The Geographer's Library

Jon Fasman
Abulfaz, who needed nothing but for Murat to feel comfortable, expert, and
therefore off his guard. So Abulfaz permitted himself to be led by the elbow,
offered live chickens, gold teeth yanked from corpses, embroidered square
caps, hairbrushes, younger daughters, illegal shortwave radios, bricks of hashish,
bolts of greasy fabric and bolts of brilliant fabric, and sad-eyed pack
animals, all the while maintaining a fixed look of intellectual and ethnic
superiority.
“How do people buy things here?” he asked Murat.
“Many ways, Comrade Professor. Sometimes foreign cash, especially with
tourists. Mostly bartering, trading. You are asking because ...?”
“Because I would have thought that most goods of quality are dispatched
to Moscow. Like that pile of carpets or those sheets of maroon silk.”
“Yes. Many are sent, but people save, people save for themselves, and
everyone saves maybe a couple of extras to sell or trade here. And you must
remember that people come here from everywhere, everywhere, everywhere.
From all over. And it looks huge today, but there are thousands of others who
will come tomorrow when the thousands who are here have sold what they
have to sell.”
“From everywhere?”
“Well, yes. Certainly no, not literally everywhere, but all over this area, all
over Central Asia.”
“What about Russians from Central Asia?”
“Ah. Ah, yes.” Murat giggled and rubbed the fingers of one hand nervously
over the fingers of the other. “No Russians. Except you. You are the
Russian here today,” Murat replied with a forced laugh.
“Ah.” Abulfaz looked around, careful to keep his mask of unease from
revealing his curiosity. “And what would happen if you were to wander away
from me? To leave me here in the middle of the market, dressed as I am, looking
as I do.”
“Not worth thinking about. I won’t leave you.”
“I know you won’t. But just for argument’s sake.”
“Ah. Well, look behind you. Slowly.”
Abulfaz turned around. Behind him a barrel-chested man with a thick
mustache and a missing eyebrow was hitting another man with a car’s muffler.
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