Landing in Ashgabat is like landing on another planet, particularly after coming from the other 'Stans that have either gray crumbling Soviet-style buildings or from Samarkand and Bukhara that are ancient towns with mud houses and tin roofs. Here the old has been eliminated completely. Here, all buildings are new and faced in gleaming white marble. As we drove into the city last night, bleary-eyed and exhausted, we sat at the edge of our seats marveling (read stunned) at what we saw. Lining huge boulevards are white marble buildings that house a plethora of ministries (agriculture, mining, army, etc.) and lighted with spotlights. The last time I thought a city had showcased its buildings so well at night was in London the last time I was there. We passed many 10 story white marble apartment buildings and wondered who could possibly have enough money to live in them… How did all of this come to exist?
Today we learned quite a lot from our wonderful guide, whose name I won’t mention for fear of getting her into trouble. Turkmenistan is not an open country for its people in any sense of that word. About the only freedom they seem to have is freedom of religion, or at least up to now the government has not seen fit to meddle in it. There is no freedom of speech, no ownership of land, the government can order you to do whatever it wants and you must do it or you will either wind up in jail or be punished in some other way. Everything and everyone is controlled by the state. Turkmenistan calls itself a democracy but there is only one political party and whatever “elections” do occur are rigged and the outcome a forgone conclusion.
Turkmenistan achieved independence from the Soviet Union in 1991 and since that time has had only two leaders, both tyrannical dictators. The first called himself “Turkmenbashi”.
It was Turkmenbashi’s idea create a marble city. He built gold statues to himself all over town (which we toured this afternoon; I could hardly bring myself to glorify them by taking a photo). Another inspired idea of his was to change the climate of Ashgabat from desert to temperate by planting fir trees, yes fir trees, everywhere the eye can see. He ordered millions of trees to the planted across acres and acres of desert land and ordered all the citizens of the city to water them and keep them healthy (or they would be punished). Some were so desperate given how difficult it is to make a fir tree grow in a hot desert, that they substituted artificial trees for real ones so when the president flew over the city in his helicopter for inspection the trees would appear to thrive.
Turkmenbashi built a 25-kilometer long “health walk” (that looks rather like the great wall of china stretching over the mountains; you can see it from anywhere in the city) that everyone was ordered to walk on Sunday regardless of whether or not they were physically able. One man notified the government that he was too ill to walk; was ordered to walk and indeed died.
Our own guide’s family personally experienced the hardship of living under such a regime. Her husband at one time worked for the government but after being forced out was subsequently blacklisted. As a result, she and her daughters were at significant disadvantage relative to those in government favor. The daughters were no longer able to get into good schools in Turkmenistan and had to leave the country to continue their education. Our guide works mostly as an English teacher and part-time as a guide. She is supports her family because her husband is no longer able to find work.
We heard shocking story after story as we drove through what she called “a fantasies (sic) world”. I’ll never forget that phrase.
Ashgabat is probably the cleanest city I've ever been in. The poorest women in society, faces wrapped in cloth to keep out the dust, spend all day in the sun sweeping with twig brooms to keep the streets clean. I saw many without dustpans simply collecting leaves by hand, picking them up one by one. I saw many scrubbing the ground (particularly around monuments dedicated to Turkmenbashi) with soap and rags. (Not once did I see a man doing such menial manual labor.)
The country is currently ruled by another (crazy) megalomaniac named Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedov, who is only slightly less oppressive than Turkmenbashi. None of the palaces That Turkmenbashi built for himself meet the needs of Berdymukhammedov, so a new white marble palace is being built and the city center is being moved to the location around his new palace. Huge red cranes work furiously all over the city building more and more and more.
Where does all the money come from? Oil and natural gas! The country is sitting on vast reserves of oil and natural gas and the government is making a killing yet is not passing much on to citizens. How it explains this (apparently the president loves to make speeches on television including one where he explained that it is bad for people to be paid too much money) and gets away with it I’ll never understand. Except that the country is run by the military and the government has and probably still does exert a form of mind-control over the citizens.
Turkmenbashi wrote a book called the Ruhnama that’s a bit like Mao’s little red book. It laid out “the rules for living” and all citizens were required to memorize it. In fact he eventually banned all other books than the Ruhnama from being taught in schools. This policy has now been changed, but our guide pointed out that there’s an entire generation that learned nothing in school but the Ruhnama. No math, science, history – nothing. So they are completely ignorant. It’s all quite horrible and unbelievable.
So putting the current world aside for moment, we drove to the outskirts of town to visit an ancient Parthian ruin called Nissa. Nissa was founded as the capital of the Parthians in the 3rd century BC. I was surrounded by a commercial city that was inhabited until the 13th c when the Mongols arrived, laid siege to the city and razed it to the ground. We walked around inside the fortress walls and saw lovely rooms made of mud bricks. The center is believed to have housed a Zoroastrian temple.
Then back into the city for a stop at a huge white marble mosque that Turkmenbashi built to honor himself (Turkmenbashi Ruhy Mosque) and a mausoleum next door built to honor his mother. Inside the Turkmenbashi mosque, instead of quotations from the Qur’an there are (surprise) quotations from the Ruhnama!
There are many Turks working in Ashgabat in the construction business so their companies got together and built the Azadi mosque, a replica of Istanbul’s Blue Mosque. We stopped by for a visit; Ok, but nowhere near the magnificence of the real thing.
Had lunch in a high-rise business restaurant with views of marble buildings and row after row of Xmas trees.
In the afternoon did more driving around and stopped to see a huge pink (why pink, no one knows) statue of the Ruhnama, plus many GOLD statues placed all over the city of “the golden man” Turkmenbashi.
The best stop of the day was at a marvelous Carpet Museum with superb examples of Turkmen weavings from all around the country. Had a Ph. D. in Turkmen textiles to give us a tour. She took us downstairs to see women weaving carpets that will become part of the museum’s collection. We were able to see how the wool is wound around the warp and cut off; different colors wound around different threads to form the eventual pattern. We saw the bits of graph paper they were working from and I cannot fathom how they translate what I saw into such magnificent and intricate designs. Both the weavers and our expert guide seemed delighted in our interest and allowed us to take photos. Unfortunately we’d been told not to bring our cameras into the museum and I’d left mine on the bus. Why I obeyed such an instruction this time I don’t know since I usually do not. So I'm relying on Larry to send me the photos and videos he took on my behalf. We left the museum energized and thrilled by our good fortune to have had such a knowledgeable guide.
Dinner at our hotel, another “fantasies-world” experience. We’re staying in the Hotel President, the poshest of posh hotel in the city yet it has no Wi-Fi, you can’t get more than one room key (the card-key variety), and when you return to your room at the end of the day you have no towels or other vital amenities and have to call to the front desk to get them. The veneer of modernity is there, but not the reality. Oh yes, almost forgot to add that Internet was only introduced into the country three years ago. And I am sure that very few people have access to it; probably only government workers and business travelers.
I do want to quote something from Lonely Planet: “Be aware that all top-range hotel rooms are bugged, as are many offices, restaurants and anywhere foreigners meet. Reserve sensitive conversations, especially any with Turkmen citizens (who are far more likely to get into trouble than you) for safe places, preferably outside.“
No comments:
Post a Comment