conspiring elements

At approximately 11:45pm last night, something rather fabulous occurred about 1000 metres above my flat. It wasn't anything especially remarkable – in fact it's almost commonplace at this time of the year. But I’d spent days wishing for it to happen, and the Weather Gods had been rudely ignoring my requests up to that point.

Around eight-ish on NYE, I went to the supermarket to stock up on supplies, and suburban Almaty was looking about as unappealing as it ever does. The last snows, almost a whole week old, had all but disappeared. Only an ugly, brown, icy slick remained on the streets, making a stroll through the hood slightly treacherous and unpleasant.

Also, the winter cold had abated, replaced by ‘neither-tut-nor-tam’* temperatures which hovered non-committally a few degrees either side of zero. This wasn’t winter – it was just a non-descript coffee break between seasons. I was feeling somewhat deflated, cheated out of the rather hardcore chilly season that had seemed imminent a couple of weeks earlier.

Then, in the final hour of 2010, everything changed. There was a dramatic temperature drop to around -12C, bringing back the frigid intensity of the Kazakh winter. And about 15 minutes before the Big Moment, snow began falling silently from the fog-lit skies.

It was that fine, glassy, almost colourless kind of snow, which glistens and sparkles in the orange fog lights like tiny falling diamonds. (I’m sure the Eskimos have a specific word for it.) This is one of my favourite kinds, ‘cause it tends to charge the atmosphere with a strange kind of energy, powerful enough to produce a smile from even the most jaded of folks**. And it was perfectly timed for the beginning of 2011.

I’d planned to host a small gathering for New Year, but had cancelled the party because I’d been experiencing some stomach problems during the day and was feeling distinctly unsociable. Yuliya, meanwhile, was visiting her family in Ukraine. So I was alone on NYE.

At a couple of minutes to midnight I wandered outside to see the fireworks (which are legal here, btw). It was at this moment, when I closed the heavy metal door of our building and stepped out onto the street, that my mood suddenly lifted. I was immediately assailed by the cold, and the glittering, semi-translucent snowflakes began to decorate my jacket in a layer of silver-white. Then the sky erupted in a palette of intense colours.

I headed out onto Mynbaeva street, where the atmosphere was nothing short of magical. A white carpet had covered the road, and there were no cars moving, so the light snow-cover was perfectly fresh and unspoiled. I stood in the middle of the thoroughfare, watching people setting their pyrotechnical purchases alight and then standing back to watch fireballs shooting into the heavens.

A couple of months ago, in Viet Nam, I’d briefly taught an IELTS preparation class. IELTS is a popular English exam – an introduction to academic English for those wishing to study at universities in Australia or The UK. The reading passages in this exam often concern technical subjects, and in one lesson we examined a text about how fireworks are manufactured. It spoke of such technicalities as ‘second-stage detonators’, but also of the patterns one could make in the sky with a bit of specialist knowledge. Terms like “hearts”, “palm trees” and “stars” were bandied about, these being among the favourite patterns that pyrotechnicians try to incorporate into their creations. And now, months later, here I was alone on the street in Kazakhstan, freezing my arse off, being snowed on, and watching these patterns explode into life around me.

It was, in a word, perfect.

At about 12:10am, some other locals arrived on Mynbaeva and began adding to the clamour with the fireworks they’d purchased from the Green Bazaar (a huge market in the centre of town which is the source of most fireworks sold in Almaty). Two Russian women set a Roman candle on the road, shrieked girlishly and ran away, seconds before it started sending green missiles into the sky, each one detonating in a multi-coloured shower of sparks that lit up the grey tower blocks in an exuberant flash.

As the snowfall became progressively heavier, silhouetted figures appeared further down the road, shooting blue and yellow fireflies into the air – some of which fell to earth almost immediately next to a line of parked cars. I vaguely wondered what constituted a safe distance from an exploding fuel tank, but I enjoyed the show anyway. In fact, I remember laughing out loud in the street ... which under normal circumstances might have been a good indication that I was losing my mind. On this occasion, though, the mental diagnosis would have to wait ... it was just a marvellous, silly moment, and laughter was the only natural response.

After standing around for about 20 minutes, being snowed on and watching the tower buildings take on a festive selection of hues, mundane reality began to press on the walls of my little Glee Bubble. My glass of G&T had become empty, my matches had run out, and the tips of my fingers were beginning to warn me that frostbite is a reality in this part of the world. So I headed back to the warmth of my flat, 2011 well and truly rung in.

Since then, temperatures have continued falling, reaching an invigorating -24C tonight ... a 'real' Kazakh winter. Honestly, going outside in weather like this makes you feel that you're really alive – at least for a while, until the "Oh my god, the flesh on my face is necrotising!" sensation begins to kick in ;-)

The snow is gone now, though. In fact, it stopped less than an hour after my little midnight walk. Seems like it was a special consignment, delivered to Almaty to coincide with the New Year. So, er ... thank you, Weather Gods!

Hoping those same gods will be generous in the weeks to come, 'cause it would be nice to have a cold, snowy January. We'll see.

In the meantime … Happy New Year, everyone!!!

Anthony.



(* tut is an informal way of saying “here” in Russian, and tam means “there”. I invented the phrase neither tut nor tam in L’viv, and Yuliya thought it was kinda funny. She repeated it to a few colleagues, and it has survived as a little in-joke.)

(** This kind of snow has such a powerful effect on me that I can effortlessly remember specific times when it fell during previous winters. An example is January 2006, when I’d spent a night hanging out with my friend Astrid in Moscow cafés, then walked home at about 6am through the glistening snow. I have an incredibly vivid memory of walking along my street while the snow fell, and grinning like an idiot. I think I even sang.)