In the last few weeks I’ve been feeling that spontaneous emergence of warm glow that sometimes happens when you live in close proximity to people in a place far from what you know to be home. It’s not just the family you stay with but the whole community starts recognizing you as part of the “street”. They see you everyday…at first thinking you were odd or crazy or weird and then making very slow strides to smiling at you when they see you. From the smile comes the emergence of simple conversation. Soon you have a village of people looking at you and smiling instead of just staring and staring some more. People start to ask you to give them a hand in looking after their animals, asking about your culture and family, and even inviting you to attend the wedding party down the street. Meanwhile, you start to make great connections with the family and the people that you interact with on a daily basis for work or research or just conversation. You start to pick up the language, or in this case languages. But most importantly, there emerges a feeling of belonging, something that gives you a sense of place.
Out on the steppe, that sense of place for me has meant the exact location of certain stones in the grassy plain and recognizing the tilt of the apple trees and which ones led closer to the house in the increasing darkness of late November evenings. Everything was imprinted in my mind.
On November 20th came the blizzard, when the last of the apples either froze on the inside (tasting like sweet apple sorbet) or shriveled up and fell into the snow drifts. From what always felt rather arid and sun-burned came a swing to the climate which brought me instantly to Canadian January. Things went on as normal, but the steppe turned into a vast white plain blending into the whiteness of the snow shrouded mountains. The day dawned warm, but by the end the electricity cut and did not return for three days. The warmth of the house lasted for about 6 hours after which we began to see our breath and huddled beside the candle light to eat rice porridge (called kasha), old bread and tea…but not too much! No, it was not a nice experience to walk out in sub-zero winds and snow to somehow find the pit latrine with only the light of endless stars to guide the way.
Things continued as normal. People helped each other. Wood and coal was provided to families in need and children glided on the ice-encrusted main road linking the villages where few cars could be seen. The engines of the old Ladas compressed with snow struggled and moaned while the air became foggy and freezing from the burning of coal.
Upon completing the majority of the field research, I left the comfort of community and 'place' to meet my local supervisor and his girlfriend who were keen to stay in an old sanitorium- one of a few which line the northern coast of Issyk-Kul. Soviet-era sanitoriums were ‘resorts’ where the ill came to rejuvenate their health in a natural environment or to get special treatments for ailments they suffered. In addition to the health facilities offered, sanitoria were also hotels for Communist party elites from Khruschev times onwards to the Gorbachev and post Soviet Yeltsin era. Many Russians descended on sanitoria in former republics and this one in particular was quite highly esteemed in its day.
After shivering without power for the past few days, arriving at the sanitorium just 30 minutes down the road seemed like quite a comfort. Built in the 70s, the building itself was a slab of concrete shaped like a giant ship washed ashore alongside the lake. Behind the ship were extensive gardens of tall blue spruce trees, a carbon-copied standard Soviet playground (with very widely spaced handlebars!), and drained fountains which led to a deserted lakeshore of snow, sand, and skeletons of patio furniture leftover from summer. There was also a long pier extending deep into the lake lit up by large circular lamps which glowed in the distance. The water of the lake was dark blue and frigid, but not frozen. Issyk-Kul means 'hot lake' in Kyrgyz and never freezes.
Inside the ship-shaped sanitorium were endless corridors with bright red or olive green carpets extending down the length to the far distance of the hallway. Poorly lit stairwells at each end and in the middle led to different wings of each floor. Since tourist numbers since Soviet days has been on the decline combined with it being late November…we were among the few guests there. The rooms were nothing spectacular, with the exception of wires and speakers along the walls. Breakfast, lunch and dinner times were scheduled for a specific hour (only one hour) and guests were given assigned seats of where to sit in the cafeteria. Food came in miniature portions and after one hour exactly the servers snapped at you to finish whatever you had left on your plate and leave.
At night, we explored the hallways and came across the ‘sterilization room’ and the ‘intestinal irrigation room’. There were dark empty passageways that smelled like a combination of rotting fruit and cigarettes and giant mirrors lining the hallways and eerie looking circular clocks on the wall at strange positions facing you down the corridor. The redness of the carpets, the emptiness of the building and the yellow glare of the lights along the corridors (and the snow outside) brought back images of Jack Nicholson in ‘The Shining’- a film I hadn’t seen or thought about in more than 10 years. By 2am, after thoroughly scaring ourselves, we found our way to our bedrooms. We each had our own (it was a regulation that beds could not be shared, even among couples!). 2 hours later an old rotary phone which was in the room began ringing. After 10 rings, I woke up in deep sleep and lifted the receiver. All I heard was a whistle. Then it happened again 10 minutes later. I left the receiver off the hook and tried in vain to get back to sleep. True story.
