Years ago, in the middle of a long trek through China and Central Asia, I found myself in an outdoor cafe near Samarkand, Uzbekistan. I was alone, but not for long. When you travel alone, I’ve found, striking up a conversation with strangers is easy. It also helps if you have brought some money along and are more than willing to spring for the vodka.
When I say “conversation,” I’m perhaps overstating it. I don’t speak Uzbek or Russian, and my new friends certainly didn’t speak much English. But, given enough vodka and the right attitude, I’ve found, people can make themselves understood.
We talked politics and religion and world affairs. We talked about cars and American basketball and what New York City is really like, and, at some point, as I was trying to describe the beaches of Southern California, I suddenly realized that no one was listening to me. My new friends were all distracted, staring at a television that was propped up in the corner, hooked up to a satellite receiver that was attached to the side of the building by a coat hanger.
The men were transfixed by an old music video of the Backstreet Boys, singing their hit, “I Want it That Way.” For those of you who insist on pretending that you don’t remember it (and no one believes you, by the way) here’s a short refresher: The Boys are dancing around, surrounded by screaming and fainting girls, and in the background is an enormous jet airplane — it looks like an Airbus A340 — with “Backstreet Boys” emblazoned on the side.
My new friends from Samarkand looked at the screen, then back to me, then back to the screen in slow and unsteady movements — the vodka was beginning to slow the afternoon to a standstill — and, though they didn’t say anything, I could tell what they were thinking: “In America, do people live like that?”
I shrugged as if to say, “Yeah, pretty much.”
While not strictly true, it’s not entirely false, either. I don’t fly in my own Airbus, of course, but I have flown in an Airbus. And, though I was not a teen idol music superstar in my twenties, had I made some different choices early on — singing lessons, for instance, and dance lessons, maybe more time in the gym — who knows? That could have been me dancing up there on the screen and some other middle-aged writer making a solitary trek along the old Silk Road, trying to keep both Muslim fundamentalists and terrifyingly sudden diarrhea at a safe distance.
But, even in their drunkenness, the local Samarkand dudes didn’t think that everyone in the United States lives a Backstreet Boy lifestyle. They weren’t naive. In Central Asia, which has been governed by an unbroken chain of psychotic emirs, murderous communists, and rapacious oligarchs (and that’s just in the last hundred years or so), you learn pretty quickly that the world is a complicated and disappointing place. What they were really thinking was this: In America, this kind of thing is possible. Or, rather, adjusting for the taciturn cynicism of your typical Central Asian drinking too much typical Central Asian vodka: In America, this kind of thing is not impossible.
An old man approached the table, asked if I was an American, and, when I nodded, his eyes lit up. He held out his hands in the international symbol for “Stay right there!” and he dashed away, looking back once or twice to give me the “Stay there!” jazz hands.
The other guys rolled their eyes and made corkscrew motions against their temples. The old guy is crazy, they said. Ignore him.
Moments later, the old guy returned. He brought with him a one hundred dollar bill, which he smoothed out on the oilcloth. The date on the bill was 1971, so, at some point in the early 1970s, this windfall had found its way into his wallet, and he had been keeping it for this exact moment.
He pointed to it and to me and back to himself.
He wanted me to make change. With liquid assets of $100, he was quite possibly the richest man in the neighborhood, but only in theory. A one hundred dollar bill in a small village in the middle of Central Asia is nearly useless. But a handful of fives, tens, and a couple twenties is Jeff Bezos-level wealth.
I made the trade. The dudes in the cafe by now had turned away from the television to focus on the new millionaire in their midst, proving that money is worth more the closer it is to hand, the smaller the bills the better. The local, crazy old geezer was transformed into what we might call a major lending institution with an impeccable balance sheet, and that’s more rapturous and captivating than anything the Backstreet Boys ever sang, Airbus or no.
Rob Long is a television writer and producer and the co-founder of Ricochet.com.
