SHOE SHINE

I, Jeff, just got back from getting my shoes cleaned and shined. The significance of that is that the shoes I’m talking about were the only shoes I took with me and wore in the 6 weeks I was in Kyrgyzstan. I grew to hate those shoes and I took them off as soon as I got home from the airport on the return from Kyrgyzstan (22 August) and I haven’t put them on since. In fact, in my days back at work at the university, I wore other shoes that gave me a blister after the first day but I still continue to wear those rather than putting back on the shoes that served me so well on the streets of Osh and Jalal-Abad.

Why do I now hate those shoes—they used to be my favorite? They more or less represent the time for me in Kyrgyzstan. During my time there I spent hours and hours walking in and out of burned out homes and always seemed to be walking on grit and ash and broken glass and broken roofing. Normally, in Central Asia, shoes are always kept clean and it is very important for men and women to have clean shoes. However, due to the tragic events there, the houses I was visiting were always dirty with this grit and ash and my shoes never were clean despite trying to clean them often.

As I sat today and watched the guy who was cleaning and shining my shoes, it brought back so many memories. He brushed away and polished over a bunch of grit and ash that had come from the burned homes of Kyrgyzstan and the shoes look like new now. I even had new strings put on them. However, as I sat there, I remember wishing that I could just brush off and polish some of the difficult memories I have of Osh and Jalal-Abad. I wish I could put out of my mind some of the horrible things I have seen and heard in my time there. My shoes were soiled and worn down from their contact with the grit there but my soul has been soiled and worn down from the cruelty and depravity I’ve seen there. How can I brush that off and polish it and be good as new?

And that is just me, an observer who came from the outside. How can the Uzbeks that have experienced it first hand--and still experience it every time they hear a strange noise outside—how can they have this brushed away and polished over? How long will these memories linger and dominate their lives? How long will they be scared to go outside their gate? How long will they be scared to stay inside their gate? What about their shoes and clothes? How many of them are still only wearing what they had on when they fled because everything else got burned?

Even though they are now clean, I still haven’t put those shoes on—maybe next week or when school starts--maybe never…