By Elsie Sze
MY quest began with a painting in the Kasteev Art Museum in Almaty, Kazakhstan. Hanging alone, it bore a label in Kazakh, Cyrillic and English. The artist, one A. Salgar, Kazakh, had titled it: The Garden of Eden, circa 1929.
Its scene wasn’t a garden as most of us might imagine, perhaps a cozy English one rich in blooms or a serene oriental one with an arched bridge and a lotus pond. If I could attribute the word “pastoral” to a garden, that’d describe the painting. Snow-capped mountains filled the background. Horsemen and cattle dotted undulating distant pastures. Yurts, those dome-shaped, skin-mounted domiciles that sheltered the nomadic Kazakh people, stood in the relative foreground.
There were no winsome flowerbeds, only wild flowers marked by clusters of white and yellow specks in the ripples of green. No undisturbed sand rested in meditative stillness, only scattered brown blotches where vegetation had eroded. No groomed hedges or pruned trees, only clumps of unruly bushes, punctuated the grassland. No greenhouse or gazebo stood near the yurts. The painting didn’t even suggest the Garden imagined in the Book of Genesis that loaned its name to the work of art.
The painting looked alive. Men in robes and fur-trimmed hats, along with women in long skirts, vests and boxy hats with veils, sat outside the nearest yurt. One woman, her face etched by age and weather lines, threaded into a piece of leather. A younger woman nursed a baby as the contented cherub rested a tiny hand on the breast that gave sustenance. An old man repaired a saddle. In the left foreground, a girl, maybe aged 10, in a colorful, flowing dress, danced to the music of a lute-like dombra played by a laughing boy. The boy wore a vest, loose pants and a close-fitted, cylindrical hat.
Probably the distant herdsmen included the baby’s father and the young girl’s. The people looked in tune with their rustic environment and nomadic lifestyle. Happiness filled their Garden of Eden. The characters and setting blended in this composition transcending the boundary between art and life.
Smitten by the painting, I ached to discover its scene in real life. Somewhere in the vast land, it must exist.
My husband, John, had taken an international consulting assignment in Kazakhstan, and I’d gone along as a consultant’s wife. I attended every handicraft fair in Almaty, visited all the bazaars, lunched a few times with expatriate wives and grew bored within the first week. Until I set eyes on the painting....
“I want to find the place in that painting,” I told John the evening after my visit to the art museum.
“It may not exist. Why are you interested?” John asked as we entered the transparent elevator at the Hyatt.
“There’s something there that I’m not finding here,” I said, trying to articulate while looking around at the glass-encased atrium of the five-star hotel.
John gave me a strange look. How could I explain to my down-to-earth, number-crunching husband such feelings for a painting?
“I’ll arrange for a driver to take us around next weekend,” he said. “But this Saturday, we’re invited to a banquet.”
I welcomed the prospect of a Kazakh banquet, which promised variety from the meals we’d attended among “expats” in sophisticated, smoke-filled restaurants with European decor or North American themes. The banquet unfolded in the spacious Soviet-era apartment of a local Kazakh to mark his father’s 80th birthday. Horse meat and lamb were served with cold herring, salads and fried Kazakh bread, all washed down with Russian vodka and Georgian wine.
As most guests withdrew to a wide balcony for a cigarette break half-way through the repast, and John talked business with another guest, I stayed in the dining room beside a tall, glass cabinet in one corner. Among the knick-knacks inside, I noticed some three-inch figurines of ivory color, some men and a woman in Kazakh costumes.
As I stood admiring them, our host, Mirbulat, approached. “What you see is a set of talisman figurines, called the Seven Companions of Happiness, carved out of camel bone.”
“Does each have a name?”
Mirbulat nodded. “Ardak, Wisdom,” he said, pointing to a figure of an elderly man with a book and wearing a long robe. “Tleukabyl, the personification of Luck, holds a big fish. Amandyk, with a cup, is Health. Sarybay, carries a treasure chest, Wealth. This old man is Omirzak, Longevity, and here’s Karlygash with her two children, for Family.”
“They really are harbingers of happiness.” I felt fascinated by the workmanship on the bone figurines, but more so by their symbolic meanings. Seven Companions of Happiness? I counted. “But I see only six. Where’s the seventh?”
“Sadly, we’ve lost the seventh.”
John kept his promise. On our second weekend in Almaty, we hired a young Russian driver to take us to the countryside.
We passed run-down gas stations, shabby farmhouses and harvested corn fields. Cows and sheep grazed in fenced meadows. At the edge of the highway, we saw horses ridden by city folks enjoying the beautiful, autumn day. We didn’t spot yurts and their residents herding cattle.
Soon we left the highway. Our driver navigated along a bumpy road as far as his car could climb. Then he parked.
“Waterfall, two kilometers up,” he said, taxing his limited English and pointing at a hill in a fingers-do-the-walking gesture.
Dubiously, John eyed the gradient. “You really want to go up? It isn’t Niagara Falls.”
“It’s not for the waterfall,” I said, unhesitatingly. “We may see something of local interest.”
“You won’t find your Garden of Eden. I can promise that.”
Our driver led the way. Brambles and branches tugged at my clothes as we ascended above a deep gorge.
“When you’re afraid of the height, go low,” I advised John as I inched on all-fours across a narrow ledge.
“Do you realize we’ll need to come back the same way?” asked John, looking a little pale, not enjoying himself. I pretended not to hear so he had no choice, but to follow.
After 40 minutes, the driver called from above us. “Come up! Waterfall! Krasivo!”
We reached the waterfall, a narrow, 50-foot drop splashing into a pool that opened into a mountain stream. To humor the driver, we posed in front of its sprays.
“Other side, krasivo,” said the driver.
“Presumably, he means we can go down the other side of the hill,” said John, preferring anything to retracing our steps.
“And it’ll be beautiful,” I interpreted, determined to explore and sensing The Garden of Eden constantly on my mind.
A steep slope to a track that followed a bend around the hill had a covering of treacherously loose rocks that gave way under our feet. Gradually, we reached the track where we could stand upright.
We rounded the bend. Clumps of bushes and deciduous trees obscured the view ahead until a valley appeared, gently undulating with low, green mounds that seemed to interlock like the fingers of hands clasped in prayer. A cluster of yurts stood in the valley. The scene looked as close to The Garden of Eden as I could get. I clutched at John in excitement.
Our driver led us to the nearest yurt. He spoke in Russian to a woman who’d emerged from it. She wore a costume like those in the painting – a long skirt, a vest and a boxy headdress with a veil that covered her neck and shoulders like a scarf.
The driver beckoned for us to follow him into the yurt. I’d become part of the painting, entering it, living it.
Bending, we passed through a wooden doorframe. Inside, red-floral carpets covered the floor. Bowls of snacks waited on a low, round table draped by a pink cloth. Nearby, a tea kettle perched on a burner. Rug hangings adorned the circular walls. A cradle stood to one side, and a dombra leaned by a stack of colorfully painted chests.
The Kazakh woman gestured for us to sit on the carpeted floor at the table. She poured a steaming, milky liquid into ceramic bowls and placed them before us.
“Milk tea, very good,” grinned our driver.
“Spasibo,” I said.
Our driver offered to take a photo of us with the woman. Again, I knew I’d entered the painting.
After tea, we stood to leave. Outside, the woman signaled for us to sit on straw mats on the ground. A young man with a dombra sat across a circular clearing from us. As he plucked his instrument’s strings, two adolescent girls in colorful skirts and vests danced to the music.
With the sun ready to set, I peered across the valley. Some cattle grazed nearby, but they looked less abundant and more scattered across the fields than I’d imagined. I saw no herders on horseback.
When a horse-drawn buggy pulled up, our driver motioned for us to climb in for a ride back to his car. Then he asked John for some tenges to pay the Kazakh woman, understandably, as a token of appreciation for her hospitality.
At a dinner party that evening when I told an American expatriate about the yurts in the valley, he said, “Oh yes, I’ve been there. The locals call it Nomads’ Paradise. It’s their idea of an historic theme park.”
“What do you mean?” I snapped.
“You must know that nomadic life no longer exists in Kazakhstan. What you saw was for tourists like us. Good idea though! It earns a few bucks.”
When next at the Kasteev Art Museum, I disabled the flash on my little camera and took a snapshot of The Garden of Eden. I’d take home a celluloid memory of it.
“Salem! Imagine seeing you here,” sounded a voice behind me. Turning, I saw our Kazakh friend Mirbulat.
“I’m surprised to see you too. Beautiful galleries you have here.”
“Yes, I love this museum. I come to recapture the past.”
“The past?”
“Yes, these paintings of the Kazakh people remind me of a life that’s gone, no more! Now our people live in cities or work on farms. They no longer wander with their horses and herds.”
“And the yurts?”
“Oh, they’re only souvenirs,” Mirbulat cackled, but I detected bitterness in his laugh.
So the expat had been right. What I’d seen was make-believe. My stomach knotted. “But why?”
Mirbulat sighed. “From 1917, the time of the Russian Revolution, and even before when we became part of Russia in the 19th century, the government had been taking our pastures as land for settled farming. Powerful people wanted us to be farmers and workers, living on the land and producing. But the nomadic spirit had flowed in our blood for centuries. My people starved because they didn’t know how to be farmers....”
Mirbulat’s voice cracked. Silently, he focused on The Garden of Eden. After long moments, he spoke again, with a tremor in his voice and a faraway look in his eyes. “A strummed dombra is like steppe horses galloping wild and free in the wind.”
“So this no longer exists?” I pointed at the painting, hoping for a different answer.
“No, not here. Maybe you’d find some Kazakhs in Mongolia or Northwest China who continue the nomadic life.”
My eyes lingered on the beaming Kazakh boy playing the dombra and the girl dancing to its silent music, her smiling eyes, radiant cheeks and agile movements captured in the still eternity of art.
“They look so happy,” I murmured. “I loved this painting from the instant I saw it. It has something I wanted. But now I know that it’s just a painting, and I’ve chased a dream.”
“Maybe that’s why the artist called it The Garden of Eden.”
Together, Mirbulat and I left the museum. My quest seemed foolish, the fancy of an arrogant traveler, the whim of a spoiled tourist, or perhaps just the urgings of a bored housewife.
Careful to sidestep the blotches of spittle here and there, I trudged with Mirbulat along a wide pavement lined with golden birches. As we passed the entrance to a college, I felt nearly overpowered by the cigarette smoke expelled by the students standing there -- girls wearing five-inch high-heels and panty-showing mini-skirts, guys in tight jeans and leather jackets. At the street intersections, cars puffed and emitted black fumes, accelerating even before the lights turned green.
As we parted, Mirbulat hesitated. “At my home the other day, you asked about the Seven Companions of Happiness.”
“I remember. You had six of them – knowledge, luck, wealth, health, longevity and family, but the seventh was missing.”
“Lost,” corrected Mirbulat. He took a deep breath. “The seventh figure was a young Kazakh named Kuanysh. He played a dombra and represented Happiness itself.
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