two yurts in the dvor. The traditional Kyrgyz nomadic dwelling is a round, tent-like structure, about fifteen feet across; sheepskins or canvas are stretched over a wooden frame, and the floors and walls are covered with shirdaks, brightly colored felt rugs. Then the group began chopping wood and building a fire. On our way out to the university, we passed a horse tethered to the fence; when we returned, the carcass was roasting on the spit. We thought it was too early for a New Year celebration so Stephanie asked Ainura, a young neighbor girl who was watching, what they were celebrating. Her face fell, and she started crying. “My grandfather died,” she sobbed. The extended family had come to Bishkek to mourn and to bury the patriarch. By tradition the women of the family sit with the body inside the yurt and wail, while the men sit outside and talk about the life of the deceased. The whole affair lasts a couple of days, and then they bury the body. It is easy to see how this tradition evolved when the Kyrgyz were nomads, moving from winter to summer pastures with their flocks of sheep and horses, and living in yurts year-round. But it was now transposed to an urban setting; the ceremony took place just off a busy main street near shops, markets, and government ministries. It was another sign that although about one-third of the population lived in cities and towns, in some ways they hadn’t moved too far from their rural roots. The mourners likely informed the police of their plans in advance, but in 1996 a wake with open fires and slaughtered horses in the middle of the capital city seemed a normal occurrence. No one was going to tell a Kyrgyz where he could pitch his yurt.
Stephanie got to know the children who played in the dvor, including Dima who lived in the apartment above us and was about nine years old. He would often appear to be talking to himself; when we inquired, he said that in school he had to recite verses by the Russian literary greats, and he was practicing his Pushkin. One day in early October, Stephanie heard a child talking in English (with a Texas accent) in the dvor. “Can I hold your kitten?” asked six-year-old Laura Marie. Dima was holding up a scrawny tabby male kitten he had found. A group of children had gathered, and were passing the kitten around. Stephanie assumed it was Dima’s kitten, and said that he should take it back to his apartment to its mother. Dima said he had found it in the dvor. When he indicated he might wring its neck, Laura Marie burst out crying: “I’m going to ask my mother if we can keep the little kitty.” The answer was no: the family already had two cats and two puppies. “We’ll take the kitten for the night until we can find its owner,” Stephanie volunteered. Of course, no one was going to claim the poor creature, so he stayed in our apartment, happy to have warm food and milk and to curl up under the covers with Stephanie. We made half-hearted attempts to give him away. We placed a small ad in the embassy newsletter which got exactly the same number of responses as most of those “lovely kittens free to good home” ads: none. After a couple of weeks, we realized that the cat was here to stay, and we had better give him a name. We wanted it be culturally appropriate but short and memorable. Partly in honor of his nemesis Dima, we decided to call him Pushkin. When we told Dima, he thought it was the funniest thing in the world. He would ask “Kak Pushkin? [How’s Pushkin?]” and howl with laughter. Fortunately, we did not adopt any other cats or we would have felt obliged to use the names of other Russian literary greats. “Dostoyevsky, stop scratching the sofa.” “Chekov, it’s time for your flea medicine.”
Over the next few months, Pushkin grew healthy, strong, and good-natured. Some cats are lap pets, but Pushkin preferred shoulders. He climbed up Stephanie’s back and hung over her neck and shoulders, even when she was cooking. He would sit on my shoulders as I worked on the computer. Our Russian teacher, Galina, got the same treatment; our friend Nicholas who took care of Pushkin for a few weeks said that he hung around his neck while he played his drum set.
Nine months later, as Stephanie was preparing to leave Kyrgyzstan (I was to stay on for four more months) we faced a difficult decision: what would happen to Pushkin? We decided to bring him home, hoping he’d get along with our other cats. We contacted the embassy and asked what we needed to do to export a cat. This caused a minor bureaucratic crisis: apparently, we were the first Americans to take a cat out of Kyrgyzstan, so no one knew what regulations applied. The embassy made a few calls to government officials who were equally perplexed but decided that giving Pushkin a feline exit visa would not jeopardize national security. We signed a document attesting that the cat was not an endangered species or a valuable commercial commodity. A vet came to the apartment to give him shots and a medical examination. His clean bill of health was translated into English.
At the airport Stephanie faced down a Turkish Airlines agent who was insisting she pay $1,300 in excess baggage charges. Eventually, the agent relented. “But you must pay for the cat,” she said. Stephanie agreed, and Pushkin, who was unhappily constrained in his carrier and was crying, was duly weighed. “That will be $60,” said the agent. Stephanie handed her a $50 and a $10 bill. “I cannot accept this $10 bill, it’s too old,” said the agent, and handed it back. Stephanie didn’t offer any more bills, so the cat ended up traveling for $50. The agent asked whether the cat should travel in the cabin or in the baggage hold. “In the cabin, of course,” said Stephanie, as if taking cats on international flights was the sort of thing she did every day. The steward asked a passenger to move to another seat so that Pushkin and Stephanie could sit together. After a two-night stay in Frankfurt, both made it safely home, and Pushkin settled into life with our other cats at our home in rural southeastern Ohio.
Pushkin died from kidney failure on August 8, 2013, in Charleston, West Virginia. He was seventeen years old and had outlived all but one of our other cats. As far as we know, he never missed the dvor.
four
Kasha, Honor, Dignity, and Revolution
Back in the USSR
My first meeting with the dean of the journalism faculty at Kyrgyz State National University (KSNU) in Bishkek did not go well. I had met Anisa Borubayeva in November 1995 while she was on a six-week trip to the United States to visit journalism and communications schools. She said that if I was awarded a Fulbright, KSNU would be happy to host me.
I was excited about the prospect of teaching and working with new colleagues, but I wanted to avoid the mistake many Westerners working in developing countries make—telling people what they need. I planned to listen and be sensitive. After a few minutes of polite conversation, I asked through the interpreter what I thought was the appropriate question.
“As dean, what do you think the main needs of the journalism faculty are?”
Anisa looked uncomfortable. “I really don’t know,” she said. “I was hoping you could tell us what we need.”
And so the conversation went. I asked about the curriculum. The qualifications of the teachers. The facilities and equipment. On almost every topic, Anisa said that she would rely on my expert judgment. As I left her office, she told me how proud she was to have a Fulbright scholar on the faculty. The rector, Sovietbek Toktomushev, the university’s chief academic and administrative officer, had sent her a letter of congratulations. Her star was rising.
After independence, Kyrgyzstan needed all the help it could find in almost every sector of society, including higher education. Western governments and international agencies provided scholarships to teachers for postgraduate study and dispatched a motley crew of teaching help—from Fulbright scholars to Peace Corps volunteers—to the universities. My Fulbright colleague Martha Merrill, who has worked on higher education reform in Kyrgyzstan since the mid-1990s, says the country has welcomed almost every donor-funded initiative, not only because it lacks resources but because it has been open to new ideas. Each donor has its own idea of what Kyrgyzstan needs, and efforts to standardize and maintain quality have been ineffective. University education, she writes, includes “three-year bachelor’s degrees, four-year bachelor’s degrees, five-year diplomas . . . programs based on contact hours, programs using credit hours (some US-style, some European), and universities teaching in Kyrgyz, Russian, English, and Turkish.” The net result, as Martha puts it, is “kasha—literally [in Russian] porridge, with a little of this and a little of that added in, but in slang, a mess.”1
In the field of