Tell

I'd like to digress a bit, this post, if I may.  The approach of the American JulyFourth holiday, my second since being back in the U.S., brings back memories of, well, the last JulyFourth holiday I was forced to endure in this country.  The staccato bursts of fireworks, unevenly spaced and like to burn down a building, thrown up furtively by amateurs who snuck over the border to Pennsylvania to buy them, have started to come more often, the interval between them shortening, like the beeping countdown of an imminently exploding bomb in a bad action movie.

As I wrote last year, I am not particular to fireworks, to the slack-jawed stares on the upturned faces of spectators, illuminated in red and blue and green by the exploding bursts above.  I am a bit alone, I have found, in my aversion to the common U.S. pastime of celebrating the war that freed a small proportion of the population by recreating the destructive forces of black powder cannons in colorful facsimile.  But it reminds me of a story.  The story of a lonely traveler far from home, another JulyFourth, another celebration of Independence.  Have I told you this one before?  No I don't think so.  I'd have remembered.

We all live by our stories, after all.  That's what this blog has been about, really.  For two years I've been making up stories, never mind the stories that have actually been happening.  Is the journey over now, I wonder?  Should I pack it in and call myself abroad no more, for real this time?  The truth, after all, is stranger than all the fictions I could come up with.  Living in this country, more and more, is like living in a foreign place, a place I don't know anymore.  A place, perhaps, I never knew.  What matter whether I am home or not?

Well.

Shall we flashback two years?

I'd been in Astana less than a month, and suddenly our boss—the American one—was talking about the party at the embassy, asking if we were going.  We responded with the customary "What?" that we'd learned was the proper response to anything our boss said to us.  He was nice enough to forward us the invitation from the embassy to all U.S. citizens in the city, and we RSVPd our way in.  In proper American fashion, it was a picnic, and we were expected to bring a dish to pass.  It seemed an odd condition, but we were excited to have a half day at work on a non-local holiday, so we took it.

Upon arriving at the embassy, I of course had forgotten my passport.  Speaking right good American, though, I smoothly talked my way in just by showing my driver's license.  Then it was on to the American-style socializing.  Which of course meant sitting apart in our own groups, pointedly ignoring all the other small groups around us.  It was just that predicament that encouraged us to move on and talk to some strangers.  We'd forgotten how stultifying it could be, talking to our boss, a middle-aged many who enjoyed chatting up younger women.  Luckily for us he began to move on to the local women after a few months.

By luck—strange, strange luck—we ended up talking to a group of construction workers—men, of course.  Without properly considering what we were doing, we entered into conversation, answering ill-advised questions like where were we from, and why did we come to Astana.  The funny part was, much as we'd been explained to about how sexist the culture was there, those construction workers were the first overtly sexist experience I had in Astana.  They couldn't believe that a group of young women would move, singly, to a foreign country, and just to be librarians.  Weren't we worried?  Where were our men?  How had they let us come?  This coming from men who probably never left their apartment complex, except to work, and if they did only went to places where they knew the workers spoke English, and only in groups.

There were other people there, interesting people.  Many of them were military, or former military.  We met the U.S. Ambassador and his wife (who was a librarian).

There were no veggie burgers.

We didn't have fireworks that day.  But the Kazakhstani were big fans of fireworks, so we had many to look forward to, and had just had a few back in June for a patriotic holiday, probably related to the president's birthday or something.

I'd never been one for patriotism, and though I played at it a bit, surrounded by U.S. citizens in a land far from it, I still didn't feel terribly inclined toward it.  Patriotism is a story we tell ourselves too, whether to hide our ignorance or warm our souls, cold from the knowledge that our allegiance is fraught at best.  Innocent, was the word Twain used; we all hold the story of our innocence close, lonely travelers in a strange land, hapless wanderers.

Even Twain's story had to end.  Even the Innocents returned home, finally.  Even Twain, king of irony, could not keep up the facade forever.  Setting out, I didn't intend for this to be my final blog post, but I find it is time to retire the facade.  Irony requires distance; I no longer have the desire or ability to distance myself from my world.  For better or for worse, it's time to go home.

You can still catch me on my tumblr, at iambooking.tumblr.com where I review and write about fiction by women, and generally talk about feminist things.  Or catch me on twitter as eaking_vb_toeak.

And hopefully someday soon find me in print, as I retell the year of my life abroad—the truth and nothing but, of course—tentatively titled My Tapestry: Reflections of a Year Abroad. 

Thanks to all who have been faithful readers, those who have shared those stories with me, and those who have just dropped by occasionally to keep tabs.

The Cranes are Flying

One of my favorite activities when traveling to foreign lands, I've found, is walking around, looking up.  There's so much to see that one often misses when only worried about what's directly in front of you.  So ran my thoughts the other day when I hopped a bus that fortuitously took me the bazaar to buy my produce for the week.  Luckily, this bus happened to run in that direction, and kept running so until it subsequently arrived, which is not underheard of, but also not entirely, so to speak, heard of.

I had an interesting conversation with the lady who sells me apples.  She explained to me that the official bird of Kazakhstan is the Ьеркут (Berkut). I'm not really sure how we got on the subject of birds.  Actually, no, I am.  I absolutely know why we started talking about birds, and that there is a certain breed of local, existing in every culture, who upon finding out that someone is a foreigner feels it is necessary to tell something about their culture.  This telling does not rely upon any rational scheme for deciding what is worth telling, does not, generally, spring from any previous experience with the foreigner in question, and almost always consists of random facts.

The official bird, then, of Kazakhstan is the Ьеркут.  Ьеркут is not a word in English, but extrapolating from my recent experience this spring in looking up, I've come to the fairly certain conclusion that it translates roughly to crane.  Cranes, these days, are flying everywhere.  I suppose it's a sign of spring.  Spring is in the air, cranes are in the air.  I've never seen such cranes as they have here in Astana.  They soar above streets and above buildings, stark against the blue sky.  Sometimes they appear in groups, sometimes singly.  The great cranes of Kazakhstan, I think they must be symbols of rebirth, or growth, or something even more poetic, heralds of the trip that pilgrims will soon embark upon in just a few short years to this unique city.

Now, I've never been much of a birdwatching aficionado, but I did manage to snap some shots of the cranes in the almost year that I've been here.  You might be surprised to know that they even fly in the winter, though there are a good deal less of them.  Here are some pictures of the spring flocks.

This flock has been living here since before I arrived in Astana.
Sometimes the numbers change, but it's always been there.

One of my favorites.  I really like the juxtaposition of urban space and natural fauna.

Don't be fooled by the snow, it really is spring.

I believe this building's going to be an opera house.  These cranes know where it's at.

Oddly, they never seem bothered by the large amount of construction going on.

I think this is a family unit.  Anyway, they're quite close-knit.

A little obscured by the tree, but they're there, off at the city limits.

A Room of One's Own, part 1

It less than one month, I was evicted from my first apartment in Astana.  I often wonder if that has in any way colored my perception of the place.  Only time will tell, I suppose.

It was a wild ride, as these things go, finding a new place to live twice in a month.  Possibly the most fun I’ve had in my time here.  I almost feel sorry, really, for the other expats who come over here with guaranteed housing packages, moving expenses and all.  Finding your own place, dealing with real estate agents and property owners, one gets to see how the other half lives, as it were.  And the language barrier—well that just adds to the experience.

Both times, we ended up working with a nice young woman with two cell-phones on her person at all times, at least three-inch heals, and about four words of English, total.  And of course a local co-worker who came as translator.  And guide.  And negotiator.  We worked with agents—even though we had to pay a fee of ten percent of the first month’s rent—because we wished to see as many places as we could in a short time and agents, as we understand them, are good at that.  It is their job, after all.  So we ran after our good Olga (literally ran at times, even up stairs, her in her heels and we half-convinced that this was some kind of local past-time—see how many flights of stairs you can get the foreign clients to climb before they give in and take whatever ridiculously-priced apartment they stumble into if only you’ll promise they can sit down for a minute).  In one afternoon we visited one slum, one palace, and two places comparably priced, but with slightly different amenities (just how different, we would only realize after the fateful eviction notice).

Luckily, many apartments are available already furnished, and owners may even be good enough to add pieces we foreign clients find lacking (rule 1: a pull-out sofa is not a bed).  As I said, after our first day of hunting we were left with a choice between two places (the slum and palace being out of the running for obvious reasons).  Between those two, really, the choice was simple—we picked the one that looked nicer.  It looked newer (how old the building actually was we couldn’t say; I got the impression from various translations that the place had been recently remodeled), was slightly bigger, and utilities were included in the rent price.  This was important because we’d been forewarned about the difficulty of understanding utility bills in this country—even the locals had trouble, it seemed.

The view from the front door

Kitchen, no expense spared.

Except, as we found later, an oven.

The living room (first half)

Living room, second half

My bedroom.  With access to balcony.

I took it as a positive sign, also, that our new landlady—during the signing of the lease and finalizing all those details that weren’t really translated to us—seemed to intimate to me (and my co-worker and new roommate) that she had two sons, both of whom were not married.  Any advantage we can get, I thought to myself, we should take, smiling along with her and deciding that if she liked us that much already, we should have a very pleasant year here.