TURKMEN HOMESTAY

Glancing over my shoulder I saw a portly woman, modestly dressed in a long skirt, her eyes glued to the floor. She entered the apartment quietly and slid into a room with Roshan’s friend. I wouldn’t have guessed she was a prostitute, but Roshan’s blatant hand gestures left no room for a mistake. He looked me in the eye and smacked his fist into his palm repeatedly, nodding towards the room she had just entered. It was an invitation for me to take the next turn. No thanks. Derick and JP also kindly declined.

We sat in a circle on a floor covered in Turkmen rugs. Empty soup bowls, a couple loaves of bread, and a dish of candies filled the space between us. It was nearing 2 AM and we were on our second bottle of vodka. Roshan had approached us on the street an hour earlier with blood-shot eyes and a drunken grin. We’d parked in front of his building and not a minute had passed before he invited us in for the night. We accepted his invitation, and followed him up into a dark, concrete apartment block. He flicked on the lights and woke up an old man named Casper who was curled up on the floor, and another he called Chief, who had passed out on the flat’s lone piece of furniture. Roshan sent a third man out to buy more vodka, and he returned with with the hooker. It was an impromptu soirée in a room of Turkmen oil workers, their temporary abode while out on the job. The conversation was broken but lively, and we bonded over shots of vodka and manhood. Casper didn’t speak a lick of English, but he managed to dominate the conversation, building his stories with a pair of weathered hands. Roshan translated what he could, and we chipped in with muddled smiles. After being stuck on a cargo ship in the Caspian Sea for three days, capped off by a hellish five-hour trudge through customs, this was our introduction to Turkmenistan.

It was 3 AM by the time we convinced our hosts to let us go to sleep, and they held their promise of an early rise by waking us up the next day before 7. With the call girl there, I doubt Roshan and his friends got much sleep, but they were as chipper as could be as they saw us off. After some tea and a round of hugs, we drove into the dessert. Our first twelve hours in Turkmenistan had been surreal. And it would only get weirder. We were happy to be on the road again. On to Ashgabat!