I purchased the hat at a chinese bazaar in a village 2 hours outside of Almaty two weeks before I left for Azerbaijan. The sun had been strong that day and the hat as sylish as it was well priced. For three hundred Tenge, or a little over 2 and a half dollars I was now rocking the classic Kazakhstan 2007 summer old man hat. The hat was being spotted on the heads of pensioners all over the country in such old man hangouts as backgammon tables and marshrootka or mini bus ticket counters. Needless to say this hat was special and was already making waves in a country devoid of an ocean.
I wore the hat through customs, on the plane and even in the taxi cab tearing through the streets of Baku at 7:07 pm on 7/7/07. I wore it as I walked away from the hostel that had denied me entry even after I made a reservation three weeks before. And I was wearing the hat as I approached a Scottish fellow looking for directions to a hotel. The hat was cream coloured with a yellow and black striped band around its base. Crafted by a hat machine somewhere in Xinjiang province, it had most likely made an equally long trip to the bazaar as I had made with it from the bazaar to Baku, Azerbaijan. The Scottish fellow heard my situation and offered my to crash in is apartment within the walls of the old city. A few hours later I removed the hat, placed it on the floor next to the army cot I was sleeping on and fell asleep.
I was wearing the hat the next day when I met an Uzbek man about my age. We began talking and the subject quickly changed from the safe multi-dimensional topic of Central Asian plov to the dangerous one-dimensional topic of Uzbek-American politics. It seemed that the hat had given me all it was worth and it was beginning to put quite a strain on my head. Our conversation ended on a lighter note as the young man complimented the beauty of the fine machine woven stitching that made up the hat. I once read somewhere that in many muslim cultures if someone compliments you on a possession you are required to give it to them. I'm not muslim but my Uzbek friend was and I realized were in a muslim country. I interpreted these coincidences as signs, just as strong the sun that shone on my neck and encouraged me to buy the hat it the first place. I knew it was time to pass all the style and good fortune the hat had given me onto someone else.
"The hat is yours" I said and removed it from my head, brushed off the sweat with the back of my forearm as I presented it to him. "You are the most generous American I have ever met" he responded. I now was convinced, the hat had served its purpose.
On the flight home from Baku a few weeks later, I noticed that the flight attendants were the same. An hour before landing, one of them a Russian woman in her mid thirties approached me and asked in Russian where my hat had gone. Slightly startled and confused, I told her I had given it to a friend who deserved it more than I did. She seemed a bit upset but continued the conversation. She had spent six months in Brooklyn last year, living in her friends apartment on Ocean Parkway she said.
We landed back in Kazakhstan, with the hat still continuing its journey. The Uzbek lived in India and would most likely bring it with him there, unless he felt the need to pass it on to another. How many more the hat would bring style and fortune to I may never know, but I had a feeling its journey would be long and arduous. It was after all, a one size fits all.
The transfer is agreed upon.
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