Woke up with a baby crying on the airplane, pushed the map button on the little screen. We were flying over the Baltic Sea. Yellow soft blue of sunrise leaked into the airplane through a few open windows. Among sleepers, the father put his baby up on a shoulder, humming. The baby reached. Pushing on the soft plastic light bulb icon, he lit it up. Hours earlier, entering security at JFK, a couple embraced below a sign that read Grab and Go. Preparing to fly through Moscow to Bishkek, I had hoped to spot Edward Snowden. 

Spent $15 on a latte at Moscow Sheremetyevo looking out the windows to a scene of trees and fog, flew through Bishkek, and landed in Osh, in southeastern Kyrgyzstan.  The moon was full. It was the middle of Ramadan. We drove in between mountains, stopping at a Russian place to eat meat and potatoes on the roadside. Whitney Houston was on the television. When we arrived in the middle of the night, finally, I met up with my cycling comrades at the Sputnick Inn. 

Emerging from the people’s Tulip revolution in 2005, Kurmanbek Bakiyev, coming from this southern land of the country, took the presidency of Kyrgyzstan. Five years later, his home - once an outstanding complex of buildings around a pretty garden, with a vast ornamental yurt at the center stood in ruins. Corruption had continued under his reign despite the demands. The Kyrgz national protesters, bent on showing the ethnic Uzbeks in the Fergana valley where the power laid, sacked the compound with a torrential thoroughness. Every building, including the yurt, had been set ablaze.   

This valley, primarily made up of ethnic Uzbeks, was divided between Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan to the southwest under Stalin, with his directive to isolate minorities, thus creating tension across borders. We rode out of the city center through the heat of summer munching on the fiery red tomatoes, into the cornfields marked by glorious sunflowers edges through an agricultural landscape ripe with symbols I could not read.

Down the road we hoofed over a pass and came to a monument commemorating the events that transpired in 2010. Over the hill from the monument, we came upon an abandoned apple orchard. There were beds beneath the trees with decomposing mattresses full of rotting apples. The apples on the trees were bright green.

Later that afternoon, while riding along the border dividing the farmland of the valley, one member of my group decided to venture to the checkpoint. A Kyrgyz man walking down the road suddenly became animated, ran after him screaming, “Uzbekistan, no, Uzbekistan!” and then started shooting as though he had a gun on his shoulder.  He was laughing so we all laughed.

The roar of the train jolted me awake. We had camped in the farmer’s yard. A man named Marat welcomed us when we showed up – five guys on bikes with tents after sundown the night before. The younger boy giggled, looking at my sleeping comrade, who was sprawled out, drooling on his sleeping bag. His older sister fetched water and brought it back to the house. We didn’t meet a mother there. Marat was carving a melon up for breakfast. We sat down to eat.

We scooped curds and apricot jelly with hard bread and tried to ask Marat about his life. Was he Uzbek or Kyrgyz? Our words weren’t so intelligible as we moved our mouths.

The salts of this funky cheese ball chewed on after breakfast were disappearing from my teeth. Spreading scapulae, I took a deep breathe in, pushed the base of my palm bones through the handlebars, and peddled into the mountain tunnel. Darkness and fear of speeding vehicles passed into a sense of coolness, a respite from the sun that intensified since we began our ascent out of the Fergana Valley. Sweat beads on skin soaked in the tunnel’s echoes.

So I learned about Kyrgyzstan on the Internet, this mountainous landlocked country at the eastern end of the post-Soviet world. Uniquely among the Stans, former Central Asian republics of the Soviet Union—Kyrgyzstan has had two government revolutions since declaring independence in 1991. In 2005 and in 2010, people took to the streets and presidents, seen as dictatorial, nepotistic and corrupt, were ousted. With a heavy U.S. military presence to run the war in Afghanistan, the country was increasingly touted as democratic and safe for travelers. Yet amidst these revolutions, inter-ethnic violence within the country had cost thousands of lives.

I came up yelping, wiping the blood from above my eye. A silver Mercedes skidded over in the gravel. I screamed out of pain. I cried. This fucker hit me out of nowhere. Me, I’m the one! Confusion punishment throbbing why? What answers? This dry earth in my bloody face. A man emerged from the Mercedes like a turtle. He pulled out a smoke.

I felt my rib, a tendon in my hand ballooned. People began surrounding us. A Kyrgyz man who spoke English said he saw everything. He went ahead and alerted my fellow cycling partners. I had to go to the hospital. I might have had brain damage. The perpetrator offered to take me and he agreed through the man who spoke English that he would take me to a bigger city, if need be, for my brain. 

I went in his car to the local hospital. He was chain smoking and scattering through sentences in Kyrgz or Uzbek or Russian on his cell phone. I picked up “Amerikanski,” which he repeated in a nervous cadence. He turned to me and put a banana in my hand. I kept the camera rolling.

I was rushed in through the waiting room past several people with bandages. Women in chef hats led me down a dark hallway. They sat me up on a cold metal table and gripped my arm, as an older man, the doctor, poured alcohol over my wounds. I yelped in pain in a high register, and the doctor laughed. I held my iPhone with my good hand. He screamed “No!” I felt the nurses’ fingers. They painted my body with a blue substance to stop the bleeding.

My cycling comrade, an aspiring doctor, said they didn’t have a stethoscope and that if I passed out, he would have had to crack open my skull with a wrench. We wouldn’t know if my brain suffered from damage for some time.

By then the man who hit me had escaped and dumped my belongings on the side of the road. He was gone. I got this information from my comrade minutes before two cars of policemen appeared at the hospital. One of the policemen with a big chubby face put me on the phone with someone in his office who explained in English that I had to come to the station immediately. I had the information, showed the police pictures of the guy who hit me, the car, and the license plate. They laughed at my cracked iPhone, which had flown a great distance. The chase was on.

I walked around the hospital grounds and breathed in my pain. I walked through a dark hallway full of people with bandages hunched over in lulls. I walked to the laundry room where a woman squeezed the sheets by hand, traces of red wringed out. I went to the cliffs overlooking the bridge, from the other side of the snaky river where I took the picture. The scene of the crime. Then finally the police got me to go to their station.

We walked through a gate into a terrace. Straight ahead were the barracks for officers. To the right, a potent smelling outhouse, and amidst the terrace, like statues in a garden, was a junkyard full of crashed cars. We waited around. I had to fill out some paperwork. The police insisted I did not take photos. I was getting hungry.

The gates began to rattle. In the back of a police car we see the man who hit me pulling in. The Mercedes followed. Everyone standing around identified my head wrapped in bandages with the shattered imprint on the windshield.

I called my friends in Bishkek. They told me that I was a fool for letting the perpetrator out of my sight for a minute, that he was mine, that his car was mine, and that I should take his organs.

We spent the next 6 hours in the police station. The guy who hit me brought some candy and delicious Jalalabad spring water. Salty spring water. As an Uzbek living in Osh, he must have grown up on this stuff.

He chain smoked cigarettes and low strolled around in his Adidas as we each took turns inside the police office. He looked down, but would glance at me across the terrace occasionally. By then I was sure my brain was not so damaged.

A translator sent by the friends in Bishkek showed up from Jalalabad and began to explain the situation. The police told me that if I wanted to leave I had to agree that my story would be that I fell—I was never hit. The police were afraid of the higher-ups in Bishkek.

Outside in the terrace the translator told me how the police were speaking of the guy who hit me, the Uzbek. It did not bode well. What would I take for my broken bike and injuries? What punishment should fall on this man who hit me so recklessly? Who was I to decide?

The afternoon sun was beginning to wane. The police decided we had to revisit the scene of the crime for evidence so we all got inside of cars and drove back across the river to where the accident happened. When we arrived there, the police asked why we had removed the evidence. There was nothing to see except a few skid marks on the road and the patch of gravel I slid across. We walked back and forth. The police pretended to take measurements. The sun spread out over this high desert and soaked in sweat. Justice mired in this bureaucracy seemed further beyond our reach.

When we got back to the station, I stood across from the perpetrator. It was clear to me now that he, as an Uzbek,

was going to get it much worse from the police than what he was going to have to give up to me. I doubled his initial offer of $200 for the damage to the bike wheel, signed the paper work with my left hand—like I was learning to write—took his cash, and we got into hired cars. He paid me $40 more than we agreed on. I may have caught a smirk on his face, or perhaps he was doing so to show the police that he was sorry.

With the drivers chain smoking the last pack of Marlboro Reds my comrades brought, we dove through these great mountains with only a short stop in the middle of the night for a plate of mutton.

Back in Bishkek twelve hours later, I shuffled through the dark corridors more hospitals. The echoes of wounded and sick people in various states of disillusion filled the endless hallways. After finding the right person to pay, we were admitted into a room with windows. I was able to receive a sketchy head inspection by a tall man with hairy ears who confirmed that my skull was still round.

A woman in a tall circular white hat held a metal blanket close to my genitals while they took x-rays.After developing them in the back they brought out the prints—again the doctor confirmed about the shape of my skull, comparing it to the Kyrgz skull which he gestured as being sort of oblong. Finally we had enough, and went to eat Turkish. That night at the hostel, I overheard a Polish couple talking about the healing waters of Issey-kata.

The next morning I hobbled out of the hostel bed, with my arm in a sling and bandages on my head. A kitten danced around the backyard. Chickens stalked amongst the tall grass. A Frenchmen who drank too much wine was passed out in the veranda.

I went straight to the bus station. Healing on my mind, on my way I noticed several people like me, with dressings on their wounds. I took solace, remembering how the idea of punishment had kept me from bailing on this trip. I got on a bus headed to the mountains. In and out of sleep over a couple of hours on bumpy roads, the sun was setting.

Arriving, I found the Russian word for “here” and called to the bus driver to stop along the mountain road beside the mosque. The call to prayer rang out through tinny speakers. I took a deep breathe, grinning and in awe of the song. The old Soviet housing complexes loomed in the background.

In the blues past sunset, an old woman who stood hunched over on the side of the road looked up at me and gave a little smile. I put my hands together and made a sleep sign next to my cheeks.

She smiled and waved me behind her. In moonlight between cold mud and rock Soviet housing projects, the creak of metal doors opened slowly and she stepped softly in slippers as we climbed three flights of stairs into an apartment with heavy carpets on the walls and floors. It smelled of burnt herbs.

The woman turned on the light. A big mole on her nose and her smile warmed me. I felt comfortable but a bit curious about where I would sleep. She showed me two rooms. She asked me many things I did not understand and I pointed at one room. She agreed and made my bed. Underneath the bed I found a box of old photos, and spent the night looking at them. These photographs in my hands: Russian conquerors on hairy horses, men in bell-bottoms smoking, tinotype prints, beautiful circley swirling bokehs around a focus point in the middle - a portrait of her mother, she would explain.

I awoke in early light seeing silhouettes of a crocheted white curtain’s shadows onto plastic roses. Shadows danced on the bed.

Sitting up, I looked through the window out. My hand touched it’s brass, flicked off some paint. Cracking open the window, I reached out onto the windowsill. Red and pink roses grew in rusted tomato cans swaying in the mountain breeze.

I put on my pants, hearing the old lady creaking around. Opened the door out of my room and there she was, asking more questions. I told her in my best Russian that I did not understand Russian. She kept speaking. Plastic elephants amongst the ornaments on the mantle caught my eye. I heard her say the word “chai,” and I said yes, and “spaciba.” Take tea.

She went to the kitchen and came back a few minutes later with the tea and a hard biscuit, plopping them on the flower placemat on the plastic over the wobbly table. I received them. I dipped the biscuit and took a sip of the black tea as she paced back and forth across the room. Dissolving the biscuit, feeling the warmth of the morning sun, the moisture between textures in my mouth. A picture of a sagely looking woman hung next to a mirror on the bookcase, black-and-white.

I hear her boiling more water in the kitchen. She steps back into the drawing room with a big spoon, throws open the cabinet, and takes out a big plastic bucket. What is this? Honey. She dishes it out into an ornate bowl. I received it and continued to dip. She kept saying something.

Then she sat down at the table and spoke more, at an increasing rate. I repeated “Ya ne ponimayu”—expressing in Russian that I did not understand. She got up again from the table and came back with more biscuits and a bowl of apricot jam and almonds. I took a deep breath and continued to nibble. A few minutes passed, and again she sat back down across from me, and began to speak faster. What was she saying? My heart began to pound. “Ya ne ponimayu,” I repeated. She got more and more agitated. Was she poisoning me? What was going on?

Finally I stood up and asked the woman to come outside with me. We walked around under the sun. We wandered around the village, step in step, her in slippers, and found someone who spoke English. I begged them to explain to me what was going on.

“She is very upset,” they said. “She can’t believe you will leave the house without eating more for breakfast. If she known you had not prepared for breakfast, she would have been prepared. But she had no idea, and she says this is unacceptable, that you cannot go out and start your day without eating a proper breakfast.”

A plastic tube coming out of the earth poured out into a large pool illustrated with cartoon paintings of orcas, mermaids, and fishes. Swathes of Kyrgz folks in their relaxing swim costumes jockeyed around the fountain. Kids splashed with blow up giraffes.

Without a clear sense of a line, I got in the fray. A younger man noticed my wounds and helped me forward. Finally this heat poured onto me, sulphurous water beating all over my body. Pounding on my ribs, shoulders, above my eye. I felt people around me, bodies. A woman stepped in writhing under the current. Muscles eased up, cuts got scabby, I felt my wounds come together.

Later, I got on the trail up into the meadows. Hawks soaring above, a wild camel snacked between two 8 foot tall wooden isosceles triangles. More steps up the trail, I found a white rose bush almost ready to open up. Lavender flowers blossomed, the purple against the blue with the snow capped mountains in the distance.

I was hiking up towards a waterfall. There, I met an man with a cane, sorting herbs he had collected. When he made his way towards the base of the waterfall, on the edge where the ground became a pool, I danced along under him to catch a frame.

The clear blue sky got cloudy, and a gentle rain came. I headed back down the path, and along the way, came to a Yurt with an old dog splayed out beside it. A woman rushed some clothes in from the clothesline, as the mist turned to droplets.

I gestured to enter the yurt, and she smiled. Inside, at one edge two children played. On the other, three adolescents laid out. One dude strummed a guitar. They smiled at me and offered to be closer. We sat down in the center of circle, underneath the skylight, on a green astroturf rug, and I fingerpicked some notes on the instrument.

Finally the rain passed and I walked back to home. On the way I stopped at the magazine corner store, where I picked up two bags of groceries.

A drunken man who I had seen wandering in the village earlier in the day was milling about while a group of young people congregated amidst the detritus between housing complexes. Suddenly a youth bolted forward from his group, charging the drunk.

He swang his fists mightily. A woman dashed into the fray, sobbing, begging this youth to stop. I stood back and watched as the young man drew blood above the old man’s eyes, over his pocked face. The crying woman finally made her way in between the young man and the drunk, clasping the young man and calming the situation. The sun had set. The people separated.

I walked by an older man burning trash, through the smoke, to the lady’s house. Jangling the key into the heavy lock, the metal gate creaked open, and I hopped up the stairs. We spent the next three evenings sometimes looking at pictures, sitting in relative silence.

Collision in Cycles by Ethan Goldwater