Travels in Siberia by Ian Frazier Read Free Book Online

Turkic tribal chief who rose to become the leader of a great Tatar army was the worst scourge of civilization since Genghis Khan. In 1402, Tamerlane met Bajazet at the Battle of Ankara in Asia Minor, defeated him, put him in a cage, and took plunder, including slaves. As a slave of Tamerlane for several years, Schiltberger was able to report on some of the notable atrocities of his master, such as his burning alive of thirty thousand people in a temple in Damascus, his constructing of pyramids of human heads, and his trampling of children prisoners younger than seven beneath the hooves of his cavalry. Once when Tamerlane was besieging the city of Hispahan, he made peace on the condition that it lend him its archers; after twelve thousand archers were sent, he ordered his soldiers to round them all up and cut off their thumbs. He then entered the city unopposed and killed almost everyone.
    Dying in a manner befitting his nature, Tamerlane fell into an incurable rage when he could not revenge himself enough on some people who had betrayed him. He went out howling, and after his burial was heard to howl every night for a year. Schiltberger then became the property of a series of Tamerlane’s sons and grandsons; just who owned him in this period is hard to keep track of. On a journey with one of his later masters, a khan named Tchekre, Schiltberger went north into what he calls “Great Tartaria.” There they met another khan who was planning an expedition “into a country called Ibissibur,” by geographic context clearly Siberia. Schiltberger’s master accompanied this khan, andSchiltberger devotes about a page to the journey, with a surprisingly accurate piece of ethnological data: “There are also in the above-named country, dogs, that go in carts and sledges; they are also made to carry luggage, and are as large as donkeys.”
    Schiltberger’s subsequent travels eventually brought him to the shores of the Black Sea, where, with five other slaves of the Muslims, he escaped and hailed a passing ship from Europe. The sailors asked the escapees to prove their identity as Christians by reciting the Ave Maria, the Paternoster, and the Credo. The memories of Schiltberger and his companions not failing them, the sailors then took them to Constantinople, where Schiltberger told his story to the Byzantine emperor, John VIII Paleologue, who cared for them and helped them on their way. After more plot twists, Schiltberger finally found himself back in Bavaria. He had been gone for thirty-one years. A Bavarian duke gave him a position in his retinue, and there, presumably, the much-journeyed Schiltberger stayed put for the rest of his life.
    Over the centuries to come, thousands of travelers, willing and otherwise, would see Siberia and write books about it. By his brief mention and description of Ibissibur, Johann Schiltberger became the first in a long literary line. If plot (as we are told) equals character, and vice versa, then maybe a similar equivalence exists between setting and genre. That is, perhaps the two presuppose each other, as in the sea story, the American Western, the English parlor mystery, etc. Schiltberger’s example leads us to expect that Siberia’s genre will be the travel story, not surprisingly, because one can’t begin to know a place that big without moving around. Sometimes the Siberian genre will also be the slave narrative, a personal account of bondage and suffering, also as per Schiltberger. His precedent also points to another, lighter Siberian genre, just as inseparable from geographic vastness—the picaresque.
    Our plane had touched down at Omsk and taxied to a stop on the runway. Through the windows nothing was visible but a distant, nondescript horizon in gray morning light. From my vantage, no buildings could be seen. Following the custom of Russian commercial aviation, the plane then sat, with nothing at all happening, for an indefinite amount of time. Eventually from the outer vagueness a