Fall Break: Exile

Exile isn't something you stumble upon easily. It takes effort, deliberation. Solzheneitsen for his efforts agitating against Stalin's regime fell afoul of the NKVD and served a a leg in Siberia. Whether self-imposed or from government decree, Kazakhstan has seen its share of cast aways sent to the lonely steppe or desert basins of the world's ninth largest country. Kazkhstan has served as a little known but important hub of what Solzheneitsen aptly titled the "Gulag Archipieligo". Perhaps its most famous inmate, the writer Fyodor Dostoyessky was interred for for some 5 lonely years in a crude log barracks as a private (and later lieutenant) in the Regiment's Seventh Line Battalion, stationed at the fortress of Semipalatinsk in the mountainous eastern region of Kazakhstan near the Tian Shan range. His experiences here and in Siberia were the inspiration for his book The House of the Dead. His crime: Membership in a liberal group which voiced the overthrow of Czar Nicolas I. When I say it takes a concerted effort to acheive this exceptional "status" we must understand that both Solzheneitsyn and Dostoyesvsky before him, were found to be "reactionaries". Solzeneitsyn for his part was arrested while stationed on the Eastern front in the Soviet Army in 1945 for writing derogatory comments in letters to a friend, Nikolai Vitkevich about the conduct of the war by Joseph Stalin. While it is easy to surmize the fecundity of the charges leveld against them, we know these were men unaccustomed to simply keeping their heads down in turbulent times. Not satisfied with their lot in life, yet knowing the risks inherent in actions to the contrary, they made their voice heard. For Solzhenietsyn, 11 years of hard labor in Siberia was no small price to pay. As for Dostoyesvsky, the fact that he dedicated a book entitled The House of the Dead to the price he paid for upitiness in the time of the Czar just about says it all. Were these experinces contrary to their best interests? To answer this question is to plumb the lonely steppe of Kazahstan, to pry the secrets of the Silk Road from the arid embrace of limestone desert and sea that seem to fill a void in the southern corner of Kazakhstan. For some us perhaps, our greatest accomplishments come only through the crucible of a greater struggle. struggle as old as the Oddessy itself. In Solheneitsyn's case, this great struggle bore him the fruit of the Nobel Prize and a free train ticket to Moscow in 1994. For some us, the rewards are far smaller but no less tangible. Always springing for a challenge and feeling desperately content, Carrie and I decided that a teaching offer in Kazahstan was a reasonable next stop along the dusty trail of treasures we wished to pursue. Writing, travelling and photography have been our shared ambition for almost ten years now and the time seemed right for a little self-imposed exile. As is the case for so many in the expatriate community over here, work over here means a career path and opportunites not readily available back home. Ask anyone in education, manufacturing, or engineering back in the U.S. about opportunity and someone has a "tough luck" sory to tell. We are all exiles from our own economy, I propose. I'll trade a little isolation from my home culture and family for the opportunities afforded Carrie and I over here: Hate paying taxes? Tax exempt status. Hate driving? Your own personal car service. A slob? Your own housekeeper. Barely making a living wage? A good salary with lots of time off. I take cold comfort in the fact that Kazakhstan's most famous exiles, suffer though they did, returned to their home counrty eventually, going on to acheive great things with even their return travel paid for!

That's why Carrie and decided to follow the trail of one of Czarist Russia's least famous exiles fro Fall break. Our pursuit took us 20 hours by train through the great limestone desert of southern Kazakhstan along the eastern shore of the Caspian Sea. Our destination: Aqtau. Situated some 500 miles south of Atyrau along the eastern coast of the Caspian Sea, this Silk Road jewel was actually the modern-day brain-child of Soviet era engineers. Lured by local oil and uranium discoveries in 1958, Soviet architects laid out this model town of wide, straight streets, breezy boulevards and expansive publlic squares with a realist zeal. The sandy beaches and blue Caspian waters made this an ideal location for vacationing Soviet elite.

Before the break up of the Soviet Union in 1991, Aqtau, then known as "Shevchenko" took its name from the region's most notable exile, Taras Shevchenko. Shevchenko, the Ukranian national poet, artist and democratic thinker had the wherewithall to agitate for a Pan-Slavist Federation. Shevchenko, for his part, was exiled by the Czar for what amounts to a very unflattering account of Emperor Nicolas's wife and her reaction to the Decembrist uprising of 1845. He banished to an era roughly 100 kilometers of present-day Aqtau in what was then one of the Czar's Naval garrisons situated along the coast of the Caspian Sea. It was here that Taras Shevchenko lived out his exile from 1850-1857.

Long train rides are a great way to see Asia and given our experiences with them in China, I figured this would be a snap. Carrie and I reserved a 'sleeper' for the trip there with the uderstanding that this would be a modestly comfortable endeavour. Becasue the sleeper accomodates 4 people, we knew we'd have company but we had the bottom two beds, so we thought. After using the toilet on this modest, Soviet Era relic, shortly after boarding the train, I retired to our new diggs only to be informed by Carrie that she had volunteered our lower beds to an elderly couple who were apparently unable to hoist themselves up and down from the upper bunks. Whether she was flattered by their consideration of the only foreginers on the entire train i may never know. i don't want to know. Part of me says that we were chosen exclusively for our foreiness.

So it was that we spent the duration of our train trip riding the old Soviet rails on the upper or "exile" bunks as I lovingly refrred to them thereafter. Case in pont: The difficulty with our situation was compounded by our literacy level of Russian (that of a 2-year old). Add to that the fact that, unlike their Chinese counterparts, the old Soviet model did away with the dining car apparently to flaunt its proletarian predilection. This meant that Carrie and I had no functional means of sitting upright for any real duration save for: a. going to the bathrroom which meant being upright only as long as you could hold your breath b. sitting on a small fold-down stool in the sleeping car corridor until being assaulted for a free English lesson by a Russian man (or woman) who made Boris Yelsten look like a tea tottler. or c. sitting in the exit compartment of the sleeper car which exposes one to the fumes of high-sulfur coal eminating from the boiler room that serves as the car's heating system. Seeing that none of these were truly served our own best interest, we thought prudent to serve out our exile laying on our bunks sweltering under the boiler's overzelous heating system. Save for the ankle shackles, the idea of being locked away on board the Amistad had crossed my mind.

On the occassional bathrrom break, we did take the opportunity to escape to the exit compartment for a panaroma of the Mangyschlak Penninsula. This great desert basin south of Atyrau bordering Turkmenistan to the South and Uzbeksiatn to the East, seemed to erupt from the undultaing plain of the Turan Lowland in the morning sun after a fitful night's rest. An ancient seabed, the Mangyschlak Penninsula is a great limestone desert of eroded mesas and plateaus that follows the Caspian Sea on its eastern shore. To look out onto this great expanse of white, banded bluffs of briliant pink sandstone and powder white mussel chalk is to know the eternity and solemnity of the Silk Road. Carrie and I have both gazed upon the great Silk Road from the sands of the Gobi and the Gansu Corridor in China, but here in this great space of nameless canyons and empty caravanseries is to see the true path to empires. A path not shrouded in glory or wealth, nor heraldry but one strewn with the outposts of survival ,ways of life long since forgotten, an epitaph to a civilization before the eruption of the Cyrillc alphabet.

In the folds of these nameless canyons unfurled scenes from a Silk Road we have all imagined: herds of bactrian camels feeding on sparse colonies of Russian Buckthorn. A clump of cottonwoods signalling an ancient oasis. A cluster of adobe huts with currogated tin roofs. Every hour or so the train might stop at some lonely outpost in the desert where a worn concrete hut might pass for a train station. Along these stops lay a handful of scattered herding communities whose occpupants seemed never to be home.

That fact that we spent any time at all taking in this limestone wilderness was a real tribute to our impending exiile. if we were to find way to Shevchenko, we'd need to see how he gothere first. I dare say that his train trip through this desert was considerably more austere than the relative luxury we were surely experiencing.

When we finally arrived at our destination and found a cab driver to take us into town, I anxiously scanned the horizon for the the real prize Carrie and I had come for: The Caspian Sea. As the driver dropped us of at the modest Hotel Aqtau, we finally caught the great skyline of the Caspian Sea. Stretching north to south as far as the eye could see, this great body of water seemed an awesome saffire gilded in a golden hue of limestone. I was transfixed by the yellow tone of the old Soviet apartment highrises and how they seemed to fill the skyline as an ancient mesa might plume skywards from the desert floor in passing. Considering that these buildings were created from local limestone quarries, their reach skywards emboldened us to press our trail towards Shevchenko.

The boulevards and public squares really delivered for carrie and I. it was everything I'd read about and more. Great bronze statues of stoic bureaucrats and stiff-lipped Kazakh heroes were fair perches for the thousands of pigeons who sougt its shade from the noon day heat and in October even! What would the summer be like here when the temps. rose to 130 degrees? After a much needed full night's sleep at the Hotel Atyrau, Carrie and I were poised for the trip to the place of Shevchenko's exile.

Suburbs for the Dead

On a cab ride to Fort Shevchenko, the majority of desert dwellings we noticed were those reserved not for the living but for those deceased. These "necropolises" revealed the funerary nature of these Caspian desert communities. Large faux mosques and ante chambers for the notable dead reached skywards in great yellow domes. Some of these commnities may have exceded a mile or two in diameter punctauted by the occassional abandoned caravansary of crumbling chalk walls. Even in death, it would appear, the deceased would lay in exile.

Now named Fort Shevchenko, this small seaside community seemed gilded in all the pastel hues and white washed patinas of a Cypriot village. The driver dropped us off at the museum giving us 4 hours to tour the museum, visit the seaside and generally get our fill of exile American style. The museum was well, a museum. Shevchenko was a prolific writer and artist which i think stems from his desperate need to stay busy in a world dominated by sun, limestone, goats, heat and the ever present draft. Shevchenko's dwelling was what you ,might expect. A sparse limestone hovel carved from half into the ground with a small bed, a stool and desk for writing, a modest window carved out of the ground facing the sea. As we left Shevchenko's dwelling, we headed toward the sea, for one long. last look at what it means to be alone in your thoughts, restless in your life, regretting nothing and always wanting more. This was exile. Our vacation was complete!