Looking for the Seventh in the Garden of Eden -- a quest for a lost era

My quest began with a painting. It was housed in the Kasteev Art Museum in Almaty, the sole occupant of the centre wall of one of the main galleries. It was labeled in Kazakh, Cyrillic and English. The artist was one A. Aliyev, Kazakh. The title of the painting: The Garden of Eden, circa 1927.    

The scene was not a garden as most of us would envision, not a pretty, cozy English garden brimful of blooms, or a serene oriental garden with an arched bridge and a lotus pond, or a grand, formal garden of geometrical greenery in well-defined symmetry. If I could attribute pastoral to a garden, that would be the Garden in the painting -- snow-capped mountains in the background, horsemen and cattle dotting the undulating pastures in the not-so-far-off distance, yurts in the relative foreground, those dome-shaped skin-mounted domiciles that were the homes of the nomadic Kazakh people. No winsome flowerbeds – only wildflowers marked by clusters of white and yellow specks in ripples of green. No sculpted sea of undisturbed sand in meditative stillness – only scattered brown blotches where vegetation had eroded. No well-groomed hedges and neatly pruned trees – only clumps of unruly bushes punctuating the wide expanse of grassland. And no greenhouse or gazebo – only the yurts. No, it did not even conjure association with the Garden imagined in the Book of Genesis that had lent its name to the painting. But the Garden was alive!

Men in long robes and fur-trimmed hats and women in long skirts and vests and boxy hats with veils were seated in front of the yurt closest to the viewer. A woman, her face deeply carved with age and weather lines, was threading into a piece of leather. A younger woman was nursing a baby, one breast, a full mound of flesh, exposed, while the contented cherub rested his dimpled little hand on it as he sucked at his source of sustenance. An old man with trenches in his face much like the old woman’s was repairing a saddle. On the left side of the foreground, a young girl, no more than ten, wearing a colorful flowing dress with a vest top was dancing to the music of the lute-like dombra, played by a laughing adolescent boy. The boy had on a vest and loose long pants, and a close-fitted, cylindrical hat. Perhaps the baby's father, and most likely the young girl's, was one of the herdsmen in the distance. The people, inherent elements in the painting, looked very much in tune with their rustic environment and nomadic lifestyle. Happiness abounded in their paradisal environment. Characters and setting blended into each other, in a composition that transcended the boundary between art and life. 

Smitten by the painting, I had to find that scene as it was being lived. Somewhere in that vast land, it had to exist.

John was on an international consulting assignment in Kazakhstan. I, the consultant's wife, was on vacation. I attended every handicraft fair there was in Almaty, visited all the bazaars, lunched a few times with expat wives, and was bored to death after the first couple of weeks. Until I set eyes on the painting.

"I want to find the place in that painting," I said to John the evening after my visit to the Kasteev Art Museum. 

“Which may not exist,” John finished my sentence. “Why the interest?”

“There’s something there that I am not finding here,” I said, trying to articulate, as I looked around at the glass- encased atrium of the five-star hotel. 

John gave me a strange look. How could I explain to my down-to-earth, workaholic, number-crunching husband my feeling for a painting?  

 "I'll arrange for a driver to take us around next weekend,” he said, “but this Saturday, we’ve been invited to a dinner party." 

I was glad of the chance to experience a Kazakh dinner, which promised to be different from the dinners John and I had been attending with expatriates in sophisticated smoke-filled restaurants with European or North American decor. The banquet was in the spacious Soviet era apartment of a local prominent Kazakh on the occasion of his father's eightieth birthday. Horse meat and shashlik of lamb and beef, and a noodle and meat dish called beshbarmak were served, along with cold herring, salads and Kazakh bread, all washed down with Russian vodka and Georgian wines. 

While most of the guests went out to the wide balcony for a cigarette break half-way through the repast, and John seized the free time to talk shop with another guest, I remained in the dining room. A tall glass cabinet stood in a corner. Inside, among other knick-knacks, were several three-inch figurines of ivory color, some men and one woman in Kazakh costumes. As I stood admiring them, our host Aidar came up to me.

"What you see is a set of talisman figurines, called the Seven Companions of Happiness, carved out of camel bone. Tourists like to get this collection as a souvenir.” 

"Do the figurines have names?" 

Aidar nodded. "Ardak, Wisdom," he said, pointing to the figure of an elderly man in a long Kazakh robe, holding a book. "Tleukabyl, Luck, the one holding a big fish, Amandyk, with a cup, is Health, and Sarybay, carrying a treasure chest, Wealth. This old man is Omirzak, who stands for Longevity, and this is Karlygash with her two young children, for Family.”

“They sure are harbingers of happiness.” I was fascinated by the workmanship of the bone figurines, but more so by their symbolic meaning. Seven Companions of Happiness. I counted them. “But there are only six here. Where’s the seventh?”

“Unfortunately we have lost the seventh.” 

John kept his promise and, on our fourth weekend in Almaty, hired a young Russian driver to take us to the countryside. We drove past run-down gas stations, shabby farmhouses, and harvested corn fields. There were cows and sheep grazing in fenced meadows which must belong to the farms nearby. There were horses along the edge of the highway, but their riders were city folk out for the beautiful autumn day. We had yet to see some yurts and their occupants herding cattle. After a while, we started on a climb away from the highway. Our driver took us up a bumpy road as far as his car could go, and parked. 

"Waterfall, two kilometers up," he said in his limited English, pointing up the hill, with a fingers-do-the-walking gesture.  

"You really want to go up, Karen? This is no Niagara Falls." John eyed the gradient in front of us dubiously.

"It's not the waterfall," I said without hesitation. “It’s what may be round a bend or over the top, something of local interest."

John shrugged his shoulders. Our Russian driver led the way up. Brambles and branches caught my clothes as we made our ascent above a deep gorge. 

"Whenever you're afraid of the height, go low," I advised John like an expert, as I went on all fours over a narrow ledge.

"Has it crossed your mind we have to come back the same way afterwards?" asked John, looking a little pale, apparently not enjoying himself.   

I pretended not to hear him. John had no choice but to follow the driver and me. After forty minutes, our driver called from a distance above, "Come up quick! Waterfall! Krasivo!" 

John and I made it to the waterfall, a narrow fifty-foot drop of water splashing into a pool that opened into a mountain stream. A waterfall in a gigantic rock garden of nature’s wild flora. But it was no Niagara. We posed in front of the sprays, to humor the driver. Then came the ordeal of descent. 

"Other side, krasivo," said the driver.

"I think he's saying we can go down on the other side of the hill," said John, ready to try anything other than retracing our steps. 

"And it's going to be beautiful," I interpreted. I was determined to explore new grounds, the Garden of Eden a constant presence in my mind.

The slope from the vantage point of the waterfall to a track that followed the bend around the hill was quite steep and covered with treacherously loose rocks that gave way as we applied our weight to them. At some places, John and I had to lean against the incline to resist the pull of gravity. I was scraping my hands, holding on to tufts of vegetation and protruding rocks. But turning back was as hard as going forward, so we proceeded on. Eventually, we reached the track, where we could stand upright. We rounded the bend, to the side of the hill opposite from the waterfall.  

Clumps of bushes and deciduous trees hid my view of what was ahead, until a valley came into sight, gently undulating with low green mounds that seemed to interlock into one another like fingers of two hands clasped in prayer. A cluster of several yurts was in the valley. The scene before me was as close to the Garden of Eden as I could get. I clutched John in excitement. 

Our driver led us to the closest yurt. He spoke in Russian to a Kazakh woman who had just emerged from it. She had on the same style of costume as the one the women wore in the painting, the long skirt, the vest, the round boxy headdress from which a veil covered her shoulders and neck like a scarf. Our driver beckoned to us to follow him into the yurt. I was becoming a part of the painting, entering it, living it. 

 We entered through a wooden doorframe, bending a little as we did. The floor was covered with red floral carpets. A low round table draped over with a pink tablecloth sat in the middle, on which were bowls of fried snacks. Not far from the table was a burner with a tea kettle on it. The interior circular walls were covered with rug hangings. Against one side was a cradle. Several beautifully patterned and colorfully painted wooden chests were piled up on the opposite side. A dombra leaned beside them. 

The Kazakh woman made a sign for us to sit at the table, on the carpeted floor. She poured a steaming milky liquid into ceramic bowls and placed the bowls before us.

"Milk tea, very good," grinned our driver.

"Spasibo," I said.

Our driver offered to take a photo of us with the Kazakh woman. I had indeed become a part of the painting. After tea, we got up to exit the yurt. Outside, the woman signaled for us to sit down on straw mats on the ground. A young man with a dombra sat across from us, with a circular clearing between us. As he plucked the strings of the instrument, two adolescent girls in colorful skirts and vests danced to its music. I clapped to its rhythm, and nudged John into clapping as well.   

The sun was about to set. I looked across the valley. There were some cattle grazing not far from us, but not as abundant and scattered over the fields as I had imagined. I could not see herders on horseback. Perhaps they had gone off to explore new turf. A horse-drawn buggy pulled up, and our driver signaled to us to get on, for the ride back to his car. Before we boarded the buggy, he asked John for some tenges to pay the Kazakh woman, understandably as a token of appreciation for her hospitality.

 I walked into the Hyatt, gloating with the thought that I had found my Garden. Back in our room, as we freshened up for a party that evening, I babbled to John about our good fortune of finding “the scene in the painting” as I called it. My excitement seemed to have rubbed off a little on my husband, for he said with a smile as we left our room for the party, “Well, Karen, I’m glad we went out there today. The distraction was good for me. It helped recharge my battery for the coming week.”

That evening, when I told an American expatriate at the party about the yurts in the valley, he said, "Oh yes, I've been there. It’s called Nomad’s Paradise by the locals, their idea of a historic theme park."

"What do you mean a theme park?" I snapped.

"You know nomadic life doesn't exist anymore in Kazakhstan. What you saw was for the tourists, like you and me. Good idea though, brings in a few bucks for them."

I was at the Kasteev Art Museum again. I disabled the flash on my little pocket camera, and took a snapshot of the Garden of Eden. I would take home the celluloid memory of it.   

"Salem! Imagine seeing you here," a voice sounded behind me. I turned to see our Kazakh friend Aidar.

"I'm surprised seeing you too. Beautiful galleries you have here."

"Yes, I love this museum. I come here whenever I want some quiet, to think, to get away from the city, to recapture the past."

"The past?" 

"Yes, these paintings of the Kazakh people are reminders of a life that’s gone, no more! Our people are office workers living in cities and towns now, or farmers settled in the country. They don't wander from field to field with their herds anymore." 

"And the yurts?"

"Oh, they are antiques, only souvenirs," Aidar cackled, but I detected bitterness in his laugh. 

"So the expat was right. What I saw was just make-believe." I felt a knot in my stomach. "But why?"

Aidar sighed. "During collectivization in the the Soviet Union in the 1930s, the government took away our pastures to turn them into land for settled farming. They wanted us to be farmers, workers, live on the land and produce. But the free nomadic spirit had been in our blood for centuries. My people starved because they did not know how to be farmers. As a result we had a terrible famine that killed over two million of our people." Aidar's voice broke, and he was silent. 

I stared at the painting of the happy family sitting in front of their yurt, the wild green fields looming all around, the mountains forming a distant backdrop to their Garden of Eden. Tears welled in my eyes.

After a long moment, Aidar spoke again, with a faraway look, "The strumming of the dombra – it's like steppe horses galloping wild and free in the wind." There was a shrill tremor in his voice.  

"So this doesn't exist anymore?" I asked foolishly, pointing to the painting and hoping to hear a different answer.

"No, not here." Aidar focused softly on the painting, my painting. "Nowadays, you may still find some Kazakhs in Mongolia and northwest China, who have continued the nomadic life." 

"They look so happy," I said, unable to turn away from the scene before me. 

My eyes wandered from the beaming face of the young Kazakh playing the dombra to the girl dancing to its silent music, those smiling eyes, radiant cheeks, the swift agile movements of her arms and legs captured in the still eternity of a work of art. 

“As you might say, that was then, this is now,” said Aidar, forcing a smile.  

“I loved this painting from the first moment I set eyes on it. It has something I want, something I’m looking for. But I realize this is just a painting, and I’ve only been chasing a dream. Perhaps that was why the artist called it The Garden of Eden.”  

Aidar and I left the museum together. My foolish quest – the fancy of an arrogant traveler, the whim of a spoiled tourist. Or perhaps just the urgings of a bored wife away from home. I walked beside Aidar along a wide concrete pavement lined with golden birches, careful not to step on the blotches of spittle here and there. We passed the entrance of a college, and I was almost overcome by the cigarette smoke coming from students standing by, girls wearing five-inch high-heels and mini skirts, guys in tight jeans and leather jackets. Cars emitted black fumes while puffing at street intersections, accelerating even before the lights turned green. 

Just before we parted, Aidar hesitated. 

"The other day you were at my home, you asked about the Seven Companions of Happiness."  

“I remember. You had six of them – knowledge, luck, wealth, health, longevity, and family, but the seventh was missing.”

 "Lost,” Aidar corrected. He took a deep breath, and continued, “I should tell you who the seventh figure was. He was a young Kazakh playing a dombra. His name was Kuanysh. He was Happiness itself."