A Conscript in the Kara Kum (part two)

Midwife in a Yurt
I was one of the very few Europeans able to speak some of the local words. It got me into a totally unforeseen situation. We were in the midst of the desert, building terraces for the rice fields. I was a team member of the military clinic, serving the builders. Our connection with the locals was limited to waving at each other from a distance.
One day I was called to the commander’s tent. He ordered me to attend to one of the wives of the local Communist Party chief. I asked what the problem was and was brusquely told to be ready for anything. Two non-Russian-speaking natives loaded me and my medical bag onto a disdainful camel and off we went.
A camel moves slowly in an undulating, fluidly rhythmical way. Chronically sleep-deprived, like everyone else in the army, I fell asleep almost immediately. I woke up on the burning hot sand. After hauling me back up between the humps of the camel, my guides lashed me to the saddle with rope and let me sleep in some safety. Ironically, hard as I tried, I was not able to get back to sleep.
The overwhelmingly hot air burned your nose the moment you decided to breathe, seeming to singe the hairs inside the nostrils. Unending, silent dunes passed slowly like petrified waves, complete stillness interrupted by the whispers of rivulets of sand flowing down from the crests of the dunes like foam. The still air was fuzzy and out of focus and gently undulated, distorting all lines, hinting of untold discoveries, tantalising the curiosity of the observer. The horizon seemed so close that one felt compelled to touch it, to find out what was hidden beyond.

Thin wisps of denser air drew together, making strange figures suspendedbetween the sand and pitiless sky. A lonely vulture glided in the immense depth of the blue, looking like a fish in an upturned aquarium, making giant circles in search of dead or weakened flesh below.
We arrived at the nomadic outstation. Several brightly coloured yurts—round tents made of felt and supported by a wooden frame—huddled around a desert well, which was marked by the skull of some animal and a large flat stone used as a lid. A small group of men and kids watched our arrival. Kids giggled, pointing their fingers at me as I was unglued from my Rosinante. The sand seemed to keep moving long after my feet touched the ground, and I felt nauseous.
I was taken to a yurt set up somewhat apart from the others. As I entered, I felt a welcome cool and merciful dimness, letting my eyes rest from the glare of the sun. The only light came from a round opening in the centre of the ceiling. A slightly sagging rope hung across the diameter of the yurt. The walls and floor were covered by exquisite rugs.
I heard a sigh and discovered a very young woman, practically a child, standing near the wall, holding onto the rope under her armpits. She was heavily pregnant. I realised why they had sent for me, and felt cold sweat on my skin. I heard the weak and thin girl’s voice. I could only recognise two words—hakim djan and ata—doctor and father. She looked fourteen or fifteen years old and scared.
I frantically tried to remember my obstetrics. The only useful things I had were scissors to cut the cord with. I noticed a long and very sharp knife on the pillow, obviously prepared for the same purpose. Or was it for the circumcision? Or was it for me, if I failed? What if she was too small? What if she was to bleed? What if the placenta blocked the entrance? The list of scary possibilities was endless.
Trying to look as confident as possible, I demanded lots of hot water, a woman experienced in helping with births, and a translator. I spoke with the husband, a stout man in his fifties. He told me, in passable Russian, that he had paid many camels for this girl, and would not like to see his investment wasted.
The girl’s blood pressure seemed normal, her urine was fine, there were no swellings or seizures, and contractions were not in evidence yet. Her fear and despair were palpable, however. I was not surprised that I was not allowed to check the position and the lie of the foetus, or the birth dimensions of her pelvis. I told her to rest lying on her side, and instructed the old granny who was with her to call me as soon as anything happened. Portraits of Brezhnev and Lenin glared down from the walls.
I decided to get in touch with the hospital and request assistance or, failing that, a helicopter to evacuate the pregnant kid. Her husband told me that hospital was out of question. Seeing my amazement he quickly explained, “There are no child marriages in the Soviet Union!”
I understood that I would not be allowed near the radiophone. Instead of guides, I now had guards, who followed me everywhere. The girl had her wash, her bowel preparation, and was resting.
My nightmarish sleep is interrupted. I can hear her screams. I quickly dress and run across to the yurt. She is in the second stage—the water is out, contractions have begun and the baby is descending. In all this commotion I ignore the glaringly obvious—that the child who is about to become a mother is standing up with the rope under her armpit, instead of lying down. Her skinny legs are spread as far apart as possible, so far apart that the tendons are visible at the place of the inguinal canal, where the hernias should be squeezing through at forty. She refuses to lie down and starts screaming again.
I’m glad I remembered to insist she empty her bowels beforehand. I flop on the floor on my back, face up towards the centre of everything. The baby’s head becomes visible, too fast, much too fast—she will tear herself everywhere, and I will surely infect her, stitching her up in these conditions! Lying under and between the legs of my patient, covered by the detritus of a live birth, sprayed by all sorts of fluids and trying to breathe through my surgical mask, I start screaming, “Don’t push! Don’t push!” Then I remember that she cannot understand me. I start swearing loudly. Everyone understood Russian swearing in the Soviet Union, even those who did not speak Russian. She is so surprised that she stops screaming and pushing. I hold my hands up, trying to support the head and catch the baby. The baby is out—a beautiful baby boy. I cut the cord, tie it up, put the baby on the chest of the exhausted new mum, who is lying down now, and wait for the afterbirth. It is undamaged. There is no conspicuous bleeding.
Daddy, delirious with vodka-induced happiness, proud of his first son and grateful for the safety of his investment, plies me with all sorts of delicacies, such as boiled sheep’s eyes and fried testicles. I am numb. I have no strength left. I cannot even hate him. All I want is sleep.
Next day, after our return to the camp, a caravan sent by the grateful father brought several sheep and a lot of other food. Everyone had a decent meal. I was popular for a while. I stared at my full plate and thought, “I don’t even know her name.”
The Welfare of my Sheep
I was in charge of the mobile clinic during desert manoeuvres, when our truck broke down. We were last in the long column of vehicles which was covered in an impenetrable cloud of sandy dust, so no one noticed when we fell behind. When the dust settled, we found ourselves in the midst of the Kara Kum desert (kara kum means black death) with two litres of water and one loaf of bread for twelve people. After the brief inventory, I realised that everybody expected food, shelter, water and entertainment from me. I was willing to sing and dance, but had no idea what to do about our daily bread.
“We can drink water from the radiator,” I said enthusiastically.
“No we can’t,” responded our driver. “There is a hole in the bottom. The radiator is empty.”
After a silence, we got off the truck and looked around. Hallelujah! There were yurts on the horizon. Several mounted men were riding in our direction, following an old aksakal (an elder) on a magnificent black horse. Even I was able to tell that it was the famous Akhal Tekin breed of horse—a cross between Arabs and local horses, suited to the desert. About fifteen metres away, they all dismounted, and the aksakal slowly approached our group alone, carefully showing his hands, demonstrating that he was unarmed. He was wearing the traditional garb of the desert people—a heavy multi-layered headpiece made of sheepskin padded with thick layers of cotton wool, called a telpek, and a burnoose-like sheepskin cloak.
He greeted us with the polite “As-salaam aleikum” and, speaking directly to me, enquired about the welfare of my sheep. He wanted to know whether I had enough cool water to drink, and asked about my esteemed parents’ good health. I politely and respectfully answered with the traditional “Wa aleikum as-salaam” and bowed, avoiding direct eye contact. In my mind I was blessing my teachers, the local Muslim boys in my squad, who had taught me how to talk with locals in the correct way.
After all the pleasantries were attended to, the aksakal did something which completely threw me off. He asked for bread and water, claiming that he and his men were thirsty and hungry. There was no time to lose—he was waiting. I looked back and saw my Muslim boys winking at me and nodding vigorously. I ordered bread and water brought over. I gave him one full water bottle and half of the bread loaf with my right hand, saying I was happy to share. Half of what I have he and his people can have, but the other half I should leave for my people.
He approvingly nodded, thanked me politely, and, wrapping the bread in a clean cloth, went back to his men. After he talked to them, they came to our group and each invited two or three soldiers to go with them. I started to worry about the splintering of my group, but the local boys from my unit told me that it was simply a matter of distributing guests evenly. The aksakal invited two local boys and me to his yurt. I asked the boys whether we should bring something with us, like wine or vodka, which we had stocked in anticipation of the trials of the manoeuvres. They laughed and said that we should bring nothing.
The conversation was lively, the food was magnificent, and we felt replete for the first time in weeks. Women, their faces covered, served the food, but did not eat with the men. Beshbarmak, meaning five fingers, describing the entire set of cutlery at your disposal (a dish made from lamb and desert fettuccine); pilaf (spiced rice with lamb); shaslik; various sweets, and green tea—the meal was superb.
Conversation was witty and polite; everything made me laugh, even if I did not understand a single word. A small part of my brain was quietly wondering—how can I find jokes I don’t understand amusing? I found this thought to be funny in the extreme and started to laugh uproariously. The puzzled face of our host made me roll with laughter.
The last thing I remember was that I was ravenous. I wanted to eat and eat and eat. After that, I do not remember anything. I do not remember being evacuated to military hospital, how I was physically restrained for a week, and what I did during my week of delirium. Later on, my boys explained to me that the pilaf was made with hashish, which was melted inside the hot pot just before the meat went in. I had never tried it before and, I guess, I never will again. Not if it means delirium.
I have observed a unique way of hashish preparation, as it is done in this part of Afghanistan and surrounding areas. There are other methods, but this one takes the cake. Imagine a field with orderly rows of female cannabis plants. Two men are slowly walking along those rows. One man is lowering the plant and rubbing the hash-containing parts with both hands, releasing the oily dust particles onto the skin of a very young sweaty female donkey, led by another man.
To get the young female donkey sweaty in the first place, they put a stake in the ground and attach a rope between the donkey and the stake. Then they start beating the donkey with a stick, making her run in circles, until she is hot and her skin is covered with foamy sweat.
The oily dust from the cannabis plant sticks to the donkey skin. Later it is carefully rubbed off by hand, while the donkey is standing on a large piece of linen, so as not to miss any. The collected substance is rolled into small balls and distributed between trusted elders, who put it under the arch of each foot and wear it in their soft boots for at least two weeks before taking it off. The finished product is regarded as the king of hashish varieties.
Twenty Kilometres over Sand Dunes in Rubber
My life of luxury as a medic came to an abrupt end. My mates and I were caught helping several girls in various stages of undress over the walls of the military base after an illicit party at my clinic.
I was busted from sergeant to private. Instead of the lordly medic, I was a lowly sanitary instructor. Apart from the loss of status and privileges, I now had to do basic soldiering, especially the dreaded twenty-kilometre sand march. This is a march over sand dunes in full kit, as though we were being attacked with chemical and biological weapons. The much-loved saying of our CO was, “More sweat, less blood.” It sounds all right in principle, until you understand just how much sweat is involved. After that a bit of blood does not seem so terrible.
The time has come. I drink the prescribed two and half litres of water, and, feeling like a waterlogged balloon, unroll my anti-chem costume on the sand. I take off my glasses, and put on my gas mask. Following the advice of old hands, I loosen my bootlaces and collar, then put on the foul-smelling rubber costume, made heavy by lead impregnation. Next, a full one-litre water bottle, gas filter, small spade, spare clips with 120 bullets, two grenades, a bayonet, emergency dressings and rations for three days, fully loaded AK-47, and last of all, my medical bag weighing eight to ten kilos. A steel helmet on top and I am ready.
At this point, I cannot scrape together even a tiny shred of enthusiasm. The temperature at two o’clock is forty-six degrees Celsius. In two hours, it is likely to rise another two degrees. I am hot in all this rubber. The sounds of my breathing, distorted by the passage through the filter, seem harsh and alien. I hear the command, “Forward—march!” I squint as I used to do in school—without glasses I cannot see very well.
Our CO has allocated an old-timer to every “green” soldier, as a “comfort”. Mine is a shifty bugger. In my previous life as a medic, I had treated him for the clap. Now he seems to be enjoying my discomfort. Being assigned to support and monitor my progress, he does not have to wear full kit.
We start moving. After a hundred steps or, rather, slides on the sand, I feel that my parents have made a terrible mistake—I should never have been born. My heartbeats are insanely quick, my breathing is laboured and hot, my mouth is dry, and every time I touch its insides with my tongue, the scraping sound jars me into a toothache. I feel as if my brain is melting. The remaining neurons in my grey matter are screaming, like a distressed submarine commander, “Dive, dive, dive!” and slide towards the bottom of my skull, trying to avoid meltdown. Gradually, I switch off and become a walking automaton. I find some kind of rhythm, and my heartbeat and breathing become less of a torture.
I cannot stop; I cannot take a leak. If I unzip my protective costume, I will be returned to the start and will have to repeat the march in full. I piss as I walk, inside the anti-chem costume, as divers do into their suits. I move in a daze, licking salt off my upper lip.
I can only see the short shadow of the silhouette in front of me, and try not to lag behind too much. My “comfort” waves in front of my gas mask—he has been talking to me, but I have not realised it. He asks me with hand gestures, “How is it going?” I cannot even answer by using my big thumb, because I have to hold on to so many belts, trying to prevent all the toys hanging off me from swinging. I just nod and keep going.
Something changes. What is it? A new sound. I cannot locate its source. It makes me feel suspicious. Are we walking on quicksand? No, the shadow in front seems to be moving all right. Ah, now I understand why the old hands advised me to loosen up my bootlaces—this is the sound of my own sweat and urine, sloshing around my ankles. The discovery amuses me. The word sloshed takes on an entirely different meaning. I keep schlepping forward, thinking of how I will tell this to my future children.
The movement is endless, excruciating and almost beyond endurance. I can see several boys who cannot get up from where they have fallen. Old-timers carry each one of them to the car that follows us. The temptation to stop, rest and take off this idiotic garb is overwhelming. I am sustained by curiosity and anger. The curiosity to know how far I can go before I drop, and the anger at the sadistic officer who ordered this idiocy, fuel my refusal to give up.
The sand is over! We are on the hard surface of the highway! It means only two kilometres left. My “comfort” decides to show some activity. He tells me to give him my weapon; he will carry it for me. “Get stuffed, I carried it across the sand, and I will carry it until the end,” I think. I keep going, without bothering to answer.
Finish. The dry heat of the desert has never felt so good. “Don’t stop, don’t stop,” someone tells me, giving me a water bottle, helping me get out of all my lead and rubber. I raise my eyes and in the uncertain focus see our CO, who looks after me, like a delighted father looks after his prodigal son. Somehow he does not seem like the sadistic bastard of before. “Don’t take your uniforms off,” he orders loudly. Too late, I have already taken off my drenched tunic. It dries out at once. I pick it up and try to put it back on, but it breaks. Salt crystals sparkle on the surface. The broken pieces of the tunic sound like corrugated iron. “Damn,” I think, “the next uniform change is in two months.”
My Dembel Job
My two years in the army were over. It was time to go home, back to my beloved Odessa, back to civilian life, to my family, to my friends, girls, fun—back to life. That’s what was supposed to happen. In practice, everyone had to earn discharge on time. It was at the discretion of the local commander, who could decide that the defence of the Motherland depended on you, and keep you as long as he wanted.
The time had come for a peculiarly Russian military phenomenon, called a “dembel job”—a gift to the army by a demobbed soldier who wishes to go home when the law says his time is up. Usually it is a job which is difficult to complete for some reason. The condition could be “build this wall/repair this engine/paint this house/dig this tunnel and you can go home”. What would they make me do? Perform another hundred enemas and three hundred injections?
They told me they wanted me to get building materials for the hospital—floor and roof paint, cement, bricks, timber, tiles, water and sewer pipes—things like that. I was just about to ask, “Why don’t you request all of it officially, as you are entitled to?” but remembered building a house for our hospital CO and shut my mouth. What a pack of thieving bastards!
I was in a pickle. The dembel job was a sacred undertaking. Many soldiers were remembered for their dembel jobs long after their departure. I was not annoyed that I had to do something to win my release. After all, everyone had to do it. It was the nature of the job which got me hopping mad—I had to risk my freedom covering up for a bunch of thieves in officer uniforms. I looked into it and concluded that there was no way I could do it legally. If I did not want to stay in the army, I had to steal the building materials.
One of my patients was a sergeant from the MVD—the Ministry of the Interior, which ran the infamous Gulag system of labour camps. This sergeant served as a guard in one of those camps, and wanted five days’ leave in exchange for helping me. He told me there was a large building site not far from the hospital. The MVD was using slave labour, prisoners building something hush-hush. Recently, a large amount of supplies had been delivered. I thought I had seen it all in the army, but the Gulag as a builders’ supplies shop took the cake.
The sergeant told me that after the prisoners finished working, they were transported back to their camp, leaving the site virtually empty.
“No guard?” I looked at him with disbelief.
“Well, there might be a guard,” he conceded, “but we can take care of him.”
“What do you mean!” My mind helpfully envisaged a man lying on his back in a pool of blood. His wife and seventeen children are crying out in unison, “Daddy, why did you leave us so young? Who is going to take care of us?” Was that what was needed to get out of the army, to learn how to “take care” of people who were in the way?
I think my face turned purple, because the sergeant hurriedly added, “No, no, I mean we can bribe him.”
That was different. But where would I get the bribe money? “How much, do you reckon?”
“How much what?” The sergeant looked at me uncomprehendingly.
“How much money would we need?” I repeated patiently, as though talking to a child.
“Who’s talking about money?” The puzzlement on the sergeant’s face was genuine.
“How do we bribe the guard without money?” It was my turn to be puzzled.
“Don’t even think about it!” Seeing that I was still none the wiser, he explained, “All you have to do is to get these guards a few bottles of vodka! Don’t offer them money; other guys would be very angry!”

Sergeant Mozart
The sergeant was known as Mozart. His intestines were his musical instrument. Nobody wanted to sleep in the same room with him because of the continuous rectal roulades, accompanied by the smell of methane. He wanted his five days’ leave to visit his sweetheart. Privately, I thought this girl deserved a medal, but there’s no accounting for taste.
I went to our CO and told him I had found the way to get my dembel job done. He told me to shut up and said that whatever I did had nothing to do with him or the hospital.
I chose a night when young soldiers carrying only dummy bullets were on duty. A truck with a working winch was parked close to the gate. A canister with twenty litres of pure alcohol was hidden in the cabin during the day. I went to the commander of the sentry squad and told him that we needed the truck for several hours. He huffed and puffed, but when I told him he would get a litre of pure alcohol, he sent his boys to push the truck out of the guarded park and wished us good luck.
Mozart was driving. I kept both windows open, trying not to breathe through my nose.
The perimeter fence, made of thick wooden boards about four metres high, surrounded the building site. Inside, a ploughed strip of dirt separated a razor-wire fence from the outer perimeter. At each corner of the site, an empty watchtower was a stark reminder of the malevolence of the place.
Mozart, unperturbed, switched off the engine and got out. I joined him and we went to one of the watchtowers and climbed the wooden ladder to the top. I saw a large darkened area, littered by the odds and ends of a building site. Something was moving in the semi-darkness, making strange, squealing noises. It was the guard, armed with a submachine gun, holding two vicious-looking dogs on the leash.
I felt Mozart’s breath in my ear, “This is a new guard. I don’t know him,” he whispered.
“I don’t care,” I whispered back, “we are here to get the stuff. Start getting it!” Mozart left without a word, after giving me a look of respect.
Several minutes passed in silence. Then I heard human voices, then the truck engine became audible. Then, the whining of the winch and a loud crash. A short staccato of submachine gun fire, screams, dogs barking —and everything went quiet again.
I thought it was the end, and saw myself in the stockade for a long time. A loud fart interrupted my melancholic thoughts. It was Mozart, climbing the ladder, living up to his name. I looked at his smiling, sweaty face.
“Come on,” he said, “I can’t do it all by myself!”
“Do what?” I asked.
“The guard is okay now,” responded Mozart, “but we had to bring the gate down with the winch, otherwise he would not have been able to explain how we got to the stores. He also had to spend some bullets, so they can’t accuse him of anything.”
The middle-aged guard was very helpful, carrying small pieces to the truck, hooking the winch up to the heavy stuff, smiling and chatting with Mozart and me. He put away his submachine gun, so it would not interfere with his helping us carry the stuff, which he was supposed to be guarding. Mozart and the guard behaved like the best of friends. They even had a drink together during a short break. I refused, thinking, “Someone has to know what’s going on.”
When the guard realised that the amount of loot we were loading onto the truck was huge, he started to protest, so we had to take away his submachine gun and tie him up. Then he relaxed, telling us it was okay now, because nobody could accuse him of helping the thieves. By the time we got to this stage, we had stopped behaving with caution. We switched on all the lights, and used lifting machinery, paying no heed to the noise it made. It struck me as bizarre—I was stealing a truckful of building materials from a Gulag building site, using their own machinery, with the help of two Gulag guards, having wrecked the place, and no one gave a hoot.
The truck was full. It was a big truck. I checked the guard’s ropes, so he would not end up with gangrene, put him in a comfortable position, put the bribe alcohol in the place he indicated, and we parted the best of friends. Even his dogs, trained to attack intruders, were behaving like playful puppies. So, off we went, leaving behind an almost empty storeyard, a violated perimeter fence, broken gates, and a guard trussed like a chicken.
I thought the prisoners would be happy when the next morning they found that their work could not be done because most of supplies were gone. Despite their sincere desire to build communism for free, the prisoners would have to have a day off. The thought of sticking one up Melikha made me feel pretty good.
I thought the hard part was over and I was on my way to Odessa. Mozart was behind the wheel. He was drunk now, smiling, laughing, hooting like an owl. From time to time, he pushed his torso through the open window and hollered at the top of his voice. He was going to have his five days of bliss with his girl.
The truck was zigzagging. I was petrified, but there was not much I could do—I did not know how to drive. Mozart, this tzedreiter (Yiddish: one short of a six-pack), was not watching the road. When he reached out to get a cigarette from the glove box, he did not notice the pedestrian.
We got out of the truck and saw the middle-aged local man, dressed in desert garb, lying on the ground, moaning. I quickly looked him over. His left thigh bone was broken. I looked at Mozart with an intense feeling of compassion for myself. There was no need to speak. Mozart became sober in an instant.
We improvised a support for the man’s fracture and hauled him up on top of the truck. The rest of the trip we made in silence.
When we arrived back to hospital at half past four in the morning, all our officers were waiting for us. The relief on their faces was palpable. They were so happy that we had not been caught that the road accident was disregarded.
The man was looked after as a celebrity—as long as he was not going to lodge a complaint, he was in a position to demand anything.
We unloaded the loot, and returned the truck, bringing more blessed relief, together with the promised alcohol, to the sentry squad’s commander.
Overall, the truckful of the stolen building material had cost our CO twenty litres of pure alcohol. He considered the stolen material to be an adequate contribution to the defence of the Motherland and the wellbeing of the army, and let me go. After two wasted years (well, I did learn how to fire a machine gun), I was going home.
Dr Michael Galak and his wife migrated to Australia in 1978. This is the second and final part of an extract from his as-yet-unpublished memoirs of his life in the Soviet Union. The first part appeared in the October issue.