Eastward from Ashkhabad my train lumbered across a region of oases where rivers dropped out of Iran to die in the Turcoman desert. In one window the Kopet Dagh mountains lurched darkly out of haze, and repeated themselves in thinning colours far into the sky. Beyond the other rolled a grey-green savannah, gashed with poppies. Over this immensity the sky curved like a frescoed ceiling, where flotillas of white and grey clouds floated on separate winds.
Once or twice under the foothills I glimpsed the mound of a kurgan, broken open like the lips of a volcano – the burial-place of a tribal chief, perhaps, or the milestone of some lost nomad advance. Along this narrow littoral, a century ago, the Tekke Turcomans had grazed their camels and tough Argamak horses, and tilled the soil around forty-three earthen fortresses. Now the Karakum canal ran down from the Oxus through villages with old, despairing names such as "Dead-End" and "Cursed-by-God", and fed collective farms of wheat and cotton.
The train was like a town on the move. In its cubicles the close-tiered bunks were stacked with Russian factory workers and gangs of gossiping Turcomans. Grimy windows soured the world outside with their own fog, and a stench of urine rose from the washrooms. But a boisterous freedom was in the air. Everyone was in passage, lightly uprooted. They gobbled salads and tore at scraggy chicken, played cards raucously together and pampered each other's children, until the afternoon lunch-break lulled them into sleep. Then the stained railway mattresses were deployed over the bunks, and the corridor became a tangle of arms and projecting feet in frayed socks. From a tundra of sheets poked the beards of Turcoman farmers, and the weathered heads of soldiers resting on their caps. Matriarchs on their way to visit relatives in the next oasis lay mounded under blankets or quilted coats, and young women curled up with their children in their arms and their scarves swept over their faces.