A guest post by writer Chinelo Okparanta who traveled with the IWP on a recent reading tour to Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan.

Turkmenistan is a country of a little over 5 million people, bordered by Afghanistan, Iran, Uzbekistan, and Kazakhstan. Ashgabat is its capital city.

We have just arrived from Uzbekistan. We drive into Ashgabat, a city unlike Uzbekistan's homey Tashkent, unlike Uzbekistan's Samarkand, and I think how very unlike any other cities I've ever visited it is: the streets--and the buildings that line them--are a glorious pearly white. It is early morning, just before dawn. The sun is not yet anywhere to be seen, but the place glows all the same, by the light of the street lamps, which are ornate and line the roadsides like delicate lace trimmings at the fringes of a wedding dress.

As we continue our drive, an analogy comes to mind, that of a model apartment unit. Except, here is not just one model unit. Here, the entire city is the model, everything glistening in shades of silver and gold. 

We arrive at our hotel, and I note how even the hotel is the epitome of luxury: a grand reception area, multiple sets of elevators scattered throughout the lobby. A series of beautiful water sculptures. Tilt your head upwards, and a cascade of gleaming railings greets you. Internal balconies adorned with deluxe furnishings: Mahogany. Marble. Granite. Again, silver and gold. It is a very polished affair, in all senses of the word, and, because I am perhaps the biggest fan of cleanliness and order, all of this is at first very suiting to me.

When we have settled at the hotel and rested a bit, our cultural diplomacy visits to the Turkmen institutions begin. To get to these destinations, we drive by large, stately buildings with names such as 'Palace of Creativity', 'Palace of Happiness', ‘Palace of Justice’. The domes are striking in their splendor. Those that are mural-like seem as if they could have been hand-painted. 

-What does one do at the Palace of Happiness? I ask the driver, pointing in the direction of the building.

The driver looks at me, holds up his hand, wiggles his ring finger. I understand then: One gets married at the 'Palace of Happiness.' 

After a moment, the next question comes to me: -And for a divorce? I ask.

The driver does not understand, and I am left to wonder if the driver’s lack of understanding is indicative of the absence of divorce in Turkmenistan. It is so perfect a place that divorce is an unheard-of thing?

It all seems very whimsical to me. A whole new world. Something taken out of a storybook, a fairytale. 

And there is more: The next day, we take a trip to the ancient city of Merv. After spending some time watching a perfectly orderly excavation-in-progress, we head into the neighboring city of Mary, to the library there, which is to be one of our stops on this cultural diplomacy mission.

There at the library, we are first greeted by an expansive array of red Turkmen carpets, which lead up to the library’s gilded entranceway. We are ushered into a conference room where we discuss methods of collaborating for the purpose of bringing Turkmen literature into the United States, also for the purpose of bringing more contemporary American literature into Turkmenistan. It is agreed that translation will be the key.

The next phase of the meeting is a tour of the library. At this moment, things become more whimsical than ever. Something just does not feel real about the place, and soon I arrive at what it is: Where are the books?

Not much later, another question comes to my mind: Just where are the library’s patrons? Because, of course, as we are taken through the library’s various sections—a children’s room, a cafeteria, a room for the elderly, an observatory, etc, I cannot help but notice the emptiness, the furnishings all perfectly in place, not appearing to have ever been moved, model units indeed. The children’s room is so tidy that it doesn’t appear to have ever lodged a child. The same with the café: no sign of ever having served even a morsel of food.  

But then there is a shift. The truth of the place begins to seep in, and I take it in slowly, in small drops.

The first drop of truth comes later in the trip. We finally make our way into a potholed road lined with a series of downtrodden bungalows, their walls clearly cracking, their roofs just a bit sunken-looking. For the first time, I see a group of school children gathered, tossing around a ball. It is the first time that I am seeing children participating in normal children activities in Turkmenistan. It causes me to exhale. After that, we see more behind-the-scene scenes: women vendors along the roadsides selling bread and other goods. We even eat at a restaurant where enlarged flies whistle around my ears and threaten to land on my food. And somehow it is a relief, this realization that there are flies in Turkmenistan.

Chinelo Okparanta is the author of Happiness, Like Water. Short-listed for the Caine Prize for African Writing, her work has appeared in Granta, The Kenyon Review, TriQuarterly, AGNI, and other journals.