Apologies for the break – I was busy finishing a piece of writing and didn’t have any spare time to continue the Pamir roadtrip story.

Where were we? We were still on Day 2, having just arrived into Khorog, and were exploring the gardens at the Serena, while Dan napped off his stomach bug. We can cover the remainder of that day plus Day 3 (In Khorog) here.

By about 5 in evening Dan forced himself out of bed to show us a bit of the town, and we went to have a bite to eat and a pleasant time relaxing on the tapchans at the Chorbogh teahouse (operated by the group of Aga Khan organizations, just like the Serena – the AK development network seems to kind of run the Pamirs, or at least Khorog). The teahouse is situated just on the banks of the river Gunt, in a corner of the Khorog city park, with a raised platform hanging out over the river and the icy blue-green water rushing by below.

The town itself feels quaint and small, although it also has the bustling feel of a regional hub, and the center of town right next to the bazaar housed a constant crowd of travelers and touts and small-time sellers and minibuses and SUVs – the marketplace for anyone wanting to depart the Pamir region for west-central Tajikistan and not aiming to pay for one of the very limited airplane seats out of town (meaning almost any ordinary traveler).


Khorog is a border post, founded in the 1890s by the Russian military as the boundaries between British-controlled Afghanistan and Russian-controlled Central Asia were firmed up, so in a sense, although the town is picturesque, it isn’t surprising that it also has a hint of the rough and ready menace of a border station. And maybe because our visit coincided with a holiday weekend, including Tajikistan’s independence day, for which there was a large public celebration in the city park, there was also at times an ever so slightly trashy feel – drunks hanging around on the edges of the park, groups of men ranging around after the late afternoon breakup of the local football match, and literally lots of remaining litter lying around in the park after the main heaps of trash had been carted away on the actual holiday. So Khorog was a pleasant break during our travels but certainly not home to us, as tourists and visitors.

We had a peaceful stay at the Serena, got rested up, and refroze the ice packs from our cooler. Continued to meet up with random travelers you’d never imagine would bother to make their way to Tajikistan, although I suppose that for them that’s the point: the Pamirs in a real sense are the end of the world, following in Marco Polo's footsteps, that kind of thing. On our first evening we’d already met up with a group of San Diego based travelers in Kalai Khumb who were making their way from Osh in Kyrgyzstan (I was surprised, given the relatively recent violence there) to Dushanbe, by way of Khorog. They claimed they’d visited (or would soon have visited?) every country in the world. “There’s a group of us,” their ringleader noted, by way of explanation. Who knew? In Khorog we crossed paths at the Serena with a French family traveling in a 2-car caravan. They had driven overland all the way from Europe and aimed after an exploration of the Pamirs to end up in Tashkent, where their university-aged son had a reservation to fly out in a few weeks’ time.

We also spent a thoroughly enjoyable morning in the Khorog Botanical Garden, perched up on a hill above the Shakhdarya river, on the southeast edge of the narrow town. (Khorog is situated in a narrow gorge, where the Gunt runs westward and intersects with the northward flowing – at this stage – Oxus. It basically has room for one main east-west street on the north side of the Gunt and a few secondary ones parallel to it.) Not much more to report on here except a slow meander through the semi-wild gardens and admiring (and taking snapshots of) the flowers, groves, and the imposing and tacky new mansion the president of Tajikistan has built for himself at the edge of the grounds. (The Serena, where he used to stay, apparently is no longer good enough. But thinking about that made us realize, kind of ickily: ‘wait, if we splurged to stay in the deluxe suite at the Serena, probably we’re sleeping in the same bed where Rahmon has slept!?’)

The brief R&R was good for our peace of mind, and Dan began to feel better. After a phone consultation with our Dushanbe medical provider, he decided to get his hands on some metronidazole, on the suspicion that he’d gotten giardia. We had a moment’s doubt about whether we could find it in Khorog, but then we realized that the prevalence of stomach bugs in this part of the world meant that actually this was probably the easiest medicine to get your hands on in a local drugstore. And we were right. He started to improve after 1 or 2 doses of the meds.

On the negative side, Monday morning we got a phone call from Dushanbe, alerting us that, in addition to the recent 25-man jailbreak and reported suicide-bombing at government buildings in Khujand, there were now reports of a bomb (or a fight? in Tajikistan rumor is king) in a local Dushanbe nightclub on Saturday night. That was slightly unsettling news, although the rational mind would tell you that in the remote eastern Pamirs you’re about as safe from unrest and political violence as you can be in Tajikistan.

Another negative that was nagging at both Dan’s and my mind, as we prepared to set out on our eastern loop through some of the most remote and unprovisioned territory in the country, stemmed from the unfortunate fact that the X-Terra’s “Service Engine Soon” light had lit up just as we pulled into Khorog, and it hadn’t yet gone off. Although the message was ominously vague, after consulting the owner’s manual, we’d established with pretty good confidence that in fact it was primarily a warning about the emissions system. Bad gas from a brief refueling stop in Kulob, perhaps? We weren’t sure, but we convinced ourselves that it probably didn’t mean we were in danger of breaking down. We hoped.

After our second morning enjoying a hearty breakfast in the Serena dining room, overlooking the sunny garden and riverbank, we gassed up again at the much more trustworthy-looking main gas station in Khorog (hoping the possibly bad Kulob fuel might get diluted?), and set out southward on the road toward Ishkashim.

Bumping to Kalai Khumb, Limping into Khorog

Well, I took a short break in real time to visit Norway, and let me tell you: visiting one of the most remote parts of the world (the Pamirs), followed by one of the most progressive parts of the world (you guess), followed by your return to the sort of semi-deprived point on the map that you now call home can give you situational and psychological whiplash. It is good to be home, but also sad to leave behind those little comforts (and friends), your fondness for which (and whom) was brought back to you in vivid color during your weekend away.

But back to our trip to the mountains, still occurring in narrative time:

Day 1 into Day 2 (Kalai-Khumb to Khorog. 240 km, ca. 9:00 am - ca. 4:00 pm, approx. 7 hours)

Midday into our first leg of the journey, we passed through Kulob and picnicked on the other side, still feeling excited for the road ahead.* At that point, another kind of bad road began: we left the slippery, fine sable-hued dust of the construction zones in the Khatlon hills and headed for the red dried mud, steeper inclines, slightly more hair-raising switchbacks, and, I can say in retrospect, medium-grade bumpy road that led between about Shurobod and Zigar. We also crossed successfully (that outcome was actually more in doubt than anyone expected setting out on our journey) the requisite iffy bridge that I think any journey in Tajikistan worth its salt must include.


Once we crossed into Darvoz proper at Zigar (recall the map), the road again included surprisingly well-paved patches. Here the Iranians, Turks, and Chinese are dividing up the road and improving it, although apparently on their own individual schedules and with their own idiosyncratic materials, methods, and plans.

We pulled into Kalai Khumb nearing dinner time and fairly quickly located our guesthouse. Since I was the passenger, it fell to me to go in and determine whether our attempt to make a reservation had really worked. It became clearer later on that it actually hadn’t, but we still got a room. The main problem when we first arrived was that my head, my neck, my shoulders – really, my whole body just felt like it had undergone some kind of human jackhammer experiment gone awry, and I was tired to boot. The synapses in my brain seemed literally to have been jostled and split, so I kind of had trouble expressing myself to the guy and explaining that we needed a room for 3 people but that it ought to be somewhere on his “reservation list.” Part of the problem was I really wasn't sure at first what language to speak, Russian or Tajik, so a bad mixture with words forgotten in each came stuttering out of my mouth. In any case, we quickly sorted it out and were shown to a double on the first floor of the small guesthouse building.

We had been unsure in any case whether we even wanted to stay in this place, since the advance report last year had steered Dan away due to bedbugs. (Dan and colleagues spent the night at the recommended Kalai Khumb alternative, only for Dan to wake up scratching his entire inflamed midsection due to – you guessed it – bedbugs. But because of that experience, we figured, we might as well try the original place.)

The guesthouse was actually very enjoyable in a Spartan kind of way, a pleasant surprise. OK, it didn’t quite merit the term “bed and breakfast,” which for Westerners is too loaded with charm and quaintness to do justice to hardly any lodging experience in Tajikistan, but the rooms were fine, the mattresses and bed linens clean, and the walls had no signs of bug squishage, which we’d been told was one way to detect a bedbug infestation. Dinner was a welcome and hearty portion of both pasta and rice with a saucy chicken and tomato kind of thing to pour over it. Large pot of green tea, a platter of dried nuts and raisins: the whole 9 yards (well, maybe 7, but in provincial Tajikistan that's a long way!). Our host even offered Dan a cold beer to start out, although it was the less savory Baltika #9 instead of a 7 or even a 3. But hardly a discomfort. We were quite happy to have a peaceful meal on the balcony overlooking the small, rough garden, and to watch the basin of the mountains rising out in front of us as they darkened into dusk.

Night unfortunately brought little sleep – Anya was hopped up, and it was hot and stuffy in the room. But we still anticipated that we’d get moving in the morning and everything would get back on track.

That was until the wee hours of morning, when at least for Dan himself that hope started to go south as he got extremely nauseous. I found out only as we rose and got ready for breakfast (which he was unable to eat) that his stomach was presenting some serious problems.

So we started out on the road to Khorog with a bit of trepidation. A few sickness stops into the ride that feeling really had not abated, although this leg of the journey was at least not terribly long. I drove a portion of the way, when Dan felt so terrible he didn’t want to drive anymore (he insisted it was at least a distraction from the stomach pain until it got very acute). But as we neared the last few kilometers before the hotel, on the outskirts of Khorog, with Dan back in the driver’s seat, we heard a wail from the backseat and turned to see projectile vomiting inside the car from passenger #2! Trepidation took a turn toward dread with that one.

It was actually just motion sickness with Anya, instead of anything she ate, but we really only determined that later on. And even that fact didn’t exactly lessen our feeling of foreboding, since for Dan car sickness is actually a pretty serious and consistent problem. The notion that the kid might be barfing all the way through days two through eight of our journey didn’t lighten our mood.

We stopped for a short clean up along the side of the road, with the requisite wide-eyed Tajik kid staring at us the entire time, and headed the final half hour or so to the 4-star Serena Inn. (Dan very wisely planned our itinerary with variation, between splurging on the very comfortable Serena and staying at places more lacking in the mod cons before and after.)

Once checked in, we had a quick but serious bath for everyone, sick and healthy. Dan headed for bed, and Anya had a quick snack (very enthusiastically eating the very same thing she’d upchucked all over the car – homemade granola – lending more evidence that she was not seriously ill, thankfully). Then Anya and I went out to explore the Serena’s very extensive and quite beautiful terraced riverside garden, while Dan slept through his fever.


Next report: our fearless leader rallies from the sickbed to show us the fine city of Khorog on our first evening in town.

----------
* Side note on the security happenings that forced us to travel the southern route: a very good overview of what is happening in Tajikistan following the jailbreak and other events, and their larger significance, can be found at Stratfor.

Day 1: Dushanbe to Kalai Khumb

368 km, actual road time: 9:30am-ca. 6:00pm; approx. 8.5 hours.

Started out later than intended (of course), and had to get some additional provisions before we left town (needed to gas up and buy the inevitable bag full of lepyoshka/Tajik flatbread, which isn’t worth getting very far ahead of time because it quickly goes stale). Also reluctantly swung around the house again for a quick grab when we realized we hadn’t packed any booze.

The theme for days 1.5 of the journey was frankly how bad the road was. The quality of the road and our relationship to it was a theme on which we had chance to meditate throughout. But on the early legs of the journey, spent basically getting to remote Badakhshan (where I guess I assumed the roads would be worst), Dan and I were both surprised at how inferior the road was, especially the lead up to Kulob and the stretch from Kulob to where the road nears the Panj River. Our main complaint as we rose and fell through the high hills (or low mountains, depending on your perspective) that progressively grow as you go south from Dushanbe concerned the long dusty stretches where apparently some kind of road work was ongoing, although not exactly always actively in process. (To be fair, it was still Ramadan at that point, and I do think there was more activity actually happening on this stretch when we drove home the day following Eid.)

If you want to see this on a map, I'm plotting out points on the way here on Google Maps.

Also, if the Cyrillic is not a deterrent, here is a map below (click on it to get a larger view), which, now that I look at it, might have given me a more realistic expectation of the roads had I looked at it before we went -- notice the very absent road line, for instance, between Khirmanjoi and Zigar. And the yellow portion between Nurak and Danghara. It actually is a very accurate representation of the roughly 3 types of road conditions we met (terrible, bad, and acceptable/good). Brings that aspect of our trip belatedly into very sharp focus for me!


Here are a couple of shots of the scene out the window (this gives you no sense of the feel of the ride, however -- on the way home I actually started taking short video clips to at least record for my own memory just how much we were being shaken, though mainly in the middle portion in Darvoz, not here in Khatlon province). You can see more on Flickr.



Next stop: Kalai Khumb for a night's rest.

8 Days To the “Roof of the World”

I’m afraid my impressions of the trip we took over the recent short week (Labor Day for those who get US holidays, and 2 days off for Tajikistan’s Independence Day and Eid) are already fading, and I’m desperate to write them down and save them. At the same time I’m having that familiar feeling of anticipatory disappointment at the way that words and even the photos you’ve taken can only poorly convey an experience, even for your own memory.

This was a trip we, especially Dan, had been planning for months, a weeklong road trip to the remote Pamir mountains and plateau, Tajikistan’s “Autonomous Region of Mountainous Badakhshan” (abbreviated in Russian as GBAO). He went last year at about the same time for work, so he had a better idea of what we were in for, in all senses of the phrase, while my notion of the trip was more vague.

I knew our itinerary as we planned it – from pictures and the telling I had some ideas of what it meant, but largely it was just place names:

Saturday, Day 1. Dushanbe to Kalai-Khumb (368 km, approx. 8 hours)
Sunday, Day 2. Kalai-Khumb to Khorog (240 km, approx. 5½ hours)
Monday, Day 3. In Khorog.
Tuesday, Day 4. Wakhan: Khorog to Langar (215 km, approx 6 hours)
Wednesday, Day 5. Langar to Lake Yashilkul (~120 km, approx. 4 hours)
Thursday, Day 6. Lake Yashilkul to Khorog (~195 km, approx. 3.5 hours)
Friday, Day 7. Khorog to Kalai-Khumb (240 km, approx. 5½ hours)
Saturday, Day 8. Kalai-Khumb to Dushanbe (368 km, approx. 8 hours)

On the first leg we would take one of two possible routes to get from Dushanbe to the eastern region of Tajikistan: either the northern route, through the lower mountains and valleys due east of Dushanbe, traveling part of the route we took in March to see buzkashi in Gharm, via the Rasht valley, but shifting south and going through Tavildara; or the southern route through the agricultural expanses of Khatlon, the southern towns of Danghara and Kulob, rounding upward toward Badakhshan. For our sake and Anya’s, we’d break up the trip that most travelers make in a Herculean single drive of anywhere from 14 to 24 hours and more, depending on road conditions. From the middle ground of Darvoz (literally, “gateway,” in Persian) we’d climb to the chief city of GBAO, Khorog, and after a day’s rest and sightseeing there, we’d follow the looping Panj River (more familiar generally as the Oxus or Amu Darya) ending up moving east through the Wakhan Valley, a remote finger of lowland shared warily by Tajikistan and Afghanistan, with the Hindu Kush peeking out from the south. Then we’d skirt northward to the lower sections of the Murghab plateau, and, meeting the main Pamir Highway, we’d return westward, back to Khorog, and from there retrace our tracks homeward via Darvoz.

The earlier debate about the “two possible routes” quickly ended after the recent Dushanbe jailbreak. The prisoners supposedly had fled to Rasht, traditionally a base for the political opposition in all its incarnations, and security recommendations from the American Embassy pointed us firmly southward. It’s hard to explain, but the escape didn’t worry us very directly on personal safety grounds. It was mainly a confusing event – ultimately followed by several others this week, but as an isolated event it called into some slight question general political security here rather than promising hardened criminals around every bend. We didn’t feel any need to call off our trip, but we did follow the guidelines and avoid what was possibly the hottest spot in what was a slightly warmed over general security situation.

I’ll try to set down my impressions of the progressive stages of the trip here over the next few days. As the vagaries of planning would have it, this Friday we’re already setting off again on a long weekend trip from Dushanbe to Oslo that defies credibility. So my fears about preserving the impressions of the journey to the Pamirs are quite real.

For me it was an adventure, a getaway, an exposure to some of the most dramatic and inspiring landscapes I have ever seen. It was a weird inside-out, through-the-looking-glass kind of experience, a trip both outward and inward: staying within Tajikistan, yet going to the edge of its borders, to a region that is extremely different and otherworldly in many respects. Going further inside and in a way digging a level deeper into the isolation and remoteness of our existence here, and yet traveling out into vast expanses, getting away from our physical and psychological lives at home in Dushanbe, away from the everyday. Depression makes you burrow in, in ways that you don’t even recognize, and it’s a gift to be able to escape, even if the return is difficult and the changes you’re able to envision during that reprieve and pledge to yourself that you’ll make threaten to slip through your fingers like the light dust blowing all along the road. You hope that, like that dust in another way, they’ll settle in quietly and barely noticed through every crack and crevice, and all but become a part of you.

Summer in Dushanbe Is...

• A month-long break from sadik.
• (In connection with the former:) Visits to the many new indoor play centers that have opened recently in our fair city, replete with those pools filled with small plastic balls, jungle gyms, climbing apparatuses, rides, little huts to play peekaboo in, etc.
• Rides in just about the only elevator in town -- and humorously quaint views out the window. (Elevator conveniently located in the same shopping center as one of our favorite play centers.)

• New nightgowns -- we love Hello Kitty.
• Hot sun. And a new bit of shade in our formerly burning hot, shadeless yard (see below -- the white canopy, just a corner of which is visible).
  
• Pools, small and large. With and without views of the mountains. At home and away.

• Watermelons!
• Qurutob* (I'm ashamed to admit that this summer I have had only my first taste of this salad, despite its widespread popularity here. I've been very tempted to order it out, but both years we've lived here, by the time I've gotten around to really wanting it, the warm season has already arrived and with it a serious increased danger of getting food poisoning from something like that. This taste was much better: homemade by our housekeeper in a home-based Tajik cooking lesson.)
  

* Qurutob, a south Tajik bread salad
serves 4

3 medium ripe tomatoes
3 medium cucumbers
4 small onions
5 green onions
2 bunches of cilantro
1/2 liter of plain yogurt
1 loaf of fatir (crispy Central Asian flatbread made with oil -- fairly different from Middle Eastern or Arabian fatir, as far as I can tell)
1/4 - 1/2 cup of vegetable oil or butter

1. Seed and finely chop tomatoes and cucumbers, and mix in a bowl. Set aside.
2. Cut onions into small, thin moon-shaped slices, or simple half-circle slices. Divide in half. Set aside.
   
3. Chop the green onions and cilantro finely, mix, and set aside.
4. Warm the fatir in the oven on low heat, if it isn't already warm from having been homemade. (Yeah, right. Although where exactly are you going to get the fatir in the US if you don't make it at home?) Remove from the oven and rip into bite sized pieces, placing the pieces into a large bowl. (If you have a flat-ish wooden turned bowl made out of walnut from the mountains of Tajikistan, all the better.)
5. Pour the yogurt (it works best if it has a moderately liquid consistency; if the yogurt is pretty thick, add some water and stir well) over the fatir pieces and mix so that all the bread gets some yogurt and soaks in a bit of liquid.
6. Arrange in layers on top of the fatir-yogurt mixture: first the cucumber-tomato mixture, then the onions, then the greens/green-onion mixture.
7. Put about 1/2 cup of butter or vegetable oil in a small skillet, and warm on medium-high heat. Add onions when oil or butter is fully warmed and/or melted, and stir and fry for about 5 minutes, until translucent. (At this point you can add salt and pepper to taste.) Pour the onions and the oil all together over the salad mixture, so that the oil can evenly trickle down throughout as a kind of warm dressing, and so that the fried onion is evenly distributed on top.
8. Serve immediately -- especially when made with butter or butter-like ghee, the oil will congeal and make it less appealing if you don't. (If you really want to get Tajik, eat out of the common large bowl in the middle of the table, using your hands to take a little bit from your edge, mixing the layers together, and lifting up carefully to your mouth. Repeat until you're full of qurutob!)

Summer Camping Trip

Photos from our goodbye camping trip with 2 families that will leave us soon -- one for a few months and the other permanently -- are here.

Sadik Graduation: A Bit of Cultural Context

I posted a video clip and some photos today from Anya's preschool year-end pageant. There were a whole lot of dance numbers and a wonderful spread of food, with the landlord's plov as the centerpiece. The evening was a lot of fun, not least for us personally because of how Anya showed to what extent she has come out of her reserved shell in the last several months, capping this year in preschool with a dance "solo."

I guess I feel the need to explain a bit, though. There was one number that made us feel a bit uncomfortable for the way race played a role, and although I loved Anya's own Eastern dance number, it occurs to me that it's possible someone unfamiliar with the cultural context might wonder what was happening with her short routine.

First, race. The kids did a group routine to the tune of "Chunga-Changa," a song from the Soviet-era cartoon "Katerok (Little Boat)." You can see the original 1970 animated version here. When we saw Anya come out together with her classmate O. to dance in costume amid their peers, we were a little surprised that the one child with an African parent was cast in a piece with that name, in outfits made to look like classically imagined "native dress."

The song is a little paean to a simple life of plenty on the desert isle to which the Little Boat in the cartoon gets blown off-course in a storm: the lyrics celebrate the "miraculous island's" blue skies, year-round summer climate, and the diet of coconuts and bananas that one apparently adopts once one is grounded there. On that level, one can probably read the song and the cartoon scenes as a simple daydream about escaping the life of shortages and difficulty in the Soviet Union. The trouble for a person born in the post-Civil Rights United States comes in where the somewhat stylized figures of black children enter (which is almost immediately), complete with curly heads of hair and what look like grass skirts. To me this looks like the product of a centuries-long distance from African and Afro-Caribbean colonialism, and the twentieth-century relationship of the Soviet state to the Third World and Africa and the Caribbean, with a dash of Russian old-school Romantically informed views about the immutable and inherent qualities of race (and, for that matter, gender).

Obviously, cultural relativism in this situation could be seen as no different from agreement and support. I'm still honestly not sure what to think of the way the teachers staged this piece, but I guess for now I think it's best to assume that this is primarily about a fondly remembered Soviet-era cultural artifact and that the bit was being staged with all the best intentions, and basically to leave it at that. (After all, so much of what the kids in our sadik do, especially at their pageants, comes from exactly the same nostalgic place: witness fondness for the Soviet incarnation of the Ded Moroz-Baba Yaga story that people in the post-Soviet world are truly loathe to part with.)

(I should mention too that this dance number at the preschool was preceded by an intro about how delightfully international our particular group of kids is, and more generally praising in broad strokes the multitude of difference kinds of people and nations in the world, complete with each kid waving the flag of his or her parents home country. Never mind that that becomes complicated with so many of our preschool's families in dual national households: the point was just to do one of those simple celebrations of the "thousand flowers" blooming together, to praise the "friendship of the peoples." More Soviet-era concepts re-imagined in the post-Soviet (re-)developing world, where expat NGO and diplomatic families and some locals can afford to pay for a better quality private day-care/preschool than what is offered officially on the local market.)

True, after seeing the dance number, there may be a place for commenting to the teachers about the role they chose for O. (I will note that O.'s European mother didn't seem to mind a bit that her son was cast in the piece, although she could have simply been keeping her reaction inside. When I talked to some of our fellow parents about it later, we all agreed that she and her family have to be used to the very different views about race that people hold in the former Soviet Union. Whether that makes it OK is a different question, but I wouldn't be surprised if in fact she wasn't phased by it.) But are our own American views and cultural associations with race so perfect that we can go around lecturing to Tajiks or Russians about their assumptions?

It might also be appropriate for us to engage our kids in conversation about race after the performance, but I tend to think that 3 and a half is young to have a talk about these things. I think my view is that here, as in other aspects of our social relations, it's probably better just to model tolerance and openness to our kids, rather than to have overt discussions about how the world works (and ought to work), to show by doing rather than to instruct by talking. (Part of that I hope is the way we interact with O., and I do think that part of the reason it took me a split second to notice the weirdness of the casting in the dance number precisely because I don't notice O.'s race. It's only because of the dance number that I'm even thinking about his skin color, really.)

Incidentally, if you want to know more about how race is discussed in Russia and in the former Soviet Union's cultural sphere, this Russian-language article on Wikipedia is actually quite insightfully written. There are a few spots where I start to wonder what the author's own biases are, but for the most part I think it explains really well the differences I've noticed in over 20 years of direct contact with Homo sovieticus and visiting his (and her) habitat.

OK, with all of that as prelude, just take a look at the photos and videos for yourself. I will try to explain my position on 3-year-olds doing something that resembles belly dancing next time, but in the meantime I'll just say that I look at the whole belly dancing thing as an art form, and one whose moves and shiny costumes truly fascinate kids. I'm really glad that Anya, whose dancing always has an Eastern flair to it, probably because she's spent these formative years in Central Asia, did this particular dance for her little year-end solo.

Around (Part of the) World in the Past 80 Days

A non-chronological rundown from A to Z of what I’ve neglected to report since I last wrote:

A – Archives, in both Russia and Tajikistan. I have been surprised in the last six weeks to learn just how much bureaucracy and apparently arbitrary and informal adjustments to bureaucratic rules really do differ between TJ and RU. I’m sorry I have to be reminded, but I do often forget that it is wrong to lump these two together into a single category. If you want to be wowed, I suggest you work for several months just trying to get registered and allowed to see documents in the sad national archive of a regressing Central Asian nation, and then go overnight to the beautiful oasis of the main reading room at GARF (State Archive of the Russian Federation), with its computerized index system and terminals at each reader station. But be careful not to faint from shock.


B – Buzkashi. The art of dragging around a goat carcass and fighting over it from your position atop a galloping horse. See photo essay.


C – Cheeses. Twelve of them, packed in multiple plastic bags, ziplocs, and stuffed together with a gift freezer pack in Paris into suitcase #3, only to emerge upon arrival in Tajikistan still cool and smelling wonderful. Now awaiting experimental freezing.


D – Disease. Luckily for Anya, only “angina” which, I guess contrary to our use of the word in English (from the Latin for choking or congestion) in reference to chest constriction and heart disease, in French refers to something like tonsillitis or strep throat. It was the sickest she’s actually been her whole life, but she was still a trooper. And our visit to the French pediatrician in Tonnere, France, renewed our already high respect for socialized medicine – bring on that Obamacare, thank you very much!


E – Embroidery. To my great disappointment, I must admit, the needlework has stalled out! But for a good reason: renewed research inspiration and necessity (much-procrastinated research trip to Moscow) made me turn away from the embroidery kind of right at the point where I was going the strongest on it, unfortunately. But I am really glad to feel the new boost in creativity and production, and the work is fun. Whether to keep up with the crafts in this current phase of Dushanbe life is my next decision…


F – France. Mmmmm, 2 weeks binging in the heartland of duck confit, terrine and paté, fromages hard and soft (especially soft and runny Epoisses and Chablis, my favorite of our discoveries), red wine (Burgundy, to be exact), and escargots (Anya to Dan: “dai mne eshche ulitku! [give me another snail!]”). Throw a few raw oysters – and whelks and winkles – on top and you pretty much have our vacation in a nut (or snail) shell.


G – Grandparents. Had a great time with 2 of them in the French countryside – Anya for 2 days longer than we did, and apparently all 3 of them had a blast.


H – Hotels, good and bad. FYI, in Autun, it's probably wise to splurge on the Hotel les Ursulines up in the old town, with the beautiful enclosed garden, despite the nondescript rooms. The incompetent front desk manager at the Hotel St. Louis et de la Poste downtown (together with the single, yet surely not solitary, cockroach we spied) made that one a bust. And the experience kind of ruined the whole next 24 hours, to be honest.


I – Insects. Fleas to be precise, which are the most bothersome ones that have visited us (and apparently left, during our vacation) over the last few months. But with the onset of spring the aphids on the fruit trees in our yard have also come out of hibernation. We are trying to spray with soap and water, but is it possible that Central Asian aphids are immune to this approach?


J – Jeans. In addition to the fact that the fashion right now is very clearly to tuck these into your tall, but flat-heeled, boots, I gleaned many other fashion tid-bits during my many hours walking from archive to archive, and people watching, in Moscow.


K – Kyrgyzstan. In truth, this doesn’t really deserve to be on this list, since ironically (and probably luckily) we could hardly feel further from the unrest and changes there. That is not to say that it might not spill over – you definitely never know. But so far it really seems not to have one iota of an influence here in Tajikistan, and in a practical way for us that is a good thing. In the larger picture I am not so sure that it is in the best interests of Tajikistan’s citizenry to be so complacent, but I am not complaining right now. The “revolution” – or maybe “coup” – occurred while I was in Moscow, and actually I probably knew more about it learning about it from that location than from home in Dushanbe, since while I was there I had the time and the inclination to watch the news quite diligently (and even discuss all of the very interesting, mainly tragic or disturbing, current events, from Kyrgyzstan to Katyn to the Moscow metro, with my landlady). It kind of felt like I was at the center of a much more connected universe while I was in Moscow, while here in Dushanbe everything typically seems very insular, very isolated from what is happening in the outside world. In any case, I include this mention here mainly since so many people have asked us about events in the neighboring ‘stan.


L – Lady drivers. It seems I’m one of them again. More precisely, for some reason when spring arrives in Tajikistan, not only do the local men do a typical double-take for women walking and perhaps wearing something pretty (a revealing mid-calf kurta, or what have you), apparently they also have a habit of looking twice and even staring when they see a woman behind the wheel. Come to think of it, women and kids will crane their necks to check it out, too. It’s just that shocking a sight to see.


M – Moscow! What a big, bewildering city it really is – I had a great time, and although after two and a half weeks there I was ready to get back to the slow pace of life in Dushanbe (and my peeps), the hustle and bustle was pretty fun to experience. It was my first time really living in the city (and right downtown, in a great location, steps away from Kievskaya metro station) and exploring it myself – the town I know best is Petersburg, and Nizhnii Novgorod I suppose is a close second. (Sorry, Vladivostok, I guess you take bronze.) I think I might not even mind spending some extended time in Moscow in the future (although maybe I’d get sticker shock if we really were to live there for a stint, not just visit short term).


N – Navruz. After a week of sun and warmth leading up to the biggest Central Asian holiday of the year, with people getting positively punch-drunk on the weather, it was a big dud. Rainy and cold. Certainly not inspiring for anyone to wear their new kurta, especially if it is still far from being completed…


O – Other scholars/academics. This spring has brought a lot more contact with researchers here in this part of the world, surprisingly many of them here in Dushanbe. It started with the German grad student, studying Soviet history, whom I met by sheer luck near the end of her 5 year stint here in Dushanbe. (5 years because she is also a spouse and mother raising her small kids here; she wasn’t spending the entire time doing full-time dissertation work.) Then it gathered steam with the grad students I met in Moscow, and now, partly because it is summer (those US based academics are smart: avoid Tajikistan in the winter. What a good idea!), there are 3 grad students here in town whom I know. I also met an inspiring independent scholar from Canada and I hope soon to formally meet the German scholar who was working at the desk next to me at the archives today. It’s gotten to the point that I am seriously planning to have an academic dinner party soon, before some of these folks cycle out of here and the population dwindles again.


P – Potty Progress. Hooray! Big girl undies (thin, no soaker panel) + possibly an unusual time-out from preschool teachers in response to her last real accident = I guess a month or more of dryness and a nearly perfect (I’d say ‘spotless’ but that wasn’t actually our problem…) record with trips to the toilet.


Q – “Quiet time.” This was how I explained to Anya what the side chapels in the several French cathedrals we visited were for. She started wanting to go in them with me to catch some together.


R – Rain. Unfortunately we departed from rainy spring weather in Tajikistan (where it is at least warm) only to be met by rain and half-century record low temperatures hovering at or under 10C in France. And now we've returned to TJ, where the rains are just an annoyance in Dushanbe but have left over a thousand people homeless and camped out in the stadium in the southern city of Kulob. Anya and I tried to make a small contribution to help Monday when we brought 4 bags of things of hers and mine that are either no longer worn or have been outgrown to donate for local efforts to assist in Tajikistan’s south.


S – Spring! and the arrival of the “Season”: the season for produce in Tajikistan, that is. When even the neighborhood bazaar has strawberries (sad and soggy though they may be) for sale, you know the highwater mark of fruit and veg season is just around the corner. Sure, you’re still advised to make the trip to Green Bazaar for really good quality and selection, but the season has arrived, for sho’.


T – Train travel. And the miracle of catching our Frankfurt-Paris train, for which we had planned a layover of 3 hours. Ultimately we had to run for it in the 45-minute interval that Somon Air's delayed arrival afforded us. (Anya to Lisa the night before the return trip, in Paris: “Will we have to run for the train again? I didn’t like that.”)


U – Umbrella. Anya was pleased as punch to be given a Winnie-the-Pooh children’s (hey, they probably make them in adult sizes, so I might need to specify) umbrella, after a shopping spree in the hypermarché outside Autun. (Shopping therapy after our bad experience at the hotel? It’s possible.) It made the trip home just fine packed in a suitcase and still hasn’t broken. Surely better quality construction than the 9-somoni jobbie I bought her at the bazaar in Khujand in the winter.


V – Vaccines. The polio outbreak in Tajikistan has given me reason to renew my earlier interest in polio vaccines, both injected/inactivated and oral/live, albeit from a very different perspective. Anya got her first round of the OPV booster series today. The situation is truly serious, but for kids who have received good quality vaccines so far and are up to date like Anya there should not be an extreme risk. With that firmly in mind, I actually think it might do us a lot of good if more academics had to deal with their topics of heated abstract discussion in direct and concrete relationship to their own or their kids' lives. But I guess that probably isn't a widely applicable or appropriate thing to wish for. The experiences is actually very enlightening and provides fascinating insight.


W – Water, dirty. Spring rains (well, any rains, really) bring “brown baths,” as Anya has called them since her first ever dip in the tub here in Dushanbe, a year and a half ago. The water from the tap used to be brown all the time, but shortly after we moved in the city did some improvements (yes, it happens), and the quality on a typical day improved. But we are reminded right now of how extremely cloudy and dingy that water can get. At least it serves as a good reminder that it wouldn’t be wise to drink out of the tap!


X – Хозяйка. Or khoziaika. That is, “landlady.” I had a really good one in Moscow for the 2 weeks I rented a room in her apartment – it was a surprisingly nice arrangement for me, working for many hours during the day and into the evening at the archives, and coming home to have a bit of dinner or tea in the kitchen with Inna Zinovievna.


Y – Yoga! So glad that Dushanbe has seen a renaissance (or I guess simply naissance?) of it in the last 6 months. I am happy to say I’m back to 2 times practicing per week (when not on vacation – but I did go to 2 overpriced yoga sessions in Moscow!).


Z – From Anya Z. (Vladivostok friend) through the mid-alphabet, mid-Europe Meilak, to Berkeley’s own Z-spot, visited with lots of friends we hadn’t seen in years during the past few months’ travels. It's a good thing to do, since living over here, even in this internet-, Facebook-friendly age, means we still aren't able to keep in contact as often as we'd like with people we care about. Sometimes the isolation here just makes us sluggish and complacent in that frame of mind, and the months stretch on and the messages (and blog posts) don't get written. So it was really good to reconnect with so many friends (and family) over these past 80 days.

Flowers Multiply As Spring Nears

There were some direct requests for photos of the embroidery, so in addition to what I had up there before, here are some more.

Project #1: One Flower

This is the same one I included a different picture of in the original post.



Project #2: Three Flowers, With Shading

This is the one I completed over the fall and winter. At a slow and relaxed pace.

This is the sort of abstract style of shading that this studio uses a lot. My teacher showed me a piece from I guess probably 5 years ago that they had done, which was more like my first project, without shading. She commented that they had developed the shading method in response to people's tastes. (She teaches young girls, mainly, but then the studio also accepts orders from brides and people who want holiday doilies and stuff, so I think the more experienced older girls are the ones who work on those projects.) Anyway, I guess this stuff is constantly evolving, as culture does -- even ostensibly "traditional" culture.

As I commented on Flickr, locals prefer brighter colors than I would choose. My teacher also praised these synthetic yarns over natural fiber from the very beginning, because she says they wash better and therefore survive over time. The American students and I who originally started out with the lessons all figured that, since we weren't likely to wash these very often, we'd rather have colors more attractive to our palette, but this was the best we could do.



Project #3: The Race to Navruz

This is the Tajik national dress, or chakkan, that I'm working on now. We are trying to finish this by the Navruz holiday 3 weeks from now. I'm further along than 2 flowers, but I still don't see how it will be done in time.

You can see here that my teacher draws the pattern on the fabric (she has a whole library of patterns to trace from), and then we talk about how I'll fill it in, and then I set to it. (She is helping me a lot with completing the dress, but I still am lobbying for her to lose the Navruz deadline.)

This fabric was apparently something the girls at the studio hadn't seen before. The yarn is all bought by my teacher, but for this I went and cruised the fabric stalls at Green Market to see what I could find that I was least unlikely to wear. Baby blue satin was the best I found, and all the girls oohed and aahed over it as the sewing studio teacher quickly snip-snipped through the much-used pattern for kurta and PJ pants.



The fabric is wicked shiny, so unfortunately my photos of this are coming out badly. I'm not a very good photographer, obviously.

Coda: Suzani

I still really have to dig more to understand the difference between suzani and gulduzi. As I said before, it seems to me that gulduzi describes a method, while suzani describes an object and its function. But I'm still not sure. And part of me is thinking that suzani is one of these words that I keep discovering is really just a Russian colonial word that isn't even used in the Central Asian vernacular (e.g. plov [in reality in Tajik, 'oshi palau': rice pilav dish with regional variation], khalat ['chapan': man's quilted coat], tebiuteka ['toqi,' I think: headwear, esp. man's squarish hat]).

Anyway, here is the best example of suzani that we have at home (unlike many of our friends, we haven't invested heavily in the embroidery market). We bought this pomegranate composition last June in Bukhara, and supposedly it was made by hand by a group of women who included the daughter of the man who owned the little shop, in one of the covered markets in the old city.





If you look closely, you can see that in fact this is actually done in a very different stitch than what I'm doing -- it's more of a chain stitch (zangjirak, I now know) than the flat, long stitch that predominates in the style I am learning. So I wonder whether that also enters into what is defined as suzani vs. gulduzi. I don't know, and of course my Tajik informants are not really all that into the finer points of categorization. I think I need to finally take my embroidery teacher up on her offer to go to the ethnography museum and explore with her their examples of embroidery to get more of the story.

Flowers in Winter

What's been happening these last few weeks in Tajikistan, you ask?

Quite a lot.

Maybe my explanation of The Rogun Powerplant Drama either didn't make sense or wasn't very interesting to anyone who reads this regularly (I know, you don't number all that many, and probably the bulk of you are more interested in the Anya report than in updates on the political or social situation in and around Dushanbe). Or maybe you just decided that the long arm of the Tajik government might reach out and bite you if you commented? In any case, if you had spent the past month here, you would see to what farcical and more serious (although not yet that serious) extremes the whole enterprise has played itself out.

The forced deductions from people's salaries continue, and reports are also piling up about people (and organizations) receiving "strong suggestions" to purchase blocks of shares to support the hydropower station. Those suggestions have supposedly been backed by very real consequences: students can't take (or pass) exams; car owners are blocked from registering their cars; and there are some vague reports that the health ministry requires citizens to show proof of purchase of their Rogun shares (for what? all I can assume is for getting health care, or maybe access to their health insurance?).

For those who work with the bureaucracy I think it's been a pretty demoralizing time, although since I don't have a lot of direct interaction of that kind I have not been experiencing the same level of negative feeling.

For me, I've been getting more active locally -- doing a little bit of charity work, getting active in my next research project, on malaria in Tajikistan in the 1920s and 30s (finally, after finishing the Draft That Would Not End, based on Vladivostok materials), and continuing with a few different outlets for improving my Tajik, where I do finally feel I'm making some progress.

Back in the summer I added to my Tajik language lessons one additional way to practice language: I started taking embroidery lessons. (The most well known word for Tajik/Uzbek embroidery among expats in Central Asia is suzani, but apparently this really describes the object -- only some of the particular kinds of embroidered decorations -- produced using this method of embroidery. The craft method that I am learning, and which I guess is used to create those suzanis, is called gulduzi [гулдӯзӣ, literally "flower-sewing"] in Tajik.)


In some ways this embroidery stuff seems totally crazy: both in the way that even a 1.5 hour lesson barely fits in my week, as well as in the way that at first glance this seems like something only a "lady of leisure" would do. But I think it's good for two reasons: first, because it does allow me to have a little more chance to hear and try to speak Tajik, outside of class. But also, because men and women live in such separate spheres in Tajik culture (traditional Tajik culture -- which still accounts for so much more of the total culture here than it would in many other places in the world), and because women's roles are so prescribed (again, at least for those women who are not in the middle or upper class, that is, those whose lives tend to be more traditional), this actually seems to me to be one real, authentic way of interacting with some of my natural peers -- Tajik women.

Sure, I could have a local friend who, in education and interests and life situation, was a bit more like me, and I would interact with her by, I guess, going out for a coffee or having lunch or getting together for a play date with our kids. But I haven't yet found that person. It's not that she doesn't exist. It's not even that she wouldn't speak Tajik -- although the probability is, as far as I can tell, that a peer in terms of education and class probably would be more likely to speak Russian in her daily life and more generally live in the European (which in Tajikistan means Russian) style. I think in theory she probably exists, but she is rare. Mainly I just haven't had the opportunity to find her.

Anyway, embroidery class is fun, and it's a totally different way of interacting with a few local women (and girls: I study with a lady at a local NGO who gives daily lessons to groups of Tajik girls between the ages of 8 and 16. Teaching them embroidery is viewed in part as a way of giving these girls a skill that they can use to earn money even within the confines of their more traditional, home-bound lives into adulthood. It's a strategy that isn't unique to this NGO -- I've heard others engaged in this kind of training. In the months I've been visiting the sewing studio I've started to reflect -- undoubtedly with the help of the meditative process of embroidering -- on that development strategy and have kind of decided that it is a bit lame and overly accommodating of the very misogynistic tendencies in contemporary Tajik culture. But I guess I still enjoy the activity and the unique kind of contact it gives me, so... I continue to participate in it).

So far I've learned the 3 basic stitches and have completed one mini doily-square (see photo) and one larger doily-square, the smaller of which I guess I'd like to frame or something for Anya. I know how to say "my yarn has a knot" in Tajik ("Решта гиреҳ зад."). I keep forgetting the damn Tajik word for "scissors." I have only seriously pricked myself once with the needle and have (surprisingly) only once sewed my needlework onto my own clothes. An important element of the whole method is that we sit on the floor on a traditional Tajik cushion (курпача), surrounding a low little table that is like a Western table that has had its legs chopped off halfway down. We sit with our backs propped up against pillows, and our knees folded up at a loose angle, and we have to keep the right edge of the fabric that constitutes our embroidery project fastened in place by holding it between our knees. That is actually an important element that our teacher always needs to remind me to do. Somehow the friend who used to take the class with me in summer got away with using a safety pin (сӯзанак) to anchor her project to her right knee and sitting cross-legged. I just keep forgetting the suzanak.

I'm now on my third project, which is probably a tad ambitious: my teacher decided I was ready to embroider the flower pattern all over a set of Tajik national loose-fitting pants and dress (kurta, or chakkan), all to be completed (and worn!?) in honor of the Persian world's start-of-spring holiday, Navruz (March 21). So I have just under 6 weeks to finish, and I think I am done with all of 4 flowers -- woefully under par by my calculations. But it continues to be fun, and if all else fails I will aim to wear it on Navruz 2011.

Back to the Future

Dedicated viewers of Tajik TV yesterday were treated to a silly all-encompassing tribute to an impromptu holiday: a National Day of Solidarity in Honor of the Construction of the Rogun Hydropower Station. Or something along those lines.

Basically Rogun (technically "Roghun" in Tajik) has been the quiet theme of all the ever-present yet continually changing large billboards in Dushanbe throughout December. New Year's wishes couldn't be avoided, so Rogun couldn't have center stage all to itself, but it was there waiting in the wings.

Once New Year's was over, Rogun quickly jumped in to dominate the billboards: "Have YOU contributed to the foundation of Rogun HPS??" sternly queries the banner hung over the recently opened and now smoothly asphalted Tursunzade Avenue. (Somehow they resisted the urge to have a photo of either President Emomali Rahmon or national historical hero Ismoili Somoni there with a finger pointing, a la Uncle Sam or the Soviet equivalent.) Billboards in the usual places were joined by those at unfamiliar points, like right outside the recently constructed (in grandiose post-Soviet style) Youth Palace where we hope to take a try at the sauna this weekend, and at other random street corners where you normally just see a guy in a quilted chapan wobbling by on his bike with a pile of brooms tethered to the rear.

Then yesterday it all really reached its zenith, with performances on those unexplained stages that had been erected on Opera Square and right by aforementioned Youth Palace, and (somewhat small) crowds and TV cameras gathered round. And it was all capped off by the simultaneous TV coverage at night: as far as I could see all the stations were broadcasting the same thing, kind of like during a State of the Union address with the American president on at least all the network channels as you surf through them.

Rogun power station was started under the Soviets but abandoned after the union's collapse and Tajikistan's slide into civil war, in the mid 1990s. Now, plagued by the difficulties of being dependent on other independent countries (mainly the spiteful one in Uzbekistan) for power at the colder points in the year, when Tajikistan's means of generating power tends to be all locked up in snow and ice, Tajikistan is intent on completing Rogun and gaining true energy independence.

The trouble is, to build it they are "requesting" that the population of the country -- one of the poorest around -- invest in the construction and buy shares in the company. Yesterday was dedicated to that, and the TV coverage jumped all over the map of the country -- interviewing people in the South, in the North, in Hissor, in Khujand, everywhere -- about their pride in that investment and what it means for the future of their country (and interspersing these mini-interviews with silly music videos of songs dedicated to Rogun). Interesting how nobody they talked to seemed to have any problem with giving their hard-earned money over for this purpose...

To me the whole thing is so very sad: where will this well earned and saved money really go? Why couldn't the government gain the confidence of any foreign investors in this project? How many of the somoni invested will truly go toward supporting the project? For that matter, will the station even really get built?

And as if all of the forced hoopla to mobilize support for heroic, earth-moving projects meant to wrench a country out of its misery and into modernity and independence didn't give Russian historians enough deja-vu, true to form, just as Dan predicted (and those who've read Richard Stites will chuckle to learn), today a little baby boy named Roghunshoh (King Rogun) came into the world in a district close to Khujand.

(I'm surprised to learn that, not only could he possibly be rocked by great-grandma Elektrifikatsiya or dandled on the knee of great-grandpa Traktor, but he could conceivably have a cousin in Russia named Viagra?! I guess say what you will, but at least in Tajikistan, the more things change, the more they really do stay the same -- for better and for worse.)