Journal Entry
by Kate Field

"The Best and Worst Day"

I woke up in a bad mood, unhappy at the prospect of having to spend a full day in Tashkurgan, not to mention another night in that awful hotel room. I stayed in bed another few minutes, feeling homesick and sorry for myself, warily watching a spider of rather alarming proportions spin a web above my head. I didn’t know what would be worse, the spider dropping on me and getting lost in my hair, or having to take a shower without warm water in that dirty bathroom. I forced myself to sit up and stretch. My neck felt stiff from the lumpy pillow and my back ached from sleeping on the rock-hard mattress, problems undoubtedly compounded by the bone-jarring bus ride the day before. “Enough!” I told myself, “It’s one more day and night; you’re a big girl—you can do this.”

We had arrived in Tashkurgan the night before, after a long, bumpy bus ride along the Karakoram Highway (the word “highway” is used either very loosely or is a mistranslation). The road follows the old Silk Route, and is mostly unpaved, frequently washed out, and covered with debris from periodic landslides. The scenery was breathtaking, but after eight hours of bumping along, I was no longer in the mood to be awestruck. I was covered in dust from the open windows, had a hairstyle resembling Ronald McDonald’s on a bad day, and had an altitude-induced headache that dwarfed the snow-capped mountains we drove by.  All I wanted was a hot shower and a soft bed. Such simple desires seemed readily attainable when we pulled up to the newly built Stone City Hotel in Tashkurgan.

Dolkun, our local guide, went into the hotel to check us in. My headache began to subside as I fantasized about the cup of coffee I would savor as soon as I finished my hot shower. I rushed to gather up my belongings, which had been flung into the far-reaches of the bus by some particularly violent bumps. I had just retrieved my bag of crushed Oreos from under the front seat, when Dolkun, looking forlorn, returned with devastating news. We would not, as promised, be staying in the four-star, luxurious Stone City Hotel, which was, according to Dolkun, completely occupied by “Big Cheeses” in the government. It was all quite unprecedented. Nobody knew what to do. Big Cheeses in Tashkurgan? Who could have anticipated that? After some debate, we were transported across town to the only other hotel in Tashkurgan that would meet our high standards. “Don’t worry,” Dolkun assured us as we pulled up to the hotel, a dilapidated, Soviet-style concrete block, “it has hot water.”

Well, it did not have hot water, at least in my room, and it didn’t have decent coffee, either. At breakfast, the rest of the group seemed to share my bad mood. In lieu of coffee, I ordered a Coke, which came in a bottle so filthy, I had to wipe off the label with a damp napkin, only to discover it had expired the year before. I began to lobby hard to convince the group to return to Kashgar right away, instead of spending the day and another night Tashkurgan.

“What are we going to do here?” I asked, “There are only two roads, and we’ve seen both of them already!” I had walked around the city with a few people from the group the night before, and we all agreed the place seemed terribly depressing. When I smiled at the locals I encountered, I was met with blank stares, as well as an occasional icy glare. Tashkurgan borders Tajikistan and Pakistan, and there is a history of social unrest in the area, something else that made me distinctly uneasy. I also did not, under any circumstances, want to return to my hotel room. “We could go back to Kashgar, now, and have an extra day there.” Glancing around the table, I could tell everyone looked pretty convinced, “we could shop for carpets—wouldn’t that be fun?”

Everyone in the group was nodding in agreement, except for one person—one of our leaders, Professor Walsh, was clearly not buying my argument. Nor did she seem even remotely swayed by the possibility of carpet-shopping, an enticement I had thrown in for her benefit.

“You’re over-reacting.” She assured me, in her blatantly honest sort-of way. “I have not noticed any hostile looks. You’re either imagining things, or you don’t understand the local people. They’re not used to foreigners, and they don’t know how to react when you smile at them. It’s only for one day—make the best of it.”

Feeling chagrined, I resolved to improve my attitude. I was lucky to be able to spend time in Tashkurgan, I reminded myself, a place few Americans would ever see. After fortifying myself with the half-melted Snickers bar I had carried all the way from the airport in Urumqi and a swig from the bottle of expired Coke, I felt ready to take on the day.

The day that started out being the worst day of the trip turned out to be the best day of all. We did many things I will always remember. We explored the remains of an ancient castle where Marco Polo once stayed, visited a local Tajik family, and hiked along the border of Tajikistan. Everywhere around us were glacier-topped mountains and valleys of startling green, dotted here and there by peasant women in vibrant red skirts and brightly colored head scarves. But the best part of the day, the best part the whole trip, came that night at a local restaurant.

Dolkun knew of a restaurant that had live music and dancing after dinner. There would be a birthday party there that night, he told us, so the dancing should be particularly lively. When we first arrived, we were met with the same blank stares we had seen on our walk around the city the night before. The group sat together, as usual. We were seated at a large table by the door, and were told we could leave early if we wanted to. I planned to take advantage of the offer, and hoped to find the Internet café I’d seen earlier so I could write home.

Dinner itself was unexceptional, but the moment the music started and two men rose to face each other, I knew something amazing was happening. The rhythm of the music was purely Middle Eastern, and in the smoky light the two Tajik men lifted their arms to chest level and began to spin like Sufi Dervishes.

Unlike other dancing we had witnessed on the trip, this was totally authentic and not for our benefit. Throughout the tour, we had gone to several staged ethnic minority performances that were about as real as the Hula shows put on for tourists in Hawaii. But as the men twirled around each other in that restaurant in Tashkurgan, I caught a glimpse of something real.

As the night progressed, members of our group rose to dance with each other. First I danced with Joan, then Eileen, then Ali. When Dolkun asked me to dance, I was afraid I might anger the local people, because men and women were not dancing together. In fact, most of the men and women sat at separate tables. But Dolkun assured me they would not mind, and had seen such things before on television or in larger cities like Kashgar or Urumqi. As I danced with Dolkun, I tried to mimic the steps I had seen others do. I too lifted my arms and whirled like a dervish. As I twirled in circles, I saw faces flash past, their smiles blurring by, their laughter blending with the music. I heard Dolkun singing along to the Uyghur songs, translating the lyrics for me, and for the first time on the trip, I didn’t mind having a translator. I didn’t mind because for once, I didn’t really need one. The smiles around me didn’t require translation.

Breathless, sweaty and happy, the group rose to go. As I was about to walk through the door, a teenage girl grabbed my arm, and pulled me away from the exit. Her eyes were shining with mischief, and her smile was huge. She spoke to me in Uyghur and in Chinese, neither of which I understood, although I knew she wanted to dance with me. I did not hesitate to drop my bag, forget about the Internet café, and follow her onto the dance floor. I followed her steps as closely as possible as she led me all the way around the dance floor, and then I led her, dancing backwards, laughing, stumbling through the Tajik steps, moving to the music with abandon.

 After several more dances, I turned again to leave, but was shyly asked to dance by an elderly man. He had a slight limp, but I had watched him dance quite gracefully with others throughout the night. Lifting our arms, we began to circle each other, our backs touching briefly as we brushed by one another. His eyes were kind and his smile gentle when I turned to face him, and for a moment he reminded me so much of my grandfather that I nearly cried. I can honestly say I’ve never had a better dance partner. As the song ended, he placed his hand over his heart and bowed slightly, saying simply “Rehmet.”

That night, as I lay in bed in my hotel room, I felt sorry to be leaving Tashkurgan so soon, and wished I could stay another day. I watched the spider weave his web above my head, and thought not about the dinginess of my hotel room, but about the kindness of the people I had met, people who let me into their lives for just a moment, but who will stay in my heart forever.