PLOV 14 - Not dead, just done
PLOV
I got home. But before: no news for days, not a peep, not a single instant gram. He must be dead, they said! He must have perished in those snowsliding cabs; he must have eaten bad braised lamb and carrots.
No, reader, I was just in the loving arms of Turkish Airlines for a little longer than I'd thought. And then swaddled in the embrace of the worst wave of jetlag I've had in a long time--still going, actually, full brain-fog, utter exhaustion, motivation sucked out like the air from a critically damaged space station.
Welcome, then, to the final edition of PLOV, where we limp to the finish line with aplomb! I have been, and always will be, Bernard Soubry, your bleary-eyed guide.
The way it goes on the way home: Play the flute for a couple guys who ask if they can film me at a sunny train station in Bukhara. Take the train to Tashkent. Everything outside is grey, unthinkably grey, the only green popping up from astroturf football fields. Babushka scarves invade the compartment in Navoi. Refuse to buy train food because I somehow presume there will be food at the hotel. Arrive at hotel to find half a can of Pringles as my supper. Sleep four hours. Taxi to Tashkent airport. Final bartering in som. Plane delayed thirty minutes. Plane delayed three hours.
Arrival in Istanbul ten minutes before connecting flight departure. Hotel rebooking line: a man at the desk periodically looks up and shouts at whatever unfortunate soul came through the exit line, no, sir! no! you go back of the line! this is exit! Try to exude Buddha-friendliness with the woman rebooking my connecting flight. Lots of thank you and I trust you and knowing smiles. Booked in hotel an hour's drive from the airport. Lady at hotel looks up and says, your bus will be here at four in the morning. Sleep four hours. Get onto bus. Get into line. Get onto plane.
Ten hour flight to Chicago. Make friends with a Thai-Canadian man also going to Montreal. Lots of comments from him about my long, flowing hair. He is wearing the telltale Turkish back-of-head diaper. So flowing! he says. You'll never need this in your life, pointing to diaper. Start to think he's maybe flirting with me. At least someone likes the musketeer look. Three-hour layover in Chicago; eat a pizza (disappointing, middling, flat in all the wrong ways) and some profiterole (glorious, bright and fluffy, so far removed from what an airport pizza joint should be able to provide). Board plane to Montreal. Land in the late afternoon light, feel the first real breath of February cold in two weeks; fall into taxi, collapse, weak smile. Home, home, home.
Lessons learned on this trip: It is possible to spend two weeks in Central Asia in winter with a single backpack and still look presentable enough to be in UN negotiations. Two weeks of Russian is not enough to negotiate with cab drivers. There is a limit to the amount of beef a used-to-be vegetarian can ingest before the heartburn starts to feel like divine punishment. Uzbekistan is a complicated, beautiful, awful place, with people who are filled with kindness despite having been witness to the strangest and worst aspects of humanity.
And: if you want to remember a place well, promise some friends and strangers you'll write about it.
Thank you for accompanying me on this journey. I wasn't sure that it would be worth it to document this trip at first. It was a self-indulgent thing to begin with, this asking for your eyeballs and attention, and UN conferences are boring even to those of us who know them well. But like I mentioned in the first iteration of this, you all collectively gave me permission to cut through that boredom. To take the chaff of the day and make it into a little doll for you.
I am a better person when I am doing things with other people in mind; other people teach me to do things for myself. I ask for this audience (you!) and I end up writing thousands of words--for you, yes, but also for myself. It makes me into the person I want to be: the one who pays attention, who stays up so late to make things bright.
Which is all to say: thank you, thank you, thank you for this time. May there be a next one! And in the meantime, be well.
Yours -
B
PS: That's it! It's done! Feel free to email me by replying if you have any thoughts or questions. I will delete the email list, so you won't be contacted by me again unless you ask to be put onto future email lists. Thanks again for reading. Really.
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