Changing of the seasons

24 October 2010

It is getting noticeably colder. Perhaps more towards what is usual in Dushanbe for this time of year. In the flat the winter clothes are coming out of the voluminous cupboard, which houses most of the three women’s and one young boys’ possessions. This means more to me, somehow, than the putting on of jumpers and jackets as we do in the west – at least for the women. Many women, while they love wearing their traditional dresses in the summer, and are a riot of colour, pattern and pizazz, in winter it is warmer to wear western dress.

So G went to the Kurvon market today, and bought a dark grey polar neck and paler grey cardigan and sheer tights – which she is now wearing with a knee length skirt with oversize buttons and stilettos. My idea that women’s clothes here expressed their different ideas, whether traditional or modern, was wrong. If it is true that Tajik women have been able to escape the massive politicisation of what they wear that goes on elsewhere, then I am glad. Though I know that Rahmon has tried to ban hijabs in the past, however women here still wear them, and apparently their numbers are growing. I even saw a young woman in a hijab and a knee length skirt and tights today!

As a counterpart to what is going on surrounding Islamic women, whether in France, Turkey or Iran, I was shocked and fascinated that a local council  in Italy, Castellammare di Stabia might try and ban miniskirts as well as football games and sunbathing by the beach! Especially as the party agitating for this calls itself the People of Freedom Party! As a subversion to the events in France, see this link on two Muslim women wearing niqabs and miniskirts, sashaying around Paris, waving at police.

It is interesting to think that a visitor here in summer could (if they thought as I did) have a completely different idea of women than someone visiting in the winter. 

Sunday was a quiet day, but even today a cleaning and a scrubbing takes place by the other women in the flat. I have been holed up in my room, picking at grapes and pistachios, learning my Persian. I have decided that even though it is different from Tajik in words, where Tajik has taken on Russian words and Persian retained an Arabic vocabulary, that if you can speak Persian well (ha ha) you will be able to communicate in Tajikistan as well.