Our places

A building looms on the other side of the street. The greying white of its walls speaks of gravity. Its wooden doors are shut. The tree-spotted yard around it glistens with dew in the light of the morning. A fence, black and bulky, surrounds the area. Grey sheets of bulletproof metal are bolted to its bars. The white of the presidential palace in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan stands protected from the occasional wrath of the country’s population. The white of its walls wishes not to be blackened again by the fires of an uprising.
Little remains of the fear, hate and blood that, just a few years ago, thickened the air of the square that surrounds the palace. Yet the grey sheets of metal remain on guard. Slabs of polished stone bear the names of people who died fighting. Around them, life goes on. Children play where men and women died – hope smiles in desolation.
To my left is the expanse of the square. Fountains shoot into the sky. Beyond them – the Coca-Cola banners that cover the black skeleton of an administrative building, set afire during the last of many revolutions, and now used as a billboard. Above stand the mountains – the pride of the country, their image present on every postcard.
The widest, busiest road in the country dissects the square. As morning traffic rushes by, I wait for the cars to allow me to cross the chaotic street. A driver stops. I wave and smile. He smiles back. Human contact finds its way through glass and plastic, through the pain of the past and the optimism for a better tomorrow.
With the square behind me, I face a cement leviathan masked by a thin crust of marble, one massive window for its façade – the country’s historical museum. I pass by the statue of the nation’s legendary hero - Manas. In his place there once stood a statue of Lenin, whose raised hand used to point West. The statue has been moved. It now stands behind the museum, its hand to the East, where another building sprawls.
On the roof of the building is a large sculpture with Soviet insignia – the sickle, the hammer and a few joyous farmers. Concrete Soviet flags that never flutter frame the images. Above, a branch grafted to a dead tree, is a yellow sun - the national flag. This is the American University of Central Asia.
I make this journey every day. My morning commute to work lies between the monstrosities of history and the fortifications of the present. I walk amidst their confused symbiosis. How did I end up here? How did we create this?