Buildings here had the habit of
looking old even when they were new. You could never quite tell driving past a
shell of a house if it was in the process of going up or coming down, and this
particular one was exemplary.
“I like
this house,” Ash’s host-father said, skipping up the first few steps. A rough
looking guard dog clamored to the end of its chain and offered a few
unconvincing growls before slinking back into its ramshackle doghouse. A chain
must take all the fun out of being a guard dog, Ash thought.
It was a
three story house with a walkout basement, or would be anyway if they had left
room for a door. Homes here were fashioned from a baffling set of architectural
rules, completely unknown to Ash’s American eye. It seemed they went up a room
at a time, and no thought was given to the next until a door was built in the
former. Take the TV workshop for example. The entrance was through a door that
hung two feet off the ground. The step up was awkward enough with a hundred
pound knock-off SONY, but the step down a foot and a half later into a
three-foot square foyer made the transaction quite the workout. How a business
managed to keep its customers was an incredible trick of culture and science –
they would be on their way with a newly functioning TV for six dollars and
forty-five minutes of their time.
The shop
was a mess. For lack of any clearly defined workspace, Janybek had spread his
tools on one of the piles of dusty TV parts. It was a miracle that he could
find the screws to put one back together again, Ash thought, and as would be
confirmed in a minute not all the same screws went back in a disassembled TV.
There just happened to be a large enough collection lying about to finish any
one job.
As Janybek
worked he chatted about the “good ol’ days” of the Soviet Union. “Things were
good back then. The streets were paved; schools were well taken care of. I
studied in Moscow and my parents never worried about me being up there all
alone. It was safe to travel – and cheap. You could get a bus ticket from
Bishkek for 3 som, forty tyiyn.”
Ash asked
how much a monthly salary was.
“Sixty som
for the very poorest. But teachers were paid well. They made a hundred and
fifty.”
“I heard it
cost seven som for a flight from Bishkek to Osh,” added Ash.
“Yes, if
you were a student. A normal ticket was fifteen. When the Soviet Union
collapsed, the country just went to pot – young people got all these crazy
ideas from movies and gangs – people were spray painting schools, tossing their
trash in the road – nobody took care of things anymore.”
The irony
of the room they sat huddled in suddenly shouted in Ash’s ear but seemed to
fall short of the gentleman with the monologue.
“Those were
good days. Now we have skinheads up in Moscow. Not safe for a Kyrgyz student.”
Janybek worked with incredible skill, unsoldering little pieces off the green
and dusty circuit boards from the back without checking to see what was on the
other side. He had studied electronics at university and had kept up with the changing
technology, though a lot of the stuff people brought in were from a dead and
buried technological age.
“I built a
light-bulb when I was in eighth-grade. A radio in seventh. The telephone
switchboards were this big.” He motioned with his hands.
Janybek had
four daughters, the youngest being a senior in high school. Her name was
Aisezim and somewhere in the back of Ash’s mind the name flipped a little
switch. The signal hadn’t made its way up to the front yet when she walked
through the door.
“Aisezim!
Ah – how are you?” Ash extended his hello in English. She had called him for a
week straight to ask about English clubs a couple months ago. “Where were you
this past Saturday?”
“Oh, I was,
busy. Yes, well, ah, good to see you.”
Her
preparations weren’t going as well as hoped, though her father had big plans.
“She’ll study at Manas University; work overseas,” said her father. It was a
heady and practical dream – in one and the same moment – for any parent,
especially one with the means.
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