It's a place that reaches a bristling -40' in winter and has effortlessly topped +40' for the first merry days of spring. Where the Aral sea and Lake Balkhash have all but disappeared due to water-resource overuse, where they are more likely to call the wind murder than "maria", and where 70 years of Soviet communist agriculture, nuclear testing and ineptitude raped the soil of whatever remaining good it may have had to offer. I'd be unreasonable expecting anything too much from the produce section of an Atyrau supermarket.
There's a dearth of a lot of things here, where the desert steppes merge into the floodplains of the Ural. My Malaysian neighbour took pity on me today; we commisserated each other on the difficulties of cooking, and they dropped by with a present of smuggled star anise, kari rendang, coconut milk and dried herbs, spices and condiments that I could only out of politeness pretend to know. Prior to this (and once this treasure chest has run out), with my basic cooking skills I'm hamstrung by supermarkets that offer two herbs, 5 vegetables, and 4 ambiguous meats. There would also be a constant peril of perished/expired goods, had I not fortunately honed my expiration-date-checking skills on the mean streets of Holland. Oh, and a supermarket summary cannot pass without mention of vodka - which has two entire aisles dedicated to the (apparently) myriad flavours and textures of this complex and delicate water-of-life. I am quietly hoping that vodka will be the balm, directly or indirectly, to the punishing diet of over ripened produce and under-described meat products. With the simple addition of its yet-unknown culinary charms, perhaps it will offer up previously unimagined, and likely to-be-unremembered possibilities.
The wonders we're accustomed to seeing on the plate (or in the case of vodka, in the glass - and later on the sidewalk) are taken for granted in Europe, when we can walk into Waitrose or Tescos and mindlessly throw into our basket Spanish cherry tomatoes, Turkish cucumbers, Scottish smoked salmon, pak choi (who knows where that comes from…), argentinian beef, spices from the four corners of the world, 32 different types of mineral water from all over Europe and, of course, imported NZ lamb racks… "NZ lamb racks" is temptingly displayed on my Atyrau hotel menu and I once snapped at them - what turned up after numerous reminders and threats was something that looked more like a steppes sheep had died of old age and been scraped onto my plate - my waiter responded with great humour when I asked him if it was in fact from NZ….
Soil, water, sunshine and climatic variation unleash nature's bounty. There's a reason Bordeaux can come nowhere but from the mineral-rich gravelly, sun-soaked, river lapped, slopes of southern france. A sweet and serendipitous combination of these gave birth to civilization in the fertile crescent and banks of the nile. So it's no great leap to conclude that one of these key elements must be missing from (or perhaps all too prevalent in) the mix in this place. It's a place more readily described as "endless desert" or "windswept steppes", where the salted earth still reminds us of the Caspian's malicious conquests over the floodplains and its sunburned silts stretch endlessly to the horizon. The Caspian sea freezes 5m thick here in winter, penetrating the marshes of the Ural Delta in a grinding, slow-moving, repressive sheet of deathly frigidity.
One of the things that strikes you when you arrive in Atyrau, in my case being early spring, is the dearth of green. And greens.
I arrive for the first time, to a spring of leafless trees lining concrete avenues, seeming somewhat embarrassed as they attempt to deny the grassless, endless steppes that lie 500m beyond. Featureless dirt gardens remind of kid's sticker books, muddy nothings waiting for a child to unleash it's imagination with a flurry of sticker crazy vegetation; trees, flowers and, of course, shrubberies.
The river is frozen over, Spring valiantly forces Winter's retreat, and re-exert life's vitality, but the river's new clothes are instead mocked by local tribes-people continuing to fish through iceholes. It deserves mention that 50% of the river is bare of ice at this point, yet they are still cutting holes. We'll get to that later.
Within a week, the ice (and, I'm willing to bet, a number of the fishermen) has disappeared and the temperature has risen by 20'. It's Tshirt time.
The barren lawns and median strips start to show the fruits of the dormant grass seed's struggle; within 2 more weeks the area is alive with green - Atyrau bites it thumb at nay-sayers and reminds us that this country gave the rest of the world Apples, tulips and, neither last nor least, lawn-grass.
A trip to the local market involves clambering over an eclectic assembly of plumbing supplies, cheescutter hats, blackened sheeps heads, cheap imported bicycles and an inordinate amount of tea-dipping cookies displayed to the open air in every shape and form (think Girlguide cookies, kiwi style).
Amongst all this is a remarkably space-efficient yet odd nursery. At first glance it seems like a botanical dance of the desperate; an assortment of sticks (yup) of different sizes and slightly different appearances, with photos of different fruits or flowers stapled to them. The assumption - to those who can't yet engage the seller in Kazakh or Russian - is "plant the stick in the searing heat, the salty soils and the relentless steppes wind, and the font of life shall spring forth". This is truly a test of faith; colleagues recently led a sponsored tree-planting event, and found themselves removing stick-markers (which I'd be unfair to presume were the result of last year's "Arbor day") to replace with imperceptibly different stick-saplings. I must admit to little sympathy, as I had earlier advised them that if they wanted to do something nice for the environment, pulling up trees might be kinder.
Months more have passed, and the sticks, now planted along the highways and arranged in attractive, optimistic borders of more affluent neighbourhoods, have indeed sprouted life. Bordered gardens in my temporary "little box" (ok, 3 bedrooms, 3 bathrooms, and a messy kitchen) on the city border still struggle to justify themselves, remaining no more than geometrically complex yet otherwise lackluster playpits for the expat kids to ride their bikes over. But the vegetation is deserving of respect.
Some say it is a Southern thing, that the tribes of Atyrau are not well-inclined toward trees and farming. That their nomadic lifestyle has left them bereft of a green thumb, or indeed an appreciation of greens at all. Meat monopolizes even the most western of menus. A vegetarian friend has stoically survived for two months here on 2 specific dishes of dahl and salad. Oh and damn good sushi (but this anomaly I won't dare tackle now).
Like the grass, I brace myself for judgement on all this, until the desert summer has truly taken hold, and I will credit the plants with a glorious death if they make it to the icy winter, let alone through it and into the next cycle of abuse.
