Nighty-night, Dushanbe.

(all he could carry was Utah, but Mitt is huge in Dushanbe)

(Mochon waving goodbye with Bakhtior)

(car bazar)

Dir Frenz,

I just said goodbye to my host parents, cat, and brother and sister and am now writing from the American Councils office before we board our 5:30am flight.

A couple fun notes from the day:

Halimjon, my peer tutor, took me to the Dushanbe car bazar. Thousands of cars and sellers looking to bargain. If lived here longer I would buy a red 1987 Lada Zhiguli. They were asking somewhere around $2000. I'm not sure why Soviet classic cars haven't caught on yet in the States.

Lots of funny guys at the car bazar with nothing to do (I didn't see any sales going down). During conversation with one group it became apparent that Halimjon thought I worked at the US embassy. No wonder he wanted me as the honorary witness at his wedding. Turns out he's not the brightest bulb.

For my departure dinner Saidaopa surprised me with a replica version of the meal I cooked for them: roast chicken, mashed potatoes with caper-laden gravy, and a salad with vinaigrette. I was touched, of course. And it turned out pretty darn well, though the skin was not crunchy enough. And most surprising, Shahsonam joined us for dinner! First time the whole summer we shared a meal with mixed gender company! Amazing! Totally un-risky, totally ho-hum! No sexual advances made by either side!

I then distributed a round of presents. Some glassware, a Mitt Romney tee-shirt for Muhammadamin, and some nice large photos I took of the kids. They were all pretty excited. I was gifted a teacup with a few glasses (please don't break). Then the heartfelt statements of thanks. I was assured that I have a home here in Dushanbe when I return and was complimented on my ability to fit in and to scold Malika when the occasion arose.

With that I said my goodbyes to Mochon, picked up the heavy sack of assorted baked goods that I'm obligated to bring to Bunyod in Istanbul, and was on my way.

I'm pretty sure most people know that Turkey is a real country, and I don't think you need my proof. So this is likely the final blog until the spirit moves me, once more, to prove to you Tajikistan's existence from afar.

Thanks for reading.

Love,

Charles

Some parting thoughts

(my teacher, Abdullahjon: this man loves Michael Jackson)

(silent cousin from meal photos; Shahsonam (NOT Sherzoda!); Malika and Muhamidamin.)

(just enjoying the latest issue of "Zamondosh" ("Contemporary").

Dir frekhnds,

My times in Dushanbe, they are grow short. I write my conclusive ideas now, below:

Four days before departure I'm sitting on the 'so'ri' (outdoor table/bench) with Bakhtior and he calls for his daughter, "Shahsonam!" I say, "who is Shahsonam?" And out comes Sherzoda, hidden host sister. "here is Shahsonam," he says. Say what??!! (For the Russian speakers that translates as "Chego???!!) Turns out that traditional Uzbek husbands and wives dont' call one another by their given names, but by the names of their eldest children. This is because, according to Bakhtior, their bond is sacred and the name of their eldest child signifies the beginning of the family they create together. After all, you can call a common acquaintance by their given name, but you can't call any common acquaintance Sherzoda, can you? You will remember that I was never formally introduced to any of Bakhtior's adult daughters, including the who lived under the same roof as me, I had always assumed that "mystery host sister" was Sherzoda, because either she or Saida-opa would come running when he yelled for them, lazily, from his chair in front of the TV. He had a good laugh at my stupidity. I had a good laugh at teh fact that it took me two months to figure this one out. Of course, I couldn't laugh about it with Shahsonam (lit. "queen-beautiful-goddess") because I'm not allowed to talk to her.

Bakhtior also explained that after deaths of close relatives women in mourning wear dark colors, green or dark blue, for a year whenever they leave the house. This is to show other people that they are in mourning and to respect their moods. Saida-opa will also not be attending an extravagant wedding of a female relative because she's in mourning due to the death of Bakhtior's sister who died earlier this year. However, a prime money making opportunity she will however be making 70 loaves of "pater" bread (a version of traditional central asian non, but with flaky layers and lots of oil. Saida-opa is well known for her paters and sells them to a store on the side). I asked if there was a similar rule for men as far as special mourning dress or obligatory skipping out on invitations and he said no.

In a general talk of women's fashion, Bakhtior also said how women are beauty, flowers, nature's gifts, delicateness, etc, etc, personified, and therefore should be surrounded by beauty and color. Hence the really colorful dresses that non-mourning central asians wear. I told him that in the West wearing black was considered rather fashionable, and he looked at me as if I were a moron. He then said that it was just rude/uneducated (po russki, "grubo") that Iranian women all wore black.

In our final conversational tussle of the night we broached the seemingly safe topic of the Olympic games. He asked me how many countries participated....40 or so? I said closer to 100, and he was surprised. He said it was impossible, for how could they find the time for 100 different nations to compete in a space of 3 week. I tried to explain to him that athletes in different events, in different heats could represent easily 50 countries in a single day. Somehow or other he refused to believe this. I said take the marathon plus 20 different swimming heats. And still he refused to beleives this.

(and while we're at it, if the olympics only took 40 countries why on earth would TAjikistan be invited?)

This was a pretty contentious evening. I think it says a lot about one's ability to really get to know people and their traditions that after two months I only figured out everyone's name in a house! What does this say about international diplomacy, I don't know.

My last complaint/moment of disbelief occurred at Bunyod's going-away party. I had really been looking forward to it because I thought it would be a chance to be invited to see the whole family interact and enjoy one another's company. Instead the menfolk, including Bunyod, me, his friends, and older cousins were segregated from the women and their table. There was not a full moment of whole-family interaction. Perhaps my presence had something to do with it. Perhaps because his friends were there. But in any case, it was a really boring affair. A bunch of dudes eating plov, drinking RC cola and watching the same Turkish 'serial' on TV as all other Uzbeks. I was a bit disappointed and sad that we couldn't all have fun together. But such is the house that Bakhtior, bastion of worldly perspective, has built. I think it's pretty good that Bunyod gets to exit it for a while...

( I did get the chance to take photos of the closer relatives when the party ended however, so I can show them to Bunyod's aunt in Istanbul. Hence I have, surprise, surprise, a photo of Shahsonam with her kids! Amazing.)

On the teaching front....our female teacher, Dilbar, is sweet, attentive, and clued in. We play games in class, she adjusts things according to our mood, and she speaks English. These are all great things in my book. Abdullahjon, our conversation teacher, is a little less clued in. Twice this summer we've informed him of things that have made his jaw drop, and he gets this look in his eye as if we've just told him there is no santa claus. It's pretty damn informative of just how insular this place is to learn what these moments are. First, we told him that Michael Jackson likes kids. No, really likes kids. He was still under the impression that the king of pop was a shining American star. Second, we told him about somethign called the "Andijon massacre," when in 2005 the Uzbek president ordered troops to fire into a crowd of innocent protesters, killing perhaps as many as 500 people. This occurred in his neighboring country, perpretrated by a man that most local Uzbeks (like my host father) revere for his strength. Hearing about Andijon from Americans in broken Uzbek made him a bit uncomfortable so he turned the conversational tables and asked us about 9/11 and why no one saw it coming. According to his worldly knowledge alll terrorists notify journalists at first, to make their ransome demands known. We then proceeded to role-play as journalist and terrorist. I was the journalist and he made my classmate, Ailey, call me and tell me he had my wife and kids captive on a plane and that they would die unless I gave her money. What wonderful conversation practice. I cut the thing short and said I wouldn't continue to make light of such things. Sometimes we have off-days with Abdullahjon....

He did recently take us to the editorial offices of all the Uzbek-langauge papers in Tajkistan. They were quite a site. I think I saw two computers total for three different newspapers. They folks working there were very nice, however. Ailey was interviewed for Uzbek radio and as long as I send my photos via email (to the one guy in the office who had an email address; the papers don't have their own), they will publish them in the papers! They're kind of funny and Soviet-posed.

Can you sense the growing jadedness? I think it's time to go soon.

Thus might be my last post. But I might be going to the car bazar on Sunday with my peer tutor, which could result in some awesome stories and pictures. So stick around.

Charles

A few more photos

(my peer tutor and family. from left to right: Halim-jon, grandma-hajji, Gulshoda the Uzbek teacher, me, peer tutor's father, his older brother and sons, unidentified and unintroduced woman, and his mother)

(my dinner! from left to right: potatoes, Muhamad-amin, salad, Malika, roast chicken, unidentified silent cousin, vinaigrette)

(my, er, private dancers: Bunyod, Malika, Muhamad-amin)

(The birthday spread: Note the soccer ball-shaped sugar bowl on the birthday spread and the two heaping bowl fulls of chuchvara. )

So here are a few photos from the last few days. At the top is a photo from my visit to teh home of my peer tutor, Halim-jon. To refresh your memory, he is paid by ACCELS to be my friend and speak Uzbek to me. Not a bad deal, though we all know how surly I can get.

Anyway, Halim-jon is painfully shy most of the time, speaks quietly or not at all, and slurs his speech. Other than that, he's a fabulous peer tutor. He's 20 and getting married in two weeks to a girl whose also 20. Apparently they know each other, but essentially it's an arranged marriage.

We had run out of things to do in Dushanbe (not a difficult task) and I proposed we visit his house at the "kolkhoz Rossiya" and milk his cow. So we went last week, with KC, another student, and Gulshoda, an Uzbek teacher, in tow. Little did I know that a quick visit for "milking cows" meant a full on Uzbek hosting experience. I arrived at the gates of the collective farm and found Halim-jon had cleaned up (really, he seemed somehow cleaner and lighter skinned, but perhaps it was just because he wasn't wearing his usual black shirt and black pants) and his father was by his side. I soon learned that this would be an entire visitation affair.

We were showed around their house and courtyard, which were quite large, I think becaue there was simply more land for homes on collective farms. His father used to be and maybe still is the main accountant for the farm. They also had a large family garden in back where they grow melons, loads of cucumbers, peppers, tomatoes, apricots, and peaches. They had two cows, several dogs, and many hens as well.

Since it was ultra hot we started in doors with all sorts of wonderful hot-weather food: green tea, watermelon, "dinosaur egg" melon, tomatoes, cucumbers, and katok(kefir?). The katok was hands down the best dairy I've had in Central Asia. Light, tangy, cold, and fresh from the cows. Next we went on a walk through the estate and were duly impressed and oohed and aahed. Next we went to the suite of rooms that Halimjon had recently renovated for his new bride. When I had asked what he was up to all summer he would demurely say "housework." I had no idea he was preparing for his bride! It was impressive and quite moving to watch him shows us around the two newly renovated rooms that will be for him and, god willing, their new baby in nine months.

Finally, we returned to the sitting room and had some pretty darn good plov. It wa pretty simple (no garlic, raisins, nor chickpeas) but the meat was excellent and easy to chew. The grandma kept urging us to "take, take, take" and we "took" as much as we could before we stuffed ourselves. She was quite a funny old woman. She was proud to say that her parents moved here from Andijon in the 30s (like many Uzbeks) and they had all wound up together outside of Dushanbe and hence "kolkhoz rossiya" is synonymous with "Uzbek." In 2005 she went on the hajj and described not being able to communicate with people but for hand signals. Going on the hajj is a really big deal, so now she is referred to as "hajji-opa" or "hajji-grandma", or some such formulation. She was in charge of all the prayers for the day. Halimjon's father is quite a chracter: handsome, jocular, and confident, and exactly who I think the Soviets were trying to create in Central Asia. He invited me to return next week for a tour of the farm. We were joined by Halimjon's 25 year old brother who has two kids, the eldest is 7 (!) and the youngest is perhaps 3. He's a cabdriver around town and he has a new, tiny orange Nexia. I mention him only because he's pretty young to have a 7 year old. And because his youngest child is named Shah-jahon, or "king of the world." This is of course the name of the Mughal emperor who built the Taj Mahal. Babur, the Mughal founder, was from Andijon himself. And so it's always interesting to me to see how Uzbeks name their kids. Needless to say, they're pretty darn proud of the Mughals. Needless to say, when you keep the literal translsation of his name in mind, it's pretty hard not laugh at, say, "king of the world, eat your plov."

Finally, I was moved (again) by one final invitation: Halimjon and his dad (though I think the invitation came from his dad) want me to stay in Dushanbe to be the official witness to their wedding. I think this is something like the best man, or at least the person who signs papers. I thanked them profoundly for the offer but explained that my visa expired before the wedding and that my plane ticket was in hand. Grandma-hajji kept insisting, "charlesjon, stay, stay!", but unfortunately it won't work. So it looks like another summer in Central Asia has come and gone and still now weddings. These are the biggest and grandest events in people's lives, and they love to impoverish themselves in order to throw a good party. In fact, the president recently passed a law capping the number of guests at 150 so people don't throw all their money away. But this rule is detested, is untraditional, and will not be enforced.

Ah well. Next time, halimjon. Maybe in three years I can come to your son's circumcision party (another major, major life event!).

Till next time,

Charles

The Tables Turn and Birthday Celebrations

Hello all,

I missed out on a triplet birthday celebration in Detroit but had a very memorable dinner in Dushanbe.

This was now the third birthday I've had the pleasure of celebrating in the former Soviet Union. The first, in Russia, involved going swimming in, literally, a greasy lake in Podmoskovia, enjoying a homemade banya and getting attacked by a local drunk. The second, in Tashkent, involved two of the most spoilt, most delinquent kids I've ever met, ages 6 and 8, drink beers and terrorize the staff of a local hotel. This was the most quiet and the most satisfying.

Saida-opa asked me which meal I wanted and I replied, with no hesitation, "chuchvara." These are basically like Russian pelmeni but they're homemade and she makes the dough so thin and sweet and the insides have the perfect amoung of meat, onion and spice. It's all topped off with basil, dill, and "kainok," Central Asian kefir. Because it was a feast all the stops were pulled: we ate in the living room rather than in the courtyard, and the table as bedecked with candy, cookies, RC cola (ubiquitous local cola) and peach juice. Aka, it was a party. For dessert they bought me a cake which, unfortunately, had its "happy birthday, Charles" greeting smudged off upon arrival. The best part of the night was the presents, of course! They picked out for me a sugar bowl shaped and decorated like a soccer ball with the words "football" all over it. I was really touched because soccer is the thing that Bunyod and I both share a passion for, and we've spent more than a few hours playing soccer at teh local stadium and logged many early morning hours in front of Euro2008. Amazing how cheap Chinese-made mass-produced products can be really moving, when picked out for the right moments by the right people. The evening was then topped off with Malika's present, which was a solo dance performance for me. Bunyod cranked out the tunes (Uzbek pop) from his cell phone, and off she went, dancing like a real Central Asian, turning her hands in and out and twirling a bit out of control. It was amazingly cute. I asked where she learned to dance like that and Saida-opa said purely from TV. Then she was joined by Bunyod and Muhamad-amin for an entire family performance.

The next night I was really glad to follow through on my promise to cook an American meal for them. Bakhtior-aka considers himself quite a gourmand, if only because of his ample midsection and his two years spent in the army staged at the world culinary capital, Communist East Germany. He's completely Soviet in his thinking about nations and national cuisines. He was adamant that there must be an American equivalent for plov, the Uzbek national dish served at all major events (in the Soviet era, of course, each nation had its own national dress, dish, language, Academy of Sciences, etc.). He was somewhat dissastisfied by my response that we have no true national "special occasion" food, but that people love steaks, seafood, and pasta, among other things. What sort of undeveloped nation do we have, anyway, esepcially with all those silly California chefs hellbent on innovation?

Anyway, I told them that my options were limited by a few things, notably my inability to cook and the lack of salmon in Tajikistan. Nevertheless I had a plan (thank to mom). I roasted a couple chickens, made an "American-French" salad with leaf greens and vinaigrette, and did a gravy with chicken juice, capers, lemons and butter I learned from my friend Andrew.

It was pretty entertaining just getting the ingredients at the central bazar. I purchased capers a few weeks before at a local high-end grocery store and went looking for French mustard, which would have been easy but for the fact that I waited til the last second and found a pretty poor version. I also bought olive oil, garlic, heirloom tomatoes (ubiquitous, incredibly!), and potatoes pretty easily. No one at the meat counter sold whole chickens, so I had to by imported hallal chickens from Brazil!

Back at the house I acquainted myself with Saida-opa's tools and went to work. Her oven is a little desk-top number that plugs into the wall and was made in Turkey. It took a bit longer to cook than usual, but out it came, looking pretty good: topped with loads of salt and some pepper, with some butter and garlic wedged inside, and some basil sprinkled on at the end (my search for thyme had been fruitless, each time I asked I was presented with carroway seeds!). I then brought out the mashed potatos, gravy, and salad, and away we went.

The kids were a bit skeptical of the gravy (lemon is out of season and hence from Argentina, and they'd never encountered capers before) but they ate the potatoes quickly. They also wouldn't stand for the vinaigrette, picking out the cucumbers and tomatoes. But everyone else seemed to really enjoy it and Saida-opa commented on how beautiful it all was. For desert I brought back, what else, melons!

Cliche of the day: it feels so good to be able to reciprocate the favor for once. I was really happy to cook for everyone a satisfying and tasty meal. And if you don't believe I pulled it off, aparently Saida-opa was gossiping with another student's host mother, who reported to me that apparently Charles had made a really tasty and aestheticallly pleasing meal. So there.

Sorry, no pictures this time because I'm writing from the internet cafe. Soon to come.

Finally, in big host family news, Bunyod, my 21 year old host brother finally got his visa to go to Turkey and is leaving on Tuesday! He'll be gone for 5 months, either to work or study or both. His cousin, who graduated from a local Turkish "lycee" moved there and works at the Istanbul airport, and will be hosting him for his time there. As you might now, a full 50% of Tajikistan's GDP comes from citizens mailing home their work checks from abroad, with Russia, Turkey and Kazakhstan being popular destinations. So Bunyod is about to join this labor stream and this international labor movement. I'm really happy for him but a bit worried. He didn't know which countries bordered Turkey nor where Istanbul was on the map. I gave him a quick Turkish history lesson and assured him that Turkey is probably one of the most interesting possible places to live in right now. But I'm not sure what a labor migrant/student with little English or Turkish language skills can offer to the economy. We'll see. I've got my fingers crossed and I bought him a Russian-Turkish dictionary that I'll give him on our big final dinner on Monday.

And with any luck, I'll be able to stay with him and his cousin in Istanbul when I go there in about a week! I feel somehwat sorry for Bakhtior-aka and Saida-opa. In ten days their household will diminish by 2 persons! And this is the first trip abroad for anyone in the house, so it will be a new experience for all of them.

That's all for now. I might be going out to dinner with my on-again off-again Tajik TV magnate friend. If so, I'm sure it will be interesting.

Best,
Charles