I am from Kazakhstan.
How important is our place in this world — literal physical place?
We are born and re-born in our bodies to occupy a certain place on this Earth. What you do during holidays, the food you eat, the sounds on the streets, what triggers your childhood memories all bound up to a certain physical place.
No matter where we are in the world, it is when we meet someone who has lived in the same place as you, we instantly connect. We are made out of the same street dust and food. We drank the same water.
I was born in Almaty, Kazakhstan. A young country that was part of the Soviet Union for a long while before finally spreading its wings to form the largest Central Asian country. A country of corruption, oil, steppes and patriarchy. A country that wasn’t put on the map since its conception — for the lack of wars, major international conflicts, under-developed tourism, or anything that normally catches attention.
If you were to Google Kazakhstan, you would find out that it is the 9th largest country in the world. That we have the largest lake which is actually called a sea due to its size. That Kazakstan is one of the most mineral-rich places in the world. That first satellite and first human spaceflight were both launched from Kazakhstan. That we won the most boxing medals at the last three Olympic Games.
But none of it really tells you what the place I grew up in is really like.
If I close my eyes right now…
I can see the sun shining through the dust in the air created by the street-sweepers early in the morning. The soviet melancholy that spreads through the grey 4-storey building blocks of apartments. Babushkas, like soldiers occupying each bench next to the building entrances, gossiping and complaining. As per the morning and afternoon ritual, each occupant of each building would say Hi and Bye to them when walking out and back home.
I can see the mountains, magnificent, tall — always looking down at you in their majesty from far away in all directions.
I can see a bazaar (aka market) next to my house. Better yet, I can smell it. You would know exactly who to get fresh tomatoes from, where to get your Korean spicy carrot salad and bags of buckwheat.
With my eyes closed, I remember how my Grandpa would get a fresh loaf of white bread, butter and kolbasa. His rough hands chopping ingredients in chunks that are way too big for my liking. But I still receive each butterbread (aka sandwich but without the top bread slice) with a huge smile on my face. He was an abusive alcoholic and died when I was a little kid. That’s the only memory I have of him. In my mind, that’s how all old Soviet Grandpas were.
I remember walking to school through a muddy soccer field every morning. In winter, the sun would rise only after your first class so walking to school was almost like a night-time mission. The snow crumples under my shoes, breath is fogging up my glasses. The most important part of the mission is not to slip and fall on your bum when the road turns into an ice-skating rink and you try to only step in places where street cleaners put dry sand or salt.
You would never come into someone’s house with your shoes on. Asking your hosts “shoes off?” would almost be barbaric if you saw what state your feet are, summer or winter — the dirt is part of our city landscape.
I close my eyes again… I am in the centre city. Almaty centre is not like your typical CBD with high rises and business buildings. The entire city is the centre, each suburb almost fully contained and alive, functioning almost like a network of towns. Centre city is where rich people lived, or at least that’s what I thought when I was younger.
It is always quiet. You walk alongside the Old Square where people sell beautiful oil paintings of Kazakh steppes. It is always the same: horses and flowers. I never knew whether these people were artists or homeless or both. No one ever buys from them. The paintings are almost like street art, they belong to the city.
It is Thursday night and I just finished my after-school art class. I don’t remember the teacher’s name but her kind face is clear in my head, she is helping me paint a winter landscape I chose with a deer at the focal centre.
I walk out of the museum-turned-art-school-at-night and head over to my mum’s work across the road. It is snowing again and every step makes a crispy sound. It is always quiet here (we are in the centre city) which makes me nervous. As a girl, you are taught to be nervous as soon as the sun goes down in Kazakhstan. Safety, unfortunately, isn’t part of the landscape.
Right next to mum’s work is a theme park. Oh, what can be more wonderful than a theme park in winter, at night?
In the foyer, a cleaner lady accidentally steps on my feet and jumps up in terror apologizing. I am more embarrassed than her and so confused about her lengthy apology. “Oh, people are usually not nice to cleaners.” I so specifically remember thinking that and how sad I got. Moments later I see mum’s happy big eyes in the crowd of serious-looking adults. “Come on, home time! You must be hungry.” I put my big pink beret looking beanie back on, it is home time, mum.
I am walking back from school through the market. It is hot and loud here. My classmates and I stop by a window shop that sells these deep-fried mince pies for 30 tenge (approx 20c). Mmmmmmmm… There is this running joke that the window-shops use cat meat instead of beef. Everyone always laughs and eats them anyway.
I have a few coins left which means I can give some out to the beggars or babushkas that sell very useless items so they don’t beg. There is this old old lady I always see, her glasses are so thick, you wonder how heavy they are on her nose. She is selling handkerchiefs for like 20 tenge each. I have 100 but she insists I buy one and get my change. She has a little plastic cup with coins and asks me to grab the change myself because she can’t see very well. I look at her cup and see coins from other random currencies or just old coins that can’t be used as money anymore. I tell her. Her voice trembles in reply: “Oh someone must have fooled me…” I held the tears then. I am struggling to hold them as I am writing this now.
As much as dirt and oil steppe paintings are part of the city landscape, so are elderly, begging or selling items alongside streets, struggling to afford bare minimum in this country.
It is 31st December. New Years Eve. The streets are full of last-minute purchasing adults dragging their kids to the shops. Holiday craze is the same no matter where you are from. A normal New Years shopping list would have 10kg of potatoes, 5kgs of carrots, 2 litres of mayo just for one salad on the menu. To be fair, our supermarkets are going to be closed for a while aaand it is winter. Need to keep those kiddos fed somehow.
The entire day people are cooking and cleaning, cleaning and cooking. It is a tradition — new year has to be met with a clean house and 40 dishes on the table. 10 pm — everyone sits down at the table and watches Russian New Years programmes, oh how I miss those! At exactly 11.50 pm, every channel gets interrupted by a President speech so you know no matter which neighbourhood you are from, everyone is watching our President list all the great things that happened this year in Russian, then in Kazakh. At midnight, after the count down, we all run outside to light fireworks. Half the street is kids and their freezing parents laughing and half is drunk people passed out in the snow. No one seems to worry about them too much.
When people ask “Where do you come from?”, I used to answer “Kazakhstan”. Now, in the ever-untied-to-a-location world, I am not sure if they meant to ask about the workplace, city, country or something else. I ask back “Do you mean, where was I born?” I genuinely want to clarify what they want to know but every time I can see the uncomfortable blush coming through on their faces. Did they just catch themselves being called out on assuming I am not from New Zealand? Are they ashamed they didn’t recognise my accent? Now they are starting to question even if I had an accent at all. And why did they ask that stupid question in the first place?
I rush to relieve them from their uncomfortable-ness. “I was born in Kazakhstan but I’ve lived in New Zealand for 9 years.”
New Zealand is my home now but I doubt I will ever have such sweet and sad memories that I have when I close my eyes and think “Kazakhstan”.
