Children play in the sand with a plastic bucket that’s missing a handle. Ragged, skinny, sad. I did not visit the nearest hospital, which is on the other side of the sea, but in Tashkent I was shown a film made in that hospital. For every one thousand children born, one hundred die immediately. And those that survive? The doctor picks up in his hands little white skeletons, still alive, although it is difficult to tell.
HALF THE PEOPLE here have jaundice. Those who have jaundice and then contract dysentery die at once. But how can one maintain even a modicum of cleanliness here? One can secure with ration coupons only a single piece of soap per month per person, and — although one doesn’t need coupons for this — only a single bucket of water a day.
THE ARAL SEA and its tributaries provided sustenance for three million people. But the fate of this sea and of its two rivers also impinges on the situation of all the inhabitants of this region, of whom there are thirty-two million.
THE SOVIET AUTHORITIES have long worried about how to reverse the disaster — the destruction of the Aral Sea, the ruination of half of Central Asia. It is after all well known that the unprecedented increase in cotton cultivation has led to a tragic shortage of water, a shortage that is destroying a large part of the world (a fact which to this day continues to be concealed). Water must therefore be found, thousands of cubic kilometers of water, for otherwise the Uzbeks will die of thirst, sand will bury the cotton fields, the textile basins of Russia will come to a standstill, and on and on. But where can one get so much water? The first idea was to blow up the Pamir and Tien Shan mountains (where the two rivers have their sources). As a result of the gigantic explosions, avalanches of snow would start to move down these mountains and, descending into the warmer regions of the planet, would change into water as plentiful as the waters of the Nile and the Amazon, the water would flow into the desiccated rivers, the rivers would reach the sea, and everything would be as it once was — meaning good, meaning normal.
But this plan had two weak points. First, mountains as immense as the Pamirs and Tien Shan could be blown up only with nuclear bombs, and the tremendous explosions and earthquakes that would ensue could be badly received by the rest of the world. But there is a more important reason why the idea was finally abandoned: while blowing up the massifs of the Pamirs and Tien Shan would indeed release the great volume of water frozen in the glaciers, it would release it only once, and then in such quantities that there would be a serious risk of drowning a significant portion of the former USSR. Still, the search for a solution continued.
IN TASHKENT I was received by Victor Duhovy, the general director of the Sanira conglomerate. Sanira is one of the numerous arms of the former USSR’s Ministry of Water Administration, which takes care of the Aral Sea as well as the Syr Darya and the Amu Darya. We can now see how it takes care of them. One has to understand what a ministry means in the Imperium. The ministry in question employs two million people. Every morning, two million people get out of bed, walk to work, sit down at their desks, take out paper and pencils, and have to start doing something. The lucky ones are those who have fieldwork. They pull out all sorts of measuring instruments, magnifying glasses and sextants, slide rules and scales, and precisely measure and count everything. But even if one accepts that there are that many things in the world to measure and count, it is still not easy to find work for these two million people. That is why masses of experts and officials work here on each and every idea — even utterly fantastic ones.
DIRECTOR DUHOVY WALKED up to a large map hanging on the wall in his office. It was a map of the former USSR and the Eurasian continent. Duhovy: a likable, energetic gentleman with a pleasant manner.
“There is a solution,” he said to me, “please, look.” He ran his hand over the map from top to bottom. “One must simply,” he explained the movement of his hand, “redirect the course of the great Siberian rivers from the north to the south. Then the water will flow to us.”
I LATER CHECKED the distance to these rivers. To reach the nearest one, one would have to dig a canal 2,500 kilometers long.
WRITING THIS BOOK, I telephoned Anvar, an engineer from the conglomerate that Duhovy administers.
“What’s new?” I asked.
“Nothing special,” he answered, “we’re working.”
“On what?” I asked.
“How to redirect the waters of the Siberian rivers in our direction.”
POMONA OF THE LITTLE TOWN OF DROHOBYCH
IN DONETSK I saw a woman selling cow’s hooves. It was on one of the main streets — University Street. She stood there in the bitter cold, rubbing her hands together for warmth, and on the table before her lay several pairs of worn-down cow’s hooves. I walked up and asked her what they were good for. “You can make soup out of them,” she answered, “there is fat in hooves.”
NOT FAR FROM THERE stands the White Swan department store. In this part of the world, an inflamed and determined crowd fulfills the same function as that performed in the West by colorful advertising — it attracts customers. A throng of people is rushing to a counter on the ground floor, shoving, storming. A shipment of shoes has arrived. I go take a closer look. They are selling shoes one pair per person. It does not matter what pair, it does not matter to whom; the saleswomen do not even look to see what is inside the boxes. Everyone just grabs a box, forces his way out of the crowd, and stands on the side, where a point of exchange has immediately formed. Gradually, through a chain of transactions, discussions, and compromises, people work their way toward the ideal, which is for each to obtain the kind of shoes he or she needs.
GALINA GOBIERNA, a professor of economics, told me what the division of profits looks like in a Donetsk factory or mine: Moscow takes fifty-four percent, Kiev takes thirty percent, the Donetsk authorities take eleven percent, and five percent is left over for the particular establishment itself.
I ASKED A GIRL standing at a bus stop which way I should walk to get to the train station. “I will show you,” she proposed. Despite the fact that this was downtown, we waded up to our ankles in mud. It was overcast; a sharp wind was blowing.
Donetsk is the center of the Ukrainian coal basin; in certain neighborhoods, piles of coal and slag lie directly in the streets. Black dust settles on walls; and on the facades of so many identical buildings that stretch for kilometers, one after the other, it creates dark streaks, gray water stains, brown rusty-looking lichens.