Talk of weddings and at the tailors

16/10/10
I have been here a week, one which has been rich with new experiences.
At the moment my hand is tingling from the latest: putting my hand in a bucket of warming water, being heated by an element so I can wash my hair. Not sure after the first time, I did it again, dipped my hand in to check the water temperature and got a weak electric shock!

Yesterday I was at the Bactria Centre and planning to meet with Antoine Buisson, who is interested in the Samanids as well as being Director of Educational Programmes there. The Bactria Centre is run by the French charity ACTED, and a cultural centre for visual art – both ancient heritage and contemporary practice as well as music and teaching of English. I also saw that in their new building on the same road as the National Museum, they had Tai Chi teaching. I chatted to Antoine for a few moments and he kindly agreed to meet with me. He also told me about an international conference taking place next week in Persian literature which I hope to attend in Dushanbe, along with other cultural events which would be interesting for me to see, and if possible meet people. So that has rather altered my plans. It makes sense I think to stay in Dushanbe for another week, as there are still some more people I want to meet with, before heading south. Having spoken to Paul in KT he is very relaxed about when I arrive, which is great.

As I walked around the city with G she was telling me about her dream wedding, which would be in Dushanbe, in a restaurant, where she and her groom would arrive in a limousine. She wants to wear white, rather than red for the traditional Pamiri bride. I also think she will find it hard not to dance! Her parents wouldn’t mind her getting married in Dushanbe; in fact her father is happy for her to travel abroad for a couple of years before getting married. I would imagine that travelling as an unmarried woman is still unusual here. However her parents would find it hard to (read couldn’t) tolerate G marrying someone who is not a Pamiri Ismaili, ‘a boy from the Pamirs.’

Just then, we saw a wedding with a limo drawing up and laughing, well dressed guests milling around. “That’s what I want!” said G.
She would like to join her friends in USA who are learning English during the day and working in restaurants etc at night. She would love to do it, and is not afraid of how hard she will have to work, craving to be busy, and in a place where other people are busy too.

Downstairs the man is crying out buy my wares, selling them from apartment block to apartment block, picking his way amidst the playing children.
This flat has two main rooms, a kitchen and a small sunlit dining area, at the moment with no table, but where I am sitting, my laptop doing what it does best. There is no fridge, no oven and only one hob which is connected to the socket by two dangerous looking wires, which the little boy likes playing with: “Nakheyr” “No!”. He can be very sweet like all two year olds, calling “Apash, bir bir” Older sister [me], come and play… However he can also be a right tearaway in a two year old way, calling out “kissi nani” over and over again which sweet though that might sound in English, in Tajik is very rude!

We met MF and his friend quickly to say happy birthday, they were sitting in a beautiful park with benches and flower beds surrounding foutains. MF was quite happy to put his bag on a neighbouring bench, occupied by another guy, as there was no room for it on ours, and, as I presume he didn’t want to put it on the ground! Something which would be unheard of in London.

After meeting her friends, I accompanied G to visit the tailors to pick up her new outfit for the wedding. A traditional dress, similar to a salwar kameez, but with a longer (and often looser top, so that it works like a dress). The fabric was a black velveteen with pink roses and pink flower beading round the neck. There was some debate as to whether there should have been more beaded flowers around the short cap sleaves, but the seamstress said, and I agreed that it just would have been too itchy, especially while dancing.

The tailors was funny experience, a room full of women each at a sewing machine and one at the ancient looking iron, all asking me where I was from and what I thought about Tajikistan. I decided, like in India to have an outfit made at the tailors. So we will go tomorrow and chose some fabric at the market.

We had photos together, I had just asked them if they would mind me taking a photo of the tailor’s shop dripping with fabric cuts and beads, they answered smiling. And then there was a merry dance of my photo being taken with various seamstresses. One of them was my age with a 17 year old daughter who looked like her and was off to college to study medicine. She was keen to practice her English and kept asking me where I was born and how many people lived in London. She could hardly believe that there were as many people living in that city as in the whole of her country c.7million. Funny to think I could have a child of school leaving age.