“Article 5.3: Under no circumstances shall any citizen go to the capital.” This is one of the most serious of all our laws. Anyone who grew up in my village of Orfetel, only a few days’ travel from the ruins of our former capital, would either blot out the fact of the capital’s proximity or exist under its oppressive spell. This reaction is all the more unfortunate because no one in the village had actually been to the ruins—though the elders spared no effort in cautioning all children against going. The “bogeyman” of the ruins was a simple fact of village life, codified into the village property charter long ago. No elaborate reason for this legal and psychological ban was provided, except that it was unsafe and, possibly, immoral. Tales of spirits, of course, supported it in the popular mind—along with stories that, after the war that forced the city’s residents out, the capital was never fully abandoned, and the meagre residents who survived there did so through cannibalism. My parents, in particular, though they usually did not give in to this kind of speculation (obviously meant to scare the dull-witted), impressed upon me that under no circumstances would I go to those ruins—at the very least, it was too far a journey to make without proper provisions. As my parents were mid-level bureaucrats in the village government, they liked to emphasise that the village had anything I could possibly need or want, and this was true. I had received excellent schooling in agriculture and mathematics and would soon, as my studies were ending and I had received the best education available, graduate from my volunteer position at the village food centre to a provisional position on the village planning committee. Provided there were no deviations from my course of study and work, my future in the village held more promise than any other path that I knew of. There were many stories of those who had succeeded in our village—many more than of those who had not—and however one defined that success to oneself, as, in my case, following in the path long set by my family, rewards in property and, most important, financial freedom, were great. It was for that reason I too did not think much about the ruins, about the former capital, or about life’s other paths. To say that too much was at stake would, I now understand, not be correct. Not at all.
During the brief rest period before my final accession exams, I followed my colleagues on a small delegational trip to a neighbouring, coastal village—my first time out of the village, in fact. As my village was several hours’ travel inland, the pace upon arriving at the coastal village, with the melodic name of Epayem, seemed lethargic in comparison. Ships set out from port, ships came in from the inland sea, and the atmosphere, instead of the contemplative, directed atmosphere of my village—an atmosphere imbued with a peculiar self-confidence—was in comparison dedicated to commerce and a lively intercourse between people. When I, along with the delegation from my village, met with the local village directorate, we were greeted as warmly as in my village—but then subjected to long explanations of the key trade position our village could occupy if only a new trade agreement, initiated but yet to be fully reciprocated, would post-haste be fully implemented, at least by the next trade cycle. We knew we were to report thoroughly on this when we returned to the village, as the village leaders were cautiously becoming more accommodating of expanding inter-village trade. For my part, I could not see the advantage unless reserves of accumulated wealth could be created to generate more wealth, as if by machine. But I kept my thoughts to myself, thinking that I would have the chance to present them at another time. Tucking the trade meeting into the back of my mind, I followed my colleagues and a representative of the Epayem directorate on a tour of the village—very similar in appearance to my own village, though accented by seafaring decor—that culminated at one of the three piers, where we waited for a captain to take us on a short tour of the coastline of that region of the inland sea. As it was my first time on a ship, I was naturally anxious—the ship, compared to the others docked nearby, was rather small and would be filled with our delegation. The pacific weather would accommodate any discomfort whatsoever, I recall thinking to myself. And so, we boarded and were given a novelty tour of the coastline.
After travelling for around two hours, we were instructed to look into the distance, where we could see another settlement, called Hilphadel. The smoke rising above the horizon seemed to indicate its considerably larger size. However, according to the captain, this was not the case. The population was roughly the same as Epayem’s, though their industry was more developed. He laughed about the goods manufactured there and, after turning down our inquiries, suggested we see for ourselves. After some conversation, all agreed that the directorate representative would, upon landing, find suitable quarters for lodging, and we would return the following day. This trip, I thought, would reward me greatly upon our return home. All who worked in the village government had travelled abroad and were greatly respected for doing so. It was one of the few ways to advance before one’s allotment. With this confidence behind me, I no longer looked out at the still inland sea but fixed my eyes on the village of Hilphadel, as if night had fallen and the light in the distance were the only thing for my eyes to focus on, aside from the vast absence surrounding me. I made a map in my mind of the many paths my colleagues and I had taken to get here—across prairies, rivers, and now upon the inland sea—and then retraced those paths in my mind. As I retraced them, I supplied somewhat ridiculous commentary and exhaustive judgements: the village of Epayem was ruled by a seafaring clan that spoke in a barely understood dialect, informed by the peoples they met on trade expeditions; the village of Hilphadel would make an excellent manufacturer for the raw materials Orfetel could provide, materials only obtainable inland. As I listed possibilities for exaggeration in my mind, I glanced around at my colleagues. We all knew each other, yet at that moment, immersed in a foreign environment, we did not find common cause—we barely spoke to each other, in fact. Everyone seemed lost in their own thoughts. I imagined that each of their occupations in the village government was its own private world of reports and acquisitions.
None of these theories was allowed to be tested, however. The captain suddenly shouted to his two crew members, who began rushing around us, unspooling ropes, opening hatches, and pulling levers. In mechanical unison, each would shout, as if in code, and the others would respond without hesitation, their movements growing faster, their expressions more focused. As this unfolded, the sky darkened rapidly, and for the first time, the waves picked up, sending my colleagues and me into tremors as we slid across the wet deck. The captain turned to us and shouted something, completely without malice—yet above the now-roaring wind, his voice was nothing more than a faint intention. He signalled to a crew member, a rugged man of perhaps 30, who growled orders at us. But between the noise and our lack of familiarity with nautical terms, none of us understood. Living inland, we did not know what the “brow” of a ship was, and that was the only term I could discern before, with a sudden and dramatic heave, the small ship was wrenched sideways, as if by a giant hand. The mast snapped, the sail fell, and the vessel crumpled like soft cheese. I can laugh at my ignorance now, though it comes with sadness. All of my colleagues from the inland sea vanished that day. When I regained consciousness, I was not in the water but lying in a canoe, the shoreline nowhere in sight. Two lithe men, both with curious yet calm expressions, stared down at me. I tried to speak, but my parched throat prevented any sound. They pulled me upright and offered water from a thermos. As they spoke softly to each other in a language I didn’t understand, I observed them closely—shirtless, wearing loose trousers of thin fabric, unlike the dense breeches typical in my village and Epayem. The canoe was filthy, though oddly, it seemed only I was covered in black residue. The two men, now clearly about my age, were impeccably clean. I noticed they wore slim leather boots, similar to those in my village. Had they taken them from one of my colleagues? Where were the others? Realising the gravity of my situation, I struggled to rise and to speak, but no number of gestures could express my questions. Exhausted, I slumped back down, closed my eyes, and fell asleep. When I woke, it was still day. I felt so energised that I could only assume I had slept for a full revolution of the sun. My rescuers were eating a crumbly paste on leaves of lettuce. Seeing that I was awake, they prepared and handed me one, which I devoured quickly, trying to conceal my desperation from them. Irrational, I thought. Later, as the sun began to set, I attempted once again to ask them my questions. One of the men waved his hand and pointed into the distance. There, I saw not a village but a vast city stretching far along the coastline. Light emanated from its structures, smoke hung heavy in the air, and a low humming sound, like a subterranean whistle, began to fill the space around us. As we drew closer, I noticed other canoes scattered across the water, all piloted by similarly clad individuals with bland but not unkind faces.
When we finally reached the landing, I was ushered through crowds of these people. They moved efficiently but without hostility, guiding me into a long building that bore a resemblance to one of Orfetel’s grain silos. Inside, groups of people huddled together, dressed identically, speaking quietly among themselves. It felt like stepping onto the set of a play, where a foreman spoke to his managers, clipboards in hand, before sending them off in all directions like arrows pointing away from a single intersection. I was gently handed off from my rescuers to another man, dressed in a shirt similar to the ones I had once worn. Without expression, he led me through the building, past numerous groups of huddled individuals, always speaking in low tones. Eventually, we arrived at a room in the back, where he called out to another person, seemingly a subordinate. They sat me down in a chair, a universal furnishing for which I was deeply grateful amidst the confusion. The technology and furnishings were remarkably similar to those in Orfetel, though none of the writing was decipherable. After a long period of attempted communication, my guides exchanged sharp glances and escorted me to another room. I waited there until I fell asleep. When I woke, the bright overhead light was still on, and beside me lay a folded blanket, a shirt, and a cup of water. Not long after, a very tall man arrived with a book, which he handed to me. Though I could not read any of it, he would thumb through the pages and point to symbols, attempting to repeat my words in a clumsy imitation of my language. It appeared to be a dictionary, and after some time, I managed to learn his name, Niall. I introduced myself as Amo. This process might have continued for days if not for the arrival of a woman. Niall greeted her with visible relief before excusing himself. The woman, curt and businesslike, spoke to me in an accented version of my language. She neither smiled nor offered visual acknowledgment, treating me as though I were livestock to be counted. Despite her demeanour, her words brought clarity. I would spend the next several months acclimatising to this new life in what they called a transitional home.
At the transitional home, I was one of many residents—all of whom, like me, were from elsewhere. As I studied the language over the next several months, I was able to have conversations with some of them, as well as with the staff. The staff, some of whom were trained in different languages, would daily instruct us—we were assigned to simple rooms, four to a room—in the language and ways of the city. Called Ewayken—similar to the name of my own capital but not quite—it had a long and proud history. No wars had ever befallen it, and its people claimed long ancestral lines. As in Orfetel, a person’s family background helped determine their educational and professional path—except that the civil service was not as robust as it was in my home village, and one was assumed to always seek new opportunities for individual profit. Curiously, property, and not agriculture, was the foundation and motivation of Ewayken’s society, and there was nothing more honourable than the acquisition of property—to fail to acquire property was considered a great shortcoming. They had developed very advanced tools for this, even—to my satisfaction—similar to the idea I had formulated in Epayem, whereby wealth would not be spent outright but multiplied, as if out of nothing, into a larger sum. That sum could then be used as a tool to secure property. It was a profound learning experience for me, and the ideas I encountered during my time at the transitional home were firmly planted in my mind for when I returned to my village.
Among the other tenants of the transitional home—a long wooden structure which I never left, as it was secured by large men at every entrance—I met no one from Orfetel but did encounter another speaker of my language. He was a trader who had travelled weeks to get to Ewayken, not to open trade channels, as my colleagues and I had attempted in Epayem, but, based on the word of another trader, to invest in the property market. I learned that, on record, no one from Orfetel or Epayem had ever visited before. However, there were ties to Hilphadel, which exported labour to Ewayken. This labour was the most menial, and those who undertook it were restricted from entering the property market. The staff at the transitional home all participated in the property market. One of them, the transitional home counsellor, gave each of us a book to study that was said to contain the guiding principles and discourse of Ewayken. It was very strange to me because I could see little practical application for any of its ideas. Yet, apparently, out of those ideas grew the immense system of property and wealth that was Ewayken, the threshold I now awaited to cross into the city. I committed certain passages to memory for use upon my return to my own village: “Labour extracted can be multiplied by the sum of spirit, thereby maximising the speed of exceptional gratuity”;”The understanding constructed in the foundation for all extraneous reality, however in cases of perjured contracts, where direction is provided by either a total loss or gain in radixes, is the construed profit”;and”Common ownership, being the goal and instantiation of ‘three dishes in the sink,’ is also a demonstration of the school of the originalist’s hypolectics; therefore, it is false.” These should suffice, I thought. As the book was written not as a constitution but as a study aide, the goal was implementation. But unfortunately, I was unable to go beyond this preliminary knowledge. One night, I was suddenly moved to another facility. As no advance preparation was possible, I could not ask our counsellor, Ilda, for her guidance. Two of the guards roughly escorted me out the door and through an alley, from where I could hear the sound of traffic and shouting. As my recent existence had been at the extreme mercy of events, not the least of which was the weather, I could only grit my teeth and await whatever adventure came next. Though I did not know it at the time, I was being taken to another facility for those about to be released into the city. Once again, I was stripped of all my belongings and instructed to sign form after form. Shortly after, I was escorted outside, in the middle of the night, to a busy plaza. People, all lithe and impeccably dressed, in the fashion I had seen—loose trousers and tight-fitting silk shirts—strutted by proudly, talking to each other, bargaining with cart owners, and reading signs pasted on walls. The transition from the warmth and comfort of the transitional home to this plaza was abrupt. I turned back to look at the closed door I had just exited, feeling a rising panic. I wondered what to do—I had learned the language, I had studied the texts of the society I was now entering—so I walked. Over the next several months, as I eked out a small living through labour, I learned that the entrepreneurial spirit required to thrive in Ewayken was incompatible with returning to my home village. I was trained primarily in agriculture, and I hesitated to invest any money I had made. The path, though narrow and leading to great rewards, was cut off to me. None of these rewards, however, would allow me to return to my parents, whom I missed deeply. I was filled with regret every time I thought of the delegational trip I had taken—what did they think had happened to me? Did the village of Epayem notify them of our shipwreck? I made no friends. I had no permanent home. I became bitter and regretted what I had learned. My haphazard adventure felt blunted. With this knowledge, I grew increasingly uninterested in each opportunity waiting like a throughway for a speedy entrance. Eventually, I found the city gate—not so much a gate as a receding of people and buildings, where the only languages spoken were ones I no longer understood. I will spare the details except to say that, in terms of technology and infrastructure, the only difference between Orfetel and Ewayken was scale. All else was so similar as to be negligible. Observing this only reinforced my desire to return.
The journey back, once I was able to locate a crew of labourers who would take me by cart for my full sum of accumulated cash, took a month. During my absence, several villages near Orfetel had opened for trade with Ewayken, and one of the labourers I met claimed to know where Orfetel was. They were an exceptionally trustworthy group, as had been all whom I had personally met. As long as I contributed to the labour, helping to cook each night in addition to paying my fare, their contentment was absolute. These labourers, who were exported from elsewhere to work in Ewayken, were free to sell their services and come and go as they pleased, to the extent their contracts allowed. Because of this, none had been through the rigorous transition programme or had learned much of the language or philosophy of the city. If anything, they were often as confused by the obsession with property as by the ability of Ewayken’s residents to seemingly conjure money out of thin air. During the trip, I tutored them with the bits of knowledge I had written down and gave them an outline of the grammar of the language to augment their pidgin speech. In conversation, they told me about the villages they came from—with the exception of the manufacturing hub of Hilphadel, all were poor in resources. By working as bonded or contracted labour, they could save money and return home—or try to re-enter Ewayken, as I did, as a not entirely welcome but unavoidable guest who would, eventually, have the opportunity to buy property. All were crude by the standards of residents of Ewayken, yet must have been very sophisticated when compared to their compatriots. They also seemed to look at me with a sense of conflict: Who would choose to leave Ewayken to return to what they assumed would be a similarly hapless village as theirs? Yet who else would tutor them and give them the tools to integrate into the society that had hired them? Although I mentioned that the infrastructure of Ewayken and Orfetel were similar except in scale, in this crucial way they were different: through the importation of labour, the system in place in my home would break. The hierarchy that nearly all assumed upon adulthood would be rendered porous, so that with the intention of poking a hole through the structure, the entire system could crumble—except for those who, as in Ewayken, had secured their wealth through private ownership. This crucial difference in the infrastructure of labour made me wince whenever I thought of it: how vulnerable Orfetel was, not to outside forces, but to any party that might “cut diagonally and find the perspective upon which the liquid subject stands”—as I had studied.
Arriving at my village was a sad event, for I was very sorry to say goodbye to my companions—though I wished them luck and sincerely (surprising even myself in my sincerity) wanted to see them again to discover their future accomplishments. Would Ruq’sur eventually be able to return with his family to Ewayken and buy property? Would Toopat be able to? And Iichensa? They wanted nothing more than that. As I faced the gate of Orfetel, a small crowd gathered to see what goods our cart was bringing to the market. I looked at the men and women in their breeches and silk shirts, but they were not at all what I remembered in my dreams. They no longer appeared so clean they practically glowed. Compared to the silk in Ewayken, the fabric seemed as coarse as burlap. And the expressions that I would have described as quietly self-confident now looked dull and unaware when compared even to the labourers, my friends, with whom I had travelled. An alarm began to ring in my head, and I started to sweat. I turned around to see my friends wheeling the cart to another nearby village. Turning back, I saw my parents rushing out of the gate, their arms outstretched as if they were afraid of letting go of a prize that was being awarded not to them, but to someone else. I grimaced and then broke into a smile. Behind everyone, I could see the glazed tile roofs of Orfetel. I surveyed my family and friends and felt thankful for the hard work that generations had done in safeguarding the lives of every single person in Orfetel. I also, suddenly, thought of another lesson I had given my travelling companions, which was boiled down into what I only then truly understood and even felt in my bones to be a pithy expression: “According to the unlikeliest companions do the unlikeliest longevity systems bend, and then the name rises to the spires, and then the coolest profit extends like the common history of the capital.”
How to cite: Turner, Matt. “In Farghestan.” Cha: An Asian Literary Journal, 11 Jan. 2025, chajournal.blog/2025/01/11/farghestan.
Matt Turner is a writer and translator based in New York City. He is the author, most recently, of the poetry collection The Places (BlazeVOX 2025). With Weng Haiying he has co-translated Ou Ning, Yan Jun, Wan Xia and others. [All contributions by Matt Turner.]