INGULFED
(Notes for the Abu Dhabi Bar Mitzvah)Archive for jean claude van damme
Tajikistan… If You Can Tajikistand It
Story-hunting in one of the world’s top seven -stan countries — let’s blame the terrible titling on the 80 hours it took to get here.
But at least there are the cultural car crashes that expose man’s natural urge to play pop culture Battleship. We’ve got no languages in common, among the three Tajiks know well, and the three I can make sentences in, but we do have a code: those references. It’s hard to know anyone without talking — it’s easy to get crazy, to assume the worst, to find fault — and yet, when the Wandering Tajik fires a random name at a Wandering Jew, and when there’s a sound not of empty echo but of a clink against something solid — we know we’re at least playing the same game. Direct hit.
So, here: a conversation in the shared taxi “terminal” in Dushanbe, waiting hopelessly to set out on the the “15-” (read: 35-) hour trip to Khorog.
A man, smiley: “London?”
Me: “America.”
“Los Angeles?”
“New York.”
“Ah. California.”
“Well…”
“Schwartzenigger.”
“Yes.”
“Schwartzenigger!”
“Yes.”
He seemed to be searching for more points of connection. I was out. “Ruski znayet?”
“No.” It was strange: me, the caucasian, ignorant in the lingua franca of the whole Caucasus. But I was too hot to be apologetic.
Another silence.
“Vandum.”
“What?”
“Vandum, Vandum: Vandam.”
“Ah, yes.”
“Jean-Claude Van Damme.”
“Yes, yes.”
I asked my cheeks to lift into what I thought would be a smile. Looking satisfied, he walked away.
Dawn at the landslide — traffic halts for a day in the valley, across the river from Afghanistan.
What happens just before Lyaksh stays just before Lyaksh — especially if the road is liquid.
