Sunday, January 15, 2006
Wednesday Was Pizza Night
Janika called a little after 6:30 to ask if we wanted to join her and Elham and a few others at a hookah bar somewhere on the other side of the city. When Erin said of course we'd join them, Janika said, "Oh, you two are so spontaneous!" Little did she know we were mostly just bored. Well, we just hadn't gone out in a while, anyway. And two people can really only go head-to-head in Scrabble so many times in a week before bad things happen.
An hour later Janika and Elham met us outside our apartment and the four of us began walking through the cold in the direction of downtown. As we were walking up Togolok-Moldo, less than a block from our building, Elham pointed to the restaurant we walk by nearly every day and said, "They have really good pizza there." "Oh?" I said. "Very good pizza, yes," he said. Our night had begun.
We walked for about a half hour, first up Togolok-Moldo to Kievskya, which runs parallel to Chui on the southern side of the square (we're north of the square, so we crossed Chui and went on one more block until we hit Sovietskya). We turned left onto Sovietskya and walked for another four or five blocks, until we hit Moskovskya. Along the way, Elham continued to point out good pizza places. After the third such instance, I laughed and asked him if he was hungry. "I've been sick," he said. "I haven't been eating much for two weeks. Yes, two weeks." He then described in detail how I could get to what he considers the best pizza restaurant in Bishkek. When he'd finished, without any attempt at segue, he asked me if I am currently reading anything beside my own writing. I told him I do my best not to read what I write too often and as such I've been eating books since getting to Kyrgyzstan. I then had to explain that eating books was a figurative expression. After we got that cleared up, I told him I was in the process of re-reading One Hundred Years of Solitude, which I'd bought at The Metro (a restaurant/bar here in Bishkek catering to Westerners to such an extent that the owner sells English-language books along with the cheese burgers and Buffalo wings on the menu) because I'd read through all of the books we brought with us. "I know that book," he said. "Marquez is a very famous writer in Iran and Afghanistan. Many works translated into Persian. I have not read him, but I know the book." He then told me about a book written by a Swedish journalist who lived with an Afghan family shortly after the fall of the Taliban. "The man of the family she lived with tried to sue her, but he is wrong. I see my family in some of her writing. You will borrow it soon."
Shortly afterward, we arrived at the park where we were to meet Yelena, a Kyrgyz Anthro student at AUCA, one of her friends, and Rizza, another Afghani student. Rizza showed up first. He came into the park from the street sort of behind us, so that we didn't see him coming. I turned around and saw him slowly approaching, his hood up and pulled tight around his head. I couldn't see his face. Elham called out to him when he saw him--they're former roommates. Rizza turned to Erin first and introduced himself and they shook hands. I said, "You're Rizza?" "Yes," he said. "Rizza." "Wow," I said, every Wu Tang song ever released simultaneously running through my head. I told him my name and shook his hand, wondering if Ol' Dirty Bastard transcended cultures.
Shortly after Yelena and her friend showed up and we began walking to the hookah bar, a place we found out when we got there was called Cafe Charisma. How can you go wrong, really? Yelena ordered some peach tobacco and we all got settled in with some draft beer and commenced discussing whatever it is seven people talk about when sitting around a table smoking a hookah and drinking beer. Mostly our discussions centered around language. There were seven different languages being spoken around the table--English, Russian, Kyrgyz, Persian, Arabic, French, and German. Not too bad. Really what we were doing was swapping vulgarities. As a result, Erin and I now know a solid handful of choice expressions that may come in handy the next time some kid rams a hand truck into my leg at the big bazaar (an event that occurs with a disturbing frequency, actually). After we'd been there long enough to drink our half-litre Amstel Lights, Janika decided she was hungry. Without much by way of hesitation, she ordered the "assorted" pizza for her and Elham to split. The choices for pizza were cheese, meat, and assorted, which seemed to be meat and cheese when it arrived, which led me to ask the obvious, "But doesn't the meat have cheese on it." The answer was confusing and no one was really certain of the answer, so I let it drop and sucked at the hookah nozzle as a way to divert my focus.
"You can blow smoke rings!" It is one of the few skills I possess in life and Yelena seemed genuinely amazed. Far, far too much time was then spent with me trying to teach everyone at the table how to blow smoke rings, which mostly amounted to me opening my mouth as wide as possible and trying to talk with the tip of my tongue stuck to the bottom of my mouth. That everyone else's mouths were open and we were all leaning across the table and peering inside one another's mouth and giggling didn't help matters any. Luckily, we weren't really near any of the other customers. Finally tired of failing to blow a smoke ring, Yelena announced that we were leaving and going to a dance club near the Hyatt called Fire & Ice. "It's the night where women get in free," she said. "But you mens have to pay."
We got to Fire & Ice about forty minutes later, losing The RZA and Yelena's friend along the way (I don't know his name...sorry). Yelena and Janika, having just spent the last two weeks in Osh with Yelena's family and forging a rather fierce friendship, spent the long walk more or less reenacting the Flying Circus "Ministry of Silly Walks" skit and generally finding ways to make the five of us giggle and forget we were so cold.
At one point the two of them ran up half a block ahead of us and ducked into a doorway. When Elham, E, and I reached them, they very seductively asked, "Natasha? You need Natasha?" How 'bout a date?" It was a callback to a rather disturbing story I had elicited from Yelena earlier. I had learned a few weeks ago that the Kyrgyz word for prostitute is natasha. Or so I thought. When I asked Yelena at Cafe Charisma, she told me it was the Turkish work for prostitute and then went in to a story about being in Istanbul when she was younger (she's only 18 now) and being constantly pestered by men asking her "Natasha? You natasha?" She laughed as she told the story, Janika, Erin, and me exchanging worried looks. The proposition on the street by Janika and Yelena somehow worked to erase all of that and I found myself laughing in a very loud, high pitched way, the sort of laugh that attracts dogs and dirty looks.
A few minutes later, the five of us still laughing against the cold, Elham pointed up to a strip of neon in the first floor of a long building and said, "That's my favorite restaurant in Bishkek." Erin read the sigh aloud--"MacBurger"--and asked, "Really?" "Yes," he said, "it is a wonderful place. Good food, the service is very attentive, and I like their menu. Much more than just the MacBurger. They also have pizza." Of course they do.
Fir & Ice was around the corner from the Hyatt and completely empty when we got there. The women were free, but Elham and I each had to pay a 250 som cover--a little over six dollars, which is more than we usually spend on food for an entire week. The room was dark, a wide rectangular dance floor surrounded on two sides by tables and chairs, one side by a low stage and a dj booth, and stretching along the wall by the door we'd come in, the bar. We sat in the back beneath a neon sign and were quickly brought menus, which we read by the light of Janika's cell phone. Just as the waitress was coming back to the table, Janika asked if anyone was hungry. "I could eat," I said. "Pizza?" she asked. "Of course," I said. "Yes," said Yelena, "I would like some pizza." We ordered two large pizzas, one with grilled chicken and mushrooms and another called the cheese burger pie, which had some ground meat (we couldn't decide if it was lamb or beef) and bacon and a few other tasty things.
Our drinks came and Yelena told a story about making babies out of mud when she was a little girl, dressing them in newspaper dresses, and marrying them off to the boys in the neighborhood. "We'd make little cakes and breads out of mud to serve the guests," she said. Janika told a story about her and her friends making 'witch's brews' when they were little, pots of mud and leaves and dirt in rain water. I thought about the "Yuck Juice" Brian Schneider and I used to hide in the bushes to ferment, but before I could share, our pizza came. As the waitress put the pizzas down on the table the PA system began to sing Don't cha wish your girlfriend was hot like me... It was the second time we'd heard the song since leaving the house. It wouldn't be the last for the night.
A few minutes later Janika said, "This is the best pizza I've had in Bishkek." I looked up at the wall above us, where a neon stripper swung around a pole in an endless arc beside a poster proclaiming the United Colors of Benetton. The pizza was delicious, she was right. For the next few hours we danced to horrible American hip-hop (why is 50 Cent one of our biggest exports? Hell, why is 50 popular? The man can't rhyme and his voice is annoying. Getting shot nine times and not dying is not by itself enough to warrant global fame.) and when we finally left we found the streets empty, the sky clear, and the moon huge above us.
"In my village," Elham said, "the moon would be the only light at night. I found it very comforting to be out late at night there."
"I could hear the water from almost everywhere at night," I said. "Or at least smell it." And then, as we passed the Japanese Embassy and the shuddered convenience store on the corner beside our building, more to myself than anyone else, spurred on by the drinking and the cold, by having skipped a proper dinner, maybe by the inexplicable amount of blood in the bathroom at Fire & Ice, definitely by Elham's odd little food tour of Bishkek, "And we can get pizza delivered more or less 24 hours a day."
An hour later Janika and Elham met us outside our apartment and the four of us began walking through the cold in the direction of downtown. As we were walking up Togolok-Moldo, less than a block from our building, Elham pointed to the restaurant we walk by nearly every day and said, "They have really good pizza there." "Oh?" I said. "Very good pizza, yes," he said. Our night had begun.
We walked for about a half hour, first up Togolok-Moldo to Kievskya, which runs parallel to Chui on the southern side of the square (we're north of the square, so we crossed Chui and went on one more block until we hit Sovietskya). We turned left onto Sovietskya and walked for another four or five blocks, until we hit Moskovskya. Along the way, Elham continued to point out good pizza places. After the third such instance, I laughed and asked him if he was hungry. "I've been sick," he said. "I haven't been eating much for two weeks. Yes, two weeks." He then described in detail how I could get to what he considers the best pizza restaurant in Bishkek. When he'd finished, without any attempt at segue, he asked me if I am currently reading anything beside my own writing. I told him I do my best not to read what I write too often and as such I've been eating books since getting to Kyrgyzstan. I then had to explain that eating books was a figurative expression. After we got that cleared up, I told him I was in the process of re-reading One Hundred Years of Solitude, which I'd bought at The Metro (a restaurant/bar here in Bishkek catering to Westerners to such an extent that the owner sells English-language books along with the cheese burgers and Buffalo wings on the menu) because I'd read through all of the books we brought with us. "I know that book," he said. "Marquez is a very famous writer in Iran and Afghanistan. Many works translated into Persian. I have not read him, but I know the book." He then told me about a book written by a Swedish journalist who lived with an Afghan family shortly after the fall of the Taliban. "The man of the family she lived with tried to sue her, but he is wrong. I see my family in some of her writing. You will borrow it soon."
Shortly afterward, we arrived at the park where we were to meet Yelena, a Kyrgyz Anthro student at AUCA, one of her friends, and Rizza, another Afghani student. Rizza showed up first. He came into the park from the street sort of behind us, so that we didn't see him coming. I turned around and saw him slowly approaching, his hood up and pulled tight around his head. I couldn't see his face. Elham called out to him when he saw him--they're former roommates. Rizza turned to Erin first and introduced himself and they shook hands. I said, "You're Rizza?" "Yes," he said. "Rizza." "Wow," I said, every Wu Tang song ever released simultaneously running through my head. I told him my name and shook his hand, wondering if Ol' Dirty Bastard transcended cultures.
Shortly after Yelena and her friend showed up and we began walking to the hookah bar, a place we found out when we got there was called Cafe Charisma. How can you go wrong, really? Yelena ordered some peach tobacco and we all got settled in with some draft beer and commenced discussing whatever it is seven people talk about when sitting around a table smoking a hookah and drinking beer. Mostly our discussions centered around language. There were seven different languages being spoken around the table--English, Russian, Kyrgyz, Persian, Arabic, French, and German. Not too bad. Really what we were doing was swapping vulgarities. As a result, Erin and I now know a solid handful of choice expressions that may come in handy the next time some kid rams a hand truck into my leg at the big bazaar (an event that occurs with a disturbing frequency, actually). After we'd been there long enough to drink our half-litre Amstel Lights, Janika decided she was hungry. Without much by way of hesitation, she ordered the "assorted" pizza for her and Elham to split. The choices for pizza were cheese, meat, and assorted, which seemed to be meat and cheese when it arrived, which led me to ask the obvious, "But doesn't the meat have cheese on it." The answer was confusing and no one was really certain of the answer, so I let it drop and sucked at the hookah nozzle as a way to divert my focus."You can blow smoke rings!" It is one of the few skills I possess in life and Yelena seemed genuinely amazed. Far, far too much time was then spent with me trying to teach everyone at the table how to blow smoke rings, which mostly amounted to me opening my mouth as wide as possible and trying to talk with the tip of my tongue stuck to the bottom of my mouth. That everyone else's mouths were open and we were all leaning across the table and peering inside one another's mouth and giggling didn't help matters any. Luckily, we weren't really near any of the other customers. Finally tired of failing to blow a smoke ring, Yelena announced that we were leaving and going to a dance club near the Hyatt called Fire & Ice. "It's the night where women get in free," she said. "But you mens have to pay."
We got to Fire & Ice about forty minutes later, losing The RZA and Yelena's friend along the way (I don't know his name...sorry). Yelena and Janika, having just spent the last two weeks in Osh with Yelena's family and forging a rather fierce friendship, spent the long walk more or less reenacting the Flying Circus "Ministry of Silly Walks" skit and generally finding ways to make the five of us giggle and forget we were so cold.
At one point the two of them ran up half a block ahead of us and ducked into a doorway. When Elham, E, and I reached them, they very seductively asked, "Natasha? You need Natasha?" How 'bout a date?" It was a callback to a rather disturbing story I had elicited from Yelena earlier. I had learned a few weeks ago that the Kyrgyz word for prostitute is natasha. Or so I thought. When I asked Yelena at Cafe Charisma, she told me it was the Turkish work for prostitute and then went in to a story about being in Istanbul when she was younger (she's only 18 now) and being constantly pestered by men asking her "Natasha? You natasha?" She laughed as she told the story, Janika, Erin, and me exchanging worried looks. The proposition on the street by Janika and Yelena somehow worked to erase all of that and I found myself laughing in a very loud, high pitched way, the sort of laugh that attracts dogs and dirty looks.A few minutes later, the five of us still laughing against the cold, Elham pointed up to a strip of neon in the first floor of a long building and said, "That's my favorite restaurant in Bishkek." Erin read the sigh aloud--"MacBurger"--and asked, "Really?" "Yes," he said, "it is a wonderful place. Good food, the service is very attentive, and I like their menu. Much more than just the MacBurger. They also have pizza." Of course they do.
Fir & Ice was around the corner from the Hyatt and completely empty when we got there. The women were free, but Elham and I each had to pay a 250 som cover--a little over six dollars, which is more than we usually spend on food for an entire week. The room was dark, a wide rectangular dance floor surrounded on two sides by tables and chairs, one side by a low stage and a dj booth, and stretching along the wall by the door we'd come in, the bar. We sat in the back beneath a neon sign and were quickly brought menus, which we read by the light of Janika's cell phone. Just as the waitress was coming back to the table, Janika asked if anyone was hungry. "I could eat," I said. "Pizza?" she asked. "Of course," I said. "Yes," said Yelena, "I would like some pizza." We ordered two large pizzas, one with grilled chicken and mushrooms and another called the cheese burger pie, which had some ground meat (we couldn't decide if it was lamb or beef) and bacon and a few other tasty things.
Our drinks came and Yelena told a story about making babies out of mud when she was a little girl, dressing them in newspaper dresses, and marrying them off to the boys in the neighborhood. "We'd make little cakes and breads out of mud to serve the guests," she said. Janika told a story about her and her friends making 'witch's brews' when they were little, pots of mud and leaves and dirt in rain water. I thought about the "Yuck Juice" Brian Schneider and I used to hide in the bushes to ferment, but before I could share, our pizza came. As the waitress put the pizzas down on the table the PA system began to sing Don't cha wish your girlfriend was hot like me... It was the second time we'd heard the song since leaving the house. It wouldn't be the last for the night.
A few minutes later Janika said, "This is the best pizza I've had in Bishkek." I looked up at the wall above us, where a neon stripper swung around a pole in an endless arc beside a poster proclaiming the United Colors of Benetton. The pizza was delicious, she was right. For the next few hours we danced to horrible American hip-hop (why is 50 Cent one of our biggest exports? Hell, why is 50 popular? The man can't rhyme and his voice is annoying. Getting shot nine times and not dying is not by itself enough to warrant global fame.) and when we finally left we found the streets empty, the sky clear, and the moon huge above us."In my village," Elham said, "the moon would be the only light at night. I found it very comforting to be out late at night there."
"I could hear the water from almost everywhere at night," I said. "Or at least smell it." And then, as we passed the Japanese Embassy and the shuddered convenience store on the corner beside our building, more to myself than anyone else, spurred on by the drinking and the cold, by having skipped a proper dinner, maybe by the inexplicable amount of blood in the bathroom at Fire & Ice, definitely by Elham's odd little food tour of Bishkek, "And we can get pizza delivered more or less 24 hours a day."
