Sojourner in Islamic Lands

9: Ashkabad, City of Love

9 Ashkabad, City of Love My destination is Ashkabad, the capital of Turkmenistan, a new country carved out of the erstwhile Soviet Union. Of old a nomad encampment, it has metamorphosed overnight to an Asian-style Las Vegas. To get there I cross the border and pick up a plane at Dashoguz. The choice between lounging in a reclining seat and navigating the Kara-Kum Desert by car isn’t a hard one. In no time at all, I am at journey’s end and watch from the window of my plane as we land. The heavens themselves, pinkish with reflecting neon, seem to know that something modern this way comes. I catch a glimpse of tentacle-like structures on the horizon. Then abruptly the Emerald City of Oz is on me, except that all the buildings are white. Behind a screen the Wizard, who is also Turkmenistan’s president, is manipulating a movie projector. The images it projects are exclusively of him. In one he is a modern man in suit and tie conducting the business of state, in another Turkman Bashi, “the leader of the Turks.” This requires a faintly medieval getup consisting mostly of a long, belted gown and leather surcoat. One hand is extended, the other, à la Tamburlaine, holds an orb. The cynosure of all eyes isn’t a young man, but his hair, when you see him on screen, is black. He is generally grinning in the hope his grin will engage you and looks a little like Dean Martin. Call him Dino. Though crazy, he was dangerous, and only since his death have people in his country ventured to lift up their heads. The leader of the Turks is or was Saparmurat Niyazov, who went to translunar paradise in 2006. His successor as president, Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedov , is also a despot whose image, like Caesar’s, appears on the Ashkabad, City of Love 139 nation’s new coins. Off with the old, on with the new. Even so, the new man is less into personality and has been whittling away at its cult. The days of the week and months of the year are no longer named in honor of Turkman Bashi and his family, and his most imposing monument is being removed to a less conspicuous corner of the city. This is the Neutrality Arch, so-called to reflect the above-the-battle pose of President Niyazov, who hoped to play off Russia and the United States while accepting large infusions of cash from either. I liken the arch to Sanders Memorial Theater at Harvard, a neo-Gothic survival, the pride of its pretentious time. Looking at it led an uncomfortable but polite French visitor to exclaim, “Voila, quelque chose!” Sanders Theater is rock-ribbed, but you can see through the Neutrality Arch. It stands on a white tripod, 246 feet above the ground, suggesting a rocket ship ready for takeoff. Confronted with it for the first time, I thought of the Eiffel Tower, in the same picture-postcard class. But the arch’s chef d’oeuvre is in a class by itself. This is a golden statue of the leader, 39 feet tall. Perched on a globe at the pinnacle, he welcomes the world with out-flung arms. Always facing the sun, he rotates nonstop and like a Hindu god manages to embrace all four points of the compass, though he has only two arms. Mountains, sea, and desert surround him but he appears to dwarf them, the Caspian Sea on the west, the Kopet Dagh Mountains to the south, everywhere else the KaraKum (Black Sands) Desert. Despite the effort to sweep the more flamboyant past under the rug, Turkman Bashi won’t go away. Maybe that is appropriate, his singular self being the principal reason for visiting Turkmenistan. He has the weird charm of totally useless things, like the Chinese empress’s stone boat that can never sail, moored at lake’s edge outside the imperial capital, Beijing. Ubiquity is of his essence, and his image shows up everywhere, on wristwatches, bottles of perfume, vodka, the national drink. His dilated eyes, like a medieval Pantocrator ’s, are always on you when you look in their direction. I am aware that they are bent on me as I leave the hotel my first morning in town. The maniacally happy face hangs from the facade of the large building across the street, a model of the White House, all marble. More white buildings line...