Back in the smoke

8 November 2010

Felt, a little, just a little, like coming home, returning to Dushanbe – I got a lift with Paul, Umed, N and Joe who were coming to the city to see the Zoo. It felt relaxing travelling with them, knowing that you would be taken to where you wanted to go, that you could communicate with them and maybe even have a laugh! First though before anything else, was lunch which was a mountain of pizza and mixed grill eaten at Merve Restaurant. I just had a pizza and my favourite Ayran – some of the others, who will remain nameless, had my size pizza for starter, and a huge mixed grill for main. Eating this amount of food is a military operation, but it was not taken too seriously!

Last night was dancing round the living room to Lady Gaga with a one year old having drunk (me not her) two shots of Arak with her grandfather! He raised a glass to people everywhere being the same, wherever they came from. The little Amina loves dancing and cries my name when she sees me, dragging me to sit down next to her. Watching her move her little body, spinning like a dervish, made the whole family laugh.

We were talking about Christmas, in English unfortunately, N relaxed her strict rules for once that we only speak Tajik because we were both into the conversation, and it was crystal clear to us both that I would never be able to follow in Tajik. It  was interesting that in Soviet times, they celebrated New Year on 31^t  December/ 1^st January with a tree and presents for the children. Basically tacking on the traditional Christmas celebrations to a secular day of fun. The pagan celebration comes full circle. However since independence the government no longer celebrates this day, no more Christmas trees in schools. Noruz is the main holiday instead. For N it is too late to change her traditions like that, although it might work for her younger countrymen and women. She misses the end of New Year.

The family lives as is normal in Tajikistan with three generations together, the parents with the youngest, or only son and his wife and children. The father (or grandfather, rather) is a bit of a joker and we laugh together, even though we can’t understand eachother, maybe even because we can’t understand eachother. He is a kindly grandfather who sits feeding his grandchildren (the girl of one and her older brother who is three), dandling them on his knee. He helps in the kitchen more than I have seen many men here. The mother is a silent ghost, with a sweet smile, who just seems to follow round her children, sorting them out with their many ups and downs.

What is not so normal is the house where they live, a beautiful house in the centre, (not an apartment) in a desirable location behind the Ped (or Pedagogical) Institute. The father is in construction, and has obviously done well. N, his wife works for the American Council as Academic Coordinator. She often has American students studying Persian staying in this room. The house is a traditional one, round a courtyard, with beautiful wooden doors and beams. So my room is in a separate building from the rest. Great when I want to play my music loud, not so great when I want to go to the toilet in the middle of the night and have to skip past the dog.

Yes the dog, Filia, whose name belies his guard dog build and his capacity for semi-violent play, not to mention his sex. His mouth fits comfortably (for him, rather than me) round my arm. And when he jumps up, his paws are almost on my shoulders. I am not scared of big dogs, but him… at least until he got used to me, I was not over keen. I had to learn the word for sit pretty quickly, as I realised that “down” was not going to work, as he had never been taught English (!). Now I just say “Beshin” or sit! However it is better not to catch his eye at all. Definitely no playing. At least though, he seems to be good with the kids.

I will be staying here until the end, being a “Centre Girl” as H called me, thinking I won’t go visiting to anyone out of the centre any more. I was staying with H who used to work for the Institute, also on the website, for a few days before here. She is about to give birth any moment, and I am so thinking about her and wishing her all the best.

It has been a busy couple of weeks, meeting academics and art professionals, trying to gather as much information to work on in the next few weeks before I come back out here. I also visited the Ismaili Centre which is the most wonderful building, they do tours on Sundays open to anyone, and I strongly recommend anyone who comes to Dushanbe to go there. It has been so beautifully thought out, such a meaningful mix of ancient forms and modern functions, a really exciting building. It has just dawned on me I have four days left in Dushanbe!

I also visited Hissar fort, an easy day (or half day) trip from the capital, with a group of economics students and their lecturer, looking at the tourism provisions in this important historical site. These as we all agreed left much to be desired, so I was able to give both a tourist and museum professional take on how these could be improved, so I was brought in to speak to the students the next day, and even am taking part in some kind of university challenge event, between three universities in Dushanbe, on Saturday on the same subject. I am just waiting to be thoroughly confounded by Mr Paxman himself!

 This week of course was Eid, which was highly amusing first meeting up with G and going round with her and her youngest sister to various classmates’ homes. The younger sister, who was a sweet twelve year old, everyone we visited assumed she was my daughter, rather than G’s sister, and indeed in colouring we were much more similar – and perhaps even in looks. Eid is hilarious, as you move around the city visiting friends, and so the whole city is on the move, dressed up and carrying sweets in the case of the children. In the evening I met with my Iranian friend J and with her and her friend went to the Professor’s home in Circ, near where I used to live. The spread was amazing, I have never seen such a tablecloth of food laid out. Nuts, sweets, fruit as well as plates of chicken, onion and chips. There I met a lovely German woman who spoke great Tajik. The others decided, laughing, we shouldn’t have been put together as we were chatting too intently!

Last week, I went to a nightclub again with J and her friends. J loves dancing too, so that was really fun. Dancing the night away on cups of tea! The dancing was great, the guys looking like they were taking part in an ancient ritual, having slaughtered a sheep! The clubs here are in some ways pretty good, in that you sit down have some food, see a variety of acts, from belly dancing (hmm) to traditional music, fused with dance beats and dance. The stage of this one was shaped like the prow of a ship and various ladies in various little costumes draped themselves over the wheel. The name of the place was Nine Bar, which I didn’t really see how that fitted!

Today I have just taken part in a tourism round table event at the Ped Institute. I thought it was going to be a group of students, but in fact they were listening, mostly, and it was mostly heads of various tourism organisations. I suddenly became an expert on museums and heritage! Hmm!

Roast chicken with all the trimmings

2/11/10

A few days ago the father had suggested that I cook a traditional British meal for them, which sounded like a good idea, if only to give the mother one meal off cooking. I couldn’t think of anything more traditional, most likely to be enjoyed, and comparatively easy to buy (or so I thought) as roast chicken with all the trimmings. In my house, this always includes bread sauce, as many vegetables as possible and gravy.

And so the mother and I went to the market which is a short taxi ride away. Everyone here travels by taxi as it is the only way to get around the city. There is no public transport. But the fares are only 1-2 somoni and it seems to work fairly well, especially since the influx of second hand western cars which means there are many more taxis plying their trade.

When I remarked on the fact that she was wearing her  thick gold chain, she replied  “I am with you so my heart is strong”.  Bless her!
Yesterday we were talking about wearing jewellery.  She was saying that she usually just wears it for celebrations,  as people can sometimes rob you for your jewellery. 

The chicken is not sold often here, I think more people eat beef. But am glad I didn’t attempt roast beef as that is a tricky one to get right. We found one frozen chicken, which I thought had come from Iran as there was Persian writing on it mentioning halal etc. It was only when I got it home and looked at the packaging properly, I realised it came from Brazil. Now that is one overtraveled bird! Oh well. We found carrots and potatoes which was not worried about. I thought we might find leeks, called piroz – but these turned out to be spring onions. We also bought beetroot, maybe not your traditional roast fare, but I love roast beetroot so why not! Also cauliflower was bought as well. The bazaar is full of people with their few vegetables and herbs laid out, each one with the weighing scales. We hop in and out of the crowd. It is nice to see the mother in the outside world, rather than just in the flat. She tells me that she usually goes to the market in the morning as the food is fresher.

Getting home we start cooking, I realise we only have one hob and the oven is plugged in on the floor. Because it is almost cooking time for everyone in these flats, the oven doesn’t get very hot. It will work better later on, when there is less competition for power. M tells me what an important part of a new bride’s identity it is to be able to cook well for her husband, his family and their guests, as otherwise she will literally be laughed and gossiped about. She says that when she was first married she didn’t know how to cook, and that it was only by practising and asking the neighbours, that she learnt how. She told me everytime she cooked plov or osh, the pilau rice with carrots and meat that is the national dish of Tajikistan, she got a headache, as she was so worried how it would turn out!

Now she was taking notes at my cooking, which I wanted to ask her, to say, wait see if you like it, before you write it all down!

The father and older brother come home, and the little girl is saying she is hungry eating bread. It is almost ready. Just the gravy to make, I start laughing, when I realise that due to the beetroot, I will be serving pink gravy tonight! The meat is served, and I tell the father about the British custom being that the father of the household carves the meat. This he does and the food is laid out. I was interested to see whether the family would like the bread sauce, (I wondered if this was the first time this had been served in KT)! But I was pleased when I tasted it that the meal tasted just as it should. If they didn’t like it, then they just didn’t like roast dinner, it was not that I hadn’t done the dish justice.

They all seemed to enjoy it, and of the mountains of vegetables that I thought much too much, most were polished off. When they thanked me, I said it was a small token of my appreciation of their hospitality, and they seemed to be pleased.

Family life

31/10/10

It is interesting staying with a family and seeing life unfolding in a way that you could almost never imagine to be part of when you are back in your own life in the UK or watching some film on TV.

I got asked yesterday “Have you ever spoken to a black man?” by S the older son from the father’s first marriage. He had wide eyes when I explained  that I have black friends and live in a very black area. It is hard for them to comprehend maybe that Britain and America, especially in the big cities, are not filled with white people and that are a multicultural and multilingual mix of people.

His other comment made me smile, apparently according to him, in New York they will comment if you wear the same thing twice two days in a row. I didn’t know how to answer, but said that yes, usually for work you would change your clothes every day.

It is Sunday, and cleaning day today, M, the little girl is sweeping the kitchen floor, we have been watching Scooby Doo cartoon in Russian. I haven’t seen Z yet. Her mother is also busying around, we agree that a woman’s work is never done, and there is always something to do in the home. It isn’t possible to come home from work and relax.

The youngest boy is meant to stay with his family and living near by, the daughter in law is meant to cook for her parents in law, which is how they will judge her value, by the deliciousness of her dishes. However the husband, according to his wife, wants Z to move away, possibly to seek better opportunities in the West, and she is sad that her young son might not live near them but sees that it might be better. She has a great desire to travel and increase her knowledge herself, and asks me about the places I have been to. “What is Geneva like, are there poor people in Africa?”.

The girls marry early as they cannot have a boyfriend without marrying them, otherwise they will be poorly looked on by the family of the prospective husband.

The little girl goes to a different school, as I understand it a less academic one, than the boy. This gives her more time to do her art. The mother would love her to go to Germany to study to be a doctor, but the father believes she is more an artist than a doctor.

A woman told me about her mother who was not allowed to go to school – she was stopped from doing it by her father as she was a girl. She described her grandfather as being like men in Afghanistan. Because they lived in the village it was easy enough for him to do this even during Soviet times. The teacher came to get her a few times, but in the end the grandfather, who was known for his temper, won. If they had lived in the city it would have been more difficult for him to get his way.

Women in Tajikistan are expected to leave work when they get married, similar to the UK 60 years ago. Most women are happy to do this. Nizora thinks in Dushanbe maybe 60% do but here in KT over 80% do.

Tajik Halloween

31/10/10

Well I didn’t think when I got to KT that my involvement in the preparations for the party would involve designing the menu and cooking, as per my instruction, for between one and two hundred people!

I think I have only ever cooked for 20 at a push before!

This realisation dawned on me on the actual day that Paul hadn’t been joking and that if I didn’t do it, I don’t know who would! So on the menu was pumpkin soup, of course, pasta salad, green salad, chicken skewers, corn on the cob, bread sweets and biscuits.

So after a pumpkin carving workshop in the morning, also led by yours truly, so that we had enough flesh for the soup, we went to the market with about 10 helpers to carry all the bags. There were many things on the menu that I was never going to find in a Tajik market; tins of tuna, green beans I thought I might – olives I knew might be difficult. I didn’t know that corn on the cob would be, as you see it boiled everywhere, but apparently people don’t cook it on a bbq.

So, some of the dishes had to be drastically redesigned while running around the massive bazaar – up and down stairs weaving in and out of other shoppers. Tuna pasta salad turned into an aubergine dish with pasta – which ended up being rather good, and went down fast.

Kilos and kilos of onions, tomatoes, cucumbers, apples for apple bobbing which never happened, parsley, dill and cumin, spring onions and radishes, tins of tomatoes, balloons, glittery hairspray and one red lipstick, shrek drink (!) peppers, chicken legs (not perfect for skewering, until Paul took an axe to them) mayonnaise, carrots, potatoes, pasta, oil, aubergine, 200 paper cups and plates, skewers, lettuce, eggs for the pasta which were turned into egg mayonnaise instead and buns for another game  - limbo donut, that sadly also never got played in all the excitement.

For those of you who don’t know it this is best done with jam donuts which are hung on a string, which party people have to limbo under while taking a bite of said donut. ‘Blood’ dripping down the face!

Oh well, the Tajiks will have to wait for another year, before their introduction to such fun!

A couple of guys followed me and Nizora  around, carrying most of the shopping.  Nizora was haggling and I was handing out the money and checking the item off the list while marking down how much we had spent.

When we got back it was straight to the kitchen while Nizora rustled up an army of helpers. I was soon directing operations, setting people to peeling, chopping and mixing. The kitchen had two hobs and a mound of dirty dishes there, the rest didn’t look too clean either, so it was a big clean before we could start…. The lady who normally cooks there, dishing out plates of greasy chips, was not the best help.

But in four hours or so it was done! The girls were great, squatting on the floor chopping the vegetables, there were about ten to fifteen of us at it, setting out sweets and biscuits on trays. The division of work is clear. No way would any of the boys been seen in the kitchen. They were all hanging around the sound system, messing up the levels once Joe had coaxed both the speakers and the PA system to work.

The barbeque area that Paul and Joe had built this week looked fab, with two large grills either side of a massive cauldron, just the size for the pumpkin soup (which turned into vegetable soup, as there was not as much pumpkin as we hoped). Unfortunately for Tajik tastes, I had not tipped half a litre of oil into it, so they were not so keen. They like their grease, do the Tajiks! But the other food was really popular and once the judges had done their business judging the best of the other food which was brought in, then the hoards of zombies, ghosts and ghouls, as well as  a couple of mummies, count Dracula, a witch and a wizard descended like raiders from the mountains on the rest. There was not much left, which all the cooks took as a complement!

Sadly I missed the burning of the alien Guy Fawkes – as this event has now been subsumed into Halloween in KT. Did see someone leaping the fire (not allowed, obviously) to disappear into the crowd. We might have had another Guy!  I also missed, the young hooligans, so-called by Paul, and he’s maybe not wrong, chucking all our pumpkins done by us and the kids into the fountain. Nizora was upset as well but felt slightly better when I said that the same thing might easily have happened at a party with young people in Britain, if there were 150 of them. It was probably the exciting thing happening in the city that night (that year, Paul added to my comment), and although the guards were not meant to let in anyone not connected with the Centre, in the dark, it was hard for them to keep tabs.

The party was hilariously surreal, from the choice of music, ranging from Celine Dion (please) to Meatloaf via Tajik rap and strange dance tracks to seeing young people aged from about 12 to 20 or so dancing together in a range of costumes. The boys had gone to town more than the girls, but that might have been something to do with many of them involved in the cooking until late. Z and M from the family I am staying with were both there. I had the sweetest dance with the little girl, M who was just beaming away hands moving up and down in the air.

Zombies, Skeletor and Count Dracula loomed out of the night, I had just managed to swap my filthy cooking and pumpkin making clothes for a witch costume with poison ivy. Green plastic leaves which I had lovingly painted earlier in black and purple as part of my costume. Worn with dark eyes and the red lipstick from the bazaar.

After all the kids went home, Joe and I decided it was time to break open the bottle of red wine from the kitchen upstairs. We thought we deserved it!

This is the one after dark party that Sword Teppe does each year, for some of the kids it is their first experience of Halloween.  But all of them seemed to get into the spirit rather well!

Kurgan Teppa

27/10/10

Now in one of the main cities in the south of Tajikistan, Kurgan Teppa, or KT as it is known amongst friends. The streets are wide and dusty, fewer trees here. The city is near the Vakhsh river which is wide and powerful at this point, bringing meltwater down from the Pamirs.

I took a shared taxi to get here, and it was a painless journey, apart from being squeezed between a rather large lady and a sleeping man in the middle of the back seat, who had both managed to get in at the same time in a kind of pincer movement, which ensured I got middle place! The landscape is wild and rocky, there are no trees giving shade to the donkeys and herds of goats we passed. These were the only things moving in the landscape apart from a stray cow who looked as if it had lost its way, but was munching contentedly, however, on the few strands of grass.

Our driver was good and drove fast but well, talking in Russian to a smartly dressed, elderly woman with hair curled upon itself in a chignon. A journey of 89 km was only 15 somoni or £2. An hour later we were pulling up. I even got taken right to the door. Better than a bus!

It was good to see Paul again; he was out back directing cement mixing operations for the new patio taking place behind the Sword Teppa centre. I also met Joe, another English guy, who had stayed after this summer’s Roof of the World Rally from London, but is soon returning home. The centre works as a hub for English teaching and indeed is the only English organisation which carries out this role in Tajikistan. So the British Ambassador visits here; he is informal “Please call me Trevor.” When Paul demurred, stating lessening of respect for the office and such like, the response was “I order you to call me Trevor!” We wondered if the response had come down from on high to seem less removed from the commoners!

They are wondering whether the Ambassador might come to the Halloween party, but as he has to be back within Embassy walls by dark, it is unlikely. All the talk now is about the upcoming Halloween party, and much of today has been spent planning it. It has been merged with Guy Fawkes, and we now have an excellent Guy with rubber gloves and baggy trousers and all.

Sworde Teppa is also a centre for studying the environment and research into malaria and other diseases. This is Paul’s side of the work. He works together with the Natural History Museum, which is how I know him, through my moth curator friend, Geoff, who works at the NHM. Last week the Centre was organising a series of climate change events for school children, next week it is a similar thing with university students, however this week seems to be all about Halloween!

The centre is looking for another British national to run their English teaching programme. I also met a lovely lady N, who works with the centre too. It was interesting to hear their take on things, as Paul has worked in Tajikistan for 11 years or so, he is a wealth of information about the ‘charity scene’ in the country.

N then kindly took me to the family I will be staying with for the next week. When I arrived the mother M laid out an amazing spread; trays of sweets and cakes and then after we arrived kept bringing out other dishes such as plates of chips and sausage and freshly crushed walnuts. We sat drinking black tea, chatting. Their flat is comfortable family home for parents and two children, a smiling girl M of 12 and a boy Z of 15.

The father is a bank manager so for Tajiks is fairly affluent, as he also has a shop in the market too. He brings down men’s shirts from Dushanbe and he and the salesman both add a couple of somoni on each; and this does good business.

By chance, this family and N are all Ismailis, they were so happy when I told them that I worked at the Institute of Ismaili Studies in London. The father asked me whether I had met His Highness, I was sorry to disappoint and answer in the negative.

However he had met many of the IIS governors and staff members during their various lectures and presentations here. The family is devote, and the father is warm and open and speaks well about his religious beliefs, telling me that God wants many different flowers in the garden, religions of many different forms and hues.

The father likes the peace of the countryside and the simplicity and straightforwardness of country people from the villages. But he urges his sons to study in US and try and improve their English.  One, Z wants to be president! – “How should I get there” he asks me?!

The daughter is 12 and good at art, and the father hopes she might study design, architecture or painting. She shyly showed me her paintings and they are good, both the colours that she uses and the forms. She was either painting from her imagination or copying from books

How revered the Aga Khan is here, he came into conversation a lot and interesting that he spoke about the importance of the Samanids to the Tajiks.