Like all others who sat or slept on suitcases, I could appreciate the peacefulness of Tashkent as a kind fate for the time being, its familiar and peaceful morning sounds from outside my window, where I shared a courtyard with a composer who was known, probably better outside of Tashkent, due to the city's declining intellectual life, who drew his inspiration from similar sounds. Breaking my first sweat of the day after a cold shower, over hot tea beside the kitchen window, I heard birds, roosters from neighboring houses, and the scratching sounds of the ladies outside who would be bent over their short makeshift brooms to sweep the eternally dust-covered streets. It was almost poignant, their futile quest to push the desert dust around, only to find it piled back up on the walkways later in the day. The dust was inescapable. It formed a film of dust on your shoes everytime you stepped out and I seemed to always be wiping down my shoes. People here looked at you from the foot and up in this country, and in most of the world, apparently, and clean shoes were de rigeur, despite the constant attention they demanded.

I didn't remember ever having to clean my shoes this often in New York, but New York isn't in the desert. And in New York, I never had to outfit myself as I did here, not only in clothing, but in demeanour, masking the many aspects of my inner landscape that were foreign or simply socially unacceptable here. It was best to not stand out too much, to blend in, to reserve one's opinions or passions, and to keep ones shoes clean, despite that now I questioned the value of the effort, and in time and adaptation would do so instinctively. Everywhere here, even on the street, perfect strangers who I would pass by would eye me in such a way that made me wonder if they not only saw the Western foreigner, but a social outcast as well. Sometimes I would leave the house early for work, only to walk on empty streets and avoid dealing with the occasional Uzbek man sitting on the side of the road peeling sunflower seeds with nothing to do and nowhere to go, calling at me from across the street as I'd walk past, asking for the time, even though he most certainly had no need for the time, but just wanted to see my watch, or ask me where I was from, or engage in some way with the exotic beast.

But when I walked outside, it seemed like there was no one there. I didn't even see any cars driving by. Everything seemed quite still and hot. This heat was different from the New York heat. It was dry and you could feel every movement of the air, like the slight wind of the tree branch that swayed from the moment a bird took flight from it. Something about walking here felt different, walking on this earth I felt the earth, that there was a different character to it. It was dirtier than I remembered, the pavements were cracked and the dirty tratuaries were filled with discarded bottles, cigarettes, and weeds growing through the cracks. My phone rang and it was Hennrietta.

"Oh my God!" She called into the phone. "Did you feel that?"

"What?" I said.

"The earthquake?"

"What earthquake?"

"The one that just happened."

"No. I'm outside." Usually one only felt these smaller earthquakes, which usually had their epicenters in Afghanistan or Western China, and of which we were only feeling a softer, shorter tremor.

"It woke me up, I was in bed and looking up at the ceiling, which seemed like it was going to bend, and the light fixture on the ceiling was shaking, and all my dishes were rattling in the kitchen, one coffee mug fell on the floor and broke. The dog went crazy, and Ali is taking him outside to walk and calm down."

"Can't believe I missed it." I said. "You can't feel it outside." I felt bad, felt like another one of those situations in this country where something might have happened and I had completely missed out on it, and here I was the journalist who was supposed to know about everythying. But here I was standing on a quiet street, walking by buildings, where I hadn't heard a sound. Tashkent was on a faultline, and in the early 60's, had a devastating earthquake that required the whole city be rebuilt. I was told, in fact, that the city was once very beautiful, with ancient buildings, and many traditional styleneighborhoods. But once it was rebuilt, it was done quickly and full of mammoth Soviet style buildings, that reminded me somewhat of New York city's housing projects, holding impossible numbers of families. Perhaps at one time they may have looked attractive and solid, possibly just for their novelty, or out of gratitude for a roof over the head, but time had not been kind to these buildings, and their worn and torn condition reflected the country's economically tough times. Even here in the center of the city, in one of the so-called "prestigious" neighborhoods.

She suggested that we meet for lunch at the pool at Le Meridien.

"I don't have my bathing suit."

"Just strip down to your underwear, no one will know," she said. "Yesterday Natasha and I took a dip in the fountain on Mustakilik Square. Crazy, no? But when we get there, we find just about everyone else from the office there as well. It's so damn hot. Ok, I have to go." She abruptly hung up on me, as she had taken to doing with me regularly these days and I assumed that it was because Ali had just entered the house.  ¶ 11:47 PM 0 Comments

  The next morning, the aggressive sun, an unwanted guest, burst through my bedroom window, shining through the thick green curtains, making the greyish walls seem almost white and making it impossible for me to sleep any longer. No matter how tired I was, how hard I closed my eyes, how deeply I buried my head under a pillow, the light was inescapable, and the heat so pervasive that I left a silhouette in sweat on my sheets and pillow. It was early still, I hadn't slept much, and I had hours to go before I needed to be in the office, but it was useless battling the chillah sun, the mighty sun of the hottest forty days of summer.

I sat up, the realization still dawining on me that I was waking up in another country. I looked down at the beat up brown leather suitcase lying at the foot of my bed, burnished by the sun, it didn't resemble the ancient, near-ready to be disposed of bag I had dragged along with me to and from New York, twice now. Though it seemed to be losing its solid rectangular shape, its leather distended from the weight of the contents it carried, bruised from being dragged into taxis and off baggage carousels, tossed into cargoes, in the light it looked like something magnificent, something with character, a faithful suitcase, that would stand beside me on this and many other long journeys. One day, I imagined, it would be filled with items I had picked up here, things that I may develop attachments to one day, unexpectedly, like my standard Uzbek blue and white ceramic cotton plant print teapot that I made tea in, that I'd transport home thinking that it would bring back memories, even though today I found it banal, something you saw in every Uzbek home. Maybe one day many years from this day, when someone would ask me about what struck them as an exotic unusual teapot, I'd recall my days drinking steaming hot tea as we did on unbearably hot summer days in Tashkent, like this one, and thinking how those were the best days of my life.

I considered unpacking, but the thought of doing so depressed me. After so many months away from home, and my feelings of alienation back there, it almost felt like I had no place to go back to, that I was doomed to wander the earth. Tashkent was home for now, and though it was comfortable, in a way, I knew I couldn't stay here forever. I would get bored, would want to move on or something here would change and I would have to go. Tashkent was the kind of place where people came and went, people always had a packed suitcase, they "sat on their suitcases," as the Russian idiom went. I pushed the suitcase under the bed. I'd take out whatever I needed when I needed it.  ¶ 2:34 PM 0 Comments