Throne of Blood

Warning: For those who don't read headings - this blog is not easy listening. Also, the facts have been selectively cropped and may be a bit shaky...

I recently returned a borrowed DVD on the history of Genghis Khan (a bloody 50mins delivered with the courtesy of the british taxpayer by the wonderful BBC) to my DVD benefactor, who had selflessly lent the disc unseen, fresh and resplendent in its store cellophane. Displaying some impatience and the incisive need to solve and simplify that all engineers share in common, he asked me "so what was his secret, was he a diplomat or a barbarian"?

A fact that tyrants, and probably most politicians in charge of great states, divine, or more likely assume early, is that all great feats are built on blood. And so it is with great civilizations.

We pondered the success of the Romans, whose conquests translate down the ages as civilized, "light-touch" conquests, firm to be sure but fair. The romans' earmark may have been organization and discipline, from societal and governmental structures to sophisticated logistics, public engineering and taxation (haven't the Italians come so far?!). But they were nothing if not masters of warfare, with the military arts at the core of their society. The sword of harsh retribution hung suspended over every diplomatic endeavour, responded to every rebellion in the ungrateful and barbaric provinces.

That their reputation, filtered through the lens of the ages, appears as a success based on statesmanship, may be fair but is perhaps a result more of their wiliness rather than their restraint. In the era 100-BC to 300 AD in Egypt, which at the time was the granary of the Roman empire, so vital to Rome's stability, oceans of blood were shed but rarely by the Roman's themselves, preferring the vicious equilibrium resulting from localized rivalry among the Greek, Jewish and Christian inhabitants. Although its army occasionally waded in with some devastating purges, the area was largely off limits to Roman politicians, finding direct suppression and unnecessary involvement more often incited unrest or weakened its hold.

In Britain, outright Roman conquest was preceded by lengthy periods where the island gladly paid tribute, or at least eagerly sought "terms" right on the eve of invasion, so long as one would be so kind as to not invade one quite just yet, thank you kindly, terribly sorry for the inconvenience...

The Romans' did not reach their dominant position without repeated use of direct force - quite the opposite - by the time of a British invasion, word of the Romans' military might had long before reached the shores. And despite the acquiescing and diplomacy, Britain's time soon came; after a wee debacle where Caligula ordered his army to attack the English Channel then collect seashells as plunder, General Plautius (under Claudius) brought the Romans back to Blighty and forced surrender of substantial british forces after a shock and awe naval battle ending in the Thames.

I look out the window at the Hotel Kazakhstan, and ponder the Cyrillic "K" shaped neon. The K is not shaped as in the western alphabet but in cyrillic script appears tailed by what might be a trickle of ink or, given the topics I'm mulling, blood. The silty steppes, inhospitable and bare, have for millenniums been a ready sponge to soak up the life fluid of invaders and defenders, feuders and usurpers. There's no surprise that one of the most violent and shocking empirical forces the world has seen came from this hostile hand to mouth environment and the times in which Genghis lived.

Genghis' formative years commence with the slaughter of his father, promptly followed by the abduction and rape of his newly wed, and not long after the bloody betrayal of his childhood friend and co-chieftan. This once friend, Jamuka, seals the end of their alliance by boiling alive all of Genghis' generals in an impressive and presumably crowded iron cauldron, following a decisive (and disappointing for Genghis) first show-down. Genghis veritable baptism in blood should have ensured that Jamuka would go no more quietly into his good night than Genghis' generals screaming, spitting and bubbling away. But instead Genghis offered his childhood friend to join him again, and on refusal granted his request for a quiet and noble death (although the slow and purposeful breaking of someone's back might not sound it to us). He was a military genius, a leader of men, and wily in diplomacy. But like the areas other big hitters, the Huns, the Scythians, and Tamerlane (who in one battle sent burning, screaming camels against his terrified enemy to incite panic in their elephant vanguard), he was a man of the sword.

So the answer to the engineer's question was "yes"; barbarity and violence, and, equally, the threat thereof. It's an urban myth that Genghis Khan, voracious in his sexual appetites, past his genes to 20% of the modern world (probably more like 0.5%, but traced to his clan not to him as an individual). But it's well documented that he slaughtered up to 30% of the populations in the territories he conquered. The "scorched earth" policy of warfare was first traced to his Steppes precedents, the Scythians, and Genghis embraced it wholeheartedly and effectively, offering all towns in his path the option to (a) surrender or (b) to have their city razed to the ground and the inhabitants subjected to raping, wholesale murder and looting. They didn't always opt for the seemingly logical option (which in fairness, often turned out to be "C", "all of the above")

Violent, yes, and when he died, he presided over an empire stretching from Beijing to Europe, further than that of Alexander the Great, and going on to become the largest empire in history. Mr Khan is on record while lying upon his deathbed as being disappointed, nevertheless, that he hadn't quite taken the world.

Leaving after the first five minutes...

In my apartment, not so high above the streets of Atyrau, where the city does sleep,or at least does a good job of sleeping around, TV is an obvious and regular respite.

Alas, as anyone who stays regularly in hotels or has access to satellite TV will know, having 42 channels does not mean having a smorgasbord of enticing dishes to pick and choose from. One of the impediments is that you never know what on earth is coming up on all those other channels you're not tuned to. You flick optimistically and constantly through the channels, sometimes idling too long at a particularly mundane yet fascinating episode of myth-busters or a scene of hyenas pack-hunting chimpanzees, in the hope of finding a good movie. What's more, you're of course seeking a quality movie (not one about a quake that threatens to rupture the world and release hoards of worms on its unsuspecting inhabitants. One where the rationale is clear for the lack of an Odeon Leicester square opening). And one that you haven't seen.

You then have the extra hurdle that, despite the 1min it takes to cycle through 42 channels, the movie you finally find, and are interested in, is invariably half way through... I like to see the movie as nature intended it, I don't want to be forced to paper over the cracks, fill in the blanks for the sake of a half satisfying, half hour of viewing.

But with satellite, no such option exists, you need to be ever at attendance, flicking, searching, trawling the skies for a movie that is worth watching and yet, not yet begun.

The reality is that you never watch an entire, satisfying or desired movie, rather you watch a collage of movie snippets. Very rarely do we tune in and find the movie has magically "just begun".

Yet the beginning means so much.

In Zack Snyder's remake of Romero's classic "Dawn of the dead", we kick off with a truly epic melding of music and video. The jagged and violent splicing of image to image, and soundtrack to soundtrack (johnny cash's "when the man comes around" overdubbed with dialogue, screams and radio garble) leaves the music video equivalent, "Thriller", in the dust.

How do I know this? Am I a film buff, a loser in the steppes with too much time on his hands, or just using obscure and specific references to pretentiously establish subculture credentials, like Luke Shapiro (Josh Peck) did in Jonathon Levine's 2008 hip hop subculture classic, the Wackness? (..)

No (well, ok, and "yes" and "yes") - it's mostly to do with a monumental exhibition I was lucky enough to stumble across "while in Berlin". Walking from room to room took me through mock theatre after mock theatre, some dressed up as old style cinema houses, others funky dancefloors with sponge floors and VJ screens. And, as I walked through, I was perpetually walking into the start of a movie.

Who knows what the intent of this was. But my interpretation was two fold;
(1) the start, the first 5minutes, of a movie, where credits are rolling, music is playing, and suspense is building, is in many ways the coolest bit. Hell, I get a kick out of just watching that 20th century fox segment with the searchlights and the make believe studio building. But when the titles roll and the incidentals kick in…. In Berlin, this collage of movie-beginnings was a meal in itself. I'm sure a study would confirm that 80% of a films editing budget goes into the opening (even if the bosses don't know it). And rightly so; the feel, the opening music portraying suspens, happy-happy joy-joy, violence or darkness. That 5 minutes that sets the tone for the next 89 minutes. First impressions are, after all, everything to us.
(2) there's something cool about walking into a movie once it's sort of started (and let's face it - we're all doing well if we're that early), so perpetually walking into one movie start after another, it has the curious effect of compounding that small unique experience, creating a sandwich of similar experiences, that is very, very cool. Think the repetitive, but slightly different, nuanced experiences of Bill Murray in Harold Ramis's "groundhog day". But with 5 minute segments.

A movie beginning is like a movie trailer. A hollywood promoter once described in the New Yorker the importance of, and dynamics around, movie trailers. In one example, they were tasked with a particularly lame rom-com starring Jessica Alba. Given such material to work with, they were understandably starved ideas on how to hook the public - they finally selected a specific scene where she happens to fall over a piece of furniture - this was pounced upon, and they used it to suggest this was another, new and improved "something about mary" (cute, clumsy and clever rom com). Thus re-inventing, at least prior to viewing, this movie in the eyes of the viewer.

You're forgiven if you've seen, but don't recall, "Good luck Chuck" (even if you haven't forgiven yourself). But the gist is, as one viewer on IMDB put it, "Good Luck Chuck is a totally different movie from the one advertised". If only the feeling could have lasted….

Unfortunately most of us stay until after the movie titles roll.

That's it for now, didn't really touch on Kazakh life. Will waver occasionally…. no apologies….

If you can't handle gardening, stay on the steppes...

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.