"It's hard to be tolerant against other cultures when you get continuously reinforced in your prejudice, hm."
This portion of the story was only my initial reactions, there's significantly more to it.
"Your only reason for visiting was to see the Door to Hell?"
No, I've condensed the reason into something possibly recognizable for the purposes of a title.
I found the start of my travel diary in Turkmenistan. I might continue writing it from memory.
I caught the last plane out of Islamabad as spring bubbled at the base of the Himalayas like an effervescent rash. The image of a deeper green suffusing throughout the Margalla Hills was rapidly fading from my memory, and I may have mourned the loss if not for the passenger seated beside me – a Croatian priest – who ate his in-flight meal counter-clockwise. Pleasantly distracted, I awoke from wide-eyed Valium tranquillity to find our descent into Türkmenbaşy had begun. Veiled attendants guided me to my seat, and we landed as the sun rose in gilded bands of red and pink, wobbling in the oily heat.
I managed to hail a cab, in amongst a hundred thousand others attempting the same, and was whisked through the crowded streets at speeds fast enough to dry the film from my eyeballs, as the radio blared with discordant dutar music. Irritated and hot, I scanned the Turkmen streets for an explanation to a culture that might popularise a two-stringed instrument incapable of producing sound that wouldn’t necessitate the services of an otolaryngologist in the coming weeks. I found no answer. I did, however, find several answers to that antediluvian dilemma of how best to store one’s goat. In Turkmenistan, you can store a goat most anywhere.
As we arrived at my hotel, my pants were stiff with sweat. The sand between my fingers had congealed into a grainy mayonnaise of Central Asia and the Middle East, and I could feel every stich of clothing biting at my skin like ants. Uncomfortable and tired, it slipped my mind to tip the driver, and he responded by heartily grabbing his crotch and likening me to a goitered gazelle. I thanked him and mounted the curb with a suitcase only rivalled in emptiness by my fatigued head.
It was at this point, fortunately or otherwise, that I met Hamza. Short, bespectacled and with teeth as jagged as shrapnel, he helped me with my bag.
‘Amerika?’ He asked me, with unusual fervour.
‘No.’
‘Western.’ He nodded, and swayed his hips in what I imagined was a reproduction of my gait.
I laughed nervously, ‘Sure.’
Hamza was a con-artist. Commendably, he didn’t introduce himself as one, and rather advised me that he was a city planner. The appearance and dysfunction of Türkmenbaşy perhaps should have compelled me to question the very existence of Turkmen city planners, but I was, at the time, a congenial combination of polite and scared for my life.
Hamza took it upon himself to show me to my room, despite not being an employee of the hotel, nor knowing where my room was. Hamza didn’t concern himself with these details, and was demonstrably resourceful in the way he verbally abused the concierge in Uzbek, resulting in a suite that I was sure I had not booked.
Through the floor to ceiling windows, I could see the desert, a rolling, writhing coil of orange ribbon. In the distance, small as a retinal scar, I could see all the letters to Santa, a half-sunk pillar in the level sands of Turkmenistan. Nibbled by camels and shredded by eddies of gritty wind.
Acutely aware that Hamza had not left, I pulled a taut smile, ‘Thank you for your help, Hamza.’
‘Is okay.’ He raised a finger and walked into the bathroom, closing the door behind him, ‘I have sleep now.’
