Losing Touch


I’d see Sherzod on the weekends. He would call me on my mobile during the week, I never gave him my office number or my home number – since I didn’t know it myself, and then we would make a plan to meet. Our meetings all depended on his very reliable phone calls, usually in the middle of the week, to confirm a plan for the weekend. I had no number at which to reach him, so it all depended on him.

Sometimes I wonder if it were up to me, if I had a number for him, would I have made those calls? I doubted it, either because I’m not as dependable or because in the end, I started to question whether I really wanted to be with someone at all, that I’m simply one of those types of people built to be alone. Or perhaps Sherzod wasn’t the right person for me to be with and that I thought it better to be alone that with the wrong person.

The weekends with Sherzod would seem dull in comparison to my lively and active weeks, where I’d taken up drinking and smoking again. I’d be traveling the country, finding stories, drinking and talking late into the nights with my fellow journalists who had flown in to catch the story of the moment that hadn’t yet happened, and never would.

When the Taliban fell, they were just waiting around for the Uzbek government to open the bridge into Afghanistan so that they could get the real story of post-Taliban Afghanistan. Some simply left and relocated to Kabul, traveling from there to reach northern points like Mazar-e-Sharif.

It was already several weeks, and the interest in Uzbekistan had begun to wane. The Americans had agreed to set up their airbase in the south of the country, but had closed it off to journalists from the rest of the country, leaving us only to rummage through the rubbish bins outside, as did the poor Uzbeks foraging for something salvageable to eat or wear. There were fewer high-level delegations and official visits. The Japanese journalists arrived in Tashkent, and usually they were the very last of the press corps to come, the indicator that a story was over. So, the world and its journalists turned their backs on Uzbekistan, returning back to their various bureaus and my nights grew quieter and solitary as my circle of drinking buddies shrank.

And as they left, all the young fixers, drivers and translators that were working for them found themselves now out of work. Somehow, they got a hold of my mobile phone number and called me looking for work. Unfortunately, I had none to offer, but was inundated with calls with persistent callers. One driver I knew had spent all the money he had made buying two new jeeps. Now he would have to sell one if he didn’t find more work. Others would tell me similar details of their plight, to the point in which I would feel that it was my personal responsibility to find them employment or even hire them myself.

When Sherzod would call, I’d be in another part of the country. I would travel the country following up on stories that I’d covered long before and I would forget Sherzod for stretches of time until he phoned. I didn’t appreciate him as much as I probably should have. I know that because I did miss him when I eventually lost him, and the way I lost him was in the most mundane way, the way you lose umbrellas, small change, socks. It was complete negligence on my part.

He called once when I was following up on an old story on the Tajik-Uzbek border which had long-been mined by the Uzbeks. An artist acquaintance of mine had put up an installation of paintings each one in memory of each child, chicken or cow that perished accidentally stumbling upon a mine – children, chicken and cows couldn’t read the signs that the Uzbek border police had put up. The installation was immediately ordered to be removed by the local government, which hadn’t authorized it and as I watched the emissaries of the government make a scene with my painter-acquaintance, possibly restraining themselves in the presence of foreign journalists, my phone began ringing again and again, though I didn’t take the call. There had already been several calls from newly unemployed translators already that day and I was growing impatient. When I finally picked up, ready to shout into the phone I realized it was Sherzod who was calling. He had big news – he was planning on Friday to replace his golden teeth with ivory white ones. He seemed very excited about this.

I tried to share his happiness over the phone while paying attention to the squabble between the local authorities and the painter that was going on in Uzbek. I thought how I’d grown so used to his teeth, I didn’t even notice them any longer, didn’t find them exotic or strange. And it’s amazing how a person can get used to anything. I told him I was happy for him; I told him that he is so handsome now that he can only now look more so. He would have the procedure done on Friday and would call me afterwards to arrange a time to meet.

I came back to Tashkent that Thursday. One fixer whom I’d told several days earlier asking for work, “I’ll keep you in mind,” called me back to check in and when I said I hadn’t found anything for him yet, he said almost hysterically, “but, you promised me a job.” I immediately asked Dildora to change my mobile phone number.

It wasn’t until Friday, when it seemed that the last foreign journalist had left town, that it would be a quiet weekend ahead, and my weekend would revolve around seeing Sherzod and his new white teeth, that I realized one huge problem. I had changed my number and notified my friends of the change, but there was no way of contacting Sherzod about that change. There was no way he could contact me now as I had broken that one way we kept in touch. I wanted to see his new porcelain teeth, I wanted to see him smile and talk without keeping his upper lip pressed against his golden upper rack. I told Henrietta about my situation, she told me not to worry. “Tashkent it small,” she said. “You’ll run into each other.”

Theoretically, he could find me. I stayed in waiting at home the weekend, hoping he’d show up at my door, hoping he’d simply appear. He didn’t. I’d lost him and didn’t know how to find him. I had no idea where he lived, who his friends were. On Sunday, I went to the bazaar in Chirchik, the town where he lived with his relatives, but I couldn’t find him there among the sea of people, I didn’t see his face among them. Every time I passed a tall man, I looked up, wondering if it might be him. I didn’t find him. How crazy this was, living in the 21st century without telephones; it's like living in the time of the bible.

It was the beginning of an early spring. I was alone and felt sad. I realized how used to him I’d gotten and that I genuinely missed him and I wanted to see him without his golden teeth. I lost him, just like that, by accident. I supposed that if he was really meant for me, he would show.

Valentines Day was the following week. I kept flowers in the house in case he showed. And that morning of Valentines Day, there was a ring at the door and I hoped it would be him, not the district police, which would have been more likely, for a routine document check. In the end, it was Stanislav. I was not happy to see him at all and I told him I was rushing to get to work. He said he brought me a gift for Valentines Day, handing me a large manila envelope. I thanked him and said goodbye. The envelope had an 8 x 11 portrait of a Spanish Jesus.  ¶ 7:37 PM