Umit, chai, soot, and flies

In a building I really thought was abandoned I have found a man, Umit, living in rooms blackened with soot. He clearly makes an effort to keep the place in order, but nothing can outdo the work of a wood fire that vents indoors. The Chorny tea is thin, almost just hot water, but welcome refreshment all the same. He has power but by the length of time it takes to boil the kettle (more than 10 minutes) I suspect it is only 12 volt, not grid. Perhaps he has a few solar panels out the back. On the stove he is cooking something in a large aluminium pot which he periodically gets up to stir. He has another massive pot where I imagine he purifies water by boiling.

He only has four toes on his right foot, and it doesn’t look like he’s lost one. He is alone here, a long way from anywhere and with no car, and no apparent work. By his manner a part of me wonders if he is simple, if someone drops him supplies from time to time and he just lives out here with the sand and the flies, so many flies, and then I scald myself for letting my imagination make such leaps. I am also alone, a long way from anywhere and with no car, and no apparent work. Am I simple? And would that be so bad?

The heat is destroying me today. I know that every minute I rest here is another minute I must walk beyond midnight tonight, but the relief of sweating merely profusely lying here in the shade atop this hard wooden bench as opposed to sweating sheer buckets out there under the white fury of a desert sun is too much for me to give up.

We eat small pomegranates which Umit quarters with a knife that has been sellotaped back together and looks like a shiv that would turn up in a cell search after a prison stabbing. I am too exhausted to say more than a few words, and Umit seems happy to talk for both of us. My brain of mush grasps enough to understand as he explains that the pomegranates are small here because there is so little water out here. Half the pods inside don’t reach sweetness, so you quickly learn to eat around those parts. He says in Samarkand there is more water and the pomegranates grow large, using his head to indicate (and perhaps exaggerate) their size. Perhaps I too will find water in Samarkand. I day dream of rain, but I know I could be without it for months yet, and when the rains do settle in in earnest towards years end I will yearn again for even this solid air and searing heat.

The rice that has been cooking on the stove is ready. It has fruit cooked in with it yet somehow doesn’t taste of much, that or my tastebuds have suspended their work in protest of the heat, but even still it is divine. Soft, sticky, fat slicked rice. Mimicking Umit and others I have been invited to eat with in the desert, I scrape a small mound to the edge of the plate we share, press it with spoon upturned and it comes up as a perfectly formed mouthful heaped and clinging to the spoon, and then seems to melt on the tongue.

Umit encourages me to sleep and I do for a while. Later, rising from one desert fever dream and stepping out into another, slightly cooler one, thanking Umit profusely, I wander on in the direction of Bukhara, several days ahead.