A Swiss couple I know have just returned from Turkmenistan, ex-Turkmen S.S.R. in Soviet days. Their description makes it sound like a cross between the Marx Brothers and 1984. Ashgabad, the capital, is a whited sepulcher of marble and gold. Most of all the old Soviet buildings have been replastered in white marble, and all the new buildings are made of it. The city is spread out, all in marble--hotels, apartments, government buildings, etc., all lit up at night by thousands of street lights and spotlights on main buildings and all the roundabouts, where there are towering marble columns. "Once you get inside the buildings," says the wife, "you see the shoddy finish. . . our first room at the hotel had no closet and the air conditioning didn’t work, but the second room had a closet but the floor lamp and the two bed lamps didn’t work; we almost had no light."
Mind you, it's not as bad as it was before the mighty Turkmenbashi died back in '06, although the gold statues of the mortal god still revolve above Ashgabad. The story of Turkmenbashi, or "Leader of theTurkmens," was a Walter Mitty dream come true: a mediocre Communist functionary in the old Turkmen S.S.R., remarkable only by his orthodoxy and slavish devotion to his Moscow masters, transformed himself into the father of his nation when the Soviet Union crumbled away in 1991. Wasting no time, Turkmenbashi--Suparmurat Niyazov, to give him his true Russo-Turkmen moniker--renamed the months after favorite historical characters, family members, etc., banned beards (in a traditionally Muslim, hence heavily bearded, nation), ordered this torn down, that renamed, and finally penned a great book, or had it penned for him,called "the Ruhnama," a ludicrous jumble of meditations, quack psychology, and portentous ponderings of the kind so familiar to adherents of crackpot faiths. Study of the Ruhnama was compulsory in every walk of life, but it was a kind of faux brainwashing; at some level, most Turkmens realized how absurd it all was. “After thorough study of our leader’s works," said an officer, tongue firmly in cheek, "our grenades will hit their targets more accurately, the tanks will run around the training zone more rapidly, and the troops will be better fed." Excuse me while I fall down laughing.
Most of Turkmenbashi's decrees, it seems, have been quietly rescinded since his sudden and somewhat mysterious death, but enough lingers, according my friends, to give the place a unique feel, a strange destiny, as if Las Vegas had melted into Pyongyang in some other dimension. I don't think I'll be hitting the road to Ashgabad anytime soon. But ya never know what's comin' down the pike, as Turkmenbashi might have said.
