“She is just one person. There are so many like her. I feel like I can’t change this.”

I came into work on Thursday to Borkhotun and Khoziat putting up a large map of India in the corner of the main room opposite Rustam’s desk. “We needed something there,” Borkhotun explained, “and Russia was too wide. India is long and narrow to fit the space.” “Plus, I think the migrants like India,” she added, straightening the poster as she hung it on the pushpin. “Look how close the North of India is to Tajikistan. You know, India has great railways running across the whole country, connecting everyone and allowing commerce. Built by the British, of course. Can you imagine if there hadn’t been a Russian Empire and the British were able to keep moving north? We would speak English and GBAO (Gorno-Badakhshan Autonomous District) would be so much more prosperous, with real transportation for goods.”

Looking at me she said, “Do you know, there are no railways going through the Pamir Mountains. You must go by car. We are completely cut off from Dushanbe. It’s awful. It is so expensive to travel there from Russia.” “How much did it cost for you to come to Moscow from the US?” she asked. “About $700 round-trip,” I replied, having gotten a great deal on Transaero. “Well it costs over $1000 to travel from Moscow to Tajikistan., one-way sometimes. There is something wrong with that – It is cheaper to travel from America to Russia than from Russia to another former Soviet republic. How terrible.”

Tulskie Prianiki

With it being a slow morning, Borkhotun, Khoziat and I hung out in their office, having tea and waffli, a Russian cookie-like snack made up of wafers (similar to the insides of Kit-Kat bar) with chocolate in between each layer of wafers. “Do you have waffli in America?” Khoziat asked. “Not really,” I replied. While Khoziat looked shocked, Borkhotun added, “I also heard you don’t have blini in America, is this true?” “Yup. We have crepes, but those are the French variety. We usually eat pancakes, which are much thicker.” “And of course no Tulski Prianiki,” Borkhotun added, referring to the glazed cake-like pastry filled with condensed milk made in Tula. “Nope, no Tulski Prianiki either.” “Wow, I learned something new today. America does not have waffli or blini. What a pity,” Borkhotun said. “You are so lucky, though,” Khoziat said to me. “You have Snickers and Coca-Cola and McDonald’s. I love french fries so much. McDonald’s is my favorite. For this, you are lucky; you are just unlucky not to have waffli and blini and Tulski Prianiki.”

After our snack break, two women, both very pregnant, came into the office with a tall, skinny Tajik man and sat at the main table. Borkhotun recognized one of the pregnant women and took a plastic, see-through folder full of paperwork from her (which all migrants seem to have, needing to carry every kind of document with them at all times). Borkhotun scanned the medical paperwork while Khoziat made copies of her passport and registration. Looking shocked, Borkhotun asked the woman, “Have you taken a look at your husband’s recent blood tests?” The pregnant woman nodded. “This says he has HIV.” The woman just shrugged. “Do you know what HIV is?” Borkhotun asked. The woman didn’t respond. “Come into my office now,” she commanded, ushering in the flippant woman and closing the door. Using her English, both to make sure I understood and so the remaining two migrants did not know we were talking about them, Khoziat said, “This woman, her husband have HIV. Very sad.” I nodded, feeling sick to my stomach that a 6-7 months pregnant woman with no prenatal care might also have HIV and not know it. And her unborn child, as well.

After quite a long time, Borkhotun let the woman out of the office and gave the man with her (apparently her apartment mate and not the child’s father) strict instructions to have the woman get a series of medical tests that day, especially a blood test, and to come back in tomorrow with the results. “I mean it,” Borkhotun said, her facial expression and tone a combination of sadness, worry and anger, “I expect to see you back here tomorrow with your paperwork. Do you understand me??” The pregnant woman just looked at her feet and didn’t respond. The male apartment mate took a list of free or low-cost medical testing centers for migrants from Borkhotun and the three of them shuffled out the door.

Beckoning me into her office, Borkhotun flopped down into her computer chair. “Her husband has HIV and she didn’t even know,” she said. “He is 24 and comes here to make a better life for himself and now has AIDS. Can you imagine? And this woman, she has come in a few times, when she was first pregnant, and never follows my instructions. You know, for migrants to be able to give birth in a hospital, they needed paperwork to prove they have had a series of medical tests – HIV/AIDS, TB, Hepatitis, Urine test, etc. Up until 2010, if you were giving birth, you could just call Skoraya Pomoshch’ (Russian equivalent of 911) and they would bring you in to the hospital to have your baby, even if you were an immigrant. Now, if you do not have this paperwork, they will not even put you in the ambulance. She has not gotten these tests and I tell her, ‘Do you want to die? Because that is what will happen if you give birth at home.’ She lives in a typical Tajik migrant apartment with 15 other people in one room, and three of them are pregnant women. I don’t know how to make her care. She does not care if she dies in childbirth, she does not care that her husband has HIV.” “You know, if her husband has HIV, then there is a good chance she has it, and her baby could have it, too,” I told Borkhotun. “You think so?” Borkhotun asked, looking even more concerned. I didn’t know whether to look shocked or cry at the lack of HIV/AIDS education, even among the staff at our office. “Yes,” I replied, “It’s far easier for a woman to get HIV from a man than the other way around. She is at great risk.” I was about to add how condoms prevent HIV transmission, but I had the sudden thought that these migrants wouldn’t even know what they were and might be against the Ismaili Islam faith that is the backbone of our foundation.

“How do I make her care?” Borkhotun asked me, looking desperate. “And you know, she is just one person. There are so many like her. The migrant women, they are all pregnant. I feel like I can’t change this. And these pregnant women, they work from 8 am to midnight, on their feet all day, up until the day they give birth. They get no care before the child is born, eat not-nutritious food, and many of their babies are born with heart defects, Down’s Syndrome, paralysis and many other conditions. How do I make them care? I try to scare them, but they don’t care about protecting the lives of their babies or their own lives.” Borkhotun waited for an answer from me, as though coming from America meant I had the solution to every difficult problem. “Well…” I started, hesitantly, not sure what I was going to say, “It seems like they value working and be able to earn money more than anything, which makes sense as they don’t want to starve. But if both this woman and her husband get HIV, then they will get very sick and not be able to work and then no one can support them. Or if their baby is sick, they will have expensive medicine to pay for, and their child cannot work, either.” This seemed a pretty callous approach to advertising prenatal medical testing and care, but Borkhotun’s eyes lit up. “Yes, money! She does not care about anything else, but she does care about money! I will tell them this disease is very expensive! If she does not come in tomorrow, I will ring her and tell her about the big sums of money she will need for this!”

While going back to sitting at the main table, still feeling awful, the Doctor bounded through the front door, clearly winded. With a white polo shirt that had the green Focus Humanitarian Assistance logo embroidered on it, jeans and a workman’s belt that held his cellphone, he looked pretty professional, if not super sweaty. He had dark tan skin, the shade of someone from Pakistan, closely cropped black hair that came to a widow’s peak in the middle of his forehead, and yellowing teeth. He greeted everyone, out of breath, speaking in Russian with a Tajik accent so thick even I could detect it. Upon introducing himself to me, he explained that he worked at a nearby hospital and so was constantly rushing from his work there to do consultations here.  He invited me to come see his hospital one day with his, “like an excursion,” he said, as Khoziat laughed and rolled her eyes. It actually sounded pretty cool to me, as going as a visitor rather than a patient was pretty much the only way one should ever enter a Russian hospital.  Switching from Russian to English, the Doctor said to me, “My English (pointing to himself) – very bad. You help my English (pointing to me) –yes?” “Sure,” I said. “Sure. Suureee. Sure,” he repeated several times, trying out the new word as he entered his office.

Tajikistan, with the Pamir Mountains in the East.

As more migrants came in and fill in around the oval table, I noticed several of them staring at me and whispering to each other in Tajik. When Borkhotun came out to ask me for some help in English (as she tries to practice her English the most frequently and has by far the best spoken English in the office), the people at the table look confused and one man asked her something in Tajik, to which she replied, “New York.” “Oh, we think you were from Pamirs,” the man said to me in stilted English. I guess I made an awkward face, as Borkhotun added, “This is compliment, don’t worry!” My virtual lack of cheek bones, yellow-toned skin and dark eyes tend to confuse Russian people as to my ethnicity (although it’s obvious I’m not one of “theirs”), so it was kind of cool that the Tajiks thought I was one of their own, and from the mountainous area near Afghanistan and Pakistan that Davlat comes from, at that.

Following Borkhotun into her office, she pulled out a pile of papers from her desk and asked me, “Do you know what is this ‘lessons learned?” We need to do this for our report, but I don’t understand.” I quickly scanned the paper, written in English, and realized it was a set of instructions on how to do quarterly evaluation reports to be sent to the Aga Khan Foundation HQ in Canada. I also noticed the front page said ‘due April 2011.’ “Borkhotun, when did you last write one of these?” “Oh, never,” she replied. “I tried to look up online what this was, and got some instructions on how to do a quarterly report, but I still don’t understand. Also, I have no time for this. All day, I help migrants with their problems, and I stay here most times until 9:00 at night. Then I get home at 10:00, 11:00 at night and I have not eaten all day as I am so busy, so then I eat everything in the refrigerator, and that is why I look like this,” making a gesture at her wide hips. “I used to be so skinny, like a pole, like Khoziat, but these migrants, they make me fat.” “You’re not fat,” I assured her, noting that her hips weren’t that much wider than mine.

“These reports, you need to do them,” I told Borkhotun, knowing from working at several NGOs the importance of evaluation reports for receiving government and private funding. “The office in Canada needs these reports to show the people that give you funding what you are doing with your money. This is like evidence that you are doing good work and deserve more money.” Borkhotun looked immediately struck by panic. “I kept getting emails from the Canada office about this for months and I kept ignoring them and now this year we have less funding. Maybe this is why!” “It’s ok,” I said, calming her, “I’ll help you write one of these while I am here. I have written these before. If you can put together the data in Russian…” “Data? We don’t have accurate numbers. We are too busy to record everything. We used to, but too many migrants come in and I don’t even have time to eat!” Borkhotun protested. Ok, Plan B. “Ok, Borkhotun, it will ok. We will just write these things called ‘success stories...’” After half an hour, I explained the different components of a quarterly report in Russian, with Borkhotun writing everything down. More than anything, I was pissed the Canada office hadn’t even bothered to send the instructions over in Russian (an inconsequential translation fee for them) and frustrated that the office being short-staffed had caused them to lose money, just exacerbating the problem.

Rustam came in the office with us to ask Borkhotun about papers he needed for Tajik Migrant Soccer Tournament. “You know, I was thinking, can you put aside some money that you get to help Nekhbakhtbegim and other sick children like her? Maybe a small fund for these poor, sick children?” Borkhotun asked. “Are you kidding? We don’t even have enough money to rent the stadium! We have no money!” Rustam responded incredulously. “Maybe a little money, maybe not this year, but…” Borkhotun tried again. “Listen, our soccer players already give money to charity,” Rustam informed her. “Last year, the first place team, they kept all their winnings, but the second place team, even though they are poor migrants, they said, ‘there are people who need this more than we do,’ and donated all of their money to an orphanage outside Moscow. I personally went and delivered the money. They came up with the idea all on their own. The nationalists attack them, but they are the ones giving back, not the Russians.”

Already kind of emotional from that story and the possibly HIV-infected pregnant woman, I went to the metro, where I saw a few Tajiks being stopped and questioned by the police, asking them to show their documents and giving them a hard time just for their appearance. Getting off the metro and walking home, I noticed the metal door of one of the single car garages that were built in a row across from my apartment building was open. With blue curtains hanging from each corner, there were two sets of bunk beds inside and the young Central Asian guy I always saw selling fruit by my house storing his unsold produce in a box by the bed. The produce vendors lived in a garage. I knew that this was where many Tajiks lived, and sometimes worse – in sheds, on construction sites, in underground hideouts – I had just never seen it in real life before. Barely keeping it together, I trudged up the five floors to my apartment, made Ramen soup (as that was all I had the energy for) sat on the couch with the cat and cried. Thankfully, Petrushka just sat on my lap and purred as I petted the white patch on his neck, blissfully unaware of anything that had happened that day.