“I don’t usually like shopping, but I’ve become an addict. I think it’s all those years living under Communism with nothing but bare shop shelves,” I told her. I was worried about the ongoing delay, so I went back to the counter to check on our flight status.
The woman at the information desk suggested that we fly to the Kyrgyz capital, Bishkek, instead of Tashkent.
“How far is Bishkek from Tashkent?”
“Nearly six hundred kilometres.”
“The road conditions?”
“Girl, I work for an airline, how should I know?” She had a point. After so many journeys on potholed roads that disappeared into ruts I felt skeptical about the possibility of a decent connection between these capitals. Still, Bishkek, the site of a political meeting, did eventually feature on our itinerary and the Aeroflot woman seemed confident that the Bishkek flight, scheduled to take off at 1:15 p.m., would fly. The tickets cost the equivalent of a few dollars each so that even on our limited budgets we could afford to buy tickets for that flight and for every other flight leaving for any Central Asian destination over the next few days.
Someone’s information was not very good. At check-in that afternoon, the Aeroflot woman said, with no hint of an apology, “that flight is cancelled. The only one leaving before 8 p.m. is the flight to Leningrad.” Defeated, we gave up and went home. A pizza delivery service had recently opened in Kiev. I thought that fresh pizza would be some consolation for a wasted day with no food at the airport.
I dialed the number for Vezuvia. The woman who answered told me to pick up the pizza myself.
“But you’re meant to deliver.”
“The driver’s away and we don’t know when he’ll come back.”
“Could you take my number and call me when he does?” The woman agreed. It wasn’t an entirely hopeless situation because she also took our order, which meant that the chef must be there.
Charlotte and I stacked our plane tickets on the kitchen table and then went through them to figure out which flight would leave next.
“I’d better call the Aeroflot office for an update on the fuel situation,” I said to Charlotte. My finger became sore from dialing a line that was constantly busy. After half an hour, someone finally answered. The woman on the other end said that the flight for Bishkek had been rescheduled and would fly but that the tickets we held would no longer be valid.
Before I could reserve new tickets, the woman put the phone handset on the counter. At least she did not hang up. I heard her complaining to a co-worker about the high cost of bus tickets. I shouted and whistled down the phone to catch her attention, but I think that she disliked work and therefore ignored me. After ten minutes, I decided that she would never return, so I hung up.
The phone then rang. It was the Vezuvia lady. She said that the driver had arrived and would deliver our order. Within twenty minutes a large cheese, tomato and pepperoni pizza sat on the table. Charlotte tried to figure out how to fit it into the oven but was interrupted by the ringing of the doorbell. She opened the door. My landlord stood there, surprised to find us home. I understood that we interfered with his plans.
When I first rented the apartment a year and a half earlier, I returned home from a trip late one night. I heard laughter from the kitchen as I unlocked my apartment door and pushed it open. I glanced down at my watch — it was past midnight. I dragged my bag over the threshold and left it in the hallway by a large bookcase. Then I stood and listened. I recognized my landlord’s voice. Why was he here? Who were those other people with him? I was tired and wanted to go to bed. But it seemed that night that I had one more issue to settle before I crawled into bed.
I walked through the small vestibule, around a corner and down the long hallway that led past a galley kitchen to the dining area. My landlord and three of his friends were sitting at the table. The vodka long gone, they were now sobering up with coffee. A few empty cups stood scattered across the table.
“Susan! You’re home! We didn’t expect you,” my landlord said.
Didn’t expect me? I was so tired that I could not even search for the correct words in Russian to ask him what he was doing here. Why had he moved in and thrown a party while I was away? Renting an apartment had only become possible once I received accreditation. Locals rarely rented and with so few foreigners in Kiev, few people here had experience as landlords. My landlord and I were still negotiating the terms of the landlord-tenant relationship. I thought we’d made progress but realized now that we still had some way to go.
As I stood there, one of my landlord’s friends asked for a drink. My landlord said, “Susan, you’re the hostess, make some more coffee.” I glared at him. Realizing they had overstayed their welcome, they packed up and left.
Tonight, I saw that my landlord held a bag with a large watermelon. He came into the kitchen and cut pieces for us. He chatted for a few minutes, said that if a man or a woman phoned for him that I should tell them to meet him at the cinema next door. Then he left. At 9 p.m. my landlord arrived back at the apartment with his boss and a woman. We passed in the hallway of our building. Charlotte and I were returning to the airport, hoping to get on the Bishkek flight. (Work on the landlord-tenant relationship would have to wait.)
Now the woman at the Aeroflot desk (did she never go home?) insisted that we register for a flight to the Turkmen capital, Ashgabat, instead of Bishkek. I knew that Ashgabat was 1,300 kilometres from Tashkent, the city that we eventually hoped to reach, but at this point I thought that anywhere in Central Asia would do. Charlotte understood the conversation. She stood erect, eyes opened wide. She shouted, “I can’t believe it.” She walked quickly through the waiting area and shouted, “I can’t believe it” over and over again. The Aeroflot woman sympathized. “Nervnyi stress [nervous stress],” she said and handed us two boarding passes for the flight to Ashgabat.
We landed at 7 a.m. I had no visa for Ashgabat; I never even wanted to be here. Independent now, Turkmenistan should have customs and passport control, but no one asked us any questions. We walked out of the airport without a document check and took a taxi to a hotel.
“One double room please,” I said to the receptionist.
“Do you have a reservation?”
“No, may I make one now?”
“Reservations must be made in advance.”
“But you have empty rooms.” Silence. I begged. She refused.
I longed for capitalism where reservations depended only on vacancy rates and the ability to pay. We tried other hotels. The receptionist at the Jubilee, which housed the American embassy, said no, as did the receptionist at the Tourist. We did not mind being rejected there quite as much because we noticed that parts of the lobby ceiling had collapsed. The stairs also seemed unstable. The Tourist receptionist sent us to the Ashgabat Hotel but warned us that that it would be impossible for us to check in there; she was right.
Under the circumstances a small lie seemed acceptable. Back at the Tourist desk, I told the receptionist that the Ukrainian diplomatic service had forwarded a reservation booking for us and that the hotel must have misplaced it. The receptionist lied right back.
“We have no rooms,” she said. (The hotel was so empty that our footsteps echoed in the lobby.) “Besides the Tourist doesn’t take foreign guests, so the telegram shouldn’t have been sent here in the first place.” The receptionist seemed mildly interested in our case. We decided that we would camp out in the lobby and not leave until she gave us a room.
A few hours later, someone in the hotel chain of authority agreed to check us in. The hotel receptionist, now a friend and an ally, led us through deserted hallways to our room. When we entered and flicked on the light, I saw a cockroach scuttle under the bathroom door.