Classic Bolshevick Romance, or, Things I Learn Over Tea

I spend way too much time with my neighbors.  So much time in fact, I’ve begun to become familiar with every member of their family (if you learn anything about Kazakh families, learn this: they are HUGE).

This past month, my ‘Kazakh-father’s’ ethnic-Kazakh mother and father came up to Zhanatas from Uzbekistan.  Many Kazakh people actually live in Kyrgyzstan or Uzbekistan or any number of post-soviet union countries. Nazerbyev, Kazakhstan’s president, famously called for all ‘Kazakhs’ to come home to their ‘mother land’ and provided heavy incentives like very generous pensions, and child birth rewards which starkly contrast Uzbekistan’s population control (give birth to 5 children, get a bronze metal, give birth to 9, get gold!).   Kazakhstan also has an ‘up and coming’ international profile, while Uzbekistan is still pinned under the heavy ramifications of the Soviet era.

Kazakhs are notoriously racist against  their Uzbek counterparts (or perhaps I should say relations are consistently strained), a sentiment Uzbeks are more than happy to echo (in fact, if you’re interested in a PCV perspective, check out this blog of the ONLY Uzbek-speaking Peace Corps Volunteer in Kazakhstan).

My ‘host mother’s’ family recently  immigrated to Kazakhstan from Uzbekistan and they’re living quite high on the horse in, raking in a joint-pension of over 100,000 tenge a month, a small fortune especially in a place like Zhanatas.  While they had to give up sheep and horses and only take what they could fit in the baggage portion of a bus, they don’t want for anything any longer.

With the announcement that my host father’s family was coming up, I couldn’t help but be curious.  Who were these ethnic Kazakh people that chose to stay in Uzbekistan when they could be living in Kazakhstan?

The grandmother was like every other Kazakh woman over the age of fifty.  Bent and wobbly, she wears layer after layer of clothing to protect herself from the cold that leeches off her body.  Her hands are gnarled, cliche or not, and she grasps at the constant cup of tea in her hands like it’s the last thing keeping her attached to this world.

She’s also blind, and to my horror, her husband of 40 years kept making nasty remarks about how ‘bad’ of a wife she was, so ‘useless.’  Let’s just say I’ve invited her to my place a lot for tea.

And it was over just such a tea that she told me her story of falling in love, and why they live in Uzbekistan.  I’m going to attempt to tell it to you as best and as accurately as I can, but some of the charm of the Kazakh language is probably  lost in translation.

Like the old women we both are at heart, the two of us began the conversation by commiserating about the state of the youth today (I, in particular, take issue with the ‘hammer pants’ the kids get away with wearing in the city or sometimes outside of school).

“When I was young,” she told me, “in Uzbekistan, things were different.  You listened, you were obedient.  You had to be.”  She sort of cackled, showing off her four remaining teeth, one of which is gold.  I reached over and refilled her little bowl of tea, the hot liquid sluicing over the tea spoon.  ”Being in love, now that was hard – no phones, no secret meetings.  My mother, now she was strict.”

I of course smiled and slightly nodded, making the soft ‘mmm’ noise under my breath that means I’m listening and interested.

“Acet and I went through school together.  I was ‘A’ class, and he was ‘V;’ I loved him long before he noticed me.”  Her hand went to the huge bun of bound-up grey hair at the back of her neck covered by a married woman’s scarf.  ”Finally in 9th form he noticed me, and told me he loved me and that he would kidnap me and take me away.”

Bride nappings are very common in my part of southern Kazakhstan, so the idea is no longer a shock or cause for pause.

She continued, “But I told him I wanted to leave school first (graduate), and if he loved me he would wait.”  Her lips, literally scored with wrinkles, pressed against the edge of her cup to drink tea as she thought, her eyes the misty white of the blind or near-blind.  ”We arranged all of this in school, on notes between the two of us.  The teachers were strict, and back then  girls had modesty.”

I nodded agreeably, taking a sip from my own bowl of black tea, my fingers wrapped comfortably around the circular shape for warmth.

“But then he had to go to the army, and I thought my heart would break.  It was summer, and I couldn’t see him expect to go on a walk with my mother – she was smart, she wouldn’t let me walk alone in the early evening – and even when I did see him I couldn’t say hello.”  Another pause, another bend of her head to the little bowl of chai.  ”Acet used to throw rocks at the window, and I would try and go out to meet him.  But once my mother caught us, and then she would stand every night by the window, her arms crossed, until I was safely tucked into my bed on the floor.”

I laughed slightly, commenting under my breath: “Smart woman.”  Her crackling laugh echoed mine.

“I would pretend to go to sleep, and wait and wait until she was asleep too, and then go to the window.  He was always there waiting, until the day he had to leave.  I told my mother I was going to my grandmother’s and I went to the station to see him off.  I cried, and he laughed- men are like that.”

I nodded the obligatory agreement accompanied by the soft ‘mmm’ in the back of my throat.

“After training he got to come home for a month.  And that is when he took me away and we were married.  It was romantic.  But then he left again and we would write letters and once a week I would go to the Post Office at a certain time and wait my turn to talk on the one telephone our village had.  He would tell me how much he loved me, and he wanted me – and I would tell him about his mother and his family and then our time would be up.  Eight minutes.”

Like young women of most Central Asian countries, she lived with her husband’s family, taking care of their every need like a second-class citizen.

“When he left that first time I became pregnant but the baby died.  It happened like that even after he came home.  I couldn’t find who I was anymore – I was lost.  We lost four.  He wasn’t like other husbands, he didn’t blame me too much.  He was good to me.  Then, when Shooak was born there was great rejoicing.  And after him came four others, healthy.”

I couldn’t and still can’t imagine the weight of losing four children, especially in a culture where fertility problems are blamed directly on woman for something they’ve done, like not wearing shoes or sitting on the floor.

“Now three of my babies live here, in Kazakhstan,” she said.  ”But five of my babies are still in Uzbekistan.  I belong with them.  I belong there.”