I didn't even hear the message, just felt Elliot grappling with me on the bright and humid streets of Baku, pulling me in for a hug.
"What?" I asked, "What'd they say?" The words coming out muffled by Elliot's amiable arm stretched over my mouth.
"We're getting on the boat today! Jonny, we're getting on the boat!"
I was too tired from the night before [Free Efes hats (Turkish beer) in a bar with the power out and a galaxy of flashing lights that I supposed to be some kind of dance club, but couldn't see enough of anything to be sure,] to respond with all the enthusiasm I felt in regard to this news, luckily it was quite easy to drape my own sweaty arm over Elliot's back and just grin.
"It's about damn time."
Freshly aboard the ferry I had the worst shower I've ever had in my life. It wasn't really a shower so much as a dowsing with lukewarm ballast water that seeped from a twisted length of metal coil, of which I had to wrap around my shoulders to ensure that some of the water would actually drip onto my soapy midsection rather than the rust-broken floor. I really don't know why I even thought I'd be able to bathe in there. The room was really nothing more than a scant bathroom with a drain in the middle of the floor and some kind of conduit hanging out of the wall with no clear indication that it actually was able to bring forth any water.
Still, the shower helped to clean some of the Baku city-sweat and detritus off my body and I felt better as I walked above deck to try to get down a few words in Turkmen before docking. But, up there, riding over the Caspian, I can think of very few books that would have been worth looking at, indeed, if I even had the wherewithal to read anything at all, as the bluish-gold waters under the twilit sky soon bore all my attention away on innumerable choppy waves.
The heat from the nearby engine room curling the hairs in my nose and a juice glass full of 'chacha' [Georgian homemade vodka] cauterizing the cilia in the back of my throat seemed to lift my already light head off somewhere between Iran, Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan; it bobbed around, just above my body, like a hefty balloon, for the rest of the night while I listened to one last Georgian tamada make one last speech to world peace, and the Caucasus sped away beneath the hull bearing a Azeri standard in the middle of the night.
"Bistra, Bistra!" I awoke to the ship's steward standing in our cabin's doorway telling us to hurry up and get out of the room before the ship docked. As we had anticipated being stuck at the dock for an extra day (at least) we had brought a lot of food and water that still littered the cabin. We breakfasted quickly and shoved what was left of our provisions (mostly chips and beans) into our bags and made for the deck where the Azeri flag on deck was now reaching out toward the Turkmen flag on the dock, two shades of green whipping crescents and stars into the desert air.
Not expecting to actually be able to get into Turkmenistan without our tour guide present, Elliot and I left the customs line dwindle down to a few other stragglers before attempting to explain our foreign passports. We passed, without interruption, from one station to the next through the customs checkpoint, each agent saying 'fcio' [that's all] and waving us onto the next attendant, bored, but still in no hurry to stamp the request 8 forms for our entry. We paid our entry fee, gave names of hotels where we thought we might stay, and, suddenly, like a prisoner who suddenly finds himself outside of jail just after he has ceased to believe that he will ever be let go, we found ourselves, with our packs on, walking toward the city of Turkmenbashi, no idea what to do next.
As we were walking down the train tracks, it seemed like a forgone conclusion that we might make for the train station and to try secure a seat to Ashgabat, the capital. Once inside, I stood in a throng of long flowing dresses and headscarves, twisted Turkmen manat between waving fists, as if these people were trying to somehow punch the money to the tired-looking clerk behind the glass window. We weren't able to get a ticket, but it was just as well, as a call to the travel agency reported that if we were stopped at one of the numerous police checkpoints leading into the capital, which we most surely would be, we could be deported for not having a guide with us. rather than take the chance we decided to wait out the night in a hotel that required proof of money exchanged at the government rate, which meant walking across town and having a gun pulled on us by an uncertain security guard, who was apparently unaccustomed to seeing anyone come in the bank and proceed to the counter as if they had some kind of business there.
We couldn't get a room, it was Sunday and the bank was closed. For the rest of the afternoon we wondered through the streets of Turkmenbashi, risking deportation to listen to Russian pop drifting up and down the otherwise quiet streets with each passing car, to visit a bar that didn't have anything and to eventually swim along side spindly ivory-colored snakes in the Caspian sea. By that night, with my underwear still wet from the swim we were getting into a cab outside the Ashgabat airport.
We were advised to stay in our hotel for the night to avoid unnecessary problems, and ended up with a 100 manat bill (about 40 dollars) and a few prostitute propositions from the disco bar downstairs.
The next day I was able to wander through the ghostly streets of Ashgabat, or 'Poshgabat' as Elliot referred to it, where avenues and parade grounds stretched out under the aegis of a milky white desert sun and a haunting silence. White marble fountains gushed for the empty streets, white marble buildings glowered down on ziggurat-like staircases, the lawns were freshly clipped, the gold and dark-veined marble shown oasis-bright, but there was no one to be found except those employed to build more of it. The sounds of new construction echoed high above the city and with them, the pervasive feeling of wandering through the most elegant sepulcher ever constructed, and still being constructed, like, as long as the tomb was still being built, the person meant to occupy it would never die.
The next morning we were waiting for a flight to Mary, near the ancient city of Merv when I met with one of the apparitions I had missed the day before in Ashgabat.
The boarding area was quiet, as all of Turkmenistan has been, when the hush died down to a total silence, total save the tinkling of small and multifarious bells. I craned my head to see from whence to sound and silence had arisen to see before me a hunched figure escorted by a man in a plain dress shirt and tie. The figure (and I have to use this word as no amount of inspection could have possibly reveled to me what lay under this moving bulk of drapery) moved slowly, face, hands and feet totally obscured, almost stolen by the embroidery, amulets and fabrics that this figure labored under.
Escorted by her new husband this living wraith stalked up to the ticket collectors and was gone, save the sound of little bells tinkling down the hall, long after she had departed.
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