Last few days spent in daily routines, both creating my own and taking part of the other one in the flat. The days are filled with studying and in the evening F, G’s sister and S, her uncle’s wife gather around the TV. A black and white telly flickering in a sepia house, patterned in reds and browns. We eat an evening meal and G and I sit and chat over tea. Their tea is smooth and drunk with sugar. Shirchoi I am not so keen on, being a salty milk tea with spoonfuls of butter in (like in Tibet – I was reminded of going to see the Dalai Lama preaching in Darjeeling in northern India, and trying to keep down the kindly given butter tea, which is better with sugar). Shirchoi is often eaten/drunk with bread dipped in. Cheap and filling, but not to my taste.
I am living on Saadi Shirozi Avenue and now have a key to the flat. I have learnt how to weave in and out of the tower blocks to find my way home and which buses to get into the centre. I walked there on my first day. A fume-filled walk along an ugly dual carriage way, and across a dusty bridge over the River Dushanbe. The sights are not worth seeing; I won’t be doing that again. There are many buses, however and also mashrutkas – minivans which zip around the traffic.
Happily G has asked me to stay another week when I return from Kurgan Tepe, the large town/ city in the south where I am going on Monday. Having spoken to Paul there are a few people who would be happy to have me to stay, which is great. I said that I didn’t mind about hot water, it is not as if I have that here. That is one bonus about the warm weather (usually there are lots, but my clothes are unsuitable, a rooky mistake), that cold showers are actually pleasant.
Saadi, who the street is named after, is a famous poet from Shiraz – hence the Shirozi appellation. I visited his tomb when I was in Shiraz, in southern Iran. His most famous works are Bustan, the Orchard, and Golistan the Rose Garden. Many of the new street names are called after classical Persian-language poets and writers, Hafez Shirozi, Firdowsi and Ibn Sina as well as more modern ones, Alisher Navoi and Aini.
I visited the two major museums in Dushanbe with Samanid material, the Bekhzod Museum and the National Archaeological Museum of Dushanbe. Inside the Bekhzod Museum was an exhibition of Qur’anic calligraphy, celebrating the first ECO calligraphy festival, organised I guess by the cultural institute of the same name. The lettering ranged from traditional to modern takes on classical styles. Fine miniature floral and vegetal arabesques snaking around the letters, picked out in golds and greens.
I was pleased from a research point of view to see one room upstairs in the Bekhzod which contained a fascinating wooden mihrab devoted to the Samanids. The wooden mihrab from Iskodar is huge and has a number of pre-Islamic motifs including swastikas, trilobed plants which I was fascinated to learn might link to the drinking of the sacred drink of haoma. Most prominent is a painted red medallion in the centre of the mihrab, surrounded by geometrical and flowering patterns. It is hard to escape the conclusion that the people who created or commissioned this still had in mind that praying to the sun, which brings light heat and all good things, was still the most natural thing to do. And this in spite of the Arabic inscription in kufic lettering telling us without doubt that they were Muslims. The museum interpretation underlines the importance of the mihrab:
“What historical significance does the Iskodar mihrab carry? First of all it serves as a historical fact of the great Tajik culture and allows us to observe the continuation of pre-islamic traditions. In spite of the Arabic legislative limitations in fine arts, the master of the Iskodar Mihrab successfully expressed the pre-Islamic world view of the Tajiks. The mihrab also proves that the time of the Samanids were indeed the cultural revival of the Tajik nation”
There was a school group here of four and five year olds being led round by their teacher and told about their past. I took photos, but wished I could have understood what they were saying. However I was pleased that I could show that school children were being taken to museums, and that some teachers at least deemed them important part of their education.
On the walls is a map showing the extent of the Samanid Empire which vastly overshadows the current borders of Tajikistan, taking in much of northern Afghanistan round Balkh as well as stretching across Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan to the Caspian Sea in the north and down to Reyy and the Mashhad area of Iran in the south. The current national boarders are also shown for comparison. This together with the model of the Samanid Mausoleum, in Bukhara currently in the neighbouring country of Uzbekistan (and will stay that way). This is the dynastic tomb possibly built by the Samanid dynasty’s founder, Ismoil Somoni.
I met S. for lunch, sister of someone at the Institute. She is PA to the President of the Academy of Sciences. She was lovely and told me sadly about how in Tajikistan the rich were getting richer and the poor poorer, and that is was hard to buy enough to eat on an average wage. There is growing inflation which means even food grown here in the country is becoming increasingly expensive. She is involved in researching the funding of scientific projects in comparison to other CIS countries and elsewhere in an attempt to improve science funding. There is an important astrophysicist research centre in the Pamirs and the Academy of Sciences is just about to host an international conference in protest of its prospective closure. They hope that by showing a gallery of international scientists concerned about its loss, will give them the leverage to keep it open.
After lunch, in a Southern Fried Chicken place, my first in years, ( however as she was so kindly inviting me, I was not going to be choosy!) she accompanied me to the National Museum. It was interesting discussing Tajikistan’s early history with her.
I had a gratifying conversation in Tajik buying a bag, when the shop assistant couldn’t believe that I had been in Tajikistan only a few days as my Tajik was so good! Ha ha, I explained I had been learning Farsi. However that may be, managed to negotiate a discount fairly easily.
I returned home on the bus, meeting a lovely Professor of biochemistry on the bus, she was keen to practice her English. She had not really had any chance since spending a semester at an American University over ten years ago.
When I got back, G had cooked another delicious dinner - lentils and vegetables. She did not start learning to cook until her two elder sisters left home as before that, they were the ones doing all the cooking. Rather reluctantly, she was the one who did the washing up. The Tajik way is to put fresh herbs such as dill and parsley and sometimes spring onions on top of stews, which is very similar to Iranian cooking. Dinner was served with a salad of cucumber and tomatoes with a sprinkling of salt, a great antidote to a burger! We eat with our hands when we can, it is good to feel the food in your fingers.
G was telling me how in Ishkoshim where she lives, they speak Tajik rather than one of the many Pamiri languages such as Shugnoni. They think that people who do speak those languages look down on them as not being true Pamiris, plastic Pamiris as it were. She was laughing but seemed rather sad that people should be prejudiced in this way.
Although all these languages are related to Persian, they are actually quite different linguistically, the Pamiri languages being from the East Iranian language group and Tajik from the West Iranian group, more similar to the language spoken in the south west Iranian Fars historically (from where the word farsi comes from, the Iranian word for their language).
The reverse is that Tajik speakers from Dushanbe also look down on those from the Pamirs who can’t speak proper Tajik. Although they learn their lessons in the medium of this language, out of school they are quick to throw it off, with their school bags and return to their native tongue.
There are so many languages and cultures in the Pamirs because of the high mountains, it is difficult even today to travel around, and that in summer. In winter people can be marooned in their mountain valley until the snows pass. I am reminded of Switzerland with its culture of various cantons and the three different languages spoken in a comparatively small area. G agreed with me that it would have been very different if they had lived on a plain or plateau, where it is easier for one culture to travel , or be imposed, across a larger area. The other thing to remember of course is that the Pamirs are where dissenters have escaped to throughout history, whether it is the Ismailis during the medieval period or the Basmachi movement in the early 20th century, resisting Soviet imperialism.
Ishkoshim is the most southerly part of Tajikistan. Just across the Panj River or Darya Panj is Afghanistan. There is a weekly market where the Afghans come across the river to buy and sell. Although according to Western social scientists the two populations on either side of the river were similar culturally, but through the differing socio-economic conditions of the last hundred and fifty years or so, have developed differently; G feels little in common with the Afghans, even the Tajik speaking ones. I am not sure where the Afghan Ismailis are found, whether this is also in Northern Afghanistan, in Badakhshan?
Tomorrow I am off to a wedding, one of G’s college mates. Lots of dancing which should be great fun! Time to do my yearly ironing lark.
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